Creativity is often seen as a talent, or as a characteristic
of eminent people. Distinctive personality traits have been identified to
exemplify a creative mind. At the same time, a number of studies recognise that
creativity can be enhanced and cultivated. How well are educational systems
enhancing this transversal skill and promoting students’ creativity? Are
schools creating the conditions for creativity to flourish? And, most of all,
why should school address creativity?
Many of the core indicators
of creative thinking and behaviour can be seen in individuals who enjoy the
process of learning through experimentation and exploration. These processes
employ elements of play, exploring alternative approaches applying imaginative
thinking to achieve an objective, making connections with previous and new
learning and thinking critically about ideas, actions and outcomes.
The use of ICT often
exploits one of the best understood features of ICT, to increase the speed of
the creative process, enabling the creative development in the digital medium
to keep pace with the thinking and process of having ideas.
Specialist software has been
developed to aid creative thinking and give substance to these ideas on screen
and on paper, to communicate through presentations, to share with others via
the web and in multi-sensory forms including visual image, sound and as
three-dimensional product or installation. These processes all make use of
another of the main features of ICT, provisionality. Provisionality enables Young people to
use ICT to develop partially formed ideas, to visualise and give substance to
their thinking. It removes much of the fear of failure or loss of evidence of
their efforts, so they can step-back to earlier ideas, re-visit and re-assess
what they have done.
The four key features of Creativity:
- using imagination
- pursuing purposes
- being original
- finding value
Indicators of creative thinking and
behaviour:
Young people may demonstrate that they can:
- generate imaginative ideas in
response to a stimuli;
- discover and make connections
through play and experimentation;
- explore and experiment with
resources and materials;
- ask 'why', 'how', 'what if' or
unusual questions;
- try alternatives or different
functions;
- look at and think about things
differently and from other points of view;
- respond to ideas, tasks and
problems in surprising ways;
- make connections and see
relationships;
- reflect critically on ideas,
actions and outcomes;
- apply imaginative thinking to
achieve an objective;
ICT provides a means by which any and all of
these indicators can be realised in the context of the task or activity.
Whether you are using creative software to design or create imaginative
outcomes in the arts, modelling with a spreadsheet, refining performance using
digital video or using the technology to share ideas and views with others over
the Internet. The strong link between creativity and the arts is well
documented and commonly understood as is the multi-sensory/multi-modality
dimensions often exploited by 'creatives', particularly within the areas of
computer gaming and the creative industries.
Many people see
imagination as the key feature of creativity, but although creative processes
are rooted in imagination they need to be much more than just imagining. They
need to have substance, to be realized as a process of development, a full or
partially formed outcome.
ICT provides a means by which imagining can
be given substance (an outcome of value), and provides a means by which
pictures and diagrams can be used to help young people think and learn, using
for example, mind mapping software, graph functions, graphic tablets and tablet
PCs to develop ideas visually and then share these ideas with others. Musicans,
Film-makers, Artists, Designers, Engineers, Scientists and Writers,
professionals from the worlds of health care and social welfare, commerce and
manufacturing, all of whom use ICT creatively, can themselves provide models of
use. It is also important to show pupils the potential for creative work and to
enable them to make choices for their future careers.
