Learning from FAILURE

If I say that as a student I was terrified of failure, I would not be alone.  I was never taught with productive failure.  It teaches students to embrace failure as a part of problem-solving.  It is defined as "a learning design that affords students opportunities to generate solutions to a novel problem that targets a concept they have not learned yet, followed by consolidation and knowledge assembly where they learn the targeted concept" (Song, 2018). 

In other words, failure can enhance student learning by allowing them to test their own hypotheses and to see how something works and then learning how or why they were wrong and the material they were working towards.  It encompasses active learning and gives students the chance to scaffold their own learning, as well as teaching them how to use design thinking processes later in life.

Even when students are told that failure is okay and leads to growth, it is still a source of anxiety.   Feigenbaum (2021) suggests one way to combat this is with generative failure using these principles:

1) To get something right, first you have to get it wrong (many times for more complicated skills or tasks);

2) Innovation and learning are iterative and messy; and 

3) That messiness needs to be embraced, as well as feedback, to pursue a "productive and happy life." 

I was able to fully embrace this messiness in learning when I became a librarian.  I was encouraged to experiment and test.  We created new websites, and then did user experience and usability testing which led to changes (not failure, but growth!) to make our website work for our users.

My own experiences and this research, especially of productive failure, will be used in the future as I redesign my information literacy lesson plans.  I plan on building in time for students to try their own research before we talk about what they did and how close it is to the tactics I want to try.  We can compare and contrast results -- what part of what they tried first will they continue doing? What parts from the instruction will they incorporate?

  References:

Feigenbaum, P. (2021). Telling students it's O.K. to fail, but showing them it isn't: Dissonant paradigms of failure in higher education. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 9(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.9.1.3

Song, Y. (2018). Improving primary students' collaborative problem solving competency in project-based science learning with productive failure instructional design in a seamless learning environment. Educational Technology Research & Development, (4).

Motivating Creativity

The topic I have been exploring the most for my research is teaching or motivating creativity.  To that end, there were several technologies that I explored this last week or have stumbled across previously that could aid this idea of teaching or motivating creativity.

First, Storybird was one technology that can be used to motivate students who perhaps need that final push to write creatively, whether for fiction or nonfiction.  While the promise of a beautiful final project might be enough to encourage students to try, the fact that there are prompts and experts available to give you feedback means that students have many different supports available to encourage their creativity.  In the classroom, I would encourage students to collaborate at each stage to give each other feedback.  Creative writing is subjective, but feedback can help students expand even further!

Jamboard is another technology that can help motivate student creativity.  Especially for group projects, it encourages students to add input with the use of colorful "sticky notes."  It can also be used for the design process where students can keep track of their brainstorming, experiments, and places where they've had to go back and make changes.  

The final technology I am exploring for motivating creativity is 3D printers.  One printer that is considered more "kid-friendly" than others is the Flashforge 3D printer.  Because not all students may express their creativity in the same manner, using a variety of technologies can help them experience different types of creation that may appeal to them.  Flashforge printers, or other 3D printers, are a way to create a maker space for students where they can try their hand at art, engineering, architecture, and more.  In the classroom, this can be used for larger, hands-on projects, such as building models or creating robots even.

 

Active Learning, Creativity, and the Digital World

 Method

My method for ensuring my resources involved searching through the library for: "active learning" AND creativity AND (technolog* OR digital).  This was limited to research published since 2015, peer-reviewed articles.  I also read up on the publishing journals to check for signs of predatory publishing that might suggest the articles were not truly peer-reviewed.

Active Learning, Creativity, and the Digital World

One of the learning theories I have a lot of interest in is active learning, and it is something I have been attempting to incorporate more in my own instruction.  "Active learning has been described as both involving students in doing things but also in thinking about what they are doing (Gordy et al., 2018, 1)."  Although Gordy, Jones and Bailey focused on higher education, they describe active learning and how students engage in it differently in the digital age.  Now, students can find new information in seconds and multi-task during classes as they learn.  It engages them in a different way, and according to Gordy et al., this represents the time and effort students are devoting to activities that are academically meaningful and encourage personal growth.

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To bring this research to a primary education perspective, Klapwijk and Van Den Burg (2020) suggest that design and technology activities can engage students with active learning and developing "original and relevant solutions (8)."  They identify student drive as an obstacle, however, as some students may not use time purposed for active learning to search for or design their own solutions.  Because active learning and digital design may encompass too much as a whole, including creativity and practical skills, students may be overwhelmed.  Klapwijk and Van Den Burg identify a possible solution as explicitly laying out learning goals and intentions at the start of assignments, or during a pre-assessment period, so students can focus on the task itself.

There are many ways to involve students in active learning using technology identified by Apergi et al. (2015), including using Google Drive, to help students learn to be self-reliant.  These methods help because students work with the teacher, as a unified group, towards a learning goal.

In short, there are many ways technology can aid active learning in the classroom, but it must be done in a way to support student learning without overwhelming them.

References

Apergi, A., Anagnostopoulou, A., & Athanasiou, A. (2015). E-learning for elementary students: The web 2.0 tool Google Drive as teaching and learning practice. World Journal of Education, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v5n3p1

Gordy, X. Z., Jones, E. M., & Bailey, J. H. Technological innovation or educational evolution? A multidisciplinary qualitative inquiry into active learning classrooms. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 18(2), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v18i2.23597

Klapwijk, R., & Van Den Burg, N. (2020). Involving students in sharing and clarifying learning intentions related to 21st century skills in primary design and technology education. Design and Technology Education, 25(3). 

Can You Teach Creativity?

 Methods

Finding a PLN for teaching creativity in classrooms was a little more complicated than I expected.  I have an extensive PLN for different facets of librarianship, but have never extended that to teachers.  I use Twitter, different listservs, professional associations and more in the library.  Since I do not yet have all of those for teaching, I stuck with Twitter and Discovery Education. These communities linked me to different areas, such as YouTube, and various blogs.  The resources I used are linked below.

After being linked to the resources I used, I did some research on the websites hosting them.  Discovery Education I find to be a credible resource as it is used throughout our program and I trust the authority of our instructors.  I was unfamiliar with WAGOLL Teaching and upon further investigation judged them to also be a credible source as a teaching group with a global community.

Can You Teach Creativity?

The topic I wanted to research further was whether creativity can be taught and/or learned.  Defining creativity is a first step to understanding whether it can be taught.  Is it a skill, an innate ability, or something else entirely?  WAGOLL Teaching (2020) defines creativity with four parts: the ability to come up with ideas; building on their idea; thinking outside the box or "breaking rules"; and adapting existing ideas.  

Creativity can be nurtured, promoted, or developed but it's hard to say if it can be taught.  There are a lot of Discovery Education (Prepare students, 2021) actually lists creativity as one of the four "C's", along with critical thinking, collaboration and communication.  Some great methods can be found on Discovery Education for including creativity, as well as the other "C's", in any subject, such as sketchnotes and paper slides. 

References

Prepare students for future: Hot topic: STEM. Discovery Education. (April 4, 2021). https://help.discoveryeducation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057869033-Hot-Topic-STEM 

SOS top ten: 4C's - Encouraging creativity and innovation. Discovery Education. (April 4, 2021). https://studio.discoveryeducation.com/view?id=5f5d26457aaefa66d40f91e3&page_id=6c3df863-4356-46d4-b9d4-0b68658104b1

WAGOLL Teaching. (2020). Weaving creativity into all lessons | Teaching ideas [Video blog]. https://youtu.be/rxIRN2jbCc8