STEM IS GOOD, BUT STEAM IS BETTER

Creativity is Intelligence having fun - Albert Einstein.

Creativity is the skill of the future for the future

Creativity is contagious, pass it on

It is a good time to remind everyone about creativity, as it is now more important than ever. In order to understand why this is so in a modern society, and why it should not be stifled in the classroom, you need to understand what creativity is and what it is about being creative that is so important. You will then realise how important nurturing it in your school and classroom is.

There is seemingly a degree of confusion with some who think creativity is about being 'arty' in some way. This is not the case. An engineer can be creative, as can a scientist, a business manager, a footballer, in fact anyone can be creative.

Creativity is really about solving problems in ingenious and novel ways and this is a skill that is at the forefront of what this modern age, where seemingly automation is taking over, requires and your students will benefit in their careers as they move forward if their creative skills have been developed and not suppressed or ignored.

Creativity is a skill, and like any skill it can be developed. Some are better at it than others, just like any skill, but you cannot afford to ignore creativity and you can get better at it through practice. We first need to embrace the fact that we needn't be right all of the time, and we must not fear being wrong, we can learn from our mistakes and those of others.

Without creativity we can't have innovation. While creativity is the ability to produce new and unique ideas, innovation is the implementation of that creativity. Businesses are realising that as new technologies continue to develop and become available, they have to be flexible and able to keep up to date. Creativity allows them to easily identify new ways in which technology can be applied to help their businesses. Likewise, with social media and other interactive forms of marketing now available, it has never been more important for companies to be able to be creative. Creativity and innovation allows a company or individual to stand out and be noticed. Realising that, and allowing employees to be more creative can inspire them to come up with more interesting ideas as well as improve their overall output. Many of the worlds leading companies have started to adopt unorthodox methods of encouraging maximum creativity from their employees, such as sleeping pods and flexible working areas and hours.

But why is this important to a company? 

Because it the only way that they can differentiate their products and services from those of their competitors, and if they get it right, then their product or service becomes the one everyone wants.

In order to develop skills in creativity it has to start as soon as possible and children must be allowed to express their ideas especially in school. Despite what we stated to start with about creativity not being about the arts specifically, the arts are an extremely flexible environment in which to nurture and develop those skills.

We've mentioned before the Sir Ken Robinson's presentation asking "Do schools kill creativity"? The presentation is from 2006 but it is highly relevant today if you are asking yourself the question about your classroom. 

It’s easy for us to turn round and simply say you need to be embracing creativity more, especially when you’ve thirty needy pupils in your classroom all clamouring for your attention. But, we can help by giving you the tools and resources that allow creativity to become more embedded in the curriculum, and embracing new technology and media.

Through stop motion animation and video presentation, your pupils and students can explore their ‘creative side’,  develop and publish their work in a way that is accessible in todays society and to a worldwide audience if required and these mediums can be relatively easily integrated into your teaching, supporting what you are already doing.

Many of you already know this and have seen the positive effect this can have on pupils and students learning. The initial step of integrating either the green screen presentation or animation into your classroom need not be a massive undertaking. Instead of children just writing reports get them to produce a short 60 second summary. The writing becomes part of the preparation for filming their presentation, the filming becomes an incentive and means of further engaging the pupils in the task.

We are not suggesting you immediately drop everything and stop what you are doing and make a video as without pedagogy it is just a way of filling in time. You first need to ask yourself ' what’s the objective, what do I want the children to learn and will using this technology improve the outcomes?. If the answer is yes then what are you waiting for? If you’re not sure as it will be the first time you’ve tried it, start small and observe what happens. We are sure it won't be long before you embrace it fully and your classroom becomes a creative hub of contented learners.

Try I Can Animate for FREE, download I Can Animate to your devices, any questions, then email us and we’ll try to help