Mike DeSchryver and I recently presented a paper at AERA titled “Googling creativity: An investigation into how pre-service mathematics teachers use the Web to generate creative ways to teach.” The abstract is as follows:

This study examined teacher creativity and its relationship with emerging technologies. Eight pre-service mathematics teachers of high and low creative skill were asked to generate creative ways of introducing specific topics to students. Each participant performed two tasks, one with a Web search tool, and one with related books. Sessions were observed, and post-task interviews conducted. In addition, browser log files were analyzed, and experts rated the ideas generated. Evaluation of this data provided that participants believed that the Web was an integral tool in the creative process, but did not demonstrate search techniques that reflected this, did not typically generate their ideas from the information resources provided, and did not achieve higher creativity scores when using the Web.

You can read the paper here (pdf), or see the presentation (swf) below.