Inspiring creativity, when more is more…

by | Wednesday, June 09, 2010

We have all heard the statement that “less is more” and in many instances that may actually be true. Good design, for instance, often is based on the KISS principle, which, come to think of it, maybe an example of Less is More. That said, there may be situations where more may be more. Wes Fryer has a great post on those of us who want to inspire creativity: Want to Inspire Creativity? Invite LOTS of Opportunities to CREATE.

It must say though that this idea of more from more will not necessarily work in most contexts. If it is busy-work we are talking about, more often just means more boredom. Think of the task the teacher had assigned in the quote that Wes provides, it was an open-ended creative task, one with fuzzy definitions about what “quality work” meant. It is here that just creating (and unconsciously learning from experience) allows students to learn, in a risk free way. Failure is not a problem, it is just a step along the way. Failure is an option.

How does it connect to Gladwell’s idea of 10,000 hours of effort to become an expert and the movement from incompetence to mastery? What does it mean for what you do in your classes, and the assignments you give your students? What does this mean for me as an instructor preparing to teach MAET courses this summer?

Topics related to this post: Art | Creativity | Good | Bad Design | Learning | Teaching | Technology | Worth Reading

A few randomly selected blog posts…

The rise of TPACK

Matt Koehler just created a webpage that tracks the citations of our original TCRecord article, as reported by Google Scholar, in real time. The reference is as follows: Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A new...

Introducing David Pogue

Introducing David Pogue

My college (The Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College) was one of the sponsors of the Arizona School Board Association Annual Conference. As a part of this, we got the privilege to introduce and have lunch with the keynote speaker. As it turns out the keynote speaker...

Grant Hackathon 2016

Grant Hackathon 2016

On October 21, the Office of Scholarship partnered with the Research Advancement Office and the Teachers College Development Team to host the first MLFTC Grant Hackathon at ASU SkySong. Over 30 faculty and staff members attended the event. More...

The civilizing effects of technology

Martin Amis was recently interviewed in Guernica (Amis Unfiltered, Santiago Wills interviews Martin Amis). The interview covered a wide range of topics, literature, Obama, and a fascinating digression on the relationship between food and national character!  What...

We are hiring… join our team

We are hiring… join our team

Over the past year the Office of Scholarship and Innovation (OofSI) at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, ASU has been engaged in supporting faculty research; creating digital solutions for learning; bringing collaborative design-based...

Political poetry

What do Donald Rumsfeld and Sarah Palin have in common? Turns out that they both deliver speeches that can, at be, without much effort, converted into poetry. Check out this and this. Some of them are quite briliant.

21st Century Learning: 2 Publications

I am in Paris as a part of EduSummIT: Building a Global Community of Policy-Makers, Educators, and Researchers to Move Education into the Digital Age. EduSummIT is organized by UNESCO (along with other partners) and brings together over 120 scholars, policy makers...

TPACK & Creativity at Twente

I just finished a marathon session of presentations and discussions with the master's students in Curriculum Development and Educational Innovation at Twente University. It was wonderful to meet with them and discuss creativity, teaching, design, TPACK, among other...

Creative Idiots share their process

Slate Magazine is running a series on Creative Pairs, or why Two is the Magic Number! Written by Joshua Wolf Shenk the series seeks to understand: What makes creative relationships work? How do two people—who may be perfectly capable and talented on their own—explode...

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *