Orientation Quest 5

Creativity is more than just artistic intention.

Watch this short animation created of an interview with David Lynch, a film director (2:33): http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/491738/david-lynch-on-where-great-ideas-come-from/

Once you've watched the video above, work through this slideshow about creativity: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xz-4JhAxodBYKNAydLS4eiD24lBIoMXzIHDl1KRxopc/edit?usp=sharing

Then, follow the instructions on the Hyperdoc to create your vanity card: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BLZQxcm13ldUSM9QaFm8gk2Uv_rPFLM2jbwn9QXEEP4/edit?usp=sharing

(I'm just storing the information below here. Ignore it. Unless you're super interested in how to teach students so that their creativity is encouraged.)

From Educational Leadership: February 2013 | Volume 70 | Number 5

Creativity Now! Pages 28-34

Criteria for Creativity

Creativity is not a synonym for clever, humorous, artistically pleasing, enthusiastic, or persuasive. Those are all great qualities that we can assess in their own right, but we shouldn't confuse them with creativity. As early childhood educator Lilian Katz once railed, "Creativity is not animals with long eyelashes!"

Rather, criteria for creativity should match what we expect in creative work: originality and high quality. Creative students

• Recognize the importance of a deep knowledge base and continually work to learn new things.
• Are open to new ideas and actively seek them out.
• Find source material in a wide variety of media, people, and events.
• Organize and reorganize ideas into different categories or combinations and then evaluate whether the results are interesting, new, or helpful.
• Use trial and error when they are unsure how to proceed, viewing failure as an opportunity to learn. (Brookhart, 2010, pp. 128–129)

The first four characteristics lead to qualities in the work that we can observe, assess, and provide feedback on. For example, are the source materials varied? Are ideas organized in a fresh way and uniquely suited to the problem or product? The last characteristic—using trial and error—is about the student's approach to learning and may or may not show itself in the finished work.

A Rubric for Creativity

If all of these first four characteristics are in play in an assignment, then a rubric like the one in Figure 1 (p. 31) may support teachers and students in assessing creativity (Brookhart, 2013). The rubric describes four levels of creativity—very creative, creative, ordinary/routine, and imitative—in four different areas—variety of ideas, variety of sources, novelty of idea combinations, and novelty of communication.

FIGURE 1. Rubric for Creativity