CREATIVITY 101

Facilitated by

Genie Reiman-OKA+ Regional Coordinator

FOCUS QUESTIONS:

Why is creativity essential to A+?

How will I become comfortable integrating creativity in my lessons?

HUMAN SCALE

Always

•Sometimes

NEVER

OK A+ MISSION STATEMENT

The mission of Oklahoma A+ Schools® is to advance a quality, whole school experience to nurture creativity in every learner.

OKA+ VISION

Education that expands the imagination and stimulates creative living, so that:

Individuals are increasingly self-aware, self-motivated and prepared to be successful along the continuum of lifelong learning.

WHY IS CREATIVITY IMPORTANT?IS THERE A CREATIVITY CRISIS?

• 1,500 CEOs identifying creativity as “the No. 1 ‘leadership competency’ of the future” (Newsweek, 2011)

• creativity is decreasing among Americans (IBM Poll)

• people who are more creative as children grow up to be more successful than those who are less creative (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking)

• “The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.” (Torrance)

• IQ scores have consistently gone up generation after generation, CQ scores stopped rising in 1990 and have since then inched downward (Torrance)

"I HAVE NO SPECIAL GIFT. I AM ONLY PASSIONATELY CURIOUS.“

Einstein, quoted in Thorpe, Scott, How to Think Like Einstein, Barnes & Noble Books, Inc., 2000, p. 115.

WHEN YOU HEAR THE WORD CREATIVITY WHAT COMES TO MIND?

DEFINITION OF CREATIVITY Webster's - Creativity is marked by the ability or power to create, to bring into existence, to

invest with a new form, to produce through imaginative skill, to make or bring into existence something new. 

Carl Rodgers (psychologist) -- The emergence of a novel, relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual.

Henry Miller ( writer) -- The occurrence of a composition which is both new and valuable. John Haefele (CEO& entrepreneur) -- The ability to make new combinations of social

worth. Newell, Simon, & Shaw (logic theorists)  -- A special class of problem solving

characterized by novelty. H. H. Fox (scientist) -- Any thinking process in which original patterns are formed and

expressed. E. Paul Torrance (educator, academic, creativity investigator) --Fluency, flexibility,

originality, and sometimes elaboration. Rollo May (writer, philosopher) - Creativity is the process of bringing something new into

being... Roger von Oech - Creative thinking involves imagining familiar things in a new light,

digging below the surface to find previously undetected patterns, and finding connections among unrelated phenomena.  

Carnevale, Gainer, Meltzer -  ... the ability to use different modes of thought to generate new and dynamic ideas and solutions

TYPES OF CREATIVITY

Small c (Personal) creativity – new and useful only to or primarily to the individual creator.

Big C (Recognized creativity) – valuable to a group as a whole. May transform society

Fox, Jon Michael and Ronni Lea Fox, Exploring the Nature of Creativity, Kendall/Hunt, 2000, p.14.

E. PAUL TORRANCE

educator, academic, creativity investigator Fluency

FlexibilityOriginality Elaboration

ASSESSMENTS FOR CREATIVITY

Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking involved simple tests of divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills, which were scored on four scales:

1. Fluency - The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus.

2. Flexibility - The number of different categories of relevant responses.

3. Originality - The statistical rarity of the responses.

4. Elaboration - The amount of detail in the responses.

WHAT MIGHT THIS BE?

BRAINSTORM- GARDEN

CREATIVITY QUOTES

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of them. -Linus Pauling (2-time Nobel prize winner)

Creativity is not only what enables us to come up with new ideas (whatever the field); it is also the skill that enables us to deal with new situations or problems that we have never confronted before. -Robert J. Sternberg , Linda Jarvin, & Elena L. Grigorenko Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success 2009

You cannot use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.    ~ Maya Angelou

Creativity is the engine that drives cultural evolution. -M. Csikszentmihalyi in Handbook of Creativity, Robert J. Sternberg (ed.), 1999"One cannot be creative without learning what others know, but then one cannot be creative without becoming dissatisfied with that knowledge and rejecting it for a better way." ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

MORE CREATIVITY QUOTES The creative individual

is a person who regularly [i.e., with continuance, intent, or skill] solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain [i.e., a particular field] in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting.–Howard Gardner, Creating Minds, Basic

Books, 1993, p.35.

Accept that creativity is not something that we learn, it’s something that we’ve forgotten but can relearn.

— Edward de Bono- physician, inventor, author of Six Thinking Hats

CONNECT: WORD ASSOCIATION GAME

• One person thinks of a word & says that word.• Next person says a different word that comes to mind

that connects with the first word.• Continue around the circle two times saying words

that connect to previous word.• No word may be repeated.

BLOOM’S TAXONOMY CATEGORIES IN THE COGNITIVE DOMAIN:

Original taxonomy 1948 New Taxonomy

1990s

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4719

INCREASING PERSONAL CREATIVITY

• Ability to choose or balance attributes• Practice making unusual and unexpected

mental associations• Acquire information in many areas• Develop skills, work hard, be passionate

about your work • Be confident• Move away from normal environment

(including use of creativity tools)• Be perceptive

WHY CREATIVITY IS IMPORTANT IN OUR SCHOOLS?

• Teen Truth Live Documentary- Insight: Creative Space- Created by Erahm Christopher & team shown at the World Creativity Forum 2010

• OK A+ Principals, Teachers and Students from : Casady, Millwood Arts & 9th Grade Academy, Santa Fe South High School