ICT in Education: Creativity and Computers

Design computer-related tasks that spark creativity!

Recently, I began to teach TechnoWonderland to a class of grade 7/8 students. They love the idea of creating their own amusement park. We have just completed planning our park and now students are designing a poster using Microsoft Word. As you may have guessed, from a technology skill standpoint we are focusing on word processing skills. However, there is so much more happening than formatting text and objects.

UPDATE 3/27/2018: TechnoKids has updated TechnoWonderland for the LATEST version of Microsoft Office.

CREATIVITY!

Even though everyone in the class is doing the same task and completing the identical steps, each poster is unique. To give you a sense of the range of ideas, one student called his park Safari Fest and it has all animal themed attractions. While another student called his park Horror Land and it has all scary rides. The students have come up with clever ideas for the names of their restaurants, shops, and attractions. I am amazed by their CREATIVITY!

Three Reasons to Provide Tasks that Inspire Creativity

There are numerous benefits to inspiring creativity in your students. Creativity helps students:

  • develop original ideas
  • become activity engaged in a task because they feel motivated
  • apply their unique talents and interests to complete a task

Three Ways that ICT in Education Promotes Creativity

Consider the ways that ICT in education fosters creativity:

  1. Undo/Redo:Students can easily undo or redo any action. This frees them up to be creative because they don’t have to worry about mistakes ruining their work.
  2. Save a Copy: Students can save a copy of their work, which keeps the original file intact. This allows them to take risks because they have a “safety net”. If things don’t work out, they can always return to the original file.
  3. Alter Design and Layout: The computer allows students to easily format, size, and arrange information and objects. This allows them to play around with the content, layout, and design to create the perfect look for their work.

Improve student learning. Design computer-related tasks that promote creativity.

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