Creativity and Curiosity: My Thoughts - Special Post #12A.

Creativity and Curiosity: My Thoughts
By:Heather Rigby


The following are my personal answers to an additional blog assignment by Dr. Strange.

I believe schools shut down/destroy the development of curiosity and creativity in students by  allowing “burp back education”. Give the kids something to be excited about. Something they can put their hands on and explore. Something like this EDM 310 class. It gives the students an opportunity to express themselves on their blogger by customizing their backgrounds and the tools needed to explore new things that are helpful and educating. It gives us students’ freedom with boundaries yet, fun and educating videos and more. I think that the key to a curriculum that would increase curiosity would be hands on exploration. Students being able to explore things on their own would be a main component. I think that if a child for instance is told a word that he/she does not know that they should be able to Google and find out what that word means. If a child will Google then they have the will and want to learn more. I think that a curriculum of creativity will come hand in hand with a curriculum of curiosity.  If a child is curious enough I believe he/she can be creative enough to find out the answer. I also think integrating the arts into say History and English by spelling things by forming letters with their bodies will excite children and they will want to learn.

I believe a teacher's actions has everything to do with the curiosity of a student. If a teacher asks questions such as Dr.Strange does (Where is Tasmania) then a students curiosity will strike and the pupil will want to find out just where exactly is Tasmania.Teacher's also influence creativity in a student. I believe the creativity in a student should never go unrecognized. Dr. Strange is another good example for this. Dr. Strange allows us (his students) to design our own Blogger and decide which pictures we put on our blog. Not only that but,  Dr.Strange also has us do neat projects such as Wordle and Smartboard where we can spend time on the tool we are using and be as creative and curious as we want.

I consider myself creative already. I take my time on projects and try to find cool ways to display them. Believe it or not I find myself taking more time trying to find  the perfect picture for my blog post than I do writing my blog post. I think a way that schools could help me become more creative is to integrate arts and have fun projects that we can be creative on. The role that teachers/ schools have had in that process is really none. Other than Dr.Strange's and Dr. Bagget's class I was never able to be creative. I sat inside four walls in a desk only moving when told too for 13 plus years. The only creativeness going on then was when I was sneaking notes to my friend while the teacher lectured his/her heart out. I think allowing more curiosity in schools would start with access to more technology. I think if teachers asked students to do assignments such as a prezi, timeline, wordle, iMovie. etc. that it would result  in interested students wondering "Hey. if I can use Google presentation anywhere... why not use it for this project." After using Google presentation they may see Google Docs and think "Hey. What does this do." Thus, resulting in a wave of curiosity.

Elli is a writer for InGoodMeasure.net.Her real name is Elspeth Bishop.She was born and raised in Colorado resides in Salt Lake City, Utah. Find out more about Elli on Google+.I have recently started following her in Google plus. hopefully I can find out more later.