Creativity has been an important part of my life since I was in middle school, and since I began teaching, I have worked to bring creativity into my classroom. During my time in the MAET program, I expanded how I view creativity by looking at ways that the use of technology can enhance creativity when combined with strong pedagogy and content knowledge. By exploring other areas of creativity, I also learned ways that aesthetics and creativity can be combined to help foster powerful teaching and learning opportunities.
As a teacher leader and now as an administrator, leadership has played a large role in my teaching career. My work in this program has helped continue to shape me into the leader I am today, both in my classroom and in my school. It is important to me as a history teacher to change the way that people view history and social studies education. This program has helped me to see how technology can help to accomplish this. In addition, I know that as an administrator, I must help others to see how technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge can come together to create transforming experiences for students.
Throughout my time in the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program, I have come to learn and relearn ways that technology can be incorporated into different environments in ways that enhance learning and create meaningful experiences for students. Three themes that I saw develop for me during this time were creativity, leadership, and transformative learning. I seek to look at each of these individually, but also to consider the powerful possibilities when the three come together. My work has pushed me to look at teaching and learning in new ways and use my creativity and leadership to help transform the ordinary and mundane, just like these photos that disguise this common object.
Webinar on Ethical Issues
In order to explore topics in educational technology, each group in our cohort planned and executed a webinar as part of Michigan State University's The Bridge webinar series. My group explored social and ethical issues in educational technology, particularly in the areas of digital equity and healthy practices. Our experts were Robyn Treyvaud, founder of Cyber Safe Kids in Australia, Justin Hardman, director for 21st Century Learning Hong Kong, and Dr. Craig Wilson, headmaster at University of Miami Global Academy. This experience allowed me to learn more about how to use technology to tap into resources around the world. I feel more prepared to research topics related to technology and leadership, but I also recognize how this process could benefit my work as an administrator.
Click here to view the blog post promoting the webinar.
Tensions in Leadership
As an educational leader both in technology and in administration, there are numerous tensions that I feel. Here you see me taking a picture of two versions of myself. One version looks like the "normal" me, but the other shows a hidden identity in the form of Batman. Sometimes as educational leaders we are expected to be superheroes, and sometimes our superhero identity is hidden. The third version of me, the one taking the picture, represents something that I enjoy doing in my free time. Balancing these three can sometimes cause tension, and this allowed me to begin to recognize what these tensions could be and how they affect my leadership. I must continue to be aware of these tensions, but also seek to move forward to use these to create positive change in teachers and students.
Understanding Misconceptions
This video is designed to explore deep misconceptions that students sometimes have about geographic understanding of the Earth. These misconceptions often keep students from understanding what educators are trying to teach in school, and make conceptual change more difficult. Each group explored student understandings on a chosen topic. In order to consider ways to break down these misconceptions, we first had to explore deep misunderstandings. As I seek to transform student learning, I must take the time to first know what misconceptions students have about a given topic. Without this critical step, I may miss the most critical ways to integrate technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge in ways that bring about change in students' thinking and a deeper understanding about complex topics.
TRANSFORMATION
LEADERSHIP
CREATIVITY
Using Photos to Explain Big Ideas
While discussing aesthetics and creativity in understanding, we explored the idea of uncovering ideas instead of covering them. This might include metaphors, stories, and/or images. Each photo in this series captures a "big idea" in a particular discipline and can be used to uncover a new idea. In order to be successful with this, it became necessary to think outside the box and explore ways to visually represent an idea. I have since used this same strategy with other disciplines, including the American Civil War. It allows me to use my love of photography and desire to capture meaningful topics in ways that spark discussion and curiosity in students, and supports the idea that creativity plays an important role in teaching, not just learning.
Use the arrows or the play button to move through the photos.
Exploring Patterns
Using the cognitive tool of patterning is one way to use creativity to foster powerful learning experiences for students. This artifact displays how searching for existing patterns in a chosen theme and then exploring how to re-pattern it can lead to new ideas and a fresh way to see a topic, thus leading to a deeper understanding. After finding existing themes, I looked for new patterns through eliminating the original patterns. As I seek to bring creativity into my classroom, but also into my leadership, looking for patterns can be a way to help move toward transformative experiences. By re-examining patterns I can provide a new way to view a topic of study or problem in education. Doing so can lead us to critical thinking and unique solutions to problems.
Click here for a written analysis of the pattern, new pattern, and how this impacts the topic of leadership in China.
Blended Learning
Learning to bring together technology, design, pedagogy, and content into an online learning experience can help create transformative learning experiences for students. This course module focuses on the American Civil War through photography, music, and writing. Students use multiple forms of media, creativity, and Google Drive for a hybrid learning experience that challenges students to understand perspectives of those who lived through the American Civil War. This artifact shows how I can use the vast number of digital resources that help students experience history and transform their understanding of different time periods.
To view Civil War: Perspecives and Culture, an online course module, click the screenshot below.
Using Play to Transform Learning
One way creativity and transformative learning come together is through play. This activity seeks to allow students to set aside conventional rules for a meaningful experience that introduces the idea of ancient and modern Chinese leadership. This complex topic can become more acessible through creativity that is used in intentional ways to transform learning. In this age of high stakes testing when there is great temptation to teach to the test, I must continue to develop skills that go beyond the surface level. Activities like this can be a gateway to critical thinking and strong questioning that can transform students' understanding of topics.
Click here to view the full playful introduction to ancient and modern Chinese leadership.
Click here to find out what the object is.
Showcase: Creativity and Leadership for Transformative Learning
Learning from the Arts
By exploring what the arts can teach educators about how compelling experiences are created, I discovered how we can use some of the same ideas in education to create compelling experiences for our students. One module focused on photography. Here, I took two photographs with the intention of one being more compelling than the other. In order to create a more compelling image, I needed to use techniques that photographers use, including leading lines. This course challenged me to learn to recognize what makes something compelling, which has become a practical way for me to think about the nature and design of learning experiences I seek to create for my students.
Click here to read my written analysis of these photos and what techniques were used to help create a more compelling image.
Understanding how students learn, how creativity and aesthetics can contribute to powerful learning opportunities, and working to incorporate technology into these situations are all critical to transforming learning. These examples seek to provide a glimpse into different levels of what these transformational learning experiences can look like.
