Fostering creativity in children

Innovate, don’t digitise is an important call to action in an EdTech Developers’ Guide. It implies that technology’s potential in terms of content and learning is much greater than mimicking what we have done in the past. 

Technology has the power to transform education and learning. It can assist us in drawing learning material from multiple resources, reflecting on it and developing our own knowledge from it. Students can become agents in choosing their own combinations of sources and content. As a result, students can enjoy new opportunities to learn and be creative in the process of learning and in demonstrating what they have learned.  

Choice-based learning

In the past, the industrialisation of education through schooling tied us to age-related learning, stepping through prescriptive curricula and standardised testing that helped bring education to a wider audience. It served us well. However, that approach came at a cost. One cost was standardisation that narrowed focus and limited opportunity for new ideas and creativity. It also brought few chances for developing global competencies, attitudes and values. Education was associated only with schools. Assessments mostly only evaluated the memory of students.  

Learning is and should be much more than this. It should include making choices from a wide range of available sources: through our parents, peers, teachers, conversations and debate or any other source of information. Reflecting on all these sources can become the first step towards greater creativity. No longer are we bound by a single source of information. Instead, we can look at any issue from different angles and choose how to triangulate to form our own conclusions.

Modern education

Creativity and innovation often come through looking across different subjects. For example, today to design a new car, you need to think about aerodynamics, understand how different power sources can work together, and develop knowledge of consumer comfort and their reactions to information and controls, and not just the physics of a combustion engine.

You should consider which elements should be automated and which should be left to choice. You might develop a new understanding of
typical errors and misjudgements made by drivers and how these can be compensated by the car, alongside many other considerations.

Need for transition 

Technology is well placed to help us reach beyond traditional boundaries, and bring content and learning from different experiences and subjects together. Something as seemingly simple as challenging children to create a 10-minute film documentary about a city of today, how was it 500 years ago and what conditions made it survive and flourish could prove to be useful. Another challenge could be for children to consider what they would like to change to improve their community and their environment for all people and to run through a design process to achieve that change. Such challenges are about both students’ creative production and use of the content.

If content publishing is to flourish, perhaps it should reflect and stimulate students’ questions. It could curate access to a range of resources that could provide and point towards choices. It could use artificial intelligence tools to help students understand and scaffold their reading proficiency and suggest helpful choices of what next to read. It should stimulate creativity through choice and combination.

Learning needs to change to encompass creativity.   Whether as a teacher, parent, learner, policymaker or publisher, perhaps we should adopt the principle “innovate, don’t digitise”, and embrace the associated opportunities for content production, creativity and change.

(The writer is CEO, India
Didactics Association)