Sitting here with writer's block, I decided to search for ways to break the block down in a classroom - maybe helping students know it happens to adults too would be useful, as well as introducing strategies to get beyond the blank page. What I found were both ways to stifle creativity as well as how to generate ideas in the classroom.
Marvin Bartel posted 10 ways he can kill creativity in his classroom, as well as explaining how and why what we do stifles the creativity and how we can change our responses to encourage creative expression. He also explicitly allows duplication of his information for Educational Fair Use, which I found to be interesting after our review of Digital Storytelling. I enjoyed his comments on cliches, especially from an English classroom point of view - while they are not ideal, critiquing the use of them instead of bolstering fresh ideas to move beyond the cliche is a great way of getting beyond the obvious.
Suzie Boss on MindShift had 8 great ideas for generating ideas beyond the graphic organizer method. What I liked best about her list is that the topics cover a wide range of ways to stoke creative fires in young minds, and old. I also liked the MindShift site as a whole, and found it to potentially have other interesting blogs for all educators.
What ways have you found you either killed creativity or brought it back? What was an exceptional class discussion you had and how did it start?
These are some great links - I will be adding these to my Diigo library! In particular I really enjoyed the post about killing creativity. Tons of great information there.
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