While thinking about play-testing creativity tools, I realized that ideally creativity resides in the individuals involved in the act, not necessarily the tools employed. So, from this perspective a creativity tool is any tool that can be used by someone to facilitate their creativity. In pursuing this line of reasoning, I realized that, while nearly any tool can be used for creativity, there is some threshold of inherent degrees of freedom necessary in a tool to facilitate creativity. Though, this is not to say that a tool cannot have both structure and substantial degrees of freedom. To illustrate these thoughts, I decided to play-test creativity tools with degrees of freedom to create and with decreasing amounts of structure.
My first play-test was with a class of applications that fit in the concept mapping or mind mapping tools category. A concept map is a diagram that allows students to create a hierarchical structure the relates concepts for a particular topic area. The diagram consists of concepts labels which are connected together by lines that are also labeled to highlight a flow or connection between concepts. In this manner students can map their explorations of a topic by defining characteristics, making comparisons and contrasts, and identifying crosscutting concepts. A mind map is slightly different in that it usually starts with a central question or idea bubble and then labeled lines radiating outward from the center bubble to other bubbles labeled with related questions or ideas. In effect, the resulting diagram because a map of the students’ thought process in exploring a central idea or question. Both of these approaches have the structure of the process of diagraming, but also high degrees of freedom in the actual content and relationships created. Both approaches facilitate creative brainstorming, visualizing concepts, critical thinking, writing, and storyboarding.
The specific applications for concept mapping and mind mapping are myriad, but one application that I find interesting is Mind Meister. Mind Meister has all the capability necessary to build either concept maps or mind maps with excellent affordances that invite students to creatively collaborate using a variety of source materials. The application operates in real-time allowing students to simultaneously contribute to a diagram while keeping track of contribution sources and changes. There is a chat function that allows remote students to converse about ideas and the chat becomes a record of the conversation that can be attached to particular elements of the diagram. The diagram can incorporate a wide range of multimedia either in diagram itself or in additional pages that are activated by clicking on an element of the diagram. I find all of the affordances as excellent degrees of freedom that would invite creativity by students as they riff off of one another’s contributions. Add the facts that this is a very user friendly application and free at the basic level, Mind Meister is a viable tool for both students and myself.
My second play-test was of a class of applications that has considerably less structured than my first and has many degrees of freedom, but resides more firmly in visual media – whiteboarding applications. Whiteboarding originated as just that, a white board on which a students or students can write or draw with markers; this of course was an evolution of the much older chalkboard or slate technology. In effect, the whiteboard, as a creativity tool, is only limited by the imaginations of the user, and perhaps their writing or drawing skills.
While the original concept is venerable, the application of technology has transformed the whiteboard into a first rate collaborative creativity tool for students and teachers. I have used many whiteboarding applications, and in fact nearly any application with a drawing capability can become a rudimentary whiteboard, but I decided to play-test Microsoft Whiteboard as part of my school’s enterprise system. Microsoft Whiteboard has all the affordances to engage students in collaborative creativity one expects from this type of application – a large open electronic canvas with background options, real-time student contributions with tracking, a variety of drawing and shape tools including a scaled ruler, text capability, the ability to add elements from various multimedia sources, and the ability to save and export the work product for later use, perhaps in an e-notebook or e-portfolio. Being part of my schools enterprise system, it offers affordances to the teacher of linking students to particular whiteboards, setting up creative teams, and keeping records of student activity and work products. Also, as a teacher, using Microsoft Whiteboard to convey my own ideas to students, commenting directly into students’ whiteboards as they are working or presenting, allowing students to comment or question directly into the teacher’s whiteboard as the teacher is working or presenting, and being able to imbed backgrounds to scaffold a task like graphing or storyboarding are just a few of the affordances that make this tool amenable to enhanced activities.
I do think the e-whiteboards are very powerful creativity tools with considerable degrees of freedom, but the Microsoft Teams application is a bit of a work in process. The connectivity interface can be a bit twitchy and the drawing tools generally require a stylus and/or mouse to be used effectively. I will certainly use an e-whiteboarding application both personally as a teacher and as a collaborative creativity tool with my students, just maybe not Microsoft Teams until it is more evolved.
My third play-test is of a class of applications that requires some structure to make the tools user friendly, but has many degrees of freedom in the overall creativity application – podcast creators. Podcasting has been used for creativity in a variety of ways in an educational setting – personal reflection and journaling, serializing an autobiography, sharing and commenting on an interest, recording a reteach to self, documenting a project or significant undertaking, reviewing favorite books or shows, creating a dramatized audiobook, learning a foreign language, interviewing an admired person, and many others. The common factor is these podcasts are designed to be created by an individual or group of students to creatively share something in which the students’ have invested their interest and talents. The popularity of educational podcast creation is evidenced by a curriculum for this purpose developed by National Public Radio (NPR).
As with the other creativity tool I have explored, there are many choices for podcast creation; I opted to play-test one that is both free and widely used – Audacity. Audacity has many affordances typical of this category of creativity tools – a recorder, an editor, a sound-effect generator, an audio analyzer, a musical instrument interface, a plugin interface, and import and export tools. One modest compromise is that Audacity is geared toward audio podcasts, whereas, other applications can include tools for video podcasting. Besides being free, an extremely helpful affordance of Audacity is its relatively user friendly making generating a basic podcast of high quality within the grasp of most high school students. Yet, there is a sufficient level of expandability via plugins that considerable creative work can be explored before exhausting the creative possibilities.
After exploring Audacity I am very positive about the possibilities of my students using this application for podcasting. I also have some ideas for podcasting about one or more of my own many professional interests and avocations; I feel Audacity would be an acceptable place to begin. I actually feel that the larger issue with student podcasting will be navigating the creation of rules of engagement that are acceptable to the students, the administration, and myself.
With respect to student work, I feel that a natural application of creativity technologies is the use of e-whiteboarding for students to create and share particle diagrams in my chemistry classes. Prior to COVID-19, whiteboarding of particle diagrams on actual whiteboards was an intimate part of the pedagogy. Now, with many remote students, to use this valuable pedagogical methodology an e-whiteboard is essential. As this is a movement of whiteboarding from the physical realm in the classroom to a web-based application, the SAMR model indicates this is merely modification but definitely at the augmentation level. The ability to work remotely, for students and teacher to directly interact with the whiteboards, and the ability to export the whiteboards to an e-notebook or portfolio for posterity, all augment the affordances of whiteboarding. From the TPCK model, this student work supports the pedagogy of students creating particle diagrams as inscriptions of things too small to see for the reification of their mechanisms. The content being covered is the relationship between the macro observations one makes of phenomena and the model of what is happening at the micro level of matter that is too small to see. The use of a creative educational technology to facilitate both the pedagogy and the content is likely to be a very effective application.
A more advanced use of a creativity tool for student work would be the use of a podcasting creator along the lines of students serializing a podcast of a captain’s log on a manned mission to Mars. With respect to the SAMR model, I see this as definitely transformation and quite possibly, depending upon the framing with students, reaching the redefinition level. From the TPCK model the pedagogical approach I use in my Space Science course is to have a final project where groups plan an aspect of a manned mission to Mars under the guidance of a NASA engineer checking in via Skype. The content is myriad aspects of space and space travel that must be considered to successfully travel to Mars, land, explore, launch, and return home safely. The human and technical elements have always been a factor, but a dramatized podcast of a captains log would be beyond anything we reasonable could have attempted. Therefore, I feel a podcasting creator is an education technology that could indeed be transformational.
In closing, I return to my initial thought – any tool can be a creative tool if it used creatively; this may be a bit of a tautology; so, it is true if less than useful. Still, the affordances of specialized creativity tools are many, at a minimum, reducing the barriers to creativity. I now feel that there is also the possibility that the affordances of these specialized creativity tools may present such opportunities as to inspire the creativity of the students and the teacher. Finally, these creativity tools all stand out from other tools such as drill and practice, tutorials, and instructional games in that they offer an environment with more degrees of freedom for students to creatively explore their understanding in a constructivist manner.
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