creativity Archives - Page 5 of 6

Mar 30 2016

Frequently Asked Questions About Design Thinking

By John Spencer Design Thinking 2 Comments

For the last 12 years, I've used design thinking as a teacher, an author, an educational technology startup founder and an artist. I've used in in the non-profit world in program development and I'm currently using it right now as I lead a team of…

Oct 16 2015

Why a Smaller Audience Might Be the Key to Helping Kids Take Creative Risks

By John Spencer Creativity Deconstructed No Comments

Flash back to Tuesday afternoon: I'm sitting down at the computer overwhelmed by the uncertainty of audience. I'm thinking about that technology training where I had wanted to show teachers how to use Google Drive for assessment . . . and then Google Drive was…

Oct 10 2015

Why Creative Types Hate Selling (And Why This Matters for Teachers)

By John Spencer Creativity, Design Thinking No Comments

Initially, I cringed at the term marketing. I viewed myself as an artist who thought that my work would be discovered. I viewed marketing as trickery. However, over time, I realized that if the initial goal of the design thinking cycle involved solving a problem…

Jul 01 2015

Nine Ways to Help Students Embrace the Revision Process

By John Spencer Design Thinking 2 Comments

I have noticed that students often hate the revision phase. In the design thinking cycle, they go from research to ideation and building a prototype. It seems cool. They're excited about what they made. But then when we switch to testing and revising, they get…

Jun 01 2015

Sometimes Less Technology Means More Creativity

By John Spencer Creativity, Creativity Deconstructed One Comment

I'm a fan of digital writing. After all, I'm sitting at my computer typing right now. And yet, when it comes to my deepest writing, I nearly always scribble it out by hand. When I'm stuck, I doodle. When I plan, I sketch out webs.…

May 07 2015

You Get Four Items and Forty-Five Minutes. What Will You Make?

By John Spencer Design Thinking One Comment

It all began the year I taught sixth grade ELL. I had the same group of students all day in a class that, by law, had to be hyper-structured (we had a four-hour block of reading, writing, oral language, and grammar). On Tuesday, we didn't…

Apr 02 2015

Eight Lessons Learned in Doing Scratch Video Game Projects

By John Spencer Technology and Media Literacy 4 Comments

My students are currently working on a Scratch video game project. Walk into my second, fourth and sixth hours and you'll see a general buzz that goes from slightly noisy to intense silence. They are locked in and focussed, sometimes arguing about the best scripts…

Mar 27 2015

Four Options for Dealing With Broken Systems

By John Spencer Uncategorized 4 Comments

I don't believe that schools are broken. I know that sounds so non-innovative or whatever, but I don't care. I see amazing things that happen at my school on a regular basis. I watch what my kids have learned and I'm blown away. I see…

Mar 01 2015

Seven Surprising Things About Creativity

By John Spencer Creativity 2 Comments

It's no secret that I like to make stuff. My wife and I co-wrote Wendell the World's Worst Wizard and I have been blown away when classrooms choose it as a read aloud. I worked with two other people on creating Write About, a digital publishing…

Nov 07 2014

I Hid My Art: Why Shame Often Kills Creativity

By John Spencer Creativity, Uncategorized No Comments

Just a few years ago, I would have been mortified for people to see that picture (above). When I was in high school, I decided not to go into Advanced Art, because I was scared. I had created a few pieces that won awards and…