Sunday, October 15, 2017

The Creative Spirit and The Sixth Design Principle

The Creative Spirit is written to help instructional designers be creation minded and help achieve high quality and flexible instruction to achieve their goals. The Author describes 3 characteristics: Imagination - exploring the unknown or unrealized, Creation Oriented – Tinkering and pushing boundaries, and Inter Disciplinary Action – Collaborating with others and getting a different perspective.  I think being creative is messy and sometimes chaotic process for designers and learners.  There is a certain amount of personal risk one takes to put themselves into the unknown.    

As a music teacher this article struck a chord with me (pun intended).  I teach on a six-day cycle. Which means I must teach the same lesson or concepts six days in a row.  This scheduling is a double-edged sword.   On one side I could have six days of frustration, wasted time, boredom, and a lack of learning if I do not create a well-designed effective lesson.   On the other side the schedule gives me time to fix, abandon, or change a lesson.  I can tweak and reflect on instruction and lesson design to help me learn to improve my practice.  Students as designers need that time as well.  To me, having a creative spirit isn’t something that just occurs during the design conception.  It must be present during implementation and past the final product to reflection.

5 comments:

  1. I agree that having a creative spirit isn't something that just occurs during the design conception. I'm reading another book called the Innovator's Mindset and there are 8 key characteristics that should be considered at all times. It's a continuous cycle of thought and I'm glad that I'm having the opportunity to develop and grow as an educator by learning about these concepts.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=8+characteristics+of+innovator%27s+mindset&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS757US757&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDxtnkzITXAhUEwWMKHQmnDn0Q_AUICigB&biw=1242&bih=579&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=OBaEb8ntJTFRpM:

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  2. I am reading the same book as Logan, "Innovator's Mindset". It goes hand in hand with the mindset needed to be a lesson designer. I already feel like that my tranformation is helping my students experience better learning. I still have a long way to go but I'm learning!

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  3. I can relate to your post. I taught a morning and afternoon Pre-Kindergarten class a few years ago and I always said my afternoon class had the better teacher, because I was able to mix up what didn't work from the morning or set clearer directions for the later bunch. In our profession, we must be reflective and this class certainly gives me more to think about each week.

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  4. You definitely mentioned something that we all need to do- reflection. Sometimes, when we become wrapped up in the design process, we can forget to reflect on our practice. When we reflect, we can take time examine what went wrong. We can also figure out how to do a better job encouraging student creativity as you mentioned.

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  5. I agree with you that the creative spirit goes beyond the designing part, it connects to the implementation and then to reflection element. I remember discussing in on of the first classes that a design document is always a work in progress, what this means for me is that a well-design lesson is a constant process of application and revision.

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