Encouraging creativity with digital technology in early primary classrooms.
“Australian school are expected to integrate various uses of digital technology across all subject areas.” However, in many schools the effectiveness of this has been questionable with “little application to the development of students creativity”. By integrating technology into all subject areas students are provided with consistency and variety in their technological learning. Furthermore, such consistency and variety will not only maintain students interest but also enhance their skills and competency in computer literacy.
In our modern society many teachers are beginning to believe that the major value of technology in the classroom lies in the “opportunities technology offers for creativity, thinking and problem solving that are not possible in other media”. However, there are many opposing views, as many ‘traditional’ classroom teachers are “not exploiting the educational potential of multimedia as a tool for children’s creative thinking by integrating its use into those subject areas traditionally considered to be non-computer or non-creative”. It is my personal opinion that the incorporation of digital technologies into various educational experiences would be beneficial to the students academic development in computer literacies and the range of subject areas combined. According to the article, researchers believe that “children in the early years of formal schooling are able to think and act creatively while using digital technologies”. In the past young children’s computing experience has been limited to game playing which restricts them by imposing a set of rules/procedures. However, providing children with content free software allows them to express their creativity and mental construct. According to the article, from a teachers perspective this mean that “both traditional drawing by hand and new digital drawing are capable of providing an appropriate canvas for students to express their creativity”.
As educators we must “recognise the ways in which our understanding of the interaction between creativity and digital technologies is emerging from practice and reflection”. Thusly, as teachers it is our role to encourage creativity using a variety of mediums, one of which would be digital technologies.
Reference: Australian Educational Computing – Journal for the Australian Council for computers in education. Vol. 19, No. 2. December 2004.
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