Homeless creativity

I was inspirted through volunteering at a local homeless shelter to research creativity in the homeless. Through my research I was able to find various areas in which creativity is involved with the homeless. But in one area that many people are able to see creativity in the homeless is through the way homeless communicate with the community. This is always seen through signs that the homeless create and then hold while standing on the streets. Typically these signs are a way of asking for money, and they usually get ignored. I have found some signs on the Internet that homeless people have created that can be seen as being in the more creative side. Enjoy!

Problems with higher education

Through this course I have realized that school systems do not place enough emphasis on creativity in education. Issues with this is seen in lots of areas, but the problems that I believe can be changed are as follows: students are only studying for the "right answer" to get an A, professors are not open minded, and the set required classes/constructed curriculum.

A main problem with how school systems have changed the way students are motivated to learn, is through students being constantly worried about making good grades. Because of this motivation to achieve a good report card, students are no longer adapting what they learn in school or becoming interested in what they are learning about, and their focus is on what grade they will get out of a class. This prevents the student from being interested in what their teachers have to offer and just strive to get an A with doing whatever it takes. Most of the time students will learn material just for the test day, and then completely forget the material soon after. A lot of us are guilty of this action.

Another area where creativity should be incorporated into the classrooms, is how teachers incorporate it into their classrooms. Teachers are a big part of allowing creativity to be involved with their course, but a lot of times it is not a part of the classroom because of the government structured curriculum. If creativity were to be involved more into the classroom, students would then be able to realize the importance of learning things, instead of just learning material to achieve an A. With creativity being used in classrooms, teachers would make students interested in the material.

The problem with the required classes and constructed curriculum is that students and teachers are not allowed to involve creativity with their learning or teaching. If students were allowed to use creativity, then the effect of learning something would benefit them in real life. Students would be able to think in a way that allowed them to be successful. The structured classrooms that is developed from the government, is strictly followed by teachers and does not allow room for creativity involvement.

Improv creativity

We have recently discussed the creativity found in improvisational theater. It is fascinating to me how much creativity is involved with this type of theater. I never really understood the practice that is involved with the actors, but I really appreciate their ability to create a performance that is total improv. It may become easy to them, because it is a way of communication, and we all know that communication is entirely improvisational, but it is one thing to create a performance in which the audience can relate to, and it be funny.

I have had little experience with improv theater, from things like different drama games or seeing my friends participate in improv groups at school, but while reading about the improvisational theater, I was able to relate it to the performance I attended by the group "Second City." "Second City" is the comedy theater and school of improv that is based out of Chicago. It is most famously known where comedians Will Farrel and Tina Fey started their careers. I was able to see a group perform in Atlanta, and I became fascinated with this performance. I caught myself talking about the different scenes constantly, and appreciating this art of improv. This creativity that these actors had made for an outstanding performance, and I was able to relate what we read in class the areas in which their training of improv, is best portrayed. I know realize the creativity that was involved with the improv that I saw. I look forward to seeing more improv performances in the future!

Creativity in Sports

Because of my involvement with sports, it has been interesting to see the many ways in which sports can be creative. I can remember as a kid constantly wanting to create different ways to play a sport. My friends and I loved establishing new sets of rules and using anything found in our homes to use as the equipment. Since this was many years ago, the games we created are lost in my memories, but it is fascinating to look back and realize the creative process we took to create an entertaining, new game.

A large amount of creativity in sports is seen through the way the sport is created. Many sports have been created because of the previous sports that exist. Like we read in Boards on the Move: Surfboards, Skateboards, Snowboards, and Kiteboards written by Johnny J Moye and John M. Ritz, "snowboarding was created from people using a surfboard on snow" (7). It is these modifications that led to the advancement of a new sport. It has been so interesting to see the different examples of the way sports were created. I never realized the, sometimes simple, process it took to create a new way to compete! "Modifications were needed, but these new sports all resulted from people using their imaginations and modifies other technologies to fit their new uses (7)".

Even though creativity is mostly seen through this creative process, creativity is also found from sports in the following: coaching techniques, making up creative moves/tricks, intrinsic motivation to perform, communication during the game (i.e. codes used during baseball and softball), and improvisation of the game.

Realizing this creativity of sports, I am now appreciating more the idea of sports in my life.

Creativity in Education

We have been discussing a lot on the reasons why schools do not provide creativity in education. There are many reasons for this, but I like to focus on the following. These reasons consist of teachers being structured with a mandated curriculum to follow set by the government, teachers having to teach students subjects that they will then be tested for on standardized tests, and lastly, teachers believing that creative students are most likely to not follow the rules set in their classroom. From reading about all of these reasons, I am not positive what it is going to take in order to change the education to prefer more creativity involved. The government is involved to create this curriculum to establish goals that students must accomplish in order to achieve academic standing, to make sure there is a future for the students. This coincides with the fact that standardized tests are mandatory for students to take in order to test where they are academically and to note progress. We understand that in classrooms all teachers want is to have well-behaved students that do what is asked of them. And when teachers think that one student shows more "creativity" than the other, they believe that student is more likely to misbehave or stray from the guided rules. With all of this being said, the relationship among education and creativity is seen as impossible for our society at the moment. We would need to change the way education is portrayed and change it to be more structured with hands-on activities with some instruction or have a focus of non-traditional education, such as how to survive on your own.

Should literacy be on the same level as creativity?

In class we began to watch the TED Talks video on creativity in education. The speaker on this video discussed that creativity needs to be introduced into schools for education. That in order to educate the students now, we need to incorporate things they need to know in order to be able to function for their future. We are not sure of the future, so instead of having a curriculm of topics, we need to teach them things that they will be able to use in order to solve situations to function in the society's future. He says that "creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."

I can agree that because of the issue of not knowing what the future holds, that student's education needs to incorporate creativity. Education now only consists of government structured subjects that does not allow the teachers to have room for teaching or using creativity. Because of this, creativity has declined while not allowing students to have a wide range of answers. Students are taught that there is only one answer, so they are always questioning for that one correct answer. This leaves no room for divergent thinking, that involves creativity.

When the speaker stated that literacy and creativity needs to be of equal importance in education, it caught me off guard. Knowing that my education has always been striving to learn "the one right answer", I could not see how education would transform into teaching the importance and use of creativity. I do not know when this transformation will be possible, or how teachers, government, and students will go about it, but I believe the change could transform the way we look at our education.

Social Creativity in The Social Network

Recently in class we watched The Social Network, the movie that shows the chronicle of the founding of the social network web site, Facebook. Even though creativity was not the focus on this film, our class was able to define many pieces that related to Mark Zuckerberg's creativity process in developing the popular social network. From watching it, I was also able to notice the social influences on creativity that allowed Zuckerberg to create the entire website.

These influences were seen when his peer asked him if he knew if a certain girl was single or not, and this conversation sparked the idea to have the relationship status on Facebook. Another influence was seen when Sean Parker sugguested to Zuckerberg that he drop the "the" off of the url to 'thefacebook.com'. An influence that sparked the idea of a new social network was due to the fact other social network web sites were established, and he was able to create a better network from the other network's flaws. His creativity was not the main account for being able to create such a widely used social network. Most of the creation was due from outside influences that he was socially involved with and the fact that he was aware of what people are socially interested in.

It is amazing to point out that creativity is sparked from previous influences or ideas and that creativity is simply not random. I believe Zuckerberg's process of creating Facebook is one of the best modern-day examples on how social creativity has a major impact on our outcome of creativity.