“Instead of making kindergarten like the rest of school, we need to make the rest of school (indeed, the rest of life) more like kindergarten” (Resnick, p. 1). What a great piece of advice for me to receive before I get started with my teaching career! Resnick’s reasoning in All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten, is that students learn to think creatively because of how kindergarten learning is cultivated. “In traditional kindergartens, children are constantly designing, creating, experimenting, and exploring”; (Resnick, p. 1) these activities not only allow for kindergarten students to enjoy what they do in kindergarten, but also to learn through experience. Experience is a way that embeds knowledge into a student because he/she will have something to recall back on when discussing an idea or concept. This is not just for kindergarteners, but for people of all ages, which is why Resnick believes the kindergarten method of learning is worth implementing in schools for all ages. It is a process that spirals through the acts of imagining, creating, playing, sharing, reflecting, and imagining (Resnick, p. 1). While this spiral may look differently in a kindergarten classroom than it would in a tenth grade history class, students will be engaged in what they are doing and actively participating in their own education. If I can incorporate this type of teaching philosophy into my work from the beginning of my life as a teacher, students will be able to truly experience social science in my classroom, not just read about and report on it.
The second article for this week, From SuperGoo to Scratch: Exploring Creative Digital Media Production in Informal Learning, by Peppler and Kafai (2007) presented another great technological tool for teachers to implement into their classroom. This article discusses the use of Scratch, a program can be used by students to create their own project and experiment with the use of media and technology. Peppler and Kafai (2007) use case studies in their article to share the ways student s can use Scratch for completely different types of projects, from music videos, to video games, to car designing. Students are able to stretch their minds and experiment with different products and designs, similar to Resnick’s argument about learning through the kindergarten method. While the students in Peppler and Kafai’s (2007) case studies created projects that would not be pertinent in a secondary social studies classroom, using a program like Scratch to make a music video about the events that happened in 1968, or to design a Revolutionary War-themed video game, may not be irrelevant.
Whether it is a kindergarten class or a twelfth grade social studies class, pushing the students to think creatively and to stretch their learning is beneficial. The teachers are able to participate alongside students as they learn instead of attempt to drill pieces of information into students’ minds. Using technological tools like Scratch also help the students to be prepared to use technology for more than entertainment.
Peppler, K. A. & Kafai, Y. S., (2007). From SuperGoo to Scratch: Exploring Creative Digital Media Production in Informal Learning, Learning, Media and Technology Special Issue: Media Education Goes Digital [Electronic Version].
Resnick, Mitchel. All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten, 1-6.
