METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL

METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL FOR CREATIVE AND COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Joaquín Moreno Marchal (Coordinator)

Index

       Situation

       General Educative Problems

       Opinions

       Recommendations for CReA activities development

Situation

Developing creativity is a general objective in all the developed countries and it is a social need.

· To develop capacity of ideas production

· To develop flexible thinking.

· To promote personnel style and originality.

Developing creativity must be stimulated in all curriculum areas with more specific objectives.

To develop verbal thinking (oral expression, writing expression, reading understanding).
Learning and develop logic and mathematic reasoning to resolve problems.
To develop arts capacities.
World understanding.

The society of knowledge needs new capacities and attitudes

Responsibility.
Project definition.
Learning to learn
To have initiative and motivation
To Innovate
Originality and creativity
Team working
Communication
Efficient use of technology.
Scheduling and planning.
Problem resolution.
Efficient use of information and knowledge.

ICT are important tools for learning, creating and collaborating but need an innovative pedagogical framework.

Students are very interested in the ICT use.

To profit this student’s motivation for learning and working.
Good use and understanding of ICT are very important educative goals.

The educational innovation and changes must be well understanding.

This is an objective of SOCRATES programme.

Europe is very interested in developing the ICT use in learning

eLearning action (included in eEurope initiative) (http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/elearning/index.html)
eLearning needs flexible education organizations.

CReA pilot-projects evaluation shows good results.

Students are motivated to CReA kind of activities.
Students are very interested in ICT use.
Technological classrooms have been developed or updated.
Understanding of importance of ICT in learning.
Teachers understanding and learning of ICT.

General Educative Problems

Student motivation for working and learning

How to integrate creativity and collaborative learning in daily curriculum development.

Flexible education organizations are needed.

New students’ role.
New teachers’ role.
Integration of ICT use.
Team work.

Traditional learning model needs to be adapted to the knowledge society.

Capacities, competencies (know to do) and attitudes are more important than contents.
There is a lot of knowledge’s sources and communication channels.
There are good specific learning tools ICT-based.
Learning is done it inside groups and organizations
The importance of belonging to a creative and learning organization.

The use of the ICT can find different difficulties

Technical: complexity, difficulties,..
Conceptual: understanding of ICT meaning, impact and possibilities.
Structural: equipments ability .
Attitudinal: how is our position about ICT use?
Formative: knowledge and use of ICT.
Absence of model to integrate ITC in daily practice.

Opinions

What about creativity?

The creativity is related with subjectivity and therefore with the affectivity world.
is creativity a global attitude?.
A creativity work is based upon previous materials and experiences
Creation implies self-construction.
Detection of real-problems trigger creativity process to resolve it.
Satisfaction and happiness are related with creative process.

What capacities and attitudes do we need to be creative?

Enthusiasm.
Effort
Problem-detection.
Interest to improve the pre-existing.
Capacity to define projects.
- Toughness.
- Thinking and reflection
- Observation and analysis.
- Synthesis.
- Auto-evaluation of work.
- Auto-confidence.
- Association of ideas, techniques or concepts.

To develop creativity we need to build environments with appropriated characteristics.

Open to play and experimentation.
Freedom.
Tolerance and flexibility.
Authenticity promotion and valuation.
Self-expression motivation.
Use of methods to stimulate creativity process.

Recommendations for CReA activities development

CReA project is a tool and an opportunity.

To promote and motivate active learning.
To develop a new role for students.
To stimulate teachers work and improvement in education.

CReA needs to be an environment stimulant and interesting for teachers.

Teachers’ teams in CReA have a creative and essential role.
Motivation students activities.
Coordination learning teams and works.
Proposition and selection CReA activities.
Participation in CReA activities
Without teachers collaboration it is not possible to obtain CReA goals.
We can build a learning organization with all participant.

CReA can be used in several ways by teachers.

Using the materials yet developed in a subject
- Using school descriptions in a language to translate into English.
- Using materials from activities (photos, text, video…) to translate it into electronic formats.
As a tool to increase students’ motivation.
To realize collaborative work
Using specific web-based learning tools.
Communicating and collaborating with other teachers.

CReA looks for stimulating an active student-model.

Defining objectives and goals.
Assuming responsibilities.
Developing useful works/products for oneself/others.
Taking decisions.
Learn in a significance way.
Construct his knowledge and add it to a team or collective
Organising and collaborate with other for project development
Searching for information.
Using the ICT as tools for creation, learning and collaboration.

Integration of CReA in daily practice is based on the normal work realized until now and depends of the teachers’ decisions.

Defining the list of interested in participating to participate in CReA.
In each subject teachers and students define a list of activities (exercises, practices, experiences, projects,…) related to the objectives of CReA.
Setting a calendar for activities taken into account subject programming.
For each activity, describing its relation with curriculum objectives, methods and contents.
In each subject the teacher set a proportion of time for working in CReA activities. (named Space-CReA time).
For each activity results must be translated (by students) into web-based format.
CReA activities must be valuated.

CREA- Spaces is time for developing creativity and collaborative learning.

Stimulant and challenge for students and teachers .
Action-oriented.
Having objectives or goals that drive the actions.
Process-centred (drawing, reading, analysing, communication,..).
Opening to multiple solutions for proposed activities
Oriented to questions and problems resolution.
Flexible in space and time.
Producing results (putting ideas into practice).
Having the possibility to use ICT.
Creative attitudes are valued, appreciated and stimulated (divergence thinking, originality, personal creation,…).
Building learning teams.
Promoting effort and responsibilities.
It's a tool to demonstrate what the students can do.

Students must participate in CReA activities definition and selection.

Activities definition and proposals are a creative task.
Selecting activities implies motivation in participating.
Students' participation give themselves a protagonist role.

Technology lessons can be used to translate CReA activities results into electronic formats.

Technology is seen as a tool for communicating of our work and collaboration.
The importance of having previous ideas and projects, before the use of technology, is clearly demonstrated in practice, demonstrate.
The use of technology is project-oriented.
Need of team work is shown.

Language lessons can be used to translate web-based text of CReA activities.

Motivating for students (translating their works).
Clearly show the utility of languages for communication and work.
Has a destination group (the other partners' students at least)

What kind of activities can be realized in CREA- Space?

Projects.
Experiences.
Exercises with open or multiple solutions.
Searches
Proposal of real problems discussion and resolution.

Real problems are stimulant to resolve. It's a source of challenge.

What about team work?

To have an explicit common objective.
To have a coordinator.
No more than 5-7 members per team.
Definition of responsibilities.
…

How CReA activities must be evaluated?

Integrated into the normal curriculum.
For each activity, valuation criteria must be clear for students.

Criteria for evaluation must be those related with creative work and active learning.

Initiative.
Ideas fluency.
Originality (divergence thinking,…).
Elaboration (detailed work).
Analysis.
Redefinition and modification of the pre-existing.
Syntheses.
Coherency of the whole.
Explanation.
Effort developed.
Collaborative work.

ITC in CReA are used as tools.

Expression.
Searching.
Knowledge organisation and management.
Communication.
Collaboration.
Learning.
…

CREA-activities need to be translated into web-based formats.

Each activity has its specific characteristics. structure and languages.
For each activity a discussion about its informatic structure and representation must be done by students.
Showing, in practice, the difference kind of information.
Need of information’s organisation.
Exercises of hypermedia documents design.
Technology and Language lessons can be used.