Creativity, Imagination and Digital Technology

School curricula and teachers have traditionally suggested that creativity is only possible in subjects such as art, music, drama and dance. However the digital technology now available to schools can offer users opportunities to be creative in different ways and in other subject areas. Using ideas from recently published UK reports on creativity and creative thinking, grade 1 and 2 students in three classes used pencil and paper to draw houses and people, and then used a computer software package to draw other items. The software package allowed students to draw free-hand, to use built-in graphics features including colour for lines and fill, and to use text. No attempt was made to compare products from the two media forms for creativity. Children who displayed certain characteristics of creativity in their pencil and paper drawings were asked about both their pencil and computer drawings. The tentative results reinforce the belief that creativity is in the child rather than the medium, but that some children respond to a particular medium and demonstrate behaviours not seen in other contexts. Introduction Education systems in developed countries appear to have actively supported the use of digital technologies in kindergartens, and primary and secondary schools. The associated costs have been substantial in terms of curriculum development, training of teachers, as well as in the provision of hardware and software. For many years teachers have restricted consideration of creativity to areas such as art, music, literature, and dance. As computers and other digital technologies have become ubiquitous in both society and education, they have also started to become an integral part of school curricula. This has resulted in teachers of art, music, writing and dance coming into contact with issues of creativity and technology. There has been much experimentation with, and writing about, students exercising their powers of creativity as part of writing (Abbott 1998,), music (Reynolds 2003), and multimedia (Lachs and Wiliam 1998, Sinker 2000). It can be argued that these are just examples of the subjects that have traditionally been linked to creativity extending these links to incorporate the evolving educational applications of digital technologies. However the focus of this paper will be on curriculum areas not traditionally linked with imaginative and creative thinking in schools – computer studies and mathematics. School and home use of ICT Curriculum documents have suggested applications of ICT in most school subject areas for many years. However many 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 “noncomputer” or “non-creative”. Until recently teachers could claim that their lack of use of technology resulted from inadequate access to suitable hardware and a general lack of appropriate educational software. These factors should not be significant today in any Australian state or territory. Teaching and learning have traditionally been considered as linear processes, usually evidenced by the scope and sequence charts included in both curriculum documents and textbooks. However teachers in this early stage of the twenty-first century accept that there is usually more than a single path between where a learner is at any given time and where they will have progressed to as they acquire new knowledge and skills. The examples that follow have been selected to demonstrate that ICT has the potential to facilitate both teachers and students creatively exploring a variety of nonlinear paths. Most Victorian children are five years old when they commence primary school. Even at this age a significant number possess considerable computing related skills and knowledge. Table 1 shows computer and Internet availability in Australian homes in 2002. This data suggests that perhaps four out of five children who commence school will come from a home that has a computer, and three out of five of those children will live in homes that also have Internet access. Entire population No children at home Children under 15 home Computer in the home 61% 53% 79% Internet available in home 46% 40% 59% Table 1: Computers and the Internet in Australian homes, 2002. Source: ABS (2003). Two recent British studies measured similar proportions among homes with school age children in Britain, but go further in their investigation of home computer use. The ImpaCT2 study (BECTA 2003) indicates that school age children spend more time using computers at home than they do at school, and also that the major use of computers at home is for playing games. The “Young People and IT” study (DfES 2002) surveyed more than 1700 school students, and reported that time spent using a computer anywhere averaged 11.4 hours/week for all students. Of this total time 7.5 hours/week occurred at home, with a range from 4.3 hours/week for 5-7 year olds and 10.7 hours/week for 16+ year olds. Table 2 shows the reported hours/week of computer use at home and at school, with a breakdown between game and non-game use. Age 5-7 – Key Stage 1 Age 7-11 – Key Stage 2 Survey total, n = 1748 Total Non-game Game Total Non-game Game Total Non-game Game School 2.2 1.6 0.6 2.6 2.3 0.3 2.9 2.5 0.4 Home 4.3 1.9 2.4 5.4 2.3 3.1 7.5 4.3 3.2 Table 2: Hours/week of computer use at school and home. (DfES 2002, pp.15, 22) Within any class there will be discrepancies in computer skills and knowledge resulting from variations in the level of access to computers at home. However, as Table 3 shows, there are also significant differences between what children actually do when they have access to a computer at home Younger children spent considerably more time playing games, while time devoted to homework and Internet access increased with age. Among students surveyed in the “Young People and IT” study the major reported home use was for game playing (89% for 5-7 year olds) and homework (85% for 11-14 year olds). Table 3 shows major home and school uses of computers reported by 5-7 and 7-11 year old children. Age 5-7. Key Stage 1 Age 7-11. Key Stage 2 Home % School % Home % School % Playing games 89 55 88 39 Homework or study 4 NA 7 NA Accessing the Internet 13 4 26 27 Drawing pictures 60 54 45 66 Writing stories 15 41 30 27 Table 3: Home and school computer use of 5-11 year olds. (DfES 2002, pp.15, 23) The statistics from both Australia and the UK show that a majority of children in the early years of school use computers relatively extensively at home and at school. In addition there are notable difference both countries between home computer use based on the socio-economic level of the household. Views of creativity The literature is replete with descriptions of creativity and creative thinking, most relating to various of the arts. For the purposes of this paper some non-arts specific characterisations will be considered. The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) reported on creativity in a variety of educational contexts, and defined creativity as .. imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value (NACCCE, 1999, p.29). The attributes of planning to achieve an outcome that is both novel and worthy appear crucial, as they occur frequently throughout the research literature. In an extensive review of published works on the combination of creativity, learning and digital technology, Loveless (2002, p.12) states, A characteristic of creativity with digital technologies would be the recognition of the potential of the features of ICT to be exploited and experimented with to support creative processes. Loveless links the features of ICT with the five characteristics of creativity proposed by NACCCE (1999), and these are shown in Table 1. Features of ICT NCCCCE Framework for Creativity Provisionality