Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society

This aricle is called "Sowing the Seeds for A More Creative Society" and is written by Mitchell Resnick.

This article discusses two technologies developed with the research by the MIT Media Lab with the goal to help people develop as creative thinkers. The two technologies are called Crickets and Scratch and they are designed to support what Mitchell calls the “creative thinking spiral.” The steps used are imagined, they share their ideas, reflect, and then imagine again. As your students go through this process over and over, then they will learn to develop their own ideas. The first technology is called a Cricket and children connect lights, motors, and sensors to a Cricket, the Cricket can then spin and play music. In many ways, Crickets are similar to the Lego Mind storms robot construction kits now used by quite a few students around the world. There is a student in ice land that programmed this Cricket to create an automatic alarm clock and he connected a motor, light, and a sound sensor. He chose perfect pieces to add to the Cricket including a feather that would tickle his face and would twirl when the alarm would ring. The Crickets are solely designed to make artistic creations and for children to have some fun in the class setting. They are very popular in Hong Kong as well and a student programmed it and attached it to her boots to flash when she lifted her foot. The Scratch is like the Cricket, yet it gives them the power to create and control things online. Scratch helps them create interactive stories, games and animations. It is better than power point and is far more dynamic and interactive.

These items should be very fun for my students and I think that I will definitely use the Scratch System with my students because it sounds like a more fun way to create reports and presentations. A student scratched a book report on Ben Franklin and added an interactive game to the presentation and made it way more fun for his fellow students. Kids that use this Scratch source can even post their work online for other users to see. It is very cool that they can share their work with one another. I think I will incorporate this Scratch System because it also will give them the chance to share what they are so proud of. I think the students will enjoy being introduced to these two systems yet they may be a little pricey so that would be the main dilemma with incorporating them into my class. If the Crickets are reasonable then that would be such a fun thing to show the children because they would think that they were playing a fun game and it will take their mind off of equations and other things that they are learning as well. Since these two items have worked with many students so far I think we will all be seeing these in the near future a lot more.