Fueling Creativity in Education
Episodes
Friday Oct 29, 2021
Friday Oct 29, 2021
What does the future of creativity and innovation look like and how do we get students involved? In this episode of Fueling Creativity, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood speak with Jonathan Nalder, a globally awarded innovator in education and Chief Futures Officer at STEM Punks, about the best practices for integrating digital tools and forward thinking in learning environments.
Listen in as Jonathan shares his thoughts on why future trends are important in education, how STEM is connected to creativity, and the trends you can expect in education in the next 10-15 years.
They also discuss the role of empathy in design thinking, how he and STEM Punks are preparing students to work in collaboration with machines and AI, and the strategies he uses in project-based learning environments to get students thinking about potential human problems of the future. Then, he sheds light on his program, First School on Mars, and how it has grown over the years.
“Instead of going, “How are we going to solve radiation in space?” You know, really hard science… What we do to flip that instead is... “Okay, if humans are going to Mars, they’re going to be away from Earth for 3-4 years minimum. So, what kind of base are you going to design that will mean the humans are happy living away?”” - Jonathan Nalder
Jonathan’s Tips for Parents & Teachers:
Make time for exploring in the classroom and give your students agency within that.
Bring physical props into the classroom.
Think about human relationships in relation to technology.
Visit FutureWe.org and STEMPunks.com.au to gain access to powerful resources and become a part of our community!
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to the episode with Bryan Alexander: https://bit.ly/3vQkQqc
Save Tomorrow for the Children by E. Paul Torrance: https://amzn.to/3GG58mC
Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?
Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.
What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?
Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
About Jonathan Nalder:
Jonathan has spent 19 years as a creative ideas factory, scaffolder of change, and builder of supportive communities with education and training organizations, businesses, entrepreneurs, schools and space professionals. He spends up to 90 minutes every day researching future trends so he can distill this with his experience as a visual story-teller, planner, teacher, and writer so that communities of practice world-wide can benefit.
Connect with Jonathan:
Connect with him on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jonathannalder
You can also find The Fueling Creativity Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!
Friday Jul 23, 2021
Friday Jul 23, 2021
How is machine learning and AI related to creativity? How can we use them to prepare for the future? In this episode of Fueling Creativity, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood speak with Bryan Alexander, an award–winning, internationally recognized futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher.
Tune in to learn what it means to be a futurist, how we can use creativity and automation to anticipate the future, and the limitations of artificial intelligence in being creative. You’ll gain insight into how teachers and administrators can utilize AI to optimize teaching strategies and school management systems.
Bryan also sheds light on a few eye-opening trends, like the decreasing birth rate, that are impacting K-12 and higher education and what this means for our children’s future.
“We now have, within creativity, two options: We have the cyborg option where AI can help us be creative and help us expand our creative output, and we also have computers that simply are creative and produce creative outputs.”
- Bryan Alexander
Bryan’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:
Play with teaching tools that already use AI. Many are free! For example, you can use Duolingo, the language-teaching app.
Look at the overall field of AI studies to get familiar with the various technologies, but also look at some of the criticisms of these technologies.
Look at AI and automation outside of teaching and learning!
Resources Mentioned:
OECD Trends Shaping Education 2019
Deep Dream
Duolingo
Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?
Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.
What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?
Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
You can also find The Fueling Creativity Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!
About Bryan Alexander:
Bryan Alexander is an award–winning, internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher. Bryan speaks widely and publishes frequently, with articles and interviews appearing in venues including The Atlantic Monthly, Inside Higher Ed, the Washington Post, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, UNational Public Radio (2017, 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020), the Chronicle of Higher Education (2016, 2020), the Atlantic Monthly, and Reuters.
He recently published Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education for Johns Hopkins University Press (January 2020), which won an Association of Professional Futurists award. He is currently working on Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Age of Climate Crisis (2022). His two other recent books are Gearing Up For Learning Beyond K-12 and The New Digital Storytelling (second edition).
Bryan is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University and teaches graduate seminars in their Learning, Design, and Technology program.
Visit Bryan’s website
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Connect with him on LinkedIn