Thursday, October 27, 2011

Kids and Creativity







"Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives"

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi*

Visão Júnior is a Portuguese magazine for children and adolescents. To celebrate the 7th anniversary, Visão Junior promoted a contest for children aged 6 to 15, last August. 

The prize? Seven Nintendos 3DS for seven winners.

Wow! How can children resist!

The aim was to create a scene for a Nintendo game. Using images and objects, children were invited to create a montage simulating some relief and 3D aspects, write a little text (maximum 15 lines)  explaining the game and giving it a name. 

All the participations sent until September 15, 2011.





Luana Ambrósio, 11 years 

The magazine's staff was completely surprised. The organization received 332 drawing works from all the country

Watch the video here   Fantastic, don't you think?

I know, I know! You are smiling and thinking: Of course! There is a Nintendo 3D to win!

Well, I am not astonished. And I don't think as you are thinking. Of course children like games and Nintendo 3D. However, they go further than adults when they are invited to be creative.

I really know how amazing students are when educators motivate them to participate in something unsual that can be included in the curriculum, in this case, Languages and Arts.

The Nintendo and Visão Júnior were only a motivation to involve children and adolescents. Winning a Nintendo 3D was a good motivation, no doubt! 




Sofia Monteiro, 13 years 

I can't forget some scientific reports about 3D visual effets on children under 6 years. And I wrote about it oNintendo 3D?

However, as the participants are up-to 6, the aim is the creativity that we can help to evolve in our students in a simple contest like this one.

Remember other contests, as Youtube Symphony Orchestra 2011, for young schoolar musiciansRobotics in Education for young people or gifted children, European girls drawing competition for ICT for gender equality. All these projects started in the school.

Education:

This contest could be included in Languages and Arts school curricula in elementary education and high junior education.

As educators, we can easily understand how students like to collaborate in different activities that develop their school skills and their creativity! They like to feel free to create. Contests are a great resource that educators must not waste.


Francisco Tavares, 9 years


The organization was so happy about the success of the contest and the quality of the drawing works that  decided to open for a week, in the Lobby of the building, a public exhibition with the best 90 works.

Just a curiosity! Talking about gender equality, it is very interesting to see that from the seven winners, six are young girls.

Some thoughts :

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives, and of course creativity is a fundamental aim to captivate students in the classroom.

Students will develop school skills in a different environment that educators may introduce in some moments of the curricula, if curricula are not very attractive to students! They will learn by playing. 


"In this century, the importance of play in educating and socializing chidren has been recognized in theory, while greatly neglected in practice."

Bruno Bettelheim*

Not anymore! There are teachers who changed it! Educators are so creative as their students because they have the courage to change the rules, captivating thus their students for learning.



Inês Lebre, 12 years

"What makes us different from ape - our language, values, artistic expression, scientific understanding, and technology - is the result of individual ingenuity that was recognized, rewarded, and transmitted through learning."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi*


G-Souto

27.10.2011
Copyright © 2011G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Licença Creative Commons
Creative Kids and curricula by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Credits: images Visão Júnior

References: screenshots Virtual Illusion

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Creactive Personality, Chicago University

Bruno Bettelheim, Chicago University, Chicago Journals

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