Managing Creative Projects and Activities

DEFINING CREATIVITY:

"Characteristics of creativity involve imaginative thinking that leads to a purposeful activity to achieve an objective, resulting in something original and of value in relation to the objective sought..."

HISTORY/BACKGROUND:

The National Advisory Committee's report (DfEE, 1999) states that we are all, or can be, creative to a lesser or greater degree if we are given the opportunity.

In 2002 Ofsted reported that in 'some schools, there is insufficient attention to the processes of designing, particularly in Key Stage 3 where pupils' experience of design and technology is merely a sequence of short focused practical tasks with no opportunity to apply their own ideas in a longer design task'. The National Strategies set about to rebalance this in schools.

The 2008 National Curriculum now emphasises the need for more open-ended project setting; where creative working is developed through encouraging personal learning & thinking and more autonomous working (either individual, paired or group).

TEACHERS ARE "KEY" TO PROVIDING CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES:

"Creativity is not an easy phenomenon to define and hence understand. Perhaps this is partly the reason why there seems to be ‘issues’ in creativity and design and technology education...The teacher, it is argued, has an important role to play within this system. Firstly, teachers of D&T must attempt to understand, value and have positive attitudes towards creativity. Only then, it is argued, can pupils access and eventually become part of the creative D&T domain, as it is the teachers who ‘sanction’ creative work."

Bill Nicholl, University of Cambridge, England - DATA research Conference 2004 "Creativity and Innovation" following a three year GATSBY funded research and development project focusing on aspects of creativity and innovation in Design & Technology at KS3 (11-14 years).

Developing creativity and problem solving skills
In 1999 the government in England invited Professor Kenneth Robinson of Warwick University to chair a working party concerned with creativity in education... The report 'All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education' (Robinson, 1999) argues that a national strategy for creative and cultural education is essential to unlock the potential of every young person. It saw creativity in terms of the task in hand as having four features:

• using imagination;
• pursuing purposes;
• being original;
• being of value.

It is not difficult to relate these four features to the central activity of design & technology: pupils designing what they are going to make and then making what they have designed. This is stated in the opening sentence of the importance statement for design & technology (quoted above) and then reinforced strongly with an additional reference to problem solving as follows:
They (pupils) learn to think creatively and intervene to improve the quality of life, solving problems as individuals and members of a team.
There are implications for classroom practice in meeting the creativity and problem solving agenda. The activities that pupils undertake must be sufficiently open to interpretation by the pupils that they can be creative and that genuine problems for them to solve will emerge as they move forward in the activities.

David Barlex, Nuffield Curriculum Centre
"Modernising design & technology - promoting design & technology in a reconfigured curriculum"

How Project Tools Supports Creative Activities

To begin, the Project Tools' "Acorn" tasks and interractive tutorials build the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding through its short focused hands-on activities. Learners can then more confidently go on to generate ideas for original design and make projects.The Project Tools (SmartStart) software can be used to develop up to 1000 different system designs based on the single generic Fasttrack PCB. For every developed system, Project Tools generates 2-page assembly guides showing: block diagrams, pictorial circuit views, component tables, making & testing info. After printing, these essential guides help to ensure more successful practical outcomes as the projects can be undertaken more independently. Teachers also find it easier to manage, as these making activities only need one ready-to-use PCB layout needed for all the projects.

Project Units for Yr.7(159KB) , Yr8(144KB) and Yr9(149KB) from DFES Standards Site

Visit the www.standards.dfes.gov.uk

Project Examples from Years 8 and 9 that have been made using the generic FastTrack pcb and Project Tools (SmartStart) software.