Blog #8 Technology that Supports Creativity

Boss and Krauss (2007) ask if we can help students to help discover and tell their own stories (p. 50). Accessing information and creating a new product through technology can be very appealing. Because technology provides color, sound, motion, shape, and design, it offers endless possibilities. Tools such as Movie Maker, Voice Thread, Photoshop, and Comic Life provide new media for expression. Whether students are conveying academic information or telling a personal story, they can enhance their projects with technology. Seeing what a tool provides can unlock or prompt a student's creativity. I have found that although students want to use every "bell and whistle" of a new tool, they eventually make better design choices the longer they use something. Providing opportunities to explore and samples to observe allows students to make good choices to represent their ideas. Also, guidelines for good project construction can guide the inexperienced student. For example, the book that Dr. Bray required for his web design class had a lot of "before" and "after" pictures of web pages with editorial comments that helped me to catch on quickly to some aspects of design (Williams, R. & Tollet, J. (2006). The Non-Designer's Web Book, 3rd ed. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press).