I'll admit that this was the first time I've ever heard of Douglas Thomas. After watching his TED talk, I can certainly say that I'm glad that I do now.
Currently, I teach Principles of Arts, A/V Technology & Communication (essentially a introductory course to digital media) and Video Game Design, both of which require the use of creativity. When it comes to my assignments, I make an effort provide a few general guidelines (or 'obstacles', as Thomas referred to them and leave the creative aspects up to my students. I've found that rather than focusing on meeting every part of a rubric, students tend to be more open to exploring ideas and grow confident with their creations. I also have rather lax device policies, since I encourage students to find information or solutions in a way that's comfortable and familiar to them.
While I've managed to provide students with creative freedom that's graded more on effort and exploration rather than something more rigid, I seem to have neglected one of Thomas's key ideas: using play to enhance learning. Although I'm not teaching coding this years, I've started thinking of ways I can incorporate "play" into future coding-related lessons. While it may be difficult to add 'play' into assignments that require manually writing code in XCODE, things like coding principles (such as functions, loops, commands, etc) can likely be taught using more hands-on approaches. This would create an interactive context that could help learners retain information to apply in their creative pursuits.
Perhaps the most difficult task would be to ensure that play is being included in a wide variety of lessons. As the year progresses, many of us begin falling into patterns and grow weary from the demands of being public school educator. Though laborious and demanding, there is no greater sense of accomplishment that comes with a student understanding a once-unfamiliar concept, which boosts their confidence in their abilities and lends itself to students raising their own achievement standards.
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