Grassroots Creativity: Helping Everyone Become a Creative Thinker

Grassroots Creativity:
Helping Everyone Become a Creative Thinker

Michael Resnick

Creativity in the educational system is found primarily in kindergarten and graduate school (and hopefully the art room)! Unfortunately, our education system is not designed to develop creativity which makes the visual arts even more essential the the education of our young people. The process to become a creative thinker is a learning spiral: imagine create, play, share, reflect and imagine. This spiral is illustrated on the left.

Technologies can take the place of the creative nature of blocks and finger paint found in kindergarten. One such technology is a program developed at MIT, Scratch. Scratch allows kids to design interactive stories and games, making computer programming as to design as Lego blocks. Scratch is one tool to expand literacy and fluency in the 21st century. Kids need to be creators. Interacting with games and programming is not enough: they need to design and create to develop creative thinking skills.