Digital Creativity and Learning

The act of making is not new. After all, “the impulse to create is one of the most basic human drives” (Martinez & Stager, 2014). But until recently, it has been merely viewed as a hobby. Now, the act of making can be more accurately understood as creating solutions for real and relevant needs of…

Digital games have been shown to significantly enhance the learning capabilities of students, more so than by teachers using non-game approaches (Clark, Tanner-Smith & Killingsworth, 2016). Games-based approaches not only allow for higher germane cognitive load (Chang et al., 2017), but they also allow students to inadvertently develop their own life skills, such as, improved…

Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging technological tool, where one is given the illusion of interacting with and immersing themselves into a computer-generated world (Tussyadiah, Wang & Dieck, 2018; Innocenti, 2017). After decades of studying it’s affordances, VR technology has been argued to facilitate experiential learning that can radically transform education (Winn, 1993; Youngblut, 1998;…

Augmented Reality (AR) – the next big platform for sharing information and productivity (TEDx Talks, 2017). Whilst still in its’ developmental phases, it’s clear that AR has the ability to transform learning, through enabling “the seamless compositing of virtual objects onto a real environment in a contextually relevant manner” (Billinghurst et al., 2001). Through facilitating…

Robotics are a relevant, intriguing, tactile way to further develop students’ computational thinking and programming skills (Wikipedia, 2019). Whilst learning about robotics fosters students to become efficient and resourceful users of technology, the educational benefits of using these machines to create knowledge are extensive. This includes, robotics… being an engaging and motivational way of teaching…

Computational Thinking (hereafter, CT) can be easily understood as “A way that humans, not computers, think…[it] is a way humans solve problems; it is not trying to get humans to think like computers.” (Wing, 2006, p. 35). Whilst this may seem like a contradictory definition, it broadly implies that CT within a school setting, entails…

‘Design thinking’ is “a process of creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organised, decisions to be made, situations to be improved and knowledge to be gained” (Burnette, 2005, para. 2). But why do we need to know about this idea? Well, research indicates that fostering Design Based Thinking within students,…

Learning Technology Critique For years there has been a reoccurring concern that students’ creativity is continually being “squashed” by educators , as they teach from curriculums which fail to promote this integral 21st century skill (Sir Robinson, K., TED2006; Loveless, Burton & Turvey, 2006). Often, the notion of creativity is narrowly perceived as merely a…