How teacher can help nurture creativity among kids?

Parents or teachers can play a big role to develop skills among kids. Creativity is one of those skills which can be nurtured among kids with some simple techniques. Being an educator I have noticed that encouragement and praise for simple tasks can help develop creativity among kids.

How teachers can help nurture creativity?

Teachers can offer a curriculum with plenty of opportunities for creative behaviors. They can make assignments that call for original work, independent learning, self-initiated projects, and experimentation. Using curriculum materials that provide progressive warm-up experiences, procedures that permit one thing to lead to another, and activities that make creative thinking both legitimate and rewarding makes it easier for teachers to provide opportunities for creative learning.

The following are some things caring adults can do to foster and nurture creativity:

* We can teach children to appreciate and be pleased with their own creative efforts.

* We can be respectful of the unusual questions children ask.

* We can be respectful of child's unusual ideas and solutions, for children will see many relationships that their parents and teachers miss.

* We can show children that their ideas have value by listening to their ideas and considering them. We can encourage children to test their ideas by using them and communicating them to others. We must give them credit for their ideas.

* We can provide opportunities and give credit for self-initiated learning. Overly detailed supervision, too much reliance on prescribed curricula, failure to appraise learning resulting from a child's own initiative, and attempts to cover too much material with no opportunity for reflection interfere seriously with such efforts.

* We can provide chances for children to learn, think, and discover without threats of immediate evaluation. Constant evaluation, especially during practice and initial learning, makes children afraid to use creative ways to learn. We must accept their honest errors as part of the creative process.

* We can establish creative relationships with children--encouraging creativity in the classroom while providing adequate guidance for the students.

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What Can Parents Do?

It is natural for young children to learn creatively by dancing, singing, storytelling, playing make-believe, and so forth. One of the first challenges to creativity may be formal schooling. By this time parents, as well as teachers, appreciate conforming behaviors such as being courteous and obedient, following rules, and being like others. While these are desirable traits to some extent, they may also destroy a child's creative potential.


Creative Behavior of School-Age Children

Until children reach school age, it is generally assumed that they are highly creative, with vivid imaginations, and that they learn by exploring, risking, manipulating, testing, and modifying ideas. Although teachers and administrators sometimes believe that it is more economical to learn by authority, research suggests that many things (although not all) can be learned more effectively and economically in creative ways rather than by authority (Torrance, 1977).

Creative thinking and learning involve such abilities as evaluation (especially the ability to sense problems, inconsistencies, and missing elements); divergent production (e.g., fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration); and redefinition. Creative learning is a natural, healthy human process that occurs when people become curious and excited. In contrast, learning by authority requires students to use thinking skills such as recognition, memory, and logical reasoning--the abilities most frequently assessed by traditional tests of intelligence and scholastic aptitude. Children prefer to learn in creative ways rather than just memorizing information provided by a teacher or parents. They also learn better and sometimes faster.

Fostering Academic Creativity in Gifted Students

Related posts:

* "Encouraging Creativity in Early Childhood Classrooms"

Download pdf report: 25 Ways to Develop Creativity

How to Develop Student Creativity

http://trainyourbrain.wordpress.com/

Useful tools and techniques to integrate technology in classroom

Integrating technology in classroom is only possible when teachers are well trained to adopt tech ideas and well informed about technology integrating techniques. 'Web Tech Vision' was an educational technology company offering Tools for TEKS:Integrating Technology in the Classroom'. Company is owned by Wesley Fryer who is still engaged in sharing information for

This website is now maintained for K-16 educators interested in the effective use of technology in the classroom.

Go to archive page directly to select the pages or tutorials you are interested in.

Other pages of the site:

* Tools

* 'Tools and techniques' covers all the topics which a teacher may need to learn for technology integration ie: Basics, Sample Lessons, Locating Websites, Multimedia, Print Publication, Creating Websites, Data Management, Computer Classroom, Administrative Resources, Intellectual Property, Good Websites, Internet Safety, Other Tech Tools, Handhelds in the Classroom, 1 to 1 Computing etc.

* Successful and Safe Educational Blogging

'"Moving at the speed of creativity" is Wesley Fryer's blog. He uses this site to digitally document his own journey of learning and collaborate with other educators and lifelong learners around the globe.

The blog focuses primarily on issues related to engaged learning, web 2.0 technologies, digital storytelling, educational leadership, literacy, blended learning, creativity, appropriate uses of educational technologies, digital citizenship, and educational transformation.

Use kids search engines to find child safe sites

Either you are a teacher, parent or student and scouring the internet for any kind of information, better to start searching at 'Kids Search Engines' which provide child safe and family friendly links. Kids or students are also advised to use these safe search engines for search purposes.

• Smart Zone:  These Web sites have been specifically selected for educational use by EdView.  
• 'KidsClick' :  Excellent site created by librarians with a search engine of appropriate educational sites for students.
• K-12 INFOMINE Search Screen:  This is a searchable collection of instructional web sites
• Berit's Best Sites for Children: Search page:  Seach Berit's Best Sites.
  
• Education Planet - The Education Web Guide:  This is a searchable collection of educational web sites.
  
 
• Education World:  Large web site of educational links and a search engine feature to search these links.

• SuperKids SuperSearch:  This is a collection of educational web sites with a search feature as well as categories.
• K-12 World! SecureSearch™ :  A SecureSearch is safer for students and other users because it does not search the entire Internet, only those sites that have been approved for educational use.
  
• Schoolwork.org:  This is a searchable site of educational web sites.
  
• Awesome Library - Education Search Engine:  Database of 110,000+ sites related to educational topics.
  
• Awesome Library - K-12 Education Directory for Kids:  Search engine with a kids category. (limited results)
  
• Blue Web'n Refined Search :  Search engine of good educational sites, with ratings and grade levels. However, this is a fairly small database, so use one or two keywords only.
  
• StudyWeb:  Doesn't give descriptions with first search results and some terms were hard to guess at the relevance. But the next level gives good descriptions of sites with ratings and approximate grade level provided.
  
• ThinkQuest:  This is a collection of educational sites created by middle and high school students for the ThinkQuest Contest.
  
• LookSmart: Exploring World - Reference & Education k-12 - For Teachers - curriculum content:  This is a search engine that searches educational curriculum content information gathered by educational sites.
  
• LookSmart: Exploring World - Reference & Education k-12 - For Teachers - Lesson Plans:  This is a search engine that searches lesson plans gathered by a number of educational sites.
• The WWW Virtual Library:  Searchable collection - may not be just geared to kids
  

Source: 'Educational Search Engines'

Useful links:
* 'Kids search engines and directories

* 'Ivy's Kids Search Engine Resources

* 'Child-Safe Search Engines and Educational Directories'

* A List of Education Search Engines

Parents can help their kids be more creative

Creativity is one of those human skills which can be developed with simple techniques. Parents and teachers can play an important role for development of creativity among kids. As kids stay with parents for long hours, parents can help their kids become creative.

The following are some positive ways parents can foster and nurture the growth of creativity:

* Encourage curiosity, exploration, experimentation, fantasy, questioning, testing, and the development of creative talents.

* Provide opportunities for creative expression, creative problem-solving, and constructive response to change and stress.

* Prepare children for new experiences, and help develop creative ways of coping with them.

* Find ways of changing destructive behavior into constructive, productive behavior rather than relying on punitive methods of control.

* Find creative ways of resolving conflicts between individual family members' needs and the needs of the other family members.

* Make sure that every member of the family receives individual attention and respect and is given opportunities to make significant, creative contributions to the welfare of the family as a whole.

* Use what the school provides imaginatively, and supplement the school's efforts.

* Give the family purpose, commitment, and courage.

How Adults "Kill" Creativity:

* Insisting that children do things the "right way." Teaching a child to think that there is just one right way to do things kills the urge to try new ways.

* Pressuring children to be realistic, to stop imagining. When we label a child's flights of fantasy as "silly," we bring the child down to earth with a thud, causing the inventive urge to curl up and die.

* Making comparisons with other children. This is a subtle pressure on a child to conform; yet the essence of creativity is freedom to conform or not to conform.

* Discouraging children curiosity. One of the surest indicators of creativity is curiosity; yet we often brush questions aside because we are too busy for "silly" questions. Children questions deserve respect.

Creative Behavior of Young Children

Young children are naturally curious. They wonder about people and the world. By the time they enter preschool, they already have a variety of learning skills acquired through questioning, inquiring, searching, manipulating, experimenting, and playing. They are content to watch from a distance at first; however, this does not satisfy their curiosity. Children need opportunities for a closer look; they need to touch; they need time for the creative encounter.

We place many restrictions on child's desire to explore the world. We discourage them by saying "Curiosity killed the cat." If we were honest, we would admit that curiosity makes a good cat and that cats are extremely skilled in testing the limits and determining what is safe and what is dangerous. Apparently children, as well as cats, have an irresistible tendency to explore objects, and this very tendency seems to be the basis for the curiosity and inventiveness of adults. Even in testing situations, children who do the most manipulating of objects produce the most ideas and the largest number of original ideas.

Source: Fostering Academic Creativity in Gifted Students

Search engines for educational, academic and scholar research

Internet is a powerful tool for students, researchers, scholars and academics offering easy access to a wealth of information. But at first attempt it is really time consuming to look only for academic resources or educational stuff as search engines grab hundreds or thousands results which include relevant but paid search results which may not fulfill your needs.

All search engines do not search the same material. Some search engines are more useful to students and researchers because they search pre-screened material, including scholarly databases and government documents. Using academic quality search engines is important because not all information published on the Internet is authoritative and accurate. Collaborative websites, such as Wikipedia, can be edited by anyone and often are not reviewed by experts. Websites may be published online without an external review for reliability.

Many sites do not include information on their authors, which makes it difficult to assess the writer’s qualifications in the field. Some links returned by search engines lead to spam sites that contain off-topic or unhelpful information or advertising links.

Academic and educational search engines and web directories provide research-quality content from websites that are screened by educators and experts in a particular field. These search tools also search the “invisible web”, which is material not available through general search engines. The invisible web contains information included in search able databases and archives. By using these search engines and web directories, students and teachers can obtain research quality information without the difficult task of weeding out non-authoritative and spam sites. Users can be sure that these search engines will not return the spam sites, junk sites, or sites of dubious quality and research value that broader search engines may return.

• Google Scholar: For broad searches of scholarly material. Returns journal article and book citations to point researchers to useful material. Users can set Google Scholar’s library preferences to include material from their institution.
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• Microsoft Academic Search: Allows users to search scholarly papers, journals, and conference proceedings. Also allows searches by author. Includes links to download full-text articles when available.
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• Internet Public Library: Resources reviewed by professional librarians. Search-able and organized by subject.
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• Infomine: Search university-level scholarly information including biological and medical sciences, business and economics, the physical sciences and engineering, government information, electronic journals, and the social sciences and humanities.
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• Intute: Search material evaluated by specialists in the subject.
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• Scirus: Research the content of scientific journals, patent information, and scientist’s websites.
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• Scitopia: Search online libraries of leading science societies, scientific journals, and conference proceedings.
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• GPO Access: Search United States government documents.
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• RefSeek: Subject directory and search engine, includes results from reference material. Allows users to search the web or documents.
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• Academic Index: Search within subject areas. Searches databases of research-quality material reviewed by educators and librarians.
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• The Infography: Search material reviewed by professors and librarians. Provides recommendations by specialists for further reading in a subject.
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• Directory of Open Access Journals: Search peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly journals.
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• Virtual Library: This search engine’s database is reviewed by subject experts.

Source: 'Start local' - Australian Business Directory & Local Business Search Engine

* Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list!

* SearchEdu.com – one of the best and largest educational and academic search sites

How search engines work and how to find specific information from search engines

To enter the world wide web you need to open a page first and enter the text or keyword to search for the stuff.  Search engines are meant to provides results within seconds but you should learn how search engines work and how you can find the specific information around the net without wasting your time.  You should also have a knowledge of topic based search engines because when you search for specific topics based information, it is advised to look for the search engines specifically dealing in those topics. If you need to search for educational links, 'Google' is always a best choice to look for any kind of information or links but if you want to omit unnecessary or prfessional links then better to go for educational search engines. At the end of this post you may check useful links section.

How Search Engines work?

 

Search engines look for your search term within the web pages they've collected and indexed. The results reflect the search engine's determination of how relevant the site's content is to your inquiry. But some search engines will rank sites higher in your results if the site pays a fee, regardless of its relevance to your terms. FTC officials say it's a savvy surfer who knows how search results are sorted and ranked. It can make a difference in which search engines you choose to use and how you interpret the results.

 

If you use Internet search engines, the FTC(Federal Trade Commission) wants you to know that:

• Some search engines have programs for paid placement and paid inclusion. 
• Paid placement means websites or URLs pay search engines for higher rankings or more prominent placements in search results.
• Paid inclusion means websites or URLs pay to be included in a search engine's pool of results available for display, but not to be more prominent.
• Sometimes, third-party partners, like other search engines or guide sites, provide listings to search engines. If a partner has its own payment arrangements with a website, it could affect the results on the search engine you use.
• Many sites indicate whether a placement is paid for. If the search engine separates some search results as "Sponsored Listings," they may be paid for placement. But keep in mind that results may be grouped under other labels. Look for terms like "featured listings," "recommended sites," "search partner" or "products and services." If those sites are ranked higher than others or placed in a more prominent location than others, it could be a tip-off that the search engine uses a paid placement program.
• You may find an explanation of the type of paid placement or paid inclusion program the search engine uses. If such a program is in use, the explanations should be easy to find and understand. If they're not and the omission bothers you, let the search engine know.
• Paid inclusion programs do not guarantee higher rankings for listings and may provide features that are useful. For example, paid inclusion programs may provide consumers with better choices if the programs allow search engines to review URLs more quickly or review websites more deeply than they would otherwise.
• You have a choice. Before you decide which search engine to use, consider whether the use of payment programs for placement or inclusion is important to you.

Download pdf version of this report: Being Frank about Search Engine Rank

 

These facts and tips are provided by ftc.gov (Federal Trade Commision) for the benefits of consumers, so you can judge how search engines work and to what extent you can trust at their results.

Useful links and resources:

* All of these links lead to sites that contain specific information that may not turn up when you do a general search of the Web using Altavista, Yahoo, and other search engines and directories. 'Specialized Search Engines and Directories'

* You can find catagorized list of search engines at: 'Search Engine Guide'

* 'Virtula Sites' presents : Education search engines

A site for histroy enthusiastics - Random History

Learning about history or historical facts may seem a boring topic but it is true that ------

- 'History Helps Us Understand People and Societies'
- 'History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be'

'Random History' is a site which provides a selection of history facts on random topics.

What they say about them?

'We believe in advancing the place of history on the Internet and strive to fulfill this purpose. Each of our professionally trained writers and editors holds a Bachelor's degree in at least one of the following fields: history, English, or journalism. Many of them have even earned advanced degrees. Every history is carefully evaluated for accuracy and veracity and contains proper citations and references.'

Many histories and random facts available can be searched from top menu at home page. These facts and historical events are interesting and fun to read and learn like:

* Sharks have been called “swimming noses” because their sense of smell is so good (they smell with their nostrils but don’t breath through them). Some sharks can smell one part of blood in 100 million parts of water and can tell which direction that smell is coming from.

* Few Fast Food facts:

- In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food. In 2006, the spending rose to nearly $142 billion.e
- During the early 1900s, the hamburger was thought to be polluted, unsafe to eat, and food for the poor. Street carts, not restaurants, typically served them.e
- Proportionally, hash browns have more fat and calories than a cheeseburger or Big Mac.b
- At some fast food chains, both in U.S. and in other countries, managers are rewarded bonuses when they reduce employee wages to save money.g

Useful links:

* Why study History? An article from 'American Historical Association' explaining the importanc of this subject.

Learn about the world around us from - How Stuff Works?

Learning about the world around us never ends, as our world is full of lessons for us, mysteries to solve, facts to discover and lot more. Net offers millions of sites with free information about the facts around us. People who are always curious about the things around us, how they work? would love to browse the site 'How stuff works?'

“How Stuff Works” is one of those sites which is equally iformative and useful for parents, teachers, students and those who are curious to learn about the things around us.

'How Stuff Works', a wholly owned subsidiary of Discovery Communications, is the award-winning source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works.This site was founded by North Carolina State University Professor Marshall Brain in 1998.
Mission:“Demystify the world and do it in a simple, clear-cut way that anyone can understand. “

What you get from this FREE resource?

From car engines to search engines, from cell phones to stem cells, and thousands of subjects in between, HowStuffWorks has answered it. You can find comprehensive articles, helpful graphics and informative videos on every topic. On HowStuffWorks, you can also find consumer opinions and exclusive access to independent expert ratings and reviews from the trusted editors at Consumer Guide — all of the information you need to make a purchasing decisions ¬in just a few clicks.

Achievements:

HowStuffWorks has won multiple Webby awards, was among Time Magazine’s “25 Web Sites We Can’t Live Without” in 2006 and 2007, and has been one of PC Magazine’s “Top 100 Web Sites” four times, including in 2007.

Recently, HowStuffWorks became part of the Discovery Communications family, in a merger that will make HowStuffWorks the cornerstone of Discovery’s digital platform and ultimately create a fully multimedia version of an encyclopedia, with content and video that will answer virtually any question an Internet user might have. A HowStuffWorks program on the Discovery Channel is currently in the works.

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