Tag Archives: creativity

Mark Rabo recently led a Creative Jam as part of the TIFF Nexus New Media Literacies Conferences that took place in Toronto this spring. We asked him to share some tips for producers interested in collaborating with others in this innovative format that inspires creativity while harnessing the talents of its participants.   “Good artists steal” “Everything is a remix” “There is nothing new under the sun” It’s both terrifying and liberating that the raw material of every idea has always existed.…

Allison Mishkin teaches at a game design camp for middle school students. Here she shares some of the lessons that she’s learned — and tries to impart — to her students during this week-long sessions.   A group of students stumble into a computer lab on a bright spring day, unsure why their parents wanted them out of the house on their vacations. By the end of the day, they would emerge optimistic and excited for the week to come.…

This past fall, I wrote a blog post for the Cooney Center about my experiences at the annual DIY Days conference at UCLA.  In that post, I wrote [emphasis added in bold]: “Many of the people I met are deeply invested in new ways to approach the role of media in children’s learning ecologies.  I believe that various projects presented at DIY Days (including R<3S and another very special project I’ll share in a later post) have deep implications for…

Numerous technology ventures aim to improve students’ scores in an increasingly test-focused educational landscape. Challenging that, the innovators behind the Robot Heart Stories project hope that modern technology can spark students’ imagination, fueling the resources needed to inspire better scores: creativity and passion. Starting Monday, October 17, two classrooms of students –one in Montreal and one in Los Angeles —  must work together to return a lost robot to its home in Outer Space (actually, Los Angeles) by October 28.…

I actually knew Steve Jobs. I am not telling you this to try to impress you, but to impress upon you that he was a human being with strengths and weaknesses just like you and me. He contacted me at Sesame Workshop when Pixar was just beginning. The original Toy Story was just in storyboard phase. He wanted to do a 3-D movie with the Sesame Street Muppets next. My team and I went out and met with the Pixar…

We’re always happy to spread the word for our Cooney Center Prize finalists — especially when they have exciting new projects and updates to share. This week, Andy Russell and Thushan Amarasiriwardena of Launchpad Toys have partnered with Wired’s GeekDad to announce a fun new contest: Kids and their parents are invited to share ‘toons they create about their summer travel adventures for a chance to win a LEGO space shuttle or a $100 Amazon gift certificate. (Check out the…

I always love going to the Games, Learning and Society (GLS) conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Where else are you guaranteed access to a lakeside terrace, local microbrews, and warm Midwestern hospitality? In addition to these welcome amenities, GLS is also a place where games are taken quite seriously, albeit in a playful way. This year was no exception.   I attended the conference to present some of the early findings from my own research. With my collaborator LeAnne Wagner, I…

Looking for a creative way to engage young students with their summer reading? How about encouraging them to re-tell that story themselves via Toontastic, an iPad app that makes it easy to create and share cartoons? The Toontastic team wants to encourage summer readers to share their favorites, and have even lowered the price of the app to just 99 cents for the next three weeks! Andy Russell shares the scoop:   Ah Summer Break… a magical but all-too fleeting…

Merriam Webster defines an ecosystem as “the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit.” The Kids+Creativity movement in Pittsburgh is creating a new kind of ecosystem for learning in and out of school, beginning with children in the earliest years and continuing through higher education at institutions that work at the cutting edge of innovation in technology and digital media. Once home to Fred Rogers, a media pioneer in his own right, Pittsburgh…

Give a young child a couple of toys or a box of crayons and he or she is likely to play for hours, deeply engrossed in an imaginary world. In both art and dramatic play, children construct settings, create fictional characters, and act out fantastic storylines that would be the envy of many Hollywood scriptwriters. Yet, ask that same child to write out a story in a blank notebook or a word processor and you would be lucky to capture…