• MP3 Audio, 32.10 MB
• PowerPoint File, 19.19 MB

Prof. Anna Craft
University of Exeter and The Open University

TITLE
Creativity in Education: Learning in a Digital Age

ABSTRACT
The early 21st century is characterised by rapid change. Permeating digital technology engages increasing numbers of children, young people and adults as consumers and also producers. In the shifting technological landscape, childhood and youth are changing. Connectivity around the clock, with a parallel existence in virtual space, is seamlessly integrated with actual lives. Young people are skilful collaborators, navigating digital gaming and social networking with ease, capably generating and manipulating content, experimenting with versions of their ‘social face’. They are implicit, inherent and immersed consumers. They are possibility thinkers. This keynote theorises possibility thinking in a digital, marketized age, using two competing discourses: young people as vulnerable and at risk; or alternatively as capable and potent. The former perspective imbues anxiety about the digital revolution; the latter embraces it as exciting and enabling. As Universities seek to re- imagine themselves, neither is sufficient. Local and global challenge and change urgently demand our creative potential and wisdom, recognising three further key characteristics of changing childhood and youth: pluralities, playfulness, and participation. Drawing from work with schools, I will argue for co-creating with students, education futures through dialogue to nurture the 4 p’s: plurality, playfulness, participation and possibilities.

This keynote talk was given at the 8th Annual Galway Symposium on Higher Education, 10th June 2010. The conference title was "Creative Thinking: Re-imagining the University"

<<Back to all public webcasts