3 Tips for Helping Students Engage Creatively with Technology
Digital literacy combines both creativity and technology use. Creativity – an important 21st century soft skill – can be implemented in a variety of ways that utilize technology. To ensure student success, educators must develop immersive classrooms that promote creative technology use by their students.
Tip 1. Model the use of multimodal presentations in the classroom to expand the ways students think about presenting information or their work.
Presentations should not be solely text-based. Rather, each should include video, audio, and images. Examples of multimodal presentations help students creatively think and reflect on practical uses of technology to further enhance presentations. This knowledge helps prepare students to examine how to creatively use technology to engage audiences.
Tip 2. Encourage students to develop prototypes as a tool in using technologies to solve real-world problems.
Prototypes are preliminary models of ideas or concepts. For example, students might be asked to design a new application or technology tool to solve a real-world problem. These prototypes can then go through multiple revisions or iterations based on feedback from the class. Then students could have the opportunity to showcase their innovative problem-solving technology solutions. This exercise promotes creative thinking and decision-making.
Tip 3. Encourage modeling as a strategy for guiding students in the use of creative technologies.
Creative technologies range from video editing, audio editing, graphic design, photo-editing, or presentation platforms. Educators can model ways to use creative technologies that make students aware of innovative design features. This is critical to ensure students understand tools available for them to creatively construct with technology. This exercise could be modeling a task for students and then having them complete the task on their own.
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