Running Header: Collaboration and Creativity with Digital Tools 1

Collaboration and Creativity with Digital Tools

Jared Callis

Western Oregon University

M.S. Ed. Information Technology Portfolio

Collaboration and Creativity with Digital Tools 2

Introduction

Educators must concern themselves most with preparing students to function,

contribute and participate in a rapidly changing society, and mobile technologies will play an

important role in that preparation. According to the PEW Research Center, teens are using

mobile technologies at a rapidly increasing rate, as 88% of 13 17 year olds have access to a

smartphone (Lenhart, 2015, pp. 8). Skills such as collaboration, along with creativity and

creative thinking, are becoming extremely important to potential employers, yet employers

state that those skills are lacking in graduating students. Evidenced by the newly released ISTE

Student Standards that center on collaboration and creativity skills (ISTE Student Standards,

2016). Technological changes have affected the ways that people collaborate and create

together in society. Those same changes also influence the learning environment. The

classroom provides many opportunities to use those technologies and to teach collaborative

and creative skills to students. As an educator, I have had the opportunity to learn and

experience collaboration and creativity using digital tools in the classroom.

Digital Tools and Leisure Time

While technology now allows an individual to work and collaborate with others more

easily, this was not always the case. In his book Cognitive Surplus (2010), Clay Shirky discusses

the surplus of time and energy that exist among the worlds population. This surplus

represents the free time that an individual has for hobbies and other restful activities. For

many years, this time and energy was consumption oriented, as some people wasted time
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consuming mostly TV or picture films. Technological advances have shifted in the last decade

toward creating content and less about consuming content. Many individuals have turned their

cognitive surplus toward collaborating on side projects. This technological shift from

consuming content to creating content has inspired many to use their time to create content

that will be useful for themselves and for others. There are more amateurs creating all types

of digital mediums to share with the world than ever before, as evidenced by the fact that there

is over 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube each minute (YouTube Statistics, 2016).

Because of this move to creating more content, digital collaboration has become commonplace

in both work and school settings. In the field of education, collaboration is a skill that has not

been a major focus until recently. It could seem to an outsider looking in that teachers stayed

in their classrooms, perhaps feeling they were responsible to know and be everything for their

students on their own. In reality, teachers work together to build curriculum and lessons that

often include cross-subject projects. This collaboration can now be done digitally as well as

face to face. In the same way that teachers can work together digitally, digital tools allows

students to collaborate on projects both face to face and remotely.

Digital Tools and Society

Steven Johnson also agrees that technology is transforming the way that we as a society

are able to create and communicate together. Johnson asserts throughout the course of his

book Interface Culture (1997) that while the development focus of early user interfaces had

efficiency in mind, in the late 1990s and into the 2000s (his future), how someone used

technology would become more a distinguished art form, developed over 50 years of
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technological innovation. The goal of the interface was to help an individual interact with the

computer. During the course of Johnsons work in the 1990s, he saw the evolution of the

Microsoft Windows platform, and he saw the efficiency with which it worked. It changed the

business landscape forever, however what was to come from Apple and Google in the first few

decades of the 21st Century has continued on the trend that Johnson predicted. That user

interfaces would continually be working to be more efficient. Johnson concludes with this:

They [user interfaces] will continue to change the way we imagine information, and in doing so

they are bound to change us as well for the better and for the worse (p. 242). In 1997,

Johnson could not possibly know or predict the shift of user interfaces that Apple and Google

would bring to the world of personal computing. These changes allow people around the globe

to access creative and collaborative computing power on a handheld device that fits in their

pockets. These devices make it extremely easy to create and collaborate on projects from

essentially anywhere on the planet. Professional looking photo and video editing is possible for

anyone at the touch of a screen or a few buttons. Remote collaboration on a work project can

happen seamlessly from one time zone to the next. This is a result of changes that have taken

place over the last sixty to seventy years.

Benefits of Classroom Collaboration and Digital Tools

Since employers have stated that graduating students do not have needed skills in

collaboration and creative thinking, K-12 educators have begun to focus in earnest on helping

students to learn these skills in this digital age. This is imperative for a successful career in

essentially every field. Yet the push for more digital creativity and collaboration is just
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beginning and the continuing change of user interfaces will play a large role in determining how

this plays out in the K-12 setting. Authors Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown provide a

look into learning environments and how we can provide our K-12 students a learning culture

that integrates creativity and collaboration as important aspects. In their book A New Learning

Culture (2011) they state, In the new culture of learning, the classroom as a model is replaced

by learning environments in which digital media provide access to a rich source of information

and play (p. 37-38). The duo also suggests that it is through digital media that students can

harness the power of learning collectively with students in the same building as them, but also

with other students working to solve the same problems around the globe (Thomas & Brown,

2011, p. 57-64). They suggest that classrooms should be set up with a focus on collective

learning and less on individual learning. They provide an example of collaborative learning

through the use of a gardening blog. They suggest that when ones personal interests meshes

with the learning of the collective, learning becomes more natural (p. 58). Digital media aids

this type of learning by allowing students to research and learn about things relating to the

subject at hand so that they have something to contribute to the collaborative effort. This can

provide more intrinsic motivation for students to learn. Students also then have input into their

own learning goals, thus raising their participation level. This new culture of learning

emphasizes collective learning as crucial to K-12 education systems.

Creativity and Digital Tools in the Classroom

This new learning culture suggested by Thomas and Brown (2011) highly encourages

play and creativity as learning goals. Play and creativity in the classroom allow students to
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experiment and make mistakes within whatever content matter they are learning. Play allows

students to engage in complicated negotiations of meaning, interaction, and competition, not

only for entertainment, but also for creating meaning (p. 97). Learning through play provides

a way for students to be more imaginative in how they learn, rather than taking the logical path

of traditional learning. As a student discovers new information in an organic, imaginative

manner, they are able to develop deeper meaning and greater scopes of understanding for that

particular content. Students need the opportunity to explore and play with new concepts as

they are taught.

Digital collaboration often benefits students who do not usually speak out in the

classroom. Susan Cain, an expert in introversion, frequently noted in her book Quiet: The

Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking (2013) that introverts at school

repeatedly hear the message that they need to come out of their shell. In reality, their

introversion is a part of who they are as an individual. Digital tools provide ways for educators

to accommodate students that are shy. Technology can provide a voice to students who are

soft spoken and introverted. Technology can also assist students coping with various

disabilities who otherwise would not have a voice in class. Many digital tools exist which allow

students to provide input to a class discussion or activity anonymously. These tools give

students a voice, providing them a way to deliver their opinion either to the teacher, or even to

their peers. Students can feel empowered to share their opinions because they are in a safe

and non-threatening environment. Collaborative learning using digital tools can be a safe and

welcoming place especially for students who may have felt insecure in the past.
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Collaboration will also benefit our societys collective whole. Clive Thompson (2014)

agrees that collaboration is important for our society as a whole to embrace, and suggests that

we already have begun that process. In his book, Smarter than You Think: How Technology is

Changing Our Minds for the Better, Thompson lays out what collaboration and collective

thinking look like. He suggests there are several rules to follow: Collaboration and collective

thinking require a focused problem to solve, a mix of contributors, and a positive culture of

collaboration (p. 158-162). According to Thompson, Wikipedia is an excellent example of

collaboration and collective thinking, demonstrating a vast range of knowledge contributed by

committed members of a very large collaboration group. He then lays out an idea of what a

school focused on digital collaboration can look like. He shares observations from classrooms

that value using digital tools to provide personalized learning, as well as using the web to

expand the classroom walls. He noted a middle school math teacher using data from Khan

Academy to help her make personal decisions for each student in her class. Khan Academy

allows a teacher the ability to diagnose areas of need quickly and work to fill those gaps, as well

as provide practice for those students in those targeted areas (Thompson, pp. 181-183). He

also discusses how students can use, wikis, blogs, and online forums to both collaborate on a

project/problem, as well as bring their learning and ideas in the public sphere. The

motivational force of public thinking and online collaboration for kids is even easier to see if

you look outside the classroom (p. 187). Kids are already using online forums, social media,

and YouTube channels to share what they know and understand about their interests. They

read fan club blogs and watch endless hours of YouTube videos about topics that interest them.

Educators can be looking for ways to enhance skills and online collaborative activities in their
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teaching curriculums. This allows students to see the work they are doing in school as a more

natural learning process that is more familiar to them. Many students are naturally

collaborating on ideas outside of the classroom when it relates to their hobbies and interests

outside of school subjects. However, there is hesitancy by the students in the classroom when

group learning is supposed to take place. Teachers can incorporate the use of digital tools to

enhance the collaborative learning that students are doing providing a more natural way for

students to learn and giving students more freedom to choose what their groups outcome

might be. Clive Thompson suggests that changing a classroom to a more collaborative

environment would be a change for the better.

Educators need to remember the high importance of collaboration in their classrooms

and learn new digital collaboration tools to meet this need. In his chapter entitled New

Literacies, Thompson suggests that just as we learned and adapted to new technology in the

past, the increasing rate of new technology will require an increasing rate of adaptation (2014,

p. 98-113). In education, students ought to learn how to collaborate and work with digital tools

to create memorable learning experiences. Yet new technology will surpass those familiar

technologies within a few short years. Students who have learned collaboration skills and are

able to adapt to the coming new technologies will be able to rather quickly adjust to the new

flow of information based on skills already learned. While students may adjust quickly, many

teachers are often hesitant to learn to use new digital tools simply because of the ever-

changing landscape of new tools that become available. Teachers can feel overwhelmed trying

to keep up. Educators need to be reminded that the process of learning new collaborative skills
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is so important that it is worth learning to use these new tools. Students are going to adapt to

new technologies at greater rates than teachers do. Let it happen and embrace it.

Author Sir Ken Robinson confirms this perspective about the importance of

collaboration and creativity skills for K-12 students. His goal is to change the culture of

education systems around the globe. In his book, Out of Our Minds (2011) he says, Employers

say they want people who can think creatively, who can innovate, who can communicate well,

work in teams and are adaptable and self-confident. They complain that many graduates have

few of these qualities (p. 69). He goes on to suggest that the way our education systems are

set up simply measure academic rigor and many of the educational policies suggest that if we

can merely increase the academic quality of the standards, then quality graduates will follow (

Robinson, p.62-79). For companies around the globe, finding talent that is creative, innovative

and collaborative can be difficult. The focus of standardized tests and over-testing our students

within our education system hampers our students desire to learn, create, and innovate in the

classroom (Au, 2012; Thomas, 2001). When teachers create an environment that fosters

collaboration and creativity as well as some personal choice, students desire to come to school

and work as a team, while also meeting their own personal learning goals. It is possible to

accomplish this in our test driven education system when an educator has the right tools, and

the desire to focus less on rigorous standards and more on allowing a space for students to

learn and grow in a creative collaborative manner.

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Concerns with Digital Tools: Time Wasting

A noted area of concern relating to digital tools for collaboration and creativity is this:

students understand the use of the tools, but waste their time on other frivolous activities,

instead of using these digital tools for learning. In his book The Dumbest Generation (2009)

Mark Bauerlein tells about a study performed in 2006 by Educational Testing Service. This

study determined that many high school and college students are comfortable using the various

digital tools available to them, but they simply do not know how to use them well, or choose

not to put their time into applying their skills in that manner. Instead, students choose to

spend time playing games and using social networking sites (p. 113). Bauerlein has a

respectable argument here, as this type of behavior is very common among middle school, high

school, and college students. Yet, an educator can be a very positive role model in using digital

tools correctly. In many cases, students have not been explicitly taught the necessary digital

collaboration skills. When a teacher takes the time to model and demonstrate how various

digital tools work, it equips students to apply those skills to their own learning. Middle school

and high school students need to be given a reason as to why they should invest in using these

tools for learning. Teachers have a remarkable opportunity to change the culture of learning by

using technology for collaboration and creativity, allowing students to enhance their learning

experiences.

Concerns with Digital Tools: Screen Time

For many years, one of the largest concerns among educators and parents about using

digital devices in schools had to do with how much screen time was appropriate for students.
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Their concerns stemmed from studies from the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP). A few

years ago, the AAP guidelines suggested that kids and adolescents should not spend more than

two hours a day in front of screens for entertainment purposes (Ghose, 2013). The guidelines

did address screens used for learning. Last year the AAP released new guidelines, taking into

consideration the use of screens for learning and educational purposes. In reality, the two

hours per day of screen time for entertainment did not change, but they have broadened it to

include parental discretion, and suggest that parents should be creating a digital media plan

with their kids (Cha, 2016).

The Learning Habit (Donaldson-Pressman, S., Jackson, R., & Pressman, R. M., 2014) takes

a more in-depth look at screen time and media use in order to inform parents. The Learning

Habit study looked at a childs educational success or failure, and focused primarily on their

home-work routines. One part of their study looked at media consumption, media

communication, and media creation. Media consumption involves TV time, as well as tablet

and cell phone usage for watching videos and playing games. Their research concluded that

children who consumed more than 45 minutes of media a day would show a drop in academic

performance (p. 69). Media communication ranged from texting to online forums to social

media sites/apps. This too proved to be detrimental to a childs social interactions according to

their research. A child struggles to focus, sleep, and remember details because of the social

chaos caused by multi-tasked communication (p. 94). The research that is important for

educators to consider is media creation. This involves the child playing through technology in a

way that is helping them build important 21st-century skills. Their research concluded that the
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goal should be to help a child move from merely consuming media, but rather being able to

learn through the creation of their own media in a variety of forms (p. 79).

Classroom Experience

All of these points have a continual theme centered on collaborating and creating. This

aligns with what I have witnessed in my own classroom these last six years. The first idea aligns

with what Bauerlein suggests in The Dumbest Generation. Students naturally do not fully grasp

the learning power that most tech tools offer them. Yet, in my experience, they are teachable.

When students see the value of a new skill, they learn it and often learn it quickly. I, as an

educator must take the time to learn the basics of using various digital tools that can be used

for collaboration and creativity. Then I must be willing to experiment with them in class with

my students. Teachers can model how to collaborate and create with those digital tools and

then set the students free to experiment and find new ways to use them in class for learning.

This experimentation through digital play allows students the opportunity to be more invested

in their own learning, if they so choose. In my experience, students naturally collaborate with

their peers during this unguided digital play experience. However, when applied to assigned

learning tasks, students tend to migrate to individualism. Working at the middle school level, I

have found that many students have been taught that collaborative work is cheating and they

should be able to do all of their work on their own in order to be successful. Somewhere in

their educational past, students have been given the idea that individual work is more rigorous

than group collaboration. The students simply need some coaching that explicitly guides them

through what appropriate collaboration looks like in class. Technology can play a large role in
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how this plays out. There are many digital tools available for teachers to use, especially on

mobile devices. These can allow a teacher to set up multiple groups all collaborating on

different projects. The teacher is then able to monitor and guide the various groups digitally

through these tools.

Another observation made within my classes is that digital tools seem to allow students

to reach new levels of engagement and deeper levels of critical thinking. There is a student in

my class who often sits quietly, rarely contributing thoughts and ideas to our problem solving

tasks. This young man always provides thorough and well thought out written work, yet during

class discussions, he sits quietly. One day, I gave the students a problem to solve, and provided

an online forum where they could share their ideas and thoughts with each other. Without

hesitation, this student jumped into the online learning community that I created and he was

able to be an influential contributor in helping the class come to an agreement on a solution.

This occurred because a digital tool provided him with a safe environment that fit his social

comfort zone. In the same manner, digital tools provide many students greater equitable

access to sharing their thoughts and opinions, allowing them to express their personal voice in

new ways. As the work of Susan Cain (2013) suggests, quiet or shy students are able to share

and be heard in a digital environment where it feels safe and less intimidating. Students also

become more engaged as they take ownership of their contributions. Previously unengaged

students, when encouraged to contribute to the work of the group, tend to see higher benefit

in being engaged in the groups learning. As they take ownership of their groups work, passion

and desire begin to take root and learning goals are met. Digital tools provide ways for
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students to be engaged in their own collaborative learning, both inside of and outside of the

classroom walls.

My last observation is one not addressed thus far. Students love to have creative choice

when working on projects and assignments. I have seen digital tools provide ways for students

to have a chance to personalize their learning. Tech tools allow for a broader range of creative

avenues for students to take, while still meeting the requirements of various projects and

assignments. This reinforces the idea that there is more than one way to solve a problem and

builds a culture of critical thinking (problem solving skills) among the students. They are

constantly evaluating what digital tools are available to meet the requirements. They look for

tools that give them the ability to create in their own way. This approach also builds a curiosity

within the student to see if the same tool can be used in a different way. Allowing students to

personalize their learning while still meeting the requirements of the assignment results in

greater participation and engagement, as well as better quality of work. I have found success

in creating activities, assignments, and projects that allow students to use digital tools

creatively while they meet the requirements of learning specific skills at the same time.

Conclusion

Collaboration and creativity are not new ideas, but they have been identified as

characteristics that are lacking in graduating students in this country (Robinson, 2011). In order

to adequately prepare students for life and work, it is imperative for educators to leverage the

digital tools available to us so that students can engage in collaboration and creative thinking in

their future environments. Digital creativity and collaboration can be an extremely effective
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way to eliminate barriers for many students. Beyond that, these digital technologies are only

going to continue to expand and broaden what students will be able to do, both in school and

in their future work places. The possibilities are almost unimaginable, and if these skills can be

taught now, students will be able to adapt and be successful in expanding their skills to new

collaborative and creative tools. Educators can jump in the game to expand digital

collaboration and creativity, using whatever tools are available to them. The longer they delay

the larger the learning gap will become.

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Bauerlein, M. (2009). The dumbest generation: How the digital age stupefies young Americans

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