MIT Inventor Inspires L.A. Unified Educators to Cultivate Creativity

by Elizabeth Lester, Instructional Technology Facilitator

April 6, the Instructional Technology Initiative (ITI) held the Leading Edge Ed Tech Summit, a mini-conference focused on cultivating creativity and playful learning among L.A. Unified educators in collaboration with Loyola Marymount University (LMU) and LEGO Education. The event was keynoted by Dr. Mitchel Resnick, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor and the creator of Scratch, which is the world's leading coding tool to introduce programming. Participants were inspired as Dr. Resnick shared his philosophy on developing creative thinkers. Each participant received a copy of his book, Lifelong Kindergarten, which dives deeper into these ideas. Dr. Resnick spent the day working and playing alongside teachers as they explored various computer science (CS) education professional learning sessions facilitated by ITI staff. The event was attended by over 180 participants, which included L.A. Unified educators, LMU professors, and pre-service teachers.

Projects! Passion! Peers! and Play! are the foundations of developing environments that lead to creative thinkers, according to Dr. Resnick. These four P’s were the guiding light on how participants would engage with their learning throughout the summit day. Sessions ranged from exploring digital storytelling to design thinking through Scratch to inspiring creativity with LEGO WeDo kits. ITI facilitators became thought partners as everyone engaged in playful experimentation.

What’s your story? What are you passionate about? While developing the Digital Storytelling with Scratch and MaKey MaKey workshop, each activity incorporated these four P’s as participants built out a modern day storytelling project about their passion to share with peers. Most importantly, they were given a supported environment to discover through play. At the core of ITI’s mission is the understanding that good instruction leads and technology is leveraged to enhance learning. This can be difficult when using amazing tools like Scratch, Lego and MaKey MaKey. Therefore, intentional conversations were had to make sure to start with a quality storytelling activity that would engage all participants, independent of their classroom experience or grade level/subject area expertise. Digital tools, Scratch and MaKey MaKey, were leveraged in ways that allowed participants to engage with the storytelling material in novel ways.

Participants warmed up their storytelling muscles by creating and sharing a brief story sparked by the artistic creation of the Coldwater Canyon Elementary students. The room filled with imagination and laughter as participants shared their stories, such as children venturing deep into caves to discover dragons. The imaginative play continued as the room storyboarded their passion projects and brought them to a new level in the Scratch platform. Dr. Resnick got into the action as he collaborated with a LAUSD teacher to bring her story to life and sparked ideas in others through directed inquiry. Ideas flooded the room as everything from avocados to DNA became active participants in their storylines. Participants got to experience and brainstorm how they could bring their story back into the physical world by developing specialized controllers through the incorporation of the MaKey MaKey and a world of creativity. ITI facilitators modeled how to lead the creative learning process through inquiry and ensuring peers collaborated through discovery.

Participants enthusiastically shared their learning via the event's official hashtag #LEETS19, showcasing how they are applying their learnings in their classroom in the days following the conference. Through their posts, they are showcasing how they embrace the goal of empowering educators to implement CS activities across content areas. As the participants continue to share, the learning that started at the summit will continue to grow and spread through Los Angeles education.