My Service Learning Project with the Intergenerational Computer Center

“A Positive Tomorrows first grader uses JumpStart on a computer at the Oklahoma City University Intergenerational Computer Center in Oklahoma City.” – NewsOK

This week is the climax, for lack of a better term, of my composition class this semester, the week of our service learning project with Oklahoma City University’s Intergenerational Computer Center. The ICC was established last year to offer free computer access to those of the local community who don’t have regular computer and internet access. The ICC also works with various public schools and children’s groups such as Boys and Girls Clubs and Positive Tomorrows. This week, the ICC is hosting various public school classes during their intersession to engage in learning activities.

I went Wednesday morning to put my time in helping out the young’uns at the ICC. In all honesty, I was expecting the whole ordeal to be much more labor-intensive than it turned out to be, but it still kept me on my toes. We were basically there to assist the students in their projects. If they ever had questions or couldn’t get something to work properly, we would give them pointers.

The students (around 3rd or 4th grade) began by writing poems based on the question “What if I was a rock star?”. They then took these poems and made them into storybooks using an online program called Kerpoof. (Check it out. It’s pretty fun.) The program does have a bit of a learning curve, so we had to help the children frequently with things like backgrounds, text boxes, and various other features (or in other words, functional literacy). Once the students got the hang of how Kerpoof worked, they really went to town. I observed a great deal of creativity going on. They all were using the same resources (same topic of poem, same program), yet each student’s finished product was vastly different from the next student’s. It was a truly amazing sight to see the students achieve advanced literacy with Kerpoof so quickly. There was one student in particular who managed to create the entire storybook without help, then proceeded to begin toying with the movie function of Kerpoof! I was astounded.

This experience has been an enjoyable one mainly because I didn’t do much. It’s not that I’m lazy or anything (although I am), but it delighted me to see these children being so independent. Once we helped them reach functional literacy, they managed to achieve great results all on their own. I was flabbergasted by their ingenuity. I am glad that I got to help these children exercise their creativity at the ICC this week. After all, creativity is an essential part of a good education.

 

Word Clouds and Creative Learning

My word cloud. I think it left out the words “single” and “available.”

Hey y’all. This lovely thing above is known as a word cloud. There are these online programs such as Tagxedo or Wordle that take a URL or block of text and create these word-based pictures based on the words you give it. The more important or common the word, the larger it is. In fact, this word cloud was made from the very blog you are currently reading.

Now we (I and my fellow Composition classmates) have been discussing how word clouds can be used to teach or cultivate creativity. To help investigate this, our teacher gave us a rubric titled “The Capacities for Imaginative Learning,” formulated by the Lincoln Center Institute as an identifier for creative material. So basically, we need to weigh word clouds against this rubric. In this post, I’ll be focusing on just a few items on the rubric which I think that word clouds carry well.

Embodying (to experience [an object of study] through your senses, as well as emotionally, and also to physically represent that experience): After making my own word cloud, I immediately realized that it carried a strong emotional feeling. The certain combination of words gave me distinct feelings and thoughts. And while doing this, it manifested itself in an aesthetically pleasing illustration. It really does a bang up job at taking your own thoughts and feelings put into writing and making something beautiful and creative out of them.

Questioning (To ask questions throughout your explorations that further your own learning; to ask the question, “What if?”): I believe that word clouds are a great method self-reflection (that is, if you use your original writing to create them). A word cloud is composed of words significant to you, but you may not be aware that you use these words as you do. By doing this, a word cloud can prompt you to ask questions about yourself: Why do these specific words appear? How do these words describe me? Do these words accurately describe me? If you want to get really deep, you may use your word cloud to identify aspects of yourself you may not like and wish to change or get rid of. I almost did that. O_O

Identifying Patterns (To find relationships among the details you notice in [an object of study], group them, and recognize patterns): VIOLIN, ORCHESTRA, PLAYING, MUSICIAN, ART, INSTRUMENT. I think you can see where I’m going with this. If there is a common theme in writing, a word cloud will point that out. Obviously it found out that I talk a lot about music in this blog. (And Tagxedo even let me shape my word cloud into a treble clef!) Being able to notice and illustrate patterns is one way that a word cloud can be a vessel for creative learning.