Task 1 of Learning and Innovation Skills: Creativity and Innovation

Questions in red are for participants to discuss.

Think Creatively

  • Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)
  • Create new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)
  • Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts

Work Creatively with Others

  • Develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively
  • Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work
  • Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
  • View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes


Implement Innovations

What methods do you use to encourage student creativity and innovation?


Creative Projects| STEM Problem-Solving Challenges | Webquests


Much project-based learning can stimulate creativity and innovation; integration of the arts in the language curriculum can encourage creativity.  How does technology support the expression of creativity and innovation in your teaching? One example is students collaborating on the creation of a video to describe their school’s community.  


STEM (Science, Technology & Math Problem Solving Challenges Destination Imagination is one such model. Teachers can easily create their own challenge or use past challenges posted on sites such as this list of challenges based on children’s literature.


One integrative application of technology in the classroom is the use of WebQuests to encourage inquiry-oriented critical thinking, collaborative learning, and student motivation. A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. (Dodge)

“WebQuests of either short or long duration are deliberately designed to make the best use of a learner’s time. . . . WebQuests should contain at least the following parts:

  1. An introduction that sets the stage and provides some background information.
  2. task that is doable and interesting.
  3. A set of information sources needed to complete the task. Many (though not necessarily all) of the resources are embedded in the WebQuest document itself as anchors pointing to information on the World Wide Web. Information sources might include web documents, experts available via e-mail or realtime conferencing, searchable databases on the net, and books and other documents physically available in the learner’s setting. Because pointers to resources are included, the learner is not left to wander through webspace completely adrift.
  4. A description of the process the learners should go through in accomplishing the task. The process should be broken out into clearly described steps.
  5. Some guidance on how to organize the information acquired. This can take the form of guiding questions, or directions to complete organizational frameworks such as timelines, concept maps, or cause-and-effect diagrams as described by Marzano (1988, 1992) and Clarke (1990).
  6. conclusion that brings closure to the quest, reminds the learners about what they’ve learned, and perhaps encourages them to extend the experience into other domains.” (Dodge, “Some thoughts about WebQuests”)

From WebQuest.org:

“A real WebQuest….

  • is wrapped around a doable and interesting task that is ideally a scaled down version of things that adults do as citizens or workers.
  • requires higher level thinking, not simply summarizing. This includes synthesis, analysis, problem-solving, creativity and judgment.
  • makes good use of the web. A WebQuest that isn’t based on real resources from the web is probably just a traditional lesson in disguise. (Of course, books and other media can be used within a WebQuest, but if the web isn’t at the heart of the lesson, it’s not a WebQuest.)
  • isn’t a research report or a step-by-step science or math procedure. Having learners simply distilling web sites and making a presentation about them isn’t enough.
  • isn’t just a series of web-based experiences. Having learners go look at this page, then go play this game, then go here and turn your name into hieroglyphs doesn’t require higher level thinking skills and so, by definition, isn’t a WebQuest. “(Webquest.org)

See “Why WebQuests?” and a complete guide to using this technique: http://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line_quest.htm

Annotated examples of WebQuests 

Bernie Dodge, the creator of WebQuests, made this “Webquest about Webquests” for a teacher workshop. In it, teachers evaluate web quests. The following videos are from Dodge’s WebQuests site.

How to design a WebQuest

Questgarden – a free web editor for WebQuests

Search on Questgarden by topic