Written by Randa Abdul Ilah Mikati

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” —Edward de Bono

According to Paul Sloane “Creativity is thinking of something new. Innovation is the implementation of something new.”

Today, 21 April 2022, is world creativity and innovation day. In this occasion, I will explore some tools that helps teachers foster creativity in their classroom. Creativity is one of the top 10 skills needed for jobs in 2025 according to the World Economic Forum in addition to technological use and technology design skills.

In order to teach your students these skills in your classroom, you can adopt any of the following tools:

Canva

It helps students express their knowledge or ideas using infographics, interactive presentations, or social media posts. They can use ready-made templates and they will edit them to fit their taste and needs and which fosters their creativity.

Scratch

It is a digital tool that lets students create engaging projects like games, animations, interactive art, stories, and more. It also introduces students to programming concepts. This program would give the little ones a brilliant start to make them think in an innovative and creative way.

Seesaw

Seesaw is an easy-to-use learning portfolio application, enabling students to document, showcase and reflect on what they are learning at school.

 SeeSaw allows students to demonstrate their learning with tools like draw+record, collage, video, and more.

Flipgrid

 With FlipGrid, teachers create discussion topics and students can respond with video recordings. Their peers can respond to keep the discussion going.

Flipgrid is a great way to get students talking about their learning and to begin the metacognitive journey of learning to make their thinking and learning visible.

Bookreator

It helps students and teachers create interactive stories rich with multimedia, it encourages students’ creativity and innovation. Students can publish their books and share them publicly.

Here is an example of a book done in Boocreator

Genially 

Genially is a tool where students and teachers can create interactive images, presentations and even games with lots of space for creativity.

Coggle

Coggle is a mind-mapping and brainstorming tool for students. You can use this tool to create a classroom-guided brainstorming to explore new ideas. This tool is also used in group projects to help students creatively come up with solutions to problems. 

Conclusion

By incorporating any of these digital tools in the classroom, and giving some space for student’s creativity and innovation, you become an effective school leader who fosters innovation and creativity.

Have you ever used any of these tools or any other tool? Share with us your experience in the comments below.