Creativity Meets Technology: The Cat is Still In the Hat

There are many things which  alter our lives forever. Having children is one of those things. My mother told me during my pregnancy “Once you have children you will never sleep the same again.” Well, with one son, eight hours away from home in college, and a thirteen year old son caught in the grips of puberty, I concur. As a parent you are always  either consciously or sub-consciously  thinking about your kids. Parenting  is a tremendous task. Now, in addition to teaching  your children how to read, write and do arithmetic, we have an additional concern.  Are we deleting or minimizing our children's creativity by allowing them to use digital technology?  Has digital technology such as cell phones and iPods and cameras- stopped us from dreaming. According to Shilo shiv Suleman an illustrator, storyteller and iPad book creator, the answer is no.  During her Ted Talk, Shilo stated “In the past 10 years children have been locked inside their rooms, glued to their PCs…But now with mobil technology, we can actually take our children outside into the natural world with technology. I have to agree with Shilo, yes our children are learning in a different manner. However, does it mean using technology make it better or worse?Then I decided to check in with one of the most creative writers to ever live.

“Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as the beloved Dr. Seuss was born in 1904. He is also well-known writing a series of books which span the generation.   The Cat in the Hat, perhaps the defining book of Ted’s career, developed as part of a unique joint venture between Houghton Mifflin (Vanguard Press) and Random House.  Houghton Mifflin asked Ted to write and illustrate a children’s primer using only 226 “new reader” vocabulary words. Because he was under contract to Random House, Random House obtained the trade publication rights, and Houghton Mifflin kept the school. With the release of The Cat in the Hat, Ted became the definitive children’s book author and illustrator.” …National Memorial Dr. Seuss.            

My mother read Dr. Seuss stories to us almost every night. I  still remember her getting tongue tied trying to pronounce some of the words. Later, when my first son was born, I  purchased him the entire collection. His favorite was Wocket in my Pocket . Then, my younger son was born in 2000. Yes, Jared  was a Millennium baby in more ways than one. At the age of eight he was formally diagnosed with Autism on the Spectrum. Why so late? That is a different blog. Anyway, I purchased the same set of Dr. Seuss books for Jared. It is no surprise he was not the least bit interested in reading books Well, at least not holding one in his hands. He could not stay focused or complete the task. However, watching videos and reading online was  totally a different story. Just like the millions of children before him, Jared managed to fall in love with the Cat in The Hat. He also loved watching Dr, Seuss movies. 

I decided to write my own version of the story:
He will read it on a Nook.
He will read it on a Kindle Fire.
He will read it on a Smartphone. 
He will read it on a PC. 
He will read  it on a IPad. 
He likes it. He likes it you see.
He will read Dr. Seuss anywhere digitally 

Alright, so it sounds a little silly. Yet, hopefully you get the point. Does it matter the source of where he obtains the information. Dr. Seuss stories encouraged kids to dream and use their imagination. Last week I asked Jared to show me a Dr. Seuss game online. He went straight to PBS kids. Oh the games he could play:  The Swirly Whirly Pearl hunt, LeafyLaFoo Round-up, Gravity-A-Boing Boing and Freeze Your Knees follow me please. Yes, I had a hard time trying to play the games. 

Children have a natural ability to create. It it funny how we engage in conversations about, How can we teach children to be creative?  Yet, the truth is creativity is a natural process. Children have the ability to learn and without any input from adults. This was demonstrated by the Hole in the Wall Project: Educational researcher Dr. Sugata Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision of formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they’re motivated by curiosity and peer interest. In 1999, Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area) What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.  The “Hole in the Wall” project demonstrates that even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mira, who’s now a professor of educational technology at New Castle University (UK), calls it “minimally invasive education.”  Excerpt from Ted Talk. Dr. Mitra goes on to say “Build a School in the Cloud, Where children can explore and learn from one another.

Across the Generations:

As I mentioned earlier my mother insisted that my siblings and I read books.    My great-grand mother was a story teller, as well as our uncles. We would  sit for hours listening to stories about how she grew up being the only girl with eleven brothers.
Today we are all readers.  Each of us reads something for pleasure on a daily basis.  This brings up very good point, out of the five of us I am the only one who has embraced Technology ( to some degree) My siblings rarely work online and three of them do not have Facebook pages or Twitter accounts or any of the multiple forms of Social Media. They are all employed in professional careers; yet, outside of the work place, they have little interest in technology.  Maybe my siblings demonstrate a reverse effect the inability to replace a strongly developed imagination with machinery. They are holding on the magic before technology.