Aim: Understand the importance of art and creativity in education.

Key Words: Art, creativity, education.

Prior Knowledge: None.

Introduction

What is creativity?

Creativity is the phenomenon where something new and valuable is formed. The item produced can be intangible, like an idea or a musical composition, or a physical object, like an invention or a painting.

What is art?

Art is the expression of human creativity and imagination.

Benefits of art and creativity in education

• They allow learners to express themselves.
• They reduce stress and anxiety.
• They encourage learners to be lifelong learners.
• They help you link with other people with the same passion.

Who uses art and creativity in education?

• Teachers.
• Teachers of special education.
• Creators of educational books.
• Creators of e-books.

Interesting fact: 65% of the population are visual learners, art is a key to engaging students in the learning process.

Specific Art Forms in BIBLIODOS

Animated ebooks and audiobooks’ as well as the ‘Ebooks interpreted in sign language’ found in https://bibliodos.eu/ the partners from all the countries have created at first a very simple form of storyboard in PowerPoint to base the creation of the ebooks on. They enriched this simple story board with famous illustrations like paintings or sketches that are publicly accessible through the internet.

Here is one example from the e-book Gulliver’s Travels in Level 1 English version:

As you can see all the readers can image Lemuel Gulliver looking out of the window in the night sky.

Resources

There are a lot of online tools that can assist you in the creation of art projects. They are easy to use and learn.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity

Online Resources for creating art:

• https://www.canva.com/photo-collages/
• https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/
• https://www.befunky.com/features/collage-maker/
• https://www.pexels.com/

Desirable Outcome

At the end of this practice sheet, you should be able to:

• Know what art and creativity is.
• Create your own art.
• Create art in one online tool.

Exercise

Let’s create and talk about art!

• Talk about a specific book.
• Find online paintings, quotes and photos that remind you of this specific book. Or you can paint your own images that come to your mind when you think of this book.
• Make a collage with the paintings, photos and quotes that you found online.
• Think about the experience that you had making this collage and the things that you learned about the materials used.