Technology and the Art of Creativity

The use of digital technology in classrooms has sparked widespread controversy among educators. For some, it marks a necessary shift in teaching and learning that prepares students for our rapidly digitizing world, while others view its use in classrooms as the demise of critical thinking and creativity. While these concerns have been raised across subject areas, they have become particularly evident in relation to arts education, causing many educators to shy away from using digital learning tools.

Arts education, which includes drama, dance, music, and visual arts, provides students with opportunities to strengthen fine and gross motor skills, problem-solve, and engage in critical thinking. More importantly, the arts also serve as a form of communication that can provide students with opportunities to express ideas and feelings in a non-verbal way. This can be particularly beneficial for English language learners and students with disabilities. 

If participation in art can offer all these advantages, why do we need to involve technology? 

The benefits of art education are not experienced by all students. Part of this is because of the way that the arts have been taught in schools. 

Growing up, I loved visual art. Painting, drawing, cutting, pasting - you name it. Oftentimes, I would begin creating without a fixed end goal in mind, allowing my ideas to develop with each mark I made on the page. However, my creative process began to change when I started school. Instead of following my own imagination, I learned to follow my teacher’s example. 

While my creative freedom had narrowed, my confidence as an artist continued to grow with each successful re-creation I completed. In fact, my confidence grew so much that in Grade 8, I decided to exercise my own artistic creativity by adding some additional details to the drawing we created in class. I couldn’t help but think how proud my teacher would be that I went the extra mile.

When my teacher returned our pieces several weeks later, I was heartbroken to receive my lowest-ever grade in art along with these three words: 

‘Too much detail.’

Although this assignment did not determine my overall grade, my confidence as an artist took a pretty hard blow. Not because I couldn’t take constructive feedback, but because I was discouraged from engaging with art in the way I loved most.

If you have experience in a classroom, you have likely encountered a student who is disinterested in participating in art because product-based activities have caused them to falsely believe that they ‘just aren’t good at it.’ While we have normalized the idea that art is not for everyone, this view imposes harmful consequences for participation, depriving children and youth of opportunities to experience its rich, developmental benefits. 

That’s where technology comes in. 

Online learning platforms can help to make art education more inclusive and its advantages more equitable by encouraging creative experimentation through process-based learning. Coding sites, like Code.org, can help to relieve anxiety in dance by providing alternative ways for students to engage with movement. Digital tools, like Toytheater.com, can invite students to experiment with shape, colour, size, and symmetry to create a design that is unique to them. MusiQuest and other virtual music studios allow students to experiment with pitch, sound, and tempo. 

While meaningful on their own, the value of learning on these sites can extend into other subject areas. For example, challenging students to represent their understanding of the water cycle in a digital poster can help them to connect with their learning more personally and engage in greater critical thinking than recall alone. Integrated learning also benefits teachers by strengthening student interest and engagement, which can ultimately help to reduce classroom behaviours that can make learning more difficult.

Perhaps most importantly, these digital tools can create opportunities for students to develop transferable skills that we discussed in class this week, like creativity, entrepreneurship, problem-solving, and digital literacy, that not only set them up for success at school, but also in the future. 

So, is technology restricting critical thinking and creativity in art education? 

Maybe a better question to ask is whether its limited implementation is. 

KarissaS@OTU

Why am I learning this?

When I was an elementary and high school student, I would always ask my teachers, why do I need to learn this? Oftentimes, I would get no response or something along the lines of, “you just have to”, but that answer never sat right with me. Despite all the years of asking this question, I never tried to answer it myself, but it wasn’t until recently, after reflecting on my journey as a student and educator, that I really started to analyze it: Why do students ask this question, and how should we respond?

It took a Grade 10 math session to bring it all back. We were reviewing substitution and elimination and finding the point of intersection when all of a sudden the famous question surfaced: why am I learning this? My immediate thought was that karma struck me, but worse than that, I did not have a response. I went home that day and thought about how I let that student down, especially since I was the one helping with the material. Reflecting on the situation, I realized that this question is a symptom of difficulty and disengagement. When students no longer feel like performing a task, they ask why they need to do it, so there is a reason for their effort. Without a clear goal or purpose, the struggle feels pointless. Considering this, it makes sense that students question their learning if they are never told what it is for or how it ties into society.

Ever since that moment, it has now been my goal to have a meaningful response ready. Providing real-world applications is a great first step, but if a student isn't interested in that specific field, the example won't resonate. Rather than knowing what this specific concept is for, it is better to frame it as mental training. In other words, we aren’t getting students to solve for x and y, instead we are getting students to be able to think mathematically, creatively, scientifically etc. The truth is that you never know when something will be useful, but life will always throw things at you that will require you to think in different ways. 

One of my objectives as a teacher is to provide examples of real world applications for each of my lessons and emphasize cognitive habits. I truly believe that this is an important philosophy and perspective to have as an educator because it adds further meaning to each lesson. Importantly, by providing these examples, I will be prepared for student questions and students will be able to see the value in each lesson.

Link for how to respond to: Why Do I Have to Learn This?’

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-responses-to-why-do-i-have-to-learn-this/2020/05 

MichaelK@NUO

Debunking AI - How it works, and why we should care

It's undeniable that AI has become a central topic in education. As a piece of emergent technology, its potential is staggering for both educators and students. However, despite the continuous discussion on its potential utility and misuse, I rarely see people talk about how AI actually operates. That's why I aim to spread some awareness about AI and its many intricacies in this post. I am hardly the leading expert, and I admit that there are many things I don't fully understand either, but I hope to at least shed some light on the enigma that is AI and maybe inspire my readers to conduct their own research. Let's start with... 

Artificial Intelligence is a myth. Now, this is a bit of an exaggeration. AI obviously exists since we use it. However, it may not exist in the way that you imagine it. The way AI is portrayed in popular media has always been sentience; an advanced machine becomes able to think and act on its own accord, cue robots taking over the world. The AI that we have become so familiar with is quite different. In the real world, AI does not have sentience or consciousness. It does not think or feel, no matter how convincing of an essay it can produce on any topic. By that same metric, it cannot create anything original, either. 

AI can only change what already exists. Since AI cannot have original thoughts, it must form its output based on existing information. Fortunately(or unfortunately), it has access to the greatest collection of data and information in history: the internet. When you ask AI whether or not you should eat a carrot, it surges through the internet, finding any information it can on carrots. Nutritional values, common recipes, anything is fair game. It then spits that information back out to you, with the grammar and language structure it copies from countless pieces of blog posts or comments made by other humans. Even when you ask AI to help you come up with new ideas, it can only look for information with a "new idea" label and return that to you. AI is extremely efficient at finding that information, but that's all it can do. 

So why does this matter? Why is it important to understand how AI works? Despite only being an elaborate pattern recognition machine, AI has become scarily powerful. The best example is GenAI, or generative AI. This is an umbrella term for AI that can create "new" content such as text, code, images, or videos. While we may use GenAI to make lesson plans, people have already used it to conduct scams in video calls, or worse, generate inappropriate content of others without consent. As AI becomes more powerful, it will become virtually impossible to distinguish real content from AI content. Thus, our role as educators is to teach responsible use and digital literacy to our students. Remember that not everything you see online is real, and interact online in a way that does not put you at risk. To that end, I believe using AI in classrooms should not just be encouraged, but mandatory. It is better for students to be exposed to this technology in a safe environment, and much worse for them to use it without guidance or remaining unaware of it. When I think about what AI can do, a few plagiarized assignments seem like less of a concern. 

Now, please keep in mind what I said at the start of the post. I am not the leading expert on AI, and I don't claim to know every nuance of how AI works or will change. If any of what you read made you think, I highly recommend you look into AI yourselves and come to your own conclusions. I would like to leave you with a TED talk about AI. Please check it out if you're interested. Thank you for reading, and may the tides of history wash gently over us all. 

Chinese room: understanding vs regurgitation 

JerryL@NUO

Let's “Spark It”- Considering How Interest is Built in Education

In Week 3’s Learning and Development class, I was really drawn to the topic of interest. I know at least for me as a future educator, we often dream of entering the profession awaiting the moment we hand a lifelong love of learning to our students—as if we pass a torch across a desk. But this idea shifted today. The reality of learning is a bit more nuanced: interest isn't something we can simply "give" to a student.

During this presentation, I realized that as much as we want students to reach the tier of lifelong learning, it is unrealistic. We can't simply package up enthusiasm, hand it over, and expect it to take root automatically or immediately. Instead, what we can do, however, is design the conditions of how curiosity becomes inevitable with a spark.

 Instead of viewing interest as a commodity we deliver, it helps to view it as an active, evolving process. I think about the first time I learned to play soccer at 5 years old- I was the definition of a “grass picker.” However, the more exposure I had, it became my favourite thing to do as I got older. We can similarly consider this in the classroom; the goal is not to force interest; we invent the environment so it can grow!

Our role as teachers unfolds in three distinct stages that the group laid out perfectly:

1. Spark It: We create high-engagement opportunities—a thought-provoking question, an unexpected demonstration, a hands-on problem—that catch students off guard and pull them in.

2. Support It: When that initial flicker appears, we recognize it. We don't let it fade out; we provide resources, encouragement, and low-stakes opportunities to explore further.

3. Let It Grow: We step back and give students room to take ownership, guiding them from passive interest to active inquiry.

Interest doesn't stay static; it matures through distinct phases. In educational psychology, this progression moves across four primary stages:

• Situational Interest: This is environmental and temporary. A compelling story or an interactive game catches a student’s attention in the moment, even if they didn't care about the topic five minutes prior.

• Individual Interest: With repeated exposure and support, that temporary spark deepens. A student starts saying, "I’m actually interested in this—I want to explore more on my own." It becomes a personal preference.

• General Interest: As students gain confidence in pursuing their own questions, their curiosity widens. They develop an appetite for discovery that transcends a single subject.

• Lifelong Learning: Curiosity becomes a core part of their identity. They no longer need a classroom or a grade to prompt learning—they simply like learning about everything.

This foundation made me realize that interest is not something that appears. It is a work in progress, and as teachers, we need to be comfortable with this progression. Have you ever built a campfire? The fire does not ignite straight away; it starts with a spark. 

With that said, a single spark rarely creates a permanent learner. But when you chain together enough small reactions—a cool experiment, a new learning environment, a tailored project, or even a moment of genuine recognition when a student asks a good question—those small moments build momentum toward interest. You do not even have to be the singular educator that makes this happen!

Once you generate enough of these micro-reactions, the energy shifts. The momentum flips from teacher-driven to student-driven. Given enough exposure and authentic support, that localized interest explodes into general curiosity.

Our job isn't to force the reaction. Our job is to build the environment, supply the fuel, and step back as the chain reaction takes off. Until there is a spark!

EmmaH@OTU

eduTopia Articles of Interest

                                                                

9 Tips for Using AI for Learning (and Fun!) These innovative, AI-driven activities will help you engage students across grade levels and subject areas.

Revamping District-Wide PD Days A differentiated instruction approach, including giving teachers a choice of sessions to attend, can make mandated professional learning more effective.

Building Better Readers With Scaffolded Read Alouds By reading books out loud every day, teachers introduce students to higher-level texts and new vocabulary, while modeling deeper thinking and strong discussion skills.

PBL That Fosters Empathy and Community Project-based learning can cultivate collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking across the grades.

The Power of One Good Math Question By focusing on authentic moments of inquiry, elementary students engage in critical thinking in math class.

Incorporating Photos, Videos, and Other Media in the Classroom By treating media like text, teachers can create a fast, relevant, and affordable lesson that stimulates lively discussion.

5 Tools Teachers Can Use to Find Research-Backed Edtech That Works Only a sliver of edtech products have been subjected to rigorous research into whether they work, but new online tools are making it easier for teachers to find tools that fit their needs. Anderson@OISE

Struggling Productively and Growing Students' Confidence

When I was younger, I always remember being kind of upset when I came to a teacher for help and they told me to keep trying or to ask my peers, because I just wanted their help and that was it. What I did not realize is that struggling a little bit would actually help me later on in my life, not only with building my confidence but also my perseverance and motivation. Letting students make mistakes and struggle through a problem is actually helping them rather than hindering them.

If teachers are always there to show students the answer or how to get to it, students will never learn how to work through a problem or come up with solutions on their own. This does not mean that teachers should be completely hands-off, but rather they can guide and even demonstrate. For example, using the strategy of "I do, we do, you do," can foster confidence and allow students to gain independence. In the first Keynote presentation, the example of kindergarten students learning how to zip up their jackets using this method, gave them the confidence to be able to do it on their own, and even help other classmates learn how to zip their jackets. I found this example really interesting as it shows just how important it is to help students grow their confidence from a young age, as it prepares them to approach new challenges as they get older. 

As students get older, we want them to become less reliant on teachers as a fallback when things get challenging. Instead, having teachers take a step back in some cases can help students develop critical transferable skills, like problem-solving, critical thinking, self-regulation, communication, and collaboration. These skills are crucial to everyday life, so providing a foundation to build those skills on is very important. I also think that letting students have a bit of time to struggle can prepare them for higher grade levels and the challenges that come with them. For example, in grade 3 students must complete EQAO testing, which does not allow teacher assistance, so having students work independently and problem solve actually has a practical benefit. 

In conclusion, it might seem cruel at first but, allowing students to have some time to struggle through a problem is actually one of the best ways to grow their independence and foster confidence for when they figure something out for themselves. Here is one way I like to think of it, teachers are not the ones who serve up success to their students, but instead teachers can provide the ingredients for success, and let students use them in their own way.

Julianna R@OTU

Regulating Generative AI in Education

Generative AI, as a tool linked to plagiarism, cognitive offloading, reinforcing racist biases, lowered test scores, environmental destruction, sweatshop labour, and violence against girls and women, is a contentious topic. This is especially so in educational spaces, where there would ideally be more safeguards from these issues. However, as a still newly-popularized and advancing technology there is still a lot that is up in the air when it comes to AI, including how useful it actually is, how ubiquitous it will become, and how/whether it should be utilized in education. 

One popular argument and justification for the use of generative AI in education is its “inevitability”: get on board or be left behind. This argument brushes over the fact that while the technology itself will not magically disappear, we are (or should be) in charge of how, when, where, and to what extent it is used. This point was particularly articulated well by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson of Citations Needed:

“There’s this idea of not making the distinction between inevitable and unavoidable [...] Is AI avoidable right now in many areas of our society, from education to healthcare, etc.? No. [...] But that does not mean that the future that is currently laid out is inevitable. It means that we have to actually take back a certain kind of control over the application and the governance of these systems [...] The kind of dulling of that question of how we actually have any control over something. Because if something is inevitable, by definition, we no longer are able to control it.”  

Rather than using the idea of inevitability to dismiss concerns over AI, it is important for us to have these conversations about regulating and setting appropriate parameters around AI usage, especially for children.

Generally speaking, there are two camps when it comes to the argument over whether to incorporate AI into education or not. In the first camp, it is believed that because AI is unavoidable, students should learn to use it in a regulated environment. This would ensure that students develop the skills they will need in their personal and professional lives such as digital literacy, vetting sources, creating better prompts, and so on. In the second, it is argued that for children, AI is ultimately a detriment to developing independent critical thinking skills and cognitive development, proliferates misinformation, promotes plagiarism, and is attached to a whole slew of problems as mentioned above. 

With this in mind, I was curious to look into how different education systems around the world approach regulating and incorporating AI. Generative AI is still too new for us to have any substantial data about the pros and cons of different modes of implementation or attempts to ban it completely from schools. Instead, I think it will be important for us as educators to keep tabs on how different education systems approach the regulation of AI. Below is a list and brief breakdown of some countries/regions that implemented intentional AI regulations in education which may be worth paying attention to: 

• New Brunswick: The New Brunswick Department of Education has officially incorporated learning about AI into its K-12 curriculum. This is an extension on the already-existing digital literacy component of the province’s curriculum and will start with “digital awareness” for younger grades before moving to practicing digital skills and hands-on practice with the technology in later grades. While this new policy has mixed reception, it will be important to see how AI is incorporated and what successes/failures come with it.

• Los Angeles: After concerns were voiced about AI and general screen-time for students at school, L.A. schools have decided to stop the usage of AI in schools for the time being. This was announced just as New York City similarly announced a ban on AI in schools. In L.A. schools, students are not given any screen-time until grade 2, at which point screen-time is gradually increased as they age. 

• Norway: Norway has also opted to completely ban AI-usage for younger students, students in grade 8 and up to use it under teacher supervision. Norway will also be banning children under 16 from accessing social media, following Australia’s similar ban.

• Sweden: Sweden does not have any specific policy around AI in schools. However, Sweden’s education system is currently shifting towards analogue learning, banning screens in the classroom to encourage better attention, conversation, and critical thinking. This is something that was pushed in response to lowering test results seen in conjunction with Sweden’s effort to provide each student with a laptop.

• Singapore: Singapore incorporates technology and AI into education from grade 1. Singapore’s approach looks to introduce AI and other technologies to students according to the students’ age and stage of development. This policy was not enacted without concern from parents and the government has outlined the guardrails it has in place for student safety but claimed that it is more important for students to learn how to effectively use AI. Since 2023, the Singapore schooling system has increasingly ramped up its use of AI both for students and teachers. 

There is obviously (and unfortunately) no clear or easily implemented policy that would solve the issues that arise with using generative AI in schools. Hence, the importance of looking at other educational systems and of being intentional about how we ourselves implement technology in the classroom. Additionally, while regulating generative AI may be helpful, students will always find shortcuts when lacking access to appropriate support and motivation. If our school system is filled with teachers overburdened by large class sizes, students who do not have access to social support systems either at home or in school, and a lack of supplies for conducting hands-on, innovative lessons, then AI will continue to be overused. In this case, any generative AI regulation or ban would ultimately be ineffective – a rule that teachers will not have the time, resources, or support to enforce against students who also lack the necessary time and attention.

References

Blume, H. (2026, September 3). LAUSD enacts student AI moratorium: What parents need to know - Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-02/lausd-student-ai-ban-policy. 

CBC News: The National. (2026, September 19). N.B. becomes 1st province to build AI into K-12 curriculum [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU3pVTsqTYc. 

Environmental cost of artificial intelligence: carbon, water, and land footprints. (2026, September 24). United Nations University. https://unu.edu/inweh/collection/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-Use-Carbon-water-and-land-footprints. 

How AI is exacerbating technology-facilitated violence against women and girls. (2026, April 10). UN Women – Headquarters. https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2025/12/how-ai-is-exacerbating-technology-facilitated-violence-against-women-and-girls. 

Gerlich, Michael. (2025). AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking. Societies. 15. 6. 10.3390/soc15010006. 

Goldstein, D. (2026, September 3). Los Angeles District bans most A.I. for students. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/us/lausd-schools-ban-ai-artificial-intelligence.html. 

Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school. (2026, June 19). Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/norway-imposes-near-ban-ai-elementary-school-2026-06-19/ 

Shirazi, N., & Johnson, A. (2026, August 12). Episode 241: The Disempowering Politics of ‘Inevitability’ (Part I): Data Centers and LLM as ‘The Future.’ Medium. https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-241-the-disempowering-politics-of-inevitability-part-1-data-centers-and-llm-as-the-a2cb241aba85. 

Strömberg, D., Lei, V., & Wu, Y. (2026). The generative AI learning penalty: Evidence from Chinese secondary education (CEPR Discussion Paper No. 21577). Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6868618 

Sweden: the unmet promises of the digital classroom. (2026, April 6). The UNESCO Courier. https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/sweden-unmet-promises-digital-classroom 

Tan, R., & Cabato, R. (2023, August 28). Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops.’ The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/28/scale-ai-remotasks-philippines-artificial-intelligence/ 

Wilks, L. (2020). [Review of the book Algorithms Of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, by Safiya Umoja Noble, and: Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin]. The Velvet Light Trap 86, 75-77. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/765116. 

ClaraM@NUO