Week4: Questions_Backgroud Theory for EdTech

**SP note**
During Week 4, I was a bit laid back..and resetting my goals for current and future study. During the 627 class, we had a good discussion about is it acceptable for PhD dissertation collaborated by two or more authors. Everyone shared interesting feedback. Later, I'll add in more class notes here. Just post my two questions ahead then later elaborate it. :-)

Discrepancy between in/out of school learning: a reflection of teaching/learning to the test
Why school/informal learning goes into symbolic, general, rule and pure mentation?
It's because of the teaching to the test makes the above happen. I mean teaching to the test is the ways, methods school systems apply to test individual performance to screen, to place people in the educational setting that can better educate them. However, in fact, the school exam system turns out into a way to select the so-called the academic intelligent to have a certain privilege and ignore the needs of learners with diverse intelligent. Ideally, I believe, the education and learning is to help an individual or a group to find out the weak and strong part of each individual, to use the strong intelligence to support the weak, to enhance the collaborate and help among people.

Solo and collective learning in creativity
I am from the visual ArtsEdu background. I found usually in fine arts history we can easily recall many great artists and their great piece of work. And in many art classroom I observed emphasized on how to cultivate individual originality. That is to make you stand out of the group to be different to have your ownership and unique identity. Therefore, I boldly assume in this type of education, artists tend to work more individually rather than collectively. Does it because in this kind definition of creativity that makes the education more focus on how to differentiate the individual from the others?

This view of greatest individual artist might be easily found in the modern art domain or in some periods of art history like three masters in Renaissance. However, in the current arts world, the new way of communication and the concept of taking Art as a tool to share or to co-produce, would this change the solo learning or working style of an artist in the discussion of creativity? Besides, I think if we take creativity as an collective form of human intelligent, the way to enhance or enable creativity in education might be different from the view of taking creativity as an individual production.