As part of my SXSW adventure I sat in on a panel that talked about youth creativity and went over results from an Adobe-led study on how youth create. This recaps a conversation with Julie Baher, formerly from Adobe and Bill Westerman, @billwesterman, who is a part of Create With Context, focusing on what motivates youth and the increase of collaboration between youth. It’s interesting to look at the results to see how these motivating factors could be addressed within the high school classroom or to develop new curriculum and courses for higher education. At a time when higher education is changing, more studies such as this one should be conducted on youth, particularly the 17-23 year-old age range to see how creativity transfers to the classroom at the college or university level.
Creative Youth: Organic, Collaborative, and Throw-Away Media
Monday March 15, 2010
12:30-1:30 pm
Background
Adobe hired Create With Context to survey and monitor youth using creative software between the ages of 13-17. Through this study, CWC went in to students homes and rooms, looking critically at their lives and examining trends. They discovered what videos students were watching, what was hanging on their bedroom walls, who they talked to, how they communicated with each other and how they learned. CWC’s goal was to determine how youth address technology and creativity, two things that have a huge impact on education and learning, regardless of age.
Survey Population
Most of the 40ish students in the survey were from middle level income, using computers and technology in public spaces in the home. Not many surveyed had computers in their personal bedrooms. As far as the software on the machines, research results showed that youth acquired software illegally, or used old versions, or platforms passed along from peer to peer. Fancy new software and gadgets were not essential to youth who were interested in creating, they worked with what they had.
*Understand that this research is very limited and narrow, but still valuable to look at in terms of education and how these trends may be able to help future development of high school or higher ed courses and curriculum.
Results
The study resulted in 7 major themes of youth creative media use, including a sense of belonging, expression and learning. As far as youth trends, its important to note that these results shouldn’t generalize to describe all youth or students aged 13-17, but should be looked at critically when relating these trends to education and how students learn outside of the classroom. In an age where technology leads to the possibility of creation 24/7, there is no reason why some of these elements can’t be addressed inside the classroom.
- A Sense of Uniqueness
As result of this study, it was found that giving youth templates was useless. A template that is built-in is something that anyone could use. Students wanted to have absolute uniqueness because they believe it aids in uniqueness and individuality. The ability to create something from nothing was more attractive then if given a starting point.
- Throw-Away Mentality
The 13-17 year old students in this study didn’t care about saving work. They would create, trash and repeat. Where older demographics would never think of NOT saving material, this generation never thought TO save. It’s very much a re-mix culture. - Non-Traditional Community
Students in this age range sought out others who were interested in the same hobbies or media. They would look for a digital community to join and create one themselves and if there wasn’t one to suite their specific interests.
- Instructions Not Necessary
Students in this study created without instructions or proper education. If they were given the right tools to create, youth found a way to make something from nothing.
- Motivation To Create
So what motivates youth 13-17? A 15-year-old in the panel rose her hand and said, “Basically we make stuff to impress our friends. We do things so our friends can say WOW that is awesome!” She also talked about credibility and rating or ranking being important factors of motivation.
- Support From Schools
Do schools support this movement of do-it yourself youth and group problem solving? It was mentioned that some schools had vibrant media technology, but in some instances the student became the expert on a topic, they knew more than the teacher. There was no formal connection between creativity used outside of the classroom and learning inside of a classroom.
I posed a question to Julie and Bill, asking them if students had expressed interest in pursing creative careers as grown ups. They told me students typically didn’t even consider attending college for the arts, video production or graphic design. Most kept their passion and their career goals separate, which is depressing to note. Students who enjoyed taking photos never thought to study photography in school, rather they believed they had to study law or medicine.
This shook me and made me question educators of youth today. Shouldn’t we, as educators push students to pursue their passion? Isn’t it our job to motivate students to go to college to pursue their dreams and ultimately get jobs that will help further them as an individual and members of society? It was very interesting for me, as an educator of students 18-23 years of age, who oftentimes still have yet to grasp their passion, discover this dichotomy of passion versus career goes much deeper than students in higher education.
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Interesting question: is the merge of creative/professional pursuits stifled because young people feel they have to pursue more traditional career paths? If that’s the case, you’ve got to wonder when/why kids make that split between want-to do something and have-to study something else. Sounds like it was a great discussion!