This film examines how creativity, shunned in the industrial age approach to schooling, is essential to learners in a networked society and a critical element of connected learning.

We commissioned filmmaker Nic Askew (http://soulbiographies.com) to make a series of films about connected learning, a new approach to learning he called “courageous” and “transformational.”

Guided by six learning principles and three core values, connected learning is the outcome of a six-year research effort supported by the MacArthur Foundation into how learning, education, and schooling could be reimagined for a networked world.

The film asks:

  • ‘In this rapidly changing world might creativity need to sit at the heart of an education for all?’
  • ‘Might education now need to embrace these new forms of literacy for all students?’
  • ‘Might our future call for creative, literate, self expressive and resourceful students?’

The interview subject is DePaul University associate professor Nichole Pinkard, founder of Chicago’s pioneering Digital Youth Network (http://digitalyouthnetwork.org), supported by the MacArthur Foundation as part of its Digital Media and Learning initiative (http://macfound.org/programs/learning).

Other films in the connected learning series: