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Purpose: This article, based on an invited talk, aims to explore the relationship among large-scale assessments, creativity and personalized learning. Design/Approach/Methods: Starting with the working definition of large-scale assessments, creativity, and personalized learning, this article identified the paradox of combining these three components together. As a consequence, a logic mode of large-scale assessment and creativity expressions is illustrated, along with an exploration of new possibilities. Findings: Smarter design of large-scale assessments is needed. Firstly, we need to assess creative learning at the individual level, so complex tasks with high uncertainty should be presented to students. Secondly, additional process and experiential data while students are working on problems need to be captured. Thirdly, the human-artificial intelligence (AI) augmented scoring should be explored, developed, and refined. Originality/Value: This article addresses the drawbacks of current large-scale assessments and explores possibilities for combining assessment with creativity and personalized learning. A logic model illustrating variations necessary for creative learning and considerations and cautions for designing large-scale assessments are also provided.

With the purpose of further mastering and grasping the course of speech signal processing, a novel Android-based, mobile-assisted educational platform (AEPS) is proposed in this paper. The goal of this work was to design AEPS as an educational signal-processing auxiliary system by simulating signal analysis methods commonly used in speech signal processing and bridging the gap for transition from undergraduate study to industry practice or academic research. The educational platform is presented in a highly intuitive, easy-to-interpret and strongly maneuverable graphical user interface. It also has the characteristics of high portability, strong affordability, and easy adoptability for application extension and popularization. Through adequate intuitive user interface, rich visual information, and extensive hands-on experiences, it greatly facilitates students in authentic, interactive, and creative learning. This paper details a subjective evaluation of AEPS’s effectiveness as an educational tool. The result of the experiences shows that the proposed platform not only promotes the students’ learning interest and practical ability but also consolidates their understanding and impression of theoretical concepts.

The creativity program, “imagination first: unleash the power of possibility,” implemented in public primary and secondary schools in Northern Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, deals with the power of imagination in unleashing creativity among gifted students and teachers. Following an in-depth literature review on creativity for gifted students, a Learner-centered Framework of Creative Pedagogy was developed. The framework is guided by the key question: “How can creative development be enhanced among gifted learners in schools?” The framework proposes that creativity can be fostered through the interplay of three key dimensions: creative practice, creative learning, and creative process. The program demonstrates that the role of imagination is at the heart of creative learning. Activities that foster creative thinking should challenge gifted learners to think laterally, be open-minded, inquire into possibilities, and kindle their imagination. Significantly, schools need to promote creativity across all areas of the curriculum. Practical strategies for implementing the framework in schools are shared.

Ethnomethodology is the analytical frame used here to recover embedded cultural discursive phenomena in the language of ‘at risk’ middle-school boys as they talk about ‘computer games’ and ‘schooling’. What emerges is a rich picture of myths and heroes, identities of participation where member values and a discernible moral order are part of the ‘gaming’ culture. A second picture emerges of ‘boys in school’. Here ‘sleepers, avoiders and disconnected teachers’ are disclosed through conversational structures as identities of non-participation in the classroom. Through student talk we learn that identities of non-participation are a reciprocal phenomena, wherein these students and their teachers co-construct a reciprocal disconnectedness, each to the other. To the individual learner, the computer game is ‘serious fun’ to the classroom it is a ‘peripheral distraction’; to the school community it is a marker for identifying boys ‘at risk’ of disengaging. Each of these individual accounts stands only as a ‘partial’ explanation of the role of computer games in schooling. The article argues that our ability to nourish learners' inner capacities is not dependent on the level or nature of technology, but on the creative learning applications it invokes.

Educators in ultrasound have found that many of their students learn best through visual, conceptual, and tactile experiences. The student's ability to apply acquired knowledge in a practical situation reinforces his or her understanding of the material presented. The integration of 3-dimensional concepts is introduced by drawing details of a specific material. Sonographic terminology is enhanced by playing Pictionary and actually scanning material objects. The understanding of imaging planes may be demonstrated with representative materials that simulate a body section. Creative stories, posters, and ultrasound equipment design enhance the student's understanding of specific ultrasound concepts.

Otters dive among the gently swaying ocean kelp, lasers leap, robots rock, children interact at the giant “computer” taped on the gymnasium floor. Architecture students build a domed arch with their bodies, measure the structure and convert the measurement to scale. Geneticists extricate an antigen from a hula hoop to create a vaccine for their Ebola virus. Welcome to “Bodies and Brains in Motion”! Students exercise their bodies and brains in the physical education curriculum at the Center for Creative Learning, which houses the gifted program for the Rockwood School District in St. Louis, MO.

This article not only proposes new directions for the Schoolwide Enrichment model, it also analyses the processes of real and effective curriculum change. The very act of learning is perceived to be at the centre of the change process. Developing modifications of existing curricula should also provide appropriate content and skills development which allows all students to develop their full potential. The article is based on Dr Renzulli's recent book, Schools for Talent Development: a Practical Plan for Total School Improvement, published in 1994 by Creative Learning Press.

We compared the classroom peer relations of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders participating in a pull-out enrichment program (Creative Learning in a Unique Environment [CLUE]) with all other classmates. Data included peer sociometric assessments, evaluations of friendship relationships, and peer nominations as aggressors and as victims of aggression. Relative to other classmates, CLUE children (a) were evaluated by peers as having greater social acceptability and social competence, (b) demonstrated greater awareness of reciprocity in friendship relationships, and (c) were perceived less often as an aggressor or as a victim of aggression. These children did not have more friends or best friends than their peers, but they had more valued positions within the peer network. These findings suggest that a pull-out enrichment program can be associated with enhanced peer relations in the classroom, an effect not evident in the current research literature.