Remix America and creativity

Creativity is an educational skill that is getting a good bit of attention these days. Whether its 21st century education thinkers or from folks in new literacies or other people interested in education reform, creativity seems to be a hot topic right now. Just one example- the Partnership for 21st Century Skills places creativity high on the list of skills they are promoting. Despite this energy, the field of history has been slow to embrace creativity as an element of history teaching and learning. Remix America, a non-profit web-based group focused on video and history, is doing great work enabling creativity in history learning and instruction. More about what they are doing in a bit, but first let's think about how the field of history has fallen behind in the push for creativity.

The current condition of history, one that emphasizes teacher performance and disciplined inquiry, has emerged slowly. Over the last 30 years, researchers have constructed a detailed understanding of historical thinking and have managed to include these disciplinary ways of thinking into standards and curricula. See Levstik and Barton’s Doing History and VanSledright’s In search of America's past: Learning to read history in elementary school for examples at the elementary level. But probably more than another other scholar, Sam Wineburg’s research on historical thinking has moved the field of history instruction toward an academic disciplinary The field is so invested the promotion of historical thinking as an academic endeavor, that little consideration has been given to the creative aspects of historical work.

In my state of North Carolina, state standards reflect this emphasis on academic historical thinking. Here are a few relevant standards.
-The learner will acquire strategies to access a variety of sources, and use appropriate research skills to gather, synthesize, and report information using diverse modalities to demonstrate the knowledge acquired.
-Analyze major documents that formed the foundations of the American idea of constitutional government.
-Define the role of an historian and explain the importance of studying history.

In California, the focus is much more deliberate
-Students pose relevant questions about events they encounter in historical documents, eyewitness accounts, oral histories, letters, diaries, artifacts, photographs, maps, artworks, and architecture.
- Students summarize the key events of the era they are studying and explain the historical contexts of those events.
- Students identify the human and physical characteristics of the places they are studying and explain how those features form the unique character of those places.
- Students identify and interpret the multiple causes and effects of historical events.
- Students conduct cost-benefit analyses of historical and current events.

Do standards such as these leave space for creative? Perhaps as students construct interpretations, they can express creative ideas, but without support and structure emphasized through standards it's doubtful much will come from their work.

One example of how academic disciplinary and creative thinking is comes together can be found in Remix America - http://www.remixamerica.org/. This resource allows users to "remix the great words and speeches of American History with the hot button issues of today."

Here is sample from Remix America, that mixes a speech from Robert F Kennedy with a Kayne West song. The effect is emotional and engaging. Evidence of historical thinking is not so obvious in the project, but as a creative endeavor a couple of interesting things stand out. Kennedy's speech known as the "Day of Affirmation" speech was delivered at the University Cape Town, South Africa on June 6th, 1966. The speech tied the struggles of blacks in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States to the struggles of blacks under Apartheid in South Africa. The Kanye West song, called Amazing, includes lyrics that draw an interesting contrast to Kennedy's speech. The music in some ways even compliments Kennedy's words. The rhythm of the song is so compelling and in sync with Kennedy, I found myself listening to Kennedy's words in ways that I never have before. What were the experiences of the person who made this video, DJMattWerner? Did he engage in historical thinking? These seem to be questions worth asking.



At Remix American history learners can access historical videos as well as more contemporary video and remix these to express their ideas and communicate their thoughts. While Remix America lacks some of the academic disciplinary structure needed in history instruction, they make up for this with tools to facilitate not only creative expression, but also community consciousness. With additional teacher designed scaffolding, Remix American can be a powerful addition to classroom history instruction at all levels.