Dr. Cyndi Burnett, in her role as the Director of Possibilities at Creativity and Education, has played a pivotal role in weaving creative thinking into the fabric of educational practices. With two decades of experience at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State University, she has been at the forefront of educational innovation. Notably, she led the creation of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) focused on everyday creativity, attracting over 70,000 participants worldwide. Her efforts have impacted various educational institutions, encouraging them to embrace creative thinking. Dr. Burnett has recently co-authored “Infusing Creative Thinking into Higher Education,” a book that highlights hundreds of simple strategies for college professors to integrate creative thinking into the classroom.
In an era marked by rapid change and innovation, the traditional frameworks of higher education are facing a critical examination. This presentation aims to enlighten college professors on the importance of creativity and provide them with a practical framework to incorporate creative thinking into their teaching methods.
Sam Wineburg founded the Stanford History Education Group in 2002, and before spinning out of Stanford this January, it had become the largest provider of Open Educational Resources in history/social studies, with over 16M downloads of its curriculum and appearing on 41 state departments of education curriculum lists. Since 2016, his work has focused on how people make thoughtful decisions about what to believe online. His latest book, with co-author Mike Caulfield, is Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (Chicago, 2023).
Today’s college students lead digital lives, waking up with and going to sleep with a digital device by their side. At the same time, few students have received sustained instruction in how to think about the information that streams across their devices. Even worse, myths continue to propagate that because students are “digital natives,” they also possess the wherewithal to discern fact from digital fiction. This presentation will focus on what we know from research about GenZ’s digital capabilities, where they tumble down rabbit holes, and how instruction can integrate information literacy into courses to better prepare students for the digital world they inhabit.