The App Generation by Howard Gardner, Katie Davis Page B

would say technology helps. . . . It allows a lot of teens to be creative who wouldn’t otherwise: music, robotics, music production.”In the words of Seymour Papert, founding member of the MIT Media Lab, and his colleague, Mitch Resnick, head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab, new technologies
lower the floor, raise the ceiling,
and
widen the walls
for youth creators. 28
    Beyond expanding opportunities for creation, there’s evidence that certain media activities can enhance individuals’ creativity. In one study, researchers investigated the relationship between middle school students’ scores on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking and four types of information technology: computer use, Internet use, video game playing, and cell phone use. 29 The investigators found that all six types of video game playing (including action-adventure, racing/driving, and violent video games) were positively related to creativity. In other words, students who played more video games were more likely to score higher on the TTCT. The researchers found no relationship between students’ creativity scores and the amount of time they spent using a computer, the Internet, or their cell phone.
    Had the researchers looked at students’ specific uses of these technologies, they might have found that certain activities do, in fact, support creativity. That’s what researchers in Pamplona, Spain, discovered when they investigated two digital tools designed to stimulate university students’ generation of ideas and originality. 30 The first, called Wikideas, uses wiki technology to facilitate the brainstorming process, from generating new ideas to assessing their value. Creativity Connector, the second tool, is a social networking platform that works in conjunctionwith Wikideas to connect participants and support their collaboration. Study participants were software engineering students enrolled in a project-based learning course. They were instructed to use Wikideas and Creativity Connector to complete a team-based software development project. The researchers found that the tools had a positive effect on the number and originality of students’ ideas. The tools also promoted productive, successful collaborations among team members.
    In this example, two features of the digital tools are worth noting:
support
and
collaboration
. One of the biggest challenges in the creative process is simply getting started. Wikideas helps students overcome this nontrivial challenge by giving them
support
in the idea-generation phase of creation. Wikideas doesn’t come up with ideas for them, just nudges them in the right direction. In this way, it resembles Songwriter’s Pad and other apps that attempt to make creating less overwhelming. As composer Igor Stravinsky famously said: “The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free. . . . If everything is permissible to me, the best and the worst; if nothing offers me any resistance, then any effort is inconceivable, and I cannot use anything as a basis, and consequently every undertaking becomes futile.” 31 And yet, the question remains: Where to draw the line between jump-starting inspiration and locking one in to prepackaged ideas?
    As a social networking tool, Creativity Connector is distinguished by its ability to connect people virtually and supporttheir creative
collaboration
. We’ve already encountered other social networking platforms that perform a similar function, such as Figment, deviantART, and LiveJournal. In his book
Cognitive Surplus
, Clay Shirky celebrates digital media’s ability to connect people easily, quickly, and cheaply. 32 Drawing on examples like the Impressionist painters, who lived and worked together in southern France, Shirky argues that collaboration is a central component of creativity. Where collaboration is supported and encouraged—as it surely is online—creativity will