Teach Science | Teach Creativity with Adobe and Khan Academy

Scientific thinking and creative proble- solving are the types of skills students need to confront global challenges like climate change, sustainability and the health and wellbeing of ourselves and our planet. At its core, science education is about teaching students to ask and define good questions. It's about showing them how to construct explanations, engage in arguments, and to obtain, evaluate, and present observations and data. Just as scientists investigate the natural world, engineers learn to design and build useful systems. So how can we prepare students in science and engineering to become critical thinkers, creators, and communicators? Adobe has extended Khan Academy lessons to provide students with opportunities to develop the skills and practices they need to grow as autonomous investigators, experiment-designers, and system builders. These creative activities ask students to do things like demonstrate, understanding by creating an infographic with facts about DNA; communicate complicated scientific findings by creating a Creative Cloud Express page about cell signaling; apply knowledge in new ways by making a 3D visualization of a chemical compound's structural formula; explore biology, gender, and identity through video and podcasting; and take action by creating a webpage to raise awareness and pose sustainable solutions to an environmental plan. Now, over to some science educators to hear how they've extended core content with creative and digital activities. I am so excited about the combination of Adobe and Khan Academy in terms of teaching science. I think Khan Academy has such great resources for my students in learning really complex science topics and making them simple for students to understand. They also provide videos and articles and practice questions, so that all different learners are able to learn using Khan Academy. And then with Adobe students are able to take what they're learning and demonstrate their knowledge in very creative and exciting ways. At Khan Academy, we're building instruction and practice content that allows students to build the core knowledge and skills that they need for success in the sciences - in middle school, high school, and beyond. When that's combined with the power of Adobe's creative activities and digital platforms, students get the opportunity to engage more directly and deeply in science and engineering practices: like designing their own solutions, building their own models and communicating their ideas and information effectively. What I love about the Khan and Create science lessons is that it asks students to see the world through a scientific lens, a field that is grounded in curiosity about the world. Rather than taking content and asking students to memorize and recall the information, many of these science lesson, ask students to take this information and consider how science influences the world around them. Khan Academy and Adobe are a great fit for teaching science because using these tools together asks students to not just memorize information so that they can recall it later, but actually to think about how to illustrate and visualize scientific concepts in really useful or novel, creative, colorful ways. So it takes it from being like, you know, just kind of information on a page, into something that's a little more lived in, but it's easy to relate to and make useful in the world around them. Students can use their creativity to showcase their understanding of really concrete ideas in science. It allows for more creativity and for students to show their understanding in a different way.