Giving Students the Freedom to Explore with Tech

I've spent a lot of time this past week planning and plotting how exactly the middle school techttoos will be organized. Since most of my experience has been with elementary students and using tech badges, this transition over to techttoos is proving to be a bit challenging.

With my tech badges, students would learn a tech skill, like animation, by following my tutorials, then to prove that they really know they have the skills, they make a project of their very own. So in the first part, the tutorial, there is no creativity on the part of the student. They are simply following the tutorial step by step. Their creativity is on hold as they master these new skills. They once the skills have been mastered they are then free to do what they like with these new skills. 

A good non-tech example would be learning to draw in 2D perspective. If you don't have the skills, it doesn't matter how "creative" you are, you drawing are not going to look that good as far as showing a 2D perspective. But if you were to be taught and then mastered the skill of 2D perspective, then you are free to let your creativity fly as you can then choose to follow or break the rules as you see fit as an artist. 

The same goes for tech, first students must learn the skills and then they be creative. I'm sure Sir Ken would disagree, but who cares, its what I've seen first hand in my classroom.