The need to produce a generation of students who are creative thinkers and innovators was a key theme at this year’s National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Atlanta.

More than 18,500 educators and exhibitors gathered at the Georgia World Congress Center June 24 through 27 for the nation’s premier educational technology conference, hosted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

Conference-goers heard from keynote speaker Andrew Zolli, a futurist and author who urged those in attendance to cultivate students’ creativity to maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation. Later in the conference, Zolli moderated a roundtable discussion on what it takes to unlock the creative potential in all of us.

In between, ISTE released an updated version of its National Educational Technology Standards for Students, a set of standards for defining what students should know and be able to do with technology at various grade levels. The revised standards include creativity and innovation at the top of the list of traits to be measured.

The innovation ‘imperative’

Zolli’s opening keynote speech on June 24 had two parts. In the first half, he explained why it’s “imperative” for educators to encourage students’ innate creativity.

“You are shifting our whole civilization onto a new platform,” he told attendees, using a metaphor the audience was familiar with to describe the changes in society brought on by advancements in technology. “We’re watching an exponential curve … an amazing set of shifts.”

Two key ideas underlie these shifts, Zolli said: Everything that can be done by machine (eventually) will be, and many more things will be able to be done by machine than we now think.

“What happens when we’re successful?” he asked attendees. In other words, what would the world look like if everything we needed were plentiful, fast, and cheap? “What is left to humanity is the essence of the creative spirit,” he answered—and it’s that creative spirit that educators must nurture in their students.

These capabilities are latent in all of us, Zolli said. He illustrated his point with an example from science. Scientists, he said, now have the ability to “shut off” various parts of the brain temporarily, and in one research experiment, scientists turned off various inhibitors and had subjects draw a picture of a dog. In almost all cases, he noted, the subjects’ drawings were much more rich in details than they were capable of before the experiment.

“We all have to find our own creative center,” Zolli concluded. “The good news is, science tells us it’s there.”

In the second half of his speech, drawing on fields as diverse as demographics and psychology, Zolli outlined five key trends that are shaping education’s future. And it’s clear from these trends that creativity and innovation aren’t necessary just for students: Educators, too, will need these traits to cultivate new approaches to teaching and learning.