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Recently, Matt a friend, handed out instruction sheets on how to make a cow to help cure a bad case of the Fridays.  This pleased me and my officemate Max to no end.  My cow ended up being orange and black, Max’s cow was more psychedelic with a yellow body, green legs and a pink nose - very cool!

I’m currently an instructor of a creative web expressions course.  My first semester teaching the course I struggled with a way to better engage my students in peer evaluation.  So then it occurred to me that the “make a cow” exercise may be a creative and engaging way to introduce the topic of peer evaluation?

I was skeptical that my students would berate me for giving them an adolescent project such as this.  I was wrong, their efforts and participation in the activity downright amazed me! The assignment was to make a cow and to be as creative as possible.  Many different cows made a showing including, a glitter cow, a cow with a fro, a cow with a Van Dyke, a studded cow, etc.  The in-class activity, a cow judging contest where cows would be rated on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being worst, 10 being best) in the following categories:

1 Overall Design

2 Originality, Creativity and Innovation

3 Shows Significant Time and Effort

BOTH AWARDS FOR BEST OVERALL DESIGN and MOST SIGNIFICANT EFFORT went to Mike S.

Note: he knitted the blanket in class while taking a quiz !!!

AWARD FOR MOST ORIGINAL, INNOVATIVE and CREATIVE COW went to Jason P.

Note: he used Adobe Photoshop to convert his cow into a bull - horns and all !!!

It is my hope that when my students engage in the task of peer evaluation of each others’ websites and blogs, it will be met with as much enthusiasm!

tags: creativity exercise, friday fun, fridays in the cube, office fun