Kara Smith
University of Windsor
Summer 2001

"You won't mind, Harry, if I use a Quick-Quotes Quill? It leaves me free to talk to you normally..."

"A what?" said Harry.

Rita Skeeter's smile widened. Harry counted three gold teeth. She reached again into her crocodile bag, and drew out a long acid-green quill and a roll of parchment, which she stretched out between them on a crate of Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess-Remover. She put the tip of the green quill into her mouth, and sucked it for a moment with apparent relish, then placed it upright on the parchment, where it stood balanced on its point, quivering slightly.

"Testing...my name is Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet reporter."

Harry looked down quickly at the quill. The moment Rita Skeeter had spoken, the green quill had started to scribble, skidding across the parchment:

Attractive blonde Rita Skeeter, forty-three, whose savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations -

Rowling, J.K. (2000) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 266-267.

Introduction
A novel studied at the grade seven level in South-Western Ontario is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. Integrated curriculum for this novel is currently being developed by the University of Windsor. In creating any curriculum for novel-based study, one of the most difficult challenges is bringing the text to life for the students. This has proved to be particularly challenging with the Harry Potter series since the books are based in another world of "wizardry and magic." One creative writing exercise being developed for the curriculum is a "Quick-Quills" article (excerpt above). The SMART Board seemed to be a logical use of technology for the development of this particular activity, since it introduced an element of "magic" into an ordinary classroom, or could possibly enable one portion of the curriculum to mirror the "magic reporter's pen" in the novel(s). As a result, pre-service teachers and grade seven students from local Windsor classrooms were arbitrarily chosen to work in control (blackboard) and test (SMART Board) groups to test the following question related to the curricular development of this activity: Does the SMART Board enable a higher level of curricular creative writing responses (as defined by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking), or are the SMART Board responses equivalent to those created using a regular blackboard?

Research Design
The design of this research involved two stages, each composed of a control (blackboard) group and a test (SMART Board) group. The participants involved in the first stage of the research were pre-service teachers; the participants in the second stage were grade seven students.

During stage one of the research, the control group, pre-service language arts teachers, brainstormed possible Quick-Quill questions on the blackboard which Rowling's reporter Rita Skeeter might have asked the character Harry. Using their notes from this session, the class was then given one week's time to create ten Quick-Quill questions, which, in turn, would be evaluated for the "most creative" based on the Torrance Tests for Creativity (TTCT). A second, test group of pre-service language arts teachers used the SMART Board to brainstorm possible Quick-Quill questions. The SMART Board notes from this session were then e-mailed to all of the participants (example of one such board appears below), and the participants were given one week's time to create ten Quick-Quill questions, which would also be assessed by TTCT. The top questions, from both groups, receiving the highest TTCT score, would be used during stage two of the research.

Stage two of the research used the top ten "most creative" Quick-Quill questions with a group of grade seven students. These students, a control and test group, would then brainstorm (as in stage one) and create answers to the Quick-Quill questions for character Rita Skeeter's column in the Daily Prophet (Rowling 2000). These Quick-Quill responses would, in turn, be evaluated for a TTCT score. The group – control or test – to receive the highest overall TTCT mean would be said to be the "more creative."

The number in each group was dependent upon the enrolment of those particular classes and sections during the school term. A breakdown of these numbers is as follows:

Stage One – Pre-service Teachers (Developing Quick-Quill Questions)

Stage Two – Grade Seven Students (Creating Quick-Quill Answers)

Both the Quick-Quill questions and the Daily Prophet columns developed in the process of this research, along with the TTCT scores of all of the groups, have been included in this paper under their appropriate stages.

Stage One – Pre-service Language Arts Teachers Create Quick-Quill Questions for Students
Following a brainstorming session, two groups of pre-service teachers were asked to write ten Quick-Quill questions that Daily Prophet Reporter Rita Skeeter might have used in an interview. These questions were to be designed for the grade seven level, and were meant to elicit sensational, heretical responses (as a Quick-Quill would do). Questions developed would eventually be tested on an actual grade seven class.

The first group, the test group, brainstormed using the SMART Board (illustrated below). The SMART Board brainstorming session was later e-mailed to the students in this group.

The second group, the control group, brainstormed using a regular blackboard. Notes were taken. No further information was e-mailed to the latter group. Both groups were required to submit their top ten Quick-Quill questions for a grade seven class in one week's time.

The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was used as the measurement of "creativity" for the above questions. Those questions receiving a higher [fluency and] originality score, were deemed to be "more creative."

The creative mean of the test group was slightly higher than the creative mean of the control group. There were 31 questions developed from the SMART Board test group of 35 pre-service teachers, and 15 questions developed from the blackboard control group of 15 pre-service teachers. Rate of return was higher for the control group due to the absence of technology. In the test group, two technological problems existed which resulted in four null returns. Seven teachers had difficulty accessing their e-mail (due to home server problems or computer software incompatibility), and three teachers checked their e-mail only once during the week (due to telephone cost), and as a result, had less time to create questions. Thus, four sets of test questions were returned later than the deadline of one week, and as a result, were not admitted into the test group. The TTCT scores per participant (based on one set of 10 questions each) were as follows:

The test group's mean score was 19.39, 3.19 higher than the control group. Even if the one, extraordinary score of 55 was removed from the test group due to its abnormal nature, there is still a mean difference of 2.0. Ergo, the responses of the pre-service teachers' SMART Board test group were "more creative" than the blackboard control group.

The ten "most creative" questions developed for grade seven students from the sets of questions submitted by both groups were as follows:

The above questions were then given to grade seven students during the week of March 12 to 16, 2001, in stage two of the research. Students were then able to choose one from the above ["most creative"] ten questions and write a Quick-Quill answer to the question chosen based on the example provided in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Because, in the first stage, the control group was not provided with the same opportunity to review (as the test group was via e-mail), it was thought that the technology, and subsequent e-mail, may have simply served as a memory review, rather than a prompt for "more creative responses." To eliminate this possibility, the control group was given an oral/aural review in stage two of the research.

Stage Two – Grade Seven Students Answer the Quick-Quill Questions in the Daily Prophet
During the week of March 12 to 16, 2001, grade seven students were able to choose one Quick-Quill question from the top ten developed during stage one of the research. To eliminate the possibility that the SMART Board simply acted as a memory review (a possibility identified in stage one), an additional oral/aural review was provided to the control group in this stage of the research.

Ten students developed Quick-Quill answers to the questions of their own individual choosing for the control group; eleven students developed Quick-Quill answers to the questions of their choosing for the SMART Board test group. There was a 100% return rate from both groups, and no perceived technical problems receiving the data.

All possible responses were first brainstormed by the test group; an illustration of this SMART Board brainstorming is below:

As in stage one, the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was used as the measurement of "creativity" for the stage two creative writing responses. Those responses receiving a higher [fluency and] originality score, were deemed to be "more creative." The TTCT evaluates the [gifted] ability to produce new ideas by bringing together elements usually thought of as independent or dissimilar. Simply, each new thought or item within a piece of writing is counted. Pieces of writing containing more unique elements are said to be "more creative."

In this particular stage, the blackboard/control group's writing outperformed the SMART Board test group; however, there were some interesting gender distinctions, and the SMART Board group preferred to write on one particular question, which may have hindered their performance. The overall TTCT results of the two groups' responses were as follows:

Exceptionalities (8.5 and 11) eliminated: Test Mean = 2.25; Control Mean = 3.22

Thus, equalizing the review time between the two groups, there appeared to be no significant increase in "creative" writing responses from those students who brainstormed answers using the SMART Board.

There were significantly more males than females in this sample. Females, for example, outperformed their grade six male counterparts on the 2000 EQAO standardized test (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training). In stage two of this research, there were almost three times more males than females, and of the female responses evaluated, the top five overall ranked responses belonged to females. Broken down by group and gender, the responses appear as follows:

Female participants in the control group still outperformed the female participants in the SMART Board test group; however, the difference between the male participants was null. This may indicate that the difference in performance between the control and test group has more to do with gender than with the technology with which they are working. The gender results do support current research on gender and language performance (Gormley, 1992; Thomas, 1994); ergo, regardless of the SMART Board, one of the largest differences in the groups' performances appears to be due to their sex. A study involving a homogeneous group of one gender would eliminate this distinction.

Besides the difference in gender performance, each group displayed a different predilection towards one particular question. The majority of the SMART Board test group (55%) for example, chose to write on the following Quick-Quill question: "Wouldn't you have liked to perform a little magic on Malfoy to make him pay for some of his nasty actions?" (Question 5, Stage One). The test group's top three answers (8.5, 5, and 4) all responded to this question. It is also the only question developed in stage one that required an answer specifically dealing with magic. Since none of the other Quick-Quill questions require the student to create a scenario based on an unknown world, this level of creativity may have hindered some of the more creative writers in this group. It is interesting to note, however, that the SMART Board participants were more interested in questions relating to magic, and the use of magic. This may indicate, as we had originally hypothesized, that the SMART Board did introduce a unique element of a type of "magic" for the students working on these creative responses.

The control group, on the other hand, most frequently (40%) chose question 2 from stage one of the research, or, "You did extremely well in your first attempt at flying, and that was with a standard-issue school broomstick. Do you think having a Nimbus 2000 will help you that much more, or could you be a Quidditch champion with any broomstick?" The "most creative" responses from the group wrote on this particular question.

In summary, although the SMART Board test group did not outperform the blackboard control group with "more creative" responses during stage two of the research, they did identify a well-documented distinction between gender abilities at age twelve (Gormley, 1992; Thomas, 1994), and they did identify those questions that are most likely to elicit more creative responses from students studying Harry Potter in the intermediate years. Rather than a conclusion to this research, what follows is a portion of the curriculum, using the questions from stage one, which was able to be developed from the SMART Board technology.

Developing a Harry Potter Curriculum
Once questions, which work towards stimulating good creative writing, are developed, teachers often look for ways to "publish" such work in a classroom setting. It is appropriate, at this point of the curriculum, if students can generate publishing ideas of their own. The students involved in the SMART Board research took all of their creative responses, from both groups, and merged them together to create their own "Daily Prophet" newspaper, a news flyer that they thought would resemble Rita Skeeter's column in Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000). Below is an illustration of this paper, as the students themselves conceived it, unedited, in its original form:

THE DAILY PROPHET

THE DAILY PROPHET

A RITA SKEETER EXCLUSIVE
INTERVIEW WITH HARRY POTTER

Using her famous "Quick-quill" to "puncture many an inflated ego", our own Rita Skeeter captured a rare interview with the now famous Harry Potter. Here are some of the questions she asked Harry:

Endnotes
i. The "Quick-Quill Quotes" are magical, sensational, heretical responses to questions, as the introductory excerpt from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire illustrates.
ii. Responses with the highest TTCT score.
iii. In stage one, there were some technical problems with e-mail, as noted.

References
Gormley, Kathleen. (1992). Gender Differences in Classroom Writing: An analysis of sixth grade students' reader response entries. Northeastern Educational Research Association, Oc. 27-28.

Ontario Ministry of Education and Training. (2000) EQAO Assessment: Grade 3. Toronto: Queen's Printer.

Rowling, J.K. (2000). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Thomas, Peter. (1994). Writing, Reading, and Gender. Gifted Education International, 9(3): 154-158.

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