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What Animals Can Teach Us About Creativity

Creativity has become one of the most desired skills to possess in the 21st century. Creativity is envisioned to be the answer to rapid automation that is taking away routine jobs and the essential ingredient for solving complex global problems we currently face. Creativity, being a uniquely human trait, has allowed us to adapt and thrive as a species so far and can potentially do so in the future as well. 

But is creativity really unique to humans or do other species show any evidence of creativity? 

Understanding how creativity evolved in other animals can help us better understand our own creative abilities. Recent research suggests that creativity is a spectrum with other animal species showing rudimentary forms of creativity. 

Animal Creativity Spectrum

According to one model, creativity is a spectrum that starts with novelty recognition and seeking, followed by observational learning and finally progresses to innovation. 

  • Novelty Recognition: At the most basic level, an animal has to be able to assess their environment and recognize if there is anything novel or different in the environment. How an animal responds once they detect novelty can lead to either neophobia or neophilia. In an interesting experiment with orangutans, researchers discovered the “captivity effect” with respect to creativity. They presented a set of novel objects to both wild orangutans and captive orangutans in zoos. They found that captive orangutans were more willing to explore novel objects than their wild peers who exhibited high levels of neophobia. In captive environments, orangutans are more frequently exposed to novel items that turn out to be pleasurable (e.g. treats hidden in toys) and over time they built positive associations towards novelty. They also built more trust with their human caretakers and are more willing to explore objects handed to them by humans. In contrast, wild orangutans view novelty with suspicion and are significantly less willing to take risks. 
  • Novelty Seeking: Beyond the ability to recognize novelty in the environment is the desire to seek novelty, which requires some risk taking. For example, male bowerbirds are known for their novel courtship dances. The success of their courtship ritual depends on the intensity and attractiveness of the display. However, too much novelty can deter females so male bowerbirds adjust their dance based on the reactions they get. By reducing the level of novelty when needed, the bowerbirds are able to increase their chances of mating. This ability to modulate the level of novelty is essential for creativity, as the novel outcome also needs to be useful in order to be creative.  
  • Observational Learning: The first two stages of the creativity spectrum deal with creativity at an individual level but this third stage allows creativity to spread from an individual to a larger group. When animals can copy one another they learn and adapt faster to their environment. In a study of capuchin monkeys, researchers found that younger monkeys who were less adept at using stones to crack nuts, spent more time observing more proficient monkeys. This social learning ability allows the younger capuchin monkeys to get better at scrounging faster than discovering techniques themselves.  
  • Innovation: At the highest level of creativity is the creation of a novel product in order to solve a problem. An example of this is tool creation or modification in animals to access food more readily. New caledonian crows are highly intelligent and known for their sophisticated tool use. In one experiment, researchers presented a crow with a setup containing food and an aluminum strip that needed to be bent or unbent in order to get to the food source. In each of the trials, the bird was able to successfully modify the tool and get their reward. 

Lessons From Animal Creativity

Rudimentary creativity skills demonstrated by different animal species give us clues about our own creativity. Here are three lessons from the animal world that apply to human creativity as well:

  • Psychological Safety: While we don’t live in the wild anymore like orangutans, we still need safety in order to be fully creative. A psychological safe environment makes it easier for people to explore ideas and share them with others. In other words, safe environments move us towards neophilia whereas in unsafe ones we tend to shut down. 
  • Openness to Experience: The novelty seeking behavior is similar to the “openness to experience” trait. In general, people who are more open to new experiences tend to be more creative than others. But just like bowerbirds, this novelty seeking needs to be balanced as too much of it can be risky. 
  • Social Learning: We learn more from others than we do from individual exploration. Most of the innovation we see around us is incremental – it builds up on other existing ideas. Our ability to learn from others, coupled with our ability to imagine different scenarios, has allowed us to innovate at much larger scales than other species. 

While most people consider creativity to be a uniquely human trait, evidence from the nonhuman animals suggests otherwise. Creativity evolved in order to help us better adapt and survive in our environments, and elements of it abound in the animal world. Given the daunting challenges we face today that threaten our survival, we need creativity and innovation now more than ever. 

This article first appeared on edCircuit.

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Improving Student Motivation in High Stakes Environments

Over a period of 5 years, from 2000 to 2005, the US slipped from being ranked 18th in the world in math to being 40th and from 15th to 24th in reading. While many reasons have been proposed for this decline in education, like increasing diversity and rising poverty levels, one factor that has gained increasing attention is standardized testing. 

Standardized testing by itself is a useful tool to see how schools are performing. However, when standardized testing becomes an accountability tool — where schools, teachers or students are rewarded or penalized based on test outcomes — tests become high-stakes and carry the potential for damage. Standardized testing had been in use in the US for many decades but starting with the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, testing became much more high stakes which then changed teaching patterns in classrooms. 

Reduction of Intrinsic Motivation

The main problem with high stakes testing is that it incentivizes all players — schools, teachers and students — in ways that don’t help in deeper learning. Instead of tapping teachers’ and students’ intrinsic motivation, it imposes strong extrinsic motivators on them. 

With school funding tied to test scores on limited subjects, time spent on teaching other subjects declined. An analysis on schools and districts found that 70% of school districts reported a focus on reading and mathematics that reduced instructional time for other subjects. 

The motivation effect extends to students as well. Teachers inadvertently pass on extrinsic motivators in the forms of excessive focus on scores or grades to students, instead of having more discussions in the classroom. As more instruction time is spent on preparing for tests, students have less time to be curious and connect their learning to the real world. As a result, students start losing interest in learning itself and no longer find schooling meaningful. 

This is especially harmful for student creativity, which relies on a well-rounded education. Creativity comes from having knowledge in several areas and being able to find connections between domains. When instruction and exploration time in other subjects like science, social studies, arts and music, are cut down the overall creativity of a child reduces. This is one reason that creativity scores of students have declined significantly over the last few decades. 

Strategies to increase motivation and learning outcomes

When high stakes testing is part of the educational culture, are there some ways to limit the harmful aspects and still achieve good learning outcomes? 

In one study conducted at Chicago Public Schools (CPS), researchers tracked low-achieving students from five elementary schools in a high stakes environment. CPS implemented a policy to end social promotion where students would be held back in the current grade if they failed to achieve a minimum score on standardized tests in reading and mathematics. The researchers found that there was a significant difference in outcomes between schools with the top performing school having 4x lower retention rate than the worst performing school. 

The top performing school employed strategies that better supported students in achieving their goals.

  • Positive, goal-focused environment: Teachers created a more positive and supportive environment for students, where students felt that the teachers personally cared for their success. The teachers frequently brought up the student goals, determined ways for them to achieve them and praised the effort students were making. All of these strategies created an environment where students’ social connection motivated them to exert more effort. As one student expressed, “She says we better try. She plays around saying she doesn’t want to see us again next year, that it’s time for us to leave… she’s usually clowning around but she’s telling the truth…She cares about all the children… She shows us by teaching us more stuff and giving us examples of the test.”
  • Shared expectations: Teachers in the high performing school created a sense of responsibility for the whole group. They nurtured an environment where not just the teacher-student relationship mattered but also the peer interactions. When students perceive that their peers are on their side and want them to succeed, their motivation increases. 
  • Support outside of regular school hours: The CPS effort also provided other avenues of support including after-school programs and summer school. These extra avenues gave students a significant boost in academic support. A majority of the students who increased their effort levels participated in after-school programs or tutoring that extended the in-class instruction. They were able to get more work done by themselves and did more homework than students who only attended regular school. 

These factors helped increase social and intrinsic motivation among students, providing a counterbalance to high-stakes extrinsic motivation. As the researchers note, “Thus, the social context of learning—how teachers, parents, and peers interact with students in relation to the policy—may be the most important factor in determining how students respond to the incentive.”

Conclusion

The standardized testing environment that is now an integral part of the US educational system will not change overnight. While there are advantages to measuring student performance, tying those results to incentives for schools or teachers creates harmful effects that lower intrinsic motivation and learning outcomes. Despite that, there are strategies schools and educators can use to build a more caring and supportive environment in their classrooms to help students achieve their learning goals. 

This article first appeared on edCircuit. 

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Mint, Electric Cars and How Creativity Can Flourish In Remote Environments

Why are most toothpastes mint flavored? The answer has nothing to do with any cleaning ability that mint might possess (it doesn’t). 

Most people didn’t brush their teeth every day until Claude Hopkins, a savvy marketing executive, hit upon the idea of selling toothpaste as a beauty product where mint played a key role. Mint oil leaves a numbing, tingling sensation that people learned to associate with cleanliness and over time started craving that sensation. As Charles Duhigg explains in his book, The Power of Habit, “Claude Hopkins, it turns out, wasn’t selling beautiful teeth. He was selling a sensation. Once people craved that cool tingling—once they equated it with cleanliness—brushing became a habit.”

Mint doesn’t actually clean teeth – it simply leaves us with a more satisfied feeling. 

When electric cars were first introduced, they produced so little noise that pedestrians and cyclists would often not detect their presence. This created a safety hazard and most electric cars now come with added artificial sounds. The extra noise doesn’t improve the driving performance of the car, but it helps make it safer. 

Traditional brainstorming, done in-person as a group, is a little like mint in toothpaste or fake noise in electric cars, both of which don’t help the core functionality but have side advantages. Brainstorming with friends or colleagues helps build social connection, which in limited amounts, can aid creativity. There is a key difference though – traditional group brainstorming performs worse when compared to individual brainstorming. 

The Challenges Of Traditional Brainstorming 

The traditional brainstorming method was the brainchild of Alex Osborn, an executive in the advertising industry. Osborn’s original brainstorming approach characterized by four key principles – ‘Deferment of judgment’, ‘Quantity breeds quality’, ‘Free-wheeling is encouraged’ and ‘Combination and improvement are sought’ – quickly became popular everywhere. 

However, while the popularity of Osborn’s brainstorming was rising, research studies were discovering that traditional brainstorming guidelines weren’t really the best way to find creative ideas. A study at Yale found that the number of ideas produced by individuals working alone (nominal group) and then aggregated, was twice that of a group working together (real group).  

Multiple studies since then have found that traditional brainstorming suffers from logistical and psychological factors that decrease the throughput of creative ideas. A few of these factors are:

  • Production Blocking: In traditional brainstorming people have to take turns sharing their ideas. Due to short term memory limitations, individuals might forget their ideas or lose their train of thought while they are waiting for their turn. People also sometimes choose not to share an idea that appears similar to what has already been said. As a result, the overall throughput of ideas declines. 
  • Evaluation Apprehension: The fear of being judged negatively makes people hold back their ideas in a social group. This is all the more true of ideas that are very different and therefore might be the most innovative. Research studies have shown that just the presence of a leader or an expert reduces the creativity of the ideas of the group. 
  • Free Riding: Also known as social loafing, free riding occurs when individuals in a group reduce their own effort. This can happen for two reasons. One, when people see others performing at a high level they don’t see the need to contribute more and can ‘hide’ in the group. Or, when people expect others to loaf they reduce their own effort so as to establish a more equitable division of labor. As a result, fewer and less creative ideas get generated. 

That’s what makes traditional brainstorming so tricky. Like mint, it feels more satisfying to brainstorm together with others. And like the noise in electric cars, it makes us feel more safe when we can modulate our ideas based on what others bring to the table. Unfortunately, this comes at a cost – brainstorming as a group makes us less creative.

Brainstorming In The Remote Setting

The difference between the performance of nominal and real groups in brainstorming indicates an obvious way to structure brainstorming sessions that fit well in a remote setting. Ideation can be split into two phases – the first phase is individual brainstorming done asynchronously (perfect for the remote environment) to gather initial ideas, and the second phase is a group session where ideas are developed further. 

The first phase mimics the nominal group but the goal of the second phase is a little different from typical brainstorming. In the second phase, everyone looks at the ideas collaboratively, which can spur additional thoughts or lead to some interesting associations between different ideas. The second phase can be done synchronously in-person, synchronously remote or even asynchronously with the aid of some tools. 

While brainstorming can very effectively be moved online, it’s only one part of the innovation equation. It’s still important to build social and emotional elements that create a healthy creative climate. One of the advantages of traditional brainstorming is that the extra social connection helps build trust making it easier to share ideas.  

Organizations will need to deliberately build a healthy culture that allows innovation to flourish at different levels. A few strategies that help with that are:

  • Building a better understanding of creativity: Despite decades of research in this area, most people still have a simplistic understanding of creativity and don’t view themselves as creative. They lack the tools and confidence to approach problems with a creative mindset. Building cognitive (like associative or reverse thinking) and behavioral skills that foster creativity can start people on their creative journeys. 
  • Focusing on innovation-specific emotional intelligence: Leaders can also inadvertently squash creativity. A leader’s emotional intelligence plays a big role in supporting creative work which invariably comes with some anxiety and frustration. A Yale study found that not only are employees of emotionally intelligent leaders more creative, they are also three times more likely to say they are happy than stressed. Leaders also need to build psychological safety in the team so everyone can share their ideas more freely, and find diverse voices within and across teams. 
  • Providing creative opportunities: Providing creative opportunities that allow people to exercise their skills not only helps with innovation, it also builds social connection and trust between different parts of an organization. 

Conclusion

The last year and a half of the pandemic has upended work expectations creating knowledge and awareness that remote and hybrid work is here to stay. The initial focus for organizations was to ensure that people have the right tools to continue their work remotely. However, this isn’t enough. Data from a recent survey shows that employees are struggling to share their ideas. Looking further ahead, organizations will need to evolve in ways that achieve innovation along with productivity. 

Since the shift to remote work, people have been concerned about the impact on creativity. It’s one of the most cited reasons for returning to work in person. But as research indicates, it is possible to maintain or even enhance creativity in a remote environment. We now have an opportunity to redefine practices and cultures to achieve higher levels of innovation and productivity whether people work remotely or not. 

This article first appeared on edCircuit.

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Why We Should Celebrate Everyday Creativity

“I am not a creative person!” is a fairly common refrain to hear when people talk about their own creativity. Most people associate creativity with eminent people like Einstein or Mozart, but completely overlook their own creative acts. However, these smaller creative acts that we engage in everyday life, like finding a new way to optimize a routine or coming up with a new way to teach a concept, are highly beneficial both as an individual and at a larger societal level. 

Ruth Richards talks about the lack of attention we give to everyday creativity in terms of the 3 U’s: “Our creativity is often underrecognized, underdeveloped, and underrewarded, in schools, at work, and at home. Why is it, after all, that in so many schools students are trying to get 100% on someone else’s test and not making up more questions of their own?”

Our everyday creativity is a universal ability that gives us survival advantages – it allows us to adapt to changing environments and handle new situations. It also equips us to better handle life’s ups and downs and lead happier, more fulfilling lives. Here are key reasons to celebrate everyday creativity, both at work and in schools. 

Paving the road to bigger creativity 

Joseph Renzulli discovered that creative accomplishments arise from an interaction between three clusters of traits – above-average ability, creative thinking skills and perseverance. It’s impossible to come up with a ground breaking theory in physics without having a deep understanding of physics, approaching the problem with multiple different perspectives and spending immense hours trying to solve it. 

Everyday creativity works the same way with all the traits scaled down for smaller, “little-c”, creative accomplishments. Most people already possess the ability to handle everyday tasks and the needed perseverance to make small innovations. The primary advantage of everyday creativity, then, is in providing a fertile ground for building creative reasoning skills and building creative confidence. Building creative problem skills in smaller ways paves the way for higher creative accomplishments over time. 

Everyday Creativity in Schools

A recent trend in invention related education is to challenge students to solve bigger societal problems like global warming. While there is nothing wrong in educating children about the problem, asking them to find creative ways to solve global challenges actually does the opposite – it drives them towards more unoriginal ideas.  Most students lack the scientific or technical knowledge to meaningfully address such challenges. So their solutions end up looking more like “awareness campaigns” that aim to influence others to invest in or solve the problem. 

Posing big, global problems is the equivalent of asking students to solve calculus problems while they are still grappling with basic number operations, or asking them to write essays when they are still figuring out paragraphs. They rob students from the opportunity to build creative thinking skills.  

Instead, we need to provide opportunities where students can pick areas that they are intimately familiar with to apply their creative thinking. For example, some of the invention challenges that we have posed to students are redesigning school supplies or designing a useful gadget for their pets, areas that students fully understand and can innovate in. 

Everyday Creativity at Work

Everyday creativity doesn’t just help individuals in their journey from little-c to big-C creativity, they also help group outcomes. When companies harness the everyday creativity of their employees, they can create solutions that are similar or better than what experts would produce. 

In one experiment, software programmers from all over the world participated in a challenge to solve a complex immunogenomics problem. The participants, roughly half of whom were students, didn’t come from academic or industrial computational biology. Despite that, several solutions outperformed industry standard software used as benchmarks, and the top most solution was two to three orders of magnitude faster than the benchmark solutions. 

While each participant didn’t possess domain expertise or exceptional creativity, as an aggregate the group performed like an eminently creative person. Establishing a system to channel individual little-c creativity among employees can help solve much bigger problems effectively and provide a strong competitive advantage to companies.  

Building a healthy, positive attitude

Our human creativity affects our health, well-being and personal growth. It enhances our social-emotional as well as our intellectual development. 

Everyday Creativity in Schools

Higher creativity is associated with better coping skills to deal with stress and anxiety among students. When students are able to think in more divergent and flexible ways about problems, they come up with original and better ways to solve their problems. Higher creativity is also associated with higher self esteem, better ability to handle ambiguity, better mental health and optimism. In a study designed to understand the effect of creativity on the ability to handle stresses, researchers found that students that rated higher on creative thinking, were also better at handling stressful situations. The researchers noted,

“Any effort on the part of parents, teachers, or other professionals to encourage and provide opportunities for the enhancement of children’s creative thinking skills may have secondary payoffs with regard to their coping abilities. In this regard, children may respond much more readily to creative-thinking opportunities than stress management or social skills training workshops or classes.”

Everyday Creativity at Work

Several research studies have highlighted the relationship between creativity and positive affect. Engaging in creative problem solving as part of work increases a sense of accomplishment and purpose. In a study on organizational creativity across several industries, researchers found that the majority of the participants reported a primary positive reaction of joy, pride, satisfaction and relief. A couple verbatim comments capture the positive emotions felt by participants as they engaged in successful creative problem solving. 

 “I really enjoy the type of work I was doing today—like solving a great big puzzle and using really great tools to do it.” (A female participant in a high-tech company)

“.|.|. [In] consideration of the enormous complexity and machinery involvement, I was forced to think. An alternative idea soon came to mind. [Description of the idea.] This not only simplifies our [current] trial tremendously, it also vastly increases the probability of success for the [trial next week]. It alternatively saves about six man days of labor, a week of schedule time, and over a thousand dollars in outside cleaning costs. This WIN-WIN eureka boosted our

spirits and let us finish the week on a high note.” (Male participant in a chemicals company)

Everyday creativity is a skill that we all possess but often forget. Engaging in small creative acts, especially at younger ages, can help pave the path for bigger creative accomplishments later in life. And perhaps, even more importantly, help us lead happier lives. 

This article first appeared on edCircuit.

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3 Ways Creativity Improves Mental Health

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This year mental health is of particular concern among students due to the impact of Covid-19 and school closures. CDC data found that mental health related emergency visits among K-12 students increased by 25% – 31% last year. Several survey results show that student mental health issues have exacerbated during the pandemic. In one survey, over half of teen students indicated that they faced mental health challenges like anxiety and trouble concentrating, and a third of the parents indicated that their child’s emotional and mental health had become worse during the pandemic.  

These sobering statistics were further compounded by the fact that many approaches to mitigating mental health issues like healthy social interactions or building trusted relationships were harder to do with school closures. 

When social connection is not easy, individual practices can help. Teaching students mindfulness meditation has shown to reduce anxiety and stress. However, in this article we will look at a somewhat less known way to improve mental wellbeing –  engaging in creative problem solving and building a creativity mindset. 

Stress and Coping Skills

Creative thinking skills allow students to approach daily challenges more effectively.  In a study of 3rd to 6th grade students, researchers found that students who scored higher on creative thinking, had better coping skills in the school environment and exhibited fewer disruptive behaviors.  

As the researchers explained, “The ability of children to keep an open mind and not judge or reach conclusions about people, situations or problems too impulsively may be a significant factor in successfully managing the stresses of daily life. Also, the ability of children to maintain flexibility of thought and to generate ideas that are not only fluent in number but original may contribute significantly to successful coping.”

In addition, the study also noted that students may respond more readily to creative thinking opportunities than training workshops on stress management and social skills. 

Other research has shown that creative people are more comfortable being on the “edge of chaos”, are better at reframing challenges into opportunities, and less likely to withdraw from college or fail academically. 

In other words, teaching children creative thinking has the secondary benefit of building better coping and stress management skills, that can last well into adulthood. 

Interpersonal Skills

In a study to understand the relationship between creativity and interpersonal problem solving, researchers tracked K-8 students over a period of two years. They found that creative thinking, and in particular ideational fluency – the ability to come up with several ideas – was significantly correlated to different aspects of interpersonal problem solving. 

One potential reason for this is that both creativity and interpersonal problem solving involves related underlying skills – coming up with several solutions, evaluating the impact of ideas and flexibly adapting to different situations to produce novel outcomes. 

Another study showed that more creative children displayed less aggression than less creative children. Research also seems to suggest that creativity is related to successful aging and longevity. 

Higher Values

Abraham Maslow studied creative people and talked about self-actualizing (SA) creativeness which came from possessing an “openness to experience” attitude, and displayed itself in everyday life. SA creative people were not just eminent people who produced groundbreaking work, but also regular people who approached everyday situations with creativity. As he explained, “I learned from her and others like her that a first-rate soup is better than a second-rate painting, and that, generally, cooking or parenthood or making a home could be creative while poetry need not be; it could be uncreative.”

More interestingly, Maslow found that SA creative people seemed happier, more at peace and more fulfilled. They were more motivated with higher values like truth goodness and beauty, and focused more on larger endeavors. 

These qualities are good for individual growth but are much more important for solving larger societal issues and driving social progress. 

Teaching Creativity

Often the most effective interventions are those that don’t even appear to be so. Building more creative thinking skills has a spillover effect into daily life. Creative people are able to use their cognitive style in a flexible and open manner to solve problems and cope with daily life stresses. Teaching creativity has the potential to develop more well-rounded and well-adjusted citizens. Unfortunately, despite being a critical 21st century skill, creativity isn’t often taught often or encouraged in schools. 

As Dr. Richards, an advocate for teaching more creativity, laments in Everyday Creativity, “How odd it may seem, considering the benefits, that we do not stress everyday creativity more in schools, homes, businesses, healthcare settings, senior centers, and centers for personal growth and development. Why, one may ask again, is our creativity so hidden or diminished (or underrecognized, underdeveloped, and underrewarded)?”

This article first appeared on edCircuit.

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World Creativity and Innovation Week: April 15 – April 21

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, marked by an increased use of AI and automation, is expected to have a profound impact on the workforce. 

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report found that by 2022, machines and algorithms will increase their contribution to specific tasks by 57% and in some categories of jobs the ratio of work done by machines vs. humans is going to tip towards machines. Tasks that are repetitive in nature and involve sequential thinking are easy targets for automation. Creative, non-linear ways of thinking are much harder to automate and future job growth is expected to come primarily from the creative domain. As the report outlines, “Proficiency in new technologies is only one part of the 2022 skills equation, however, as ‘human’ skills such as creativity, originality and initiative, critical thinking, persuasion, and negotiation will likewise retain or increase their value.”

Creativity is no longer just nice-to-have, it is now an indispensable skill for students to build. 

The UN recognized the growing importance of creativity, and in 2017 it designated April 21st as the World Creativity and Innovation Day (WCID). Their goal is to raise the awareness of the role of creativity and innovation in human and economic development. April 21, the day before Earth Day, April 22, was deliberately chosen to emphasize the role creativity plays in solving global challenges to create a sustainable planet.

The origin of the WCID goes back several years. It was founded in 2001 by Marci Segal, after seeing an article on the Canadian Creativity Crisis. Having studied creativity at the International Center for Studies in Creativity, SUNY Buffalo earlier, she decided to raise awareness around creativity and its impact around the world. In 2006, the day expanded to a week-long celebration starting on April 15th, Leonardo daVinci’s birthday, and culminating on April 21st. The World Creativity and Innovation Week (WCIW) was born!  

WCIW starts next week on Thursday (4/15) and there are several events planned for that week. Here are a few fun events geared towards building and encouraging student creativity. 

  • Seven-Day CreateTUBEity Challenge, April 15-21 12 pm EST: Dr. Cyndi Burnett, Creativity expert and Director of Possibilities at Creativity and Education, and children’s book author Barney Saltzberg, are going to subject themselves to a new creativity challenge led by a different creativity expert each day from around the world. Join them for a FREE daily 15-minute live-stream event on CreateTubeity. Appropriate for the young, and the young at heart!
  • Global Innovation Field Trip (GIFT), April 17th-April 18th: GIFT is a 24-hour, virtual, multi-country event hosting presentations from innovators currently spanning 28 countries. Young innovators and educators from across the globe will share their ideas to support and inspire innovation, and the event is free for anyone to attend. “GIFT provides an excellent platform for students to share their stories of innovation with a global audience and inspires educators to incorporate innovation, invention, language, culture and a variety of other subjects utilizing STEAM skills into their regular daily lessons,” says Juli Shively, GIFT Co-Founder and COO of Innovation World. 
  • Belouga’s Creativity and Innovation Playlist: To inspire students and educators to learn more about creativity, Belouga has created a playlist of lessons for the World Creativity and Innovation Day. There are over 50 lessons corresponding to over 30hrs of content, covering many different aspects of creativity in our lives. 

I hope you can find time to join in these creativity focused events next week, or be creative in your own way! And if you choose to do your own creative activity, don’t forget to register it with WCIW and share with others. 

This article first appeared on edCircuit. 

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Creativity Hack: Doodle To Discover Your Assumptions

We are starting a new blog category called “Creativity Hacks”. Each blog will contain one concrete technique that can be used in the classroom to help bring out student creativity. Our first one is a technique to help students find underlying assumptions they hold. 

About The Hack

A highly effective creativity technique is to reverse a commonly-held assumption which often gives radically new insights. 

When we teach our invention class one of the tasks we give students is to find an assumption they are making about the object of their innovation. As a warm up activity, we play a game called “Opposite Day”, where students work in teams and pick an assumption to reverse and present their solution to the rest of the class in about 5 minutes. For example, if the assumption is “Tables have legs”, then students have to reverse it (“Tables don’t have legs”) and then find a design or a situation where the reversal will make sense. When we gave this prompt to one group, they came up with a table that is held up with wires attached to the ceiling and can be lowered when needed or raised to make more space in the room. 

The nice thing about this technique is that it often gives very original ideas that one would normally not come up with. However, we found that while older students (middle school and up) are reasonably comfortable with coming up with assumptions themselves, elementary students have a harder time. They are able to come up with solutions once an assumption is given to them, but finding an underlying assumption itself is tricky. 

This brings us to a creativity hack we discovered. We found that asking students to first draw their object and then question each part of their drawing makes it easier for them to identify assumptions they can subsequently work with. We all hold mental models of objects that reflect commonly found real world implementations. By doodling we bring to surface the salient features of the object model, which can then be used to generate new ideas. 

Summary

Finally, here is a quick summary of the creativity hack and how to use it with students.

DescriptionDoodling your idea can help surface assumptions you hold about the object or idea. Once surfaced, it’s easier to reverse those assumptions and get new insights.
ExampleIf you ask students to draw a table they will typically draw a rectangular surface with four legs. They then question each part – “Should tables have four or any legs?”, “Does the tabletop have to be one flat surface?”. Examining each question can give students fresh ideas and insights for designing a new kind of table. 
Tips Give students <1min to doodle their object in order to bring out the most common held model.Reiterate to students that the quality of the drawing isn’t important but drawing all parts is. 
ExtensionsWhile we have used this technique on concrete objects (invention, design thinking), it is possible to extend this to abstract concepts like biases. For example, if students are asked to doodle a scientist, do most of them draw a man in a lab coat? If so, it can lead to a good discussion about women as scientists and different kinds of scientific disciplines. 
Hack: Doodle To Discover Your Assumptions

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Inventor Spotlight: Geeth Nunna

Our featured student inventor is Geeth Nunna, who created an interesting storage pouch. Her idea won a national level award as part of the “Student Ideas for a Better America” competition organized by the National Museum of Education. 

Here is Geeth talking about her invention in more detail.  

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

My name is Geeth Nunna and I’m in 5th grade! My interests-hobbies-favorite subjects consist of video games, social network, drama, acting, music, science, social studies, etc. And, my dream job(s) are to be a model, an actor, or a doctor/investigator helping discover new medical research.

What is your invention and how does it work?

My invention is a multi conventional storage pouch! Basically it has several layers, and each layer has a certain item(s), for example: The top layer has your pens, while the bottom layers have something else like your notes, food, or anything else of your choice.

What inspired you to develop this invention?

At the time I had made this invention, I was very interested in d.i.y’s. However, as I researched further about these “do it yourself” crafts they were very harmful to the environment as they used lots of plastics that couldn’t be recycled. So I decided to make something that could be used as several things, a lunch box, pencil case, cosmetics case, etc. And not only is this invention making less waste, it’s also made out of recycled items, so that it can be made out of someone else’s waste, and when the owner wants to throw it away it can also be re-recycled.

Did your prototype work? How was that experience? 

Yes my prototype did work on the first try, however our inventions had to be made out of cardboard and paper. Yet I still managed to make it work!

What are some things you learned from your MindAntix camp that will help you in the future? 

I learned a lot about adapting to new situations. For example, if one of my ideas didn’t work, I learned to change it to make it more useful for my purpose rather than trash the whole idea itself.

Who is your favorite inventor and why? 

My favorite inventor is George Washington Carver. This is because, to me, the whole purpose of inventing is for safety to people and the planet. Mr. Carver found 300 uses for peanuts again being resourceful and his creativity with the plant helped the whole world, and using one thing to make several others is another way of reproducing, again also helping the planet!

What kind of problems do you want to solve in the future?

I want to help the loss of animals in the ocean, due to litter. And I also want to help the homeless! 

How will you use your prize money? 

I’m not too sure right now, but I’m sure that I’ll find a good purpose for it.

Congratulations Geeth for winning the award! We hope to see you solve bigger challenges in the future.

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Inventor Spotlight: Pahal Sah

Our featured student inventor is Pahal Sah, who created a more useful backpack. Her idea won a national level award as part of the “Student Ideas for a Better America” competition organized by the National Museum of Education. 

Here is Pahal talking about her invention in more detail.  

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Hi! I’m Pahal Sah, a 5th Grade Quest student at Albert Einstein Elementary. I love reading books about mystery and fiction, arts and crafts, playing board games, and playing with friends! My favorite subjects are Reading and Social Studies, mainly because of the fun projects we have.

What is your invention and how does it work?

My Invention is the Fluffy Carrier 9000, and it is a backpack, a normal one, but with a few extra features. One of them is the wheels and handle, like a suitcase. Whenever you pull the handle, wheels pop out of the bottom. I also added an expandable pocket in the middle, and if you unstrap it, the other side turns into a blanket! There are many pockets for school supplies, and another great part is that the backpack itself is waterproof.  

What inspired you to develop this invention?

Two problems inspired me – how wet backpacks got during rainy days, and that most of the time I couldn’t fit all my supplies in my bag at school. It was a real pain carrying my water bottle, folder, and lunchbox while trying to board a bus.

Did your prototype work? How was that experience? 

Yes, my prototype worked! I made a bag using construction paper; the hardest part was shaping it. I’m pretty sure I used some cardboard for the base, and I decorated it with even more “pockets”. For the wheel, I taped a small circle and the handle, I used a piece of construction paper to sort that out. I was very happy at the end when my prototype looked like an actual backpack! 

What are some things you learned from your MindAntix camp that will help you in the future? 

To think out of the box and to be creative. Later, I will have to make my own ideas not copy them from other people. I really loved how we were supposed to make our own inventions! 

Who is your favorite inventor and why? 

I don’t really have a favorite inventor. All the inventors stand out to me!

What kind of problems do you want to solve in the future?

In the future, I want to solve the problems that are affecting nature such as Global Warming, helping save endangered animals, and more. 

How will you use your prize money? 

I actually haven’t thought about that…maybe to get something I really want? Or maybe I could use it to get a new game or book!

Congratulations Pahal for winning the award! We hope to see you solve bigger challenges in the future.

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Inventor Spotlight: Manan Ghosh

Our featured student inventor is Manan Ghosh, who designed an interesting board game. His idea won a national level award as part of the “Student Ideas for a Better America” competition organized by the National Museum of Education. 

Here is Manan talking about his game in more detail.  

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

My name is Manan Ghosh. I’m in 5th Grade Quest at Ella Baker Elementary School in Redmond. My favorite subjects are Science and Math. During my free time I like to play Minecraft and build items in Paint 3D that I can use in Minecraft. My dream job is to be a scientist.

What is your invention and how does it work?

My invention is a board game called “Castles at Battle”. In the game, you move your pawn across the board to collect  resources such as Wood, Rock, Metal and Bricks. You then use these resources to build parts of your castle that then do battle with each other. As part of this, you can enhance the defenses of your castle by adding  things like Walls, Towers and Drawbridges, using the resources that you have collected. Resources also let you attack your opponent’s castles by buying attacks, like Knight Attack and Archer Attack. It is a game of moves and countermoves, as you try to get enough resources to defend your own castle while also collecting resources to attack your opponent. You win if you eliminate all other players, this is done by sending out an attack that deals more attack points then the defense points of the other castle.

What inspired you to develop this invention?

I like games involving war and when you have to focus on more than one thing to win. Making 3-D models of castles, walls and towers was a lot of fun and made playing the game more real.

Did your prototype work? How was that experience? 

I could not finish my prototype though I did make some of the 3D printed items for my game. Since it was my first time doing 3D printing and my game pieces were a bit complex, it took me more time than I expected. It was still a lot of fun.

What are some things you learned from your MindAntix camp that will help you in the future? 

I learned how to design 3D objects using new tools and print them. I have played board games, but it is different to think about board games from the point of view of the designer. You have to think about different things.

Who is your favorite inventor and why? 

Leonardo Da Vinci is my favorite inventor. He was an artist and also made many inventions in various fields.

What kind of problems do you want to solve in the future?

I would like to find ways to solve the problem of too much plastic and pollution in the oceans.

How will you use your prize money? 

I will save my money until I find some good use for it.

Congratulations Manan for winning the award! We hope you enjoy playing your board game with your friends and family.