A Plug 4 Creativity & Innovation

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“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.”

— Roger von Oech

 

 

Why do we need to Innovate?

Being creative and innovative doesn’t always mean that you’re crafty or a great artist. Creativity and innovation includes characteristics such as taking the perspective of others, accepting failure as an opportunity to learn, or being bold.  Do you think you could kick you creativity up a notch?  According to the article “How To Be More Creative” you can increase your creativity by; developing your questioning ability and elaboration skills along with increasing your ability to  shift perspectives easily.

Creativity and Innovation are defined by the Partnership  for 21st Century Skills (www.p21.org) as students being able to;  think creatively , work creatively with others, and implement innovations.  To increase creativity and innovation skills in your students, give the concept of conceptual blending a try.  Conceptual blending takes two dissimilar scenarios and uses creative thinking skills to make them work together.  The blog post Conceptual Blending for Creative Thinking by Thoughtful Learning explains the concept further and gives numerous examples of how to implement conceptual blending in the classroom.

 

“We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.”

— John Cleese

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

— Dr. Linus Pauling

 

 

“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.”

— Anthony Jay

A Plug 4 Collaboration ~

Unity is strength…when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.

Mattie Stepanek

 

 

When you hear the word “collaboration”, what first comes to mind?  Working together?  Being part of a team?  Co-labor? Absolutely!  But what do these descriptions really mean?  What are the roles and responsibilities of each person in a collaborative group?  According to the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills, collaboration includes the following attributes:

• Working effectively and respectfully with diverse teams
• Flexibility and willingness to be helpful in compromises to achieve a common goal
• Sharing responsibility for collaborative work and valuing individual contributions made by each team member (www.p21.org)

As educators, we can easily identify times we collaborate with our peers and coworkers.  Team meetings, professional learning communities, school and district committees are just a few of the myriad of collaborative opportunities we encounter in our professional realm.  When we participate in these settings, we discover that we perform the skills above without laborious thought.  We simply… collaborate!

How did we learn these skills?  How did we know the unstated rules for collaborating successfully with others?  By practice and guidance, of course!  Collaborative skills, while seemingly natural to us as adults, do not appear as easily in the behaviors of the students with whom we teach.  Often, we have to model, model, and model again the basic elements of collaboration in order for our students to be successful with this process.

The collaborative process has exploded with the digital age.  No longer are we forced to collaborate face-to-face to complete projects and tasks.  Even phone calls and emails have been upgraded to include virtual conferencing and online social networking.  For digital immigrants (that would be us), these modes of collaboration can be overwhelming and daunting at times.  For digital natives (namely our students), it’s simply the way the world operates. 

We hope this month’s blog will provide inspiration for new ways you can use collaboration in your profession and with your students.  Together we can achieve great things!

A Plug 4 Communication ~

Welcome to the first edition of the ITRT Blog! We are “Plugged In” to 21st century teaching and learning, and hope this will empower you to “Plug In” too. This digital publication will be sent to you each month to keep you informed of 21st century skills, great things happening in Hanover, Tools, Content ideas, websites, and PD opportunities.

This month we are focusing on the 21st century skill of Communication. In today’s society students are expected to enter the workforce with the ability to articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms and contexts. Allowing the students opportunities to develop communication/presentation skills can be difficult to do with our busy schedules but it is such an important component of their growth  and development. Think of all the ways that you communicate in order to inform, instruct, entertain, and persuade others.  Did you know… that in messages conveying emotion, the following parts of the message are used for interpretation:

• 7% of  message is understood by words alone
• 38% of message is understood by tone, inflection, and elements of voice
• 55% of message is understood by body language and non-verbal communication

These statistics are  based on research from UCLA professor, Albert Mehrabian.  Communication is essential to everyone in order to succeed in work and life!

Look at the list of upcoming topics below. Be sure to check out these blogs in future months so you can stay up to date with what’s happening in and beyond Hanover County!

October ~  Communication
November  ~  Collaboration
December  ~ Creativity
January ~ Innovation
February ~ Critical Thinking
March ~ Problem Solving
April/May ~ Information, Media, and Technology
June ~ What’s Next?

Looking for a brief communication presentation for yourself or to share with others?  Check out this link from Prezi!
http://prezi.com/l1j0-k-wchlp/communication/

     One rich way to communicate ideas is through the eyes,  info graphics are a  new media rich way to visually display information. Below you will see a favorite  infographic of ours on some of the best design blogs.  Blogs – online journals are another great way to communicate quickly in real-time real content.

The Blog Tree: New Growth

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Please participate in our poll about your favorite way to communicate.