KLF I: Introducing the Torrance Incubation Model

I am delighted to be invited to speak during the Kindergarten Learning Forum (KLF) later this month. This is sure a stretch of my flexibility to cater to the specific needs of a special group of educators. This is even more meaningful as my own kids are in the pre-school going age, especially for Joshua where I have witnessed his cognitive development under the guidance of very creative teachers from 3 different pre-schools.


As I pondered on how best to demonstrate some of the key creative metaphors behind Torrance's pioneering work on creativity in education, I decided to design a playful approach to demonstrate learning about Creatively in an experiential manner. I am keen to observe how the Torrance Incubation Model can be the “... a simple, powerful, general-purpose teaching model that integrates creativity skills with content and knowledge” (Torrance, 1993, p. 187). In my 45 minutes workshop, I hope to explore and witness the integrative potential of this model that combines both the anticipatory and participatory teaching and learning approach.




Stage 1: Heightening Anticipation

Of late, the craze and revival of playing yo-yo struck an interesting cord with me and my kids. As a father, I enjoy the discussion and testing of ideas together with Joshua on the different yo-yo strategies and that to me was a creative engagement. We sharpened our yo-yo skills after a process with countless debates, trialing and celebrating little perks of success while trying to consider many alternatives. While dad and son were busying doing all of the above, little Joanna can't help but attentively emulate and adapt to the best of her abilities the wacky actions of dad and brother. Of course, the rich discussion arising from our 'equal footing' since we were both new to the game allowed much freewheeling, and very often, the wilder the ideas the more fun we had together.

The point here is, how do I use this platform to help these kindergarten educators return to their 'innocence' and just remain open to new ideas? I guess as a person grows and matures, he/she develops a variety of mental and social expectations. The engagement of playing with a less-than-familiar object such as a yo-yo would be a nice physical warm-up activity to effectively facilitate creative thinking, even in adults. In this regard, the yo-yo would serve as an useful metaphor to depict how we can play with our imagination, either individually or collaboratively. More relevantly, I hope to reinforce the awareness that as imaginative pre-school teachers, they can use creative movement such as warm-up games or dance as a good supplementary technique for any subject matters.

O yes, not to mention, the pre-work of registering for my session already aimed to enthuse the participants with expecting the unexpected, the title and synopsis of my session reads:


“ Help me be more CREATIVE .... 
   I like to have my Yo Yo back, please?"

This workshop has been specially designed to re-ignite the passion to teach about Creativity and to teach creatively, using a Yo-Yo.
A father of two, John gets bundles of inspiration by simply enjoying the creative process of imagination and invention with them. For this hands-on interactive session, how would you like to:

• Discover how you can enjoy learning about creativity by being 'play-full'
• Get the best out of your students' imagination
  
• Invite your students to become coachable by toying with a yo-yo
  

KLF II: Deepening Expectations with the YO-YO metaphor

Why 'YO-YO' or Do I mean 'YEO-YEO'?

Face it, I am an EGOistic teacher. Allowing my students to 'hip-hop-ly' greet me with a "Yo, Mr Yeo" has worked to my advantage as a teacher as it established a personal connection between me and my students. Thus, to revisit this "yeo-yeo" effect to facilitate new learning, getting warmed up with a real Yo-Yo this time would hopefully help to strengthen the use of everyday objects for problem solving.

The source of inspiration was a really a story that I posted earlier this year (From Whose Perspective) when I conducted a workshop in Hong Kong where through one of the brainstorming activities, I was humbly made to realise how a simple yo-yo can powerfully turn an innovation company around.

The earlier entry talked about how Stage 1 (Heightening the Anticipation) beings the engagement process by getting participants ready to learn. The following two stages contain the information processing patterns or strategies presented as metaphors dealing with some complex behaviors likely to be encountered in the learning of creativity (Torrance & Safter, 1990).

Stage 2: DEEPENING EXPECTATIONS

The Yo-Yo is an appropriate devise to match many of the metaphors for this stage including Digging Deeper, Looking Twice, Listening for Smells, Listening/Talking to a Cat or Crossing Out Mistakes, Cutting Holes to See Through, Cutting Corners, Getting in Deep Water, and Getting Out of Locked Doors.

In my workshop, instead of me 'talking down' on what each of the above metaphors means, I have designed a series of Learning Stations for the participants to walk around and experience for themselves the strategies through some fun activities- revolving around the theme of Yo-Yo.  To heighten the metacognition level of the activities, participants after diving deep into each of my designed task will spend some time to reflect and share on their learning to rest of the groups. The essence of conducting this session in a World Cafe style is to help in generalising the above metaphors to the other problems at a later stage. Some of the key principles for the metaphors infused within the learning stations include learning to defer judgment, having a sense of congruence between moving, imaginations, and visualisation, getting beyond the surface, synthesizing diverse kinds of information, and going beyond the status quo while seeking novelty.

So the Yo-Yo Playing Stations include

1) SCAMPER: Participants will first listen to a simple story of 'Little Bitty Bunny' where a group of little bunnies found a hat but knowing the purpose of this object started to invent different uses such as a boat for the water, a basket to throw balls in, a sea-saw, etc. Thereafter, they are invited to adopt Bob Eberle's (1971) SCAMPER to generate new uses for the Yo-Yo while phyiscally playing with the Yo-yos together. Some of the visuals included in this station are brief write-ups of the history of Yo-Yos, Yo-Yo tricks, etc.

2) Forced-Connection: Unlike the above activity, participants are now invited to answer the question "How can I better see the brilliance in every one of my students?" by posting quietly and individually their ideas while shifting around a series of photographs. This way, the collective wisdom could then be tapped with the group engaged in hits and clusters by selecting some of the better and more novel ideas.

3) Word-Dance: While watching the movie' Nim's Island' together with my kids, we were discussing the fascinating details of the show and wondered several times "What if..." a certain element of the plot was changed. Based on Rhodes (1961) 4Ps definition of Creativity: Person, Press, Product and Process, participants are now invited to list out some elements of a movie that they are familiar with and to re-create a new story by mixing and matching. Think-Pair-Share is the cooperative learning strategy used in this station where participants will draft their exciting story in pairs.

(Photos contributed by my friend and a highly creative photographer- Thanks Sze Kiat! sprintist_sk@hotmail.com)

KLF III: Extending the Learning

Based on the Torrance Incubation Model, the final stage of bringing it all together in Extending the Learning spreads out some of the most intricate metaphors that helps to ignite and surface the most novel ideas with metaphors such as Having a Ball, Singing in One's Own Key, Building Sand Castles, Plugging in the Sun, Shaking Hands With Tomorrow.

This final activity for my session would bring together all the participants to create a giant brainstorming wall where the cumulative wisdom of all would contribute their ideas to "How Can  Kindergarten Teachers Facilitate More Creativity?".

By reiterating the importance of the Brainstorming ground rules, it is hope that the participants will collaborately apply the earlier brainstorming techniques from the play stations to generate some novel and valuable ideas. While giving personal meaning to the new information and relating their personal experience to the earlier tasks, hopefully, the strategies will form a basis for helping teachers to start imagining, fantasizing, searching for ideal solutions or otherwise taking off from what is been read, heard, or encountered and find available resources of energy or inspiration to enlarge, enrich, and make more accurate one's images of the future.

By 'Shaking Hands With Tomorrow', the kinesthetic experience will help to value add the very purpose why they chose to attend this play-full yo-yo session!

Steve Job Brainstorms on a White Board

My craze with APPLE.... I just (finally)bought myself a Mac Air- a dream come true. AND I can soon look forward to getting an I-phone too. But all these craze and crave for these two wonderful Apple creations goes beyond the yucky T word- Technology. I am not much of a Techie really. What struck me consistently of the products as well as the creator- Steve Jobs was really a about THE experience.

As I read about some of the highlights of Steve Job's presentation tips (http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2009/sb2009106_706829.htm) I can't help but note some of the interesting pointers gleaned from the above website as well as the video of Carmine Gallo, author and communications coach (cool... but what exactly is that) who just published 'The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience' :

- Deliver MINDBLOWING keynote presentations... EVERYTIME!
- Power of EXPERIENCE- I quote "Steve Jobs does not sell computers; he sells an experience"
- Presentation skills can be coached in a STEP-BY-STEP format
- Create stunningly VISUAL presentations
- Its all about STORY-TELLING- and make them compelling
- The CEO Apple actually BRAINSTORMS and loves doing it on a white board
- Stick to the ONE thing I want people to remember- be consistent
- Avoid the least effective way to learn- NO BULLET POINTS! (opps... pardon me)
- Use IMAGES that speak volumes
- Identify an ENEMY and help people conquer that as a shared motivation
- Have fun with DEMOS- its neuroscientifically proven!

SO, if you have misgivings about the faults above, perhaps this is a baby step improvement...

Note: the above image was created in http://www.wordle.net/

Creatively Persuading about the relevance of Science Education- Science Buskers Festival

I agree with Carl Rogers (1962) conditions for creativity- especially on his notion that creativity requires a willingness to toy with ideas and play with possibilities.

In this second year as a judge for the Science Buskers Festival, I am increasingly recognising the importance of how the truly creative students are able to challenge themselves with the willingness to toy with ideas and play with possibilities. Besides being a competitive platform to showcase the various ingenious acts, the Buskers Festival includes an important component whereby judges provide their inputs to participants. This is another important iterative learning process whereby judges can assess the participants' openness to learning. During the preliminary judging sessions, I was amazed with how some of them were able to take the feedback and add new dimensions to their performance. This clearly connects to their receptiveness to new ideas and often sets higher benchmark for the next rounds.

In Gardner's book 'Creating Minds' (1993), he defined a creative person as- "... [one] who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting." (1993, p.35) I see the relevance of this openness to feedback and experience crucial as the participants learn to recognize that their act need to gain a 'place' of recognition and trust the judgement of the experts. Especially in the larger field of science, this helps us to constantly adapt and innovate.

The Science Buskers Festival is a most interesting concept of learning about the many interesting applications of our everyday Science. That said, what is more crucial is the participants ability to interest, engage, provoke and persuade the audience of their creative acts. Going beyond show-and-tell, they need to creatively change the way we think about Science. It is an interesting connection to Simonton's fifth P of creativity (1988a, 1990) - beyond the creative person, product, process and press. He advocated that leaders need to be persuasive to impress others with their creativity- "A creator claim appreciators or admirers to be legitimatized as a true creator" (p.387). This competition is fun to observe especially if you see how the participants adapt their acts to outdo one another. I see this competitive spirit of Science Busking much enliven through the enigmatic Six Senses of 'A Whole New Mind' (Pink, 2005) .

1. Not just function but also DESIGN. The outstanding acts were not just about the mundane science and its marvelous applications. Each sought to provide audience with an experience that was fun, beautiful or simply emotionally engaging.

2. Not just argument but also STORY. Pink captured it most wonderfully with "The essence of persuasion, communication, and self-understanding has become the ability to fashion a compelling narrative" (Pink, 2005, p.66).

3. Not just focus but also SYMPHONY. The group below 'Magical Science' - most charmingly arranged multiple little acts into a show- allowing audience the flexibility to indulge in the rhythm one 'finger play' performance or freely allow audience to run their palms through the syncopation of the different activities and yet understanding the gist of their almost musical performance.

4. Not just logic but also EMPATHY. Beyond logical thoughts, the whole Festival brings together a whole new dimension of science- exploding in the performers screaming out their acts to capture their pull of audience. Amidst the overload of ubiquitous information, technology of facebook, youtube, and what-have-you (yes, even reading this blog entry), the real-ness and mindfulness of each performance helps to even forge a higher level of understanding- and for some, even stronger relationships.

5. Not just seriousness but also PLAY. I recently got to learn of this concept called Hard Play. Fact is, playing can be a serious affair of cognitive development. Vivien (Zany Science, below) was extremely intriguing in how she used her balloons to teach science. Of course, she did a brilliant job to explain the science of balloon sculpturing and the many applications. But it was the science of laughter, games and humor that made the Science really larger than life!

6. Not just accumulation but also MEANING. The completeness of experience for me- seeing how each participant grew in their initial attempts, clarifying the purpose of their individual acts and discovering their sense of fulfilment, was satisfying-even to me.

References:

Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York: Basic Books.

Pink, D. H. (2005). A whole new mind: why right-brained will rule the future. London: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Rogers, C. R. (1962). Toward a theory of creativity. In S. J. Parnes & H. F. Hardings (Eds.), A source book for creative thinking. New York: Scribners.

Simonton, D. K. (1988). Creativity, .leadership, and chance. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Simonton, D. K. (1990). History, chemistry, psychology, and genius: An intellectual autobiography of histrionomy. In M. A. Runco & R. S. Albert (Eds.), Theories of creativity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Stimulating Creative Flow... with Toys

It may sound ironic that participants comprising of senior managment from various organisations expecting to glean some applications on how to improve organisational innovation in my recent China's 创新与创造力研讨会, ended up having most fun and learnings from playing with the toys.

Feedback to the seminar included the following:

- 通过发散性思维进行关联创新 Through brainstorming to make new connections

- Through experiential learning the success of seminar lies in "value creation"

- Creative association and case study

- 通过互动性的交流，能调动大家积极性 Able to dynamically stimulate and engage everyone

- 互动环节 (Interactive components) helps to market futurised concept game

With such a diverse group all with different learning needs, I thought that a good way to trigger creative thoughts would be through the use of simple stimulus so that everyone can share their varied experiences all leading to the same understanding of making new connections as a creative strategy. What I observed, however, was that through the function of the learning content, the context of such an event, the activity of the learners, and perhaps most importantly, the goals of individual learners, I noted that somehow, cognition was distributed.

Interestingly, the group's interaction with the toys led to a sort of "puzzlement" as being the stimulus for learning and this somewhat readily suggests both intellectual and pragmatic goals for learning for all. In a collaborative manner, the activity served as a mechanism for enriching, interweaving and expanding everyone's understanding of the particular issue I posed as the challenge. Just as Lebrow (1993) talked about shift in values when one takes a constructivist perspective, he noted that "the seven primary constructivist values of collaboration, personal autonomy, generativity, reflectivity, active engagement, personal relevance and pluralism (1993,p.5)."

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi questions the how creativity the place of creativity and highlighted that "creativity does not happen inside people's heads, but in the interaction between a person's thoughts and a sociocultural context (1996, p.23). " He also proposes that "centers of creativity tend to be at the intersection of different cultures, where beliefs, lifestyles, and knowledge mingle and allow individuals to see new combinations of ideas with a greater ease", the activity was in my view effective to arouse this creative cognitive distribution. Further, just as there was time to allow individuals to work on their problems by toying with the stimulus, the 'aha' was more visible after a period of immersing into "me and my toy" quiet moments. This was apparent as most participants settled down after the first few minutes of elation and puzzlement before their little creative exploration with their selected toys.

What was then observed was the 'flow' in which Csikszentmihalyi describes as the state of absorption in the creative process. He defines flow as “an automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness”, which results from stretching our abilities in the pursuit of a meaningful challenge. The elements of creative flow include: clear goals; a balance between challenges and skills; total absorption in the task; a distorted sense of time; and an absence of distractions, worry and selfconsciousness.

When the participants were invited to share on their new creative ideas, many spoke eloquently and spontaneously about their improved solutions. Almost effortlessly I must say, others around could easily sense the intrinsic rewards of their experience. If one of the objectives of the seminar was to achieve the following- 为了加强个人适合的创新和变革的能力，在实际业务挑战上学习，应用工具和流程；为了个人和组织的成功变革，学习如何灵活运用, I think the participants will agree with me that at least for the seminar most were able to revisit the simple joys and fun of playing with creativity.

Csikszenmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

Lebrow, D. (1993). Constructivist values for systems design: Five principles toward a new mindset. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41, 4-16.

From Whose Perspective?

I recently conducted a series of Innovation & Creativity Seminar in Hong Kong & China as part of a joint effort between TUV Rheinland (China) & Centre of Organisational Excellence (Singapore).

One of the most intriguing and insightful feebacks I gained was from Mr Wong Kin Hung, Sky Technology Co. Ltd (Hong Kong). Although throughout the workshop, he appeared passively uninvolved with the group activities, after the workshop he came forward to thank me for triggering a mindset shift as well as a list of possible solutions that may help him to resolve a critical challenge he faced in his company. All simply done through the use of a YO-YO.

Mr Wong highlighted two very useful insights of his yo-yo learning experience:

1) Power of Mindfulness

Although he appeared very detached during the seminar, he explained that it was because he was actually deeply thinking or 'mindfully' focussed. He further explained that although he was first introduced to the 'mindful' concept by Dr Langer of Harvard University years back, this was the first time he experienced this state of mindfulness so powerfully that he was completely engaged mentally in the process and highly alert to the new learnings. Yet, as he was simultaneously looking at his challenge intensively, he noted that he was intuitively and cognitively very open to the new information that was disseminated during the workshop as well as the multiple perspectives from the conversation of the other group members at his desk.

2) Using Visual Connections to Radically Shift Mindset

What was most exciting was how the Yo-Yo through the activity of Visual Connections got him all started in his 'mindful' experience. When I first asked the participants to write down a challenge that needed some new breakthrough, he was initially reluctant to pen down his thoughts. However, I am thankful he shared this comment with me- "If a strategy really works, then it should be able to deliver the intended outcomes if implemented properly." After which, he wrote down the following- "How to get my clients back?" As he gave the Visual Connection Tool a chance, he simply grabbed the most colorful object on his table- the Yo Yo. As he listed the attributes of the Yo-Yo, he noted adjectives like- smiley face, retractable, colorful, produce clicking sound, etc, he found it easy to immediately connect each of the attributes to some new ideas. He also highlighted that it was initially not easy to observe the divergent ground rule of deferring judgment, he found the act of playing with the object easier to circumvent the mental barrier of not judging the silliness of the activity. However, the experience not only allowed him to deepen his thoughts on pulling out some ideas from each of the attributes but stretched his thinking further when he saw all the attributes as a whole. Excitedly, he shared that a mysterious shift of how he viewed the challenge occurred. With the clicking sound and his shaking motion, he was 'jolted' to a realisation that the past months of working on the problem was from HIS perspective, rather then that of his clients. Just as he felt that he and his team had some futile attempts to regain his clients, the activity led me to a realisation that their vision of the problem is very different from that of his clients. He further explained that some of the solutions that were offered were short term gains that other external factors such as competitors' offering could easily under-cut his discounts. However, the clicking sound led him to think of how to sustain a resonating relationship and how the smiley face got him to go back to the fundamentals of communication- looking at customers' satisfaction. Further, while he was playing with the yo-yo, he realised how inflexible their system was how there need to have an urgent review of their own sales cycle.

To conclude, Mr Wong's sharing led me to realise the common connection between business and learning- the essence of humility. He was humble and open to a new learning experience, even by playing with a simple toy. With mindful attention, even such a simple activity allowed him to re-perceive from his clients' point of view and deepen his own insights into a precious lesson on being more customer-centric. His sharing also showed me how Thinking Tools are great to evoke 'mindful playing'- with discovery of the joy of learning in a thoughtful and focused way.

Quoting from wikipedia (http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Mindfulness)- "Langer defines her version of mindfulness as a "heightened sense of situational awareness and a conscious control over ones thoughts and behavior relative to the situation" (Marzano 2003, p. 65). She explains that mindfulness is not about just paying attention. It is making a conscious effort to be "in the moment" and to not ignore the environment."

Personally, I gained a huge dose of humility and reminded me that I really do have a lot to learn about mindfully improving my craft.

Learn like an Inqusitive Child

Torrance ( 1979) quoted his student's definition of the elements he considered that were important to creativity. Some examples include-

• Creativity is wanting to know;
• Creativity is having a ball;
• Creativity is building sand castles;
• Creativity is singing in your own key;
• Creativity is shaking hands with the future.

These fun and joyful elements serve as timely reminders for us to return to our basics of looking at the child in us. Creativity has much to do with the freewheeling imagination that every child naturally embraces. Its like as we obseve a child busy at "work", we seem to notice how he/she can bring the intellectual, volitional and emotional functions into play all together! Rollo May (1975) believes that creative thinking represents one of the highest level of emotional health and is the expression of normal people experiencing the process of actualising themselves. Behold the "flow" of intense absorption and heightened consciousness!

Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly."
- Arnold Edinborough

Torrance, E. P. (1979). The search for satori and creativity. Buffalo, NY: Creative Education Foundation.

Photos taken from Singapore's first Science Busking Festival

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Singapore/Science-Buskers-Festival/24734317997