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).
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
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.
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)
1 comment:
I love how you stretch the boundaries, John! You have a healthy divergence going here, and I see that you've reached the time to converge and narrow.
The first thing I'd suggest is to map out your time, down to the minute. It is difficult to cover much ground in 45 minutes in the best of circumstances, and your ambitious agenda may simply not fit. For example, heighten is 5 minutes; deepen is 10 minutes per station (30 total) and 5 minutes of debrief, and that leaves only 5 minutes for extend.
Which aspects of TIM do you want them to take away? TIM is three stages AND the interweaving of a creative (Beyonder) skill. Can you do all that? Perhaps, but it's asking a lot if they have to experience it and then understand what they experienced while in the room.
So, maybe simplify the three stations (seven minutes each?), make sure they can be done in any order (so that three groups work at the same time), and make sure they are very TIM-centric, so that they are learning the very content you are teaching. For instance, I don't know if I'd use SCAMPER, etc., here, since they are creativity skills but not TIM skills.
In order to know what to leave in and what to take out, you must answer this question: what should they be able to do when they leave? If this is an intro and a nudge to go learn more, then give them a way to do that. If you want them to walk out with a skill or two, make darn sure those skills are in there. Hard to do the latter in 45 minutes with everything else you want to do, but I've noted that already.
Finally, regarding the closing expercise: do we need to enhance the creativity of kindergartners, or enhance the creativity of those who teach kindergarten?
My seven cents worth,
Paul
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