Creative Thinking Skills
for Life and Education
( teaching creativity )
for Life and Education
( teaching creativity )
WHAT, WHY, and HOW?
What is Creativity?
"Creative or innovative thinking is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things. The products of creative thought include some obvious things like music, poetry, dance, dramatic literature, inventions, and technical innovations. But there are some not so obvious examples as well, such as ways of putting a question that expand the horizons of possible solutions, or ways of conceiving of relationships that challenge presuppositions and lead one to see the world in imaginative and different ways." {Peter Facione, Santa Clara University}
Why should you want to be creative? What are the benefits? 12 Reasons to Study Creativity
How can you be more creative, and help your students be more creative? The International Center for Studies in Creativity says, "Creativity is an effective resource that resides in all people and within all organizations. Our more than thirty years of research has conclusively demonstrated that creativity can be nurtured and enhanced through the use of deliberate tools, techniques and strategies." {source}
You can begin exploring with Three Basic Principles (and more); creative strategies are explained, and illustrated with historical examples, in Creativity, Innovation and Problem Solving. If you only want to read one page, I suggest the Introduction to Creative Thinking by Robert Harris, which is an excellent summary of strategies for understanding and improving creativity.
A wide variety of strategies — 31 tools for creativity — are described by Charles Cave in Creativity Techniques plus "What can I do to increase my creativity?" and a link to plenty of ideas and resources in his Creativity Web: Resources for Creativity and Innovation. This is very thorough, is worth exploring, and is useful for getting a comprehensive overview of the field.
Another website is less comprehensive, but interesting: Thoughts on Problem Solving was developed by faculty in the Engineering Dept at the Univ of Michigan.
Strategies for effective searching (to find old ideas) and imagining (to invent new ideas) help you use the best of the old and new.
Edward de Bono has been influential in the field of creativity, with his Thinking Tools — Lateral Thinking, Six Thinking Hats, Direct Attention Thinking Tools, and more. On his own website, de Bono describes Lateral Thinking & Parallel Thinking and other ideas.
ْ
________*التــَّـوْقـْـيـعُ*_________
لا أحد يظن أن العظماء تعساء إلا العظماء أنفسهم. إدوارد ينج: شاعر إنجليزي
أمس في 2:16 am من طرف freeman
