Day 1 - Brainstorming & Take Homes

The second half of today FLEW by so fast.

We talked about creativity at first:

• How creativity is tricking your brain
• you need relaxed attention to generate ideas
• experience in different things in the world leads to creativity

This brought us into the Brainstorming section of the program.  Brainstorming is often hindered by anxiety and self-judgement.  Kim Saxe used an EXCELLENT visual to describe brainstorming:

She put a bag of popcorn into a microwave in front of the entire class. "Ideas come like popcorn...it takes a while at first," she said.  As it started warming up we heard a single pop here and there.  She described this as the area where people start feeling anxious about their ideas being heard...especially introverts.  Soon, however, the corn started popping, as it popcorn does.  She called this the "flurry". "Write on your paper and go until you get to this flurry." Just like popcorn, the ideas will fly so fast, you won't have time to judge them. After three or so of these "flurries," the process can be stopped and ideas that connect can be clumped together. 

There were a few different exercises we did to help build our brainstorming skills

1. Model how not to do something 


1. using prompts, each of us role-played how NOT to act

   

   These are our "how not to act" & "how to act" prompt cards

1. Generated bad ideas received with wild applause
1. by thinking of the negatives, it helps unveil the positives
2. feeling of positive energy
3. gets your mind thinking outside the box
4. gets you over the thought that your idea might be bad....because its SUPPOSED to be bad
5. positive feedback allows the session to go on longer
2. 12 uses for a brick
1. helps push kids beyond the obvious

Nueva Brainstorming Method

• Individual brainstorming done first
• Spread out from one another to avoid seeing other people's progress

1. Share your favorite idea - everyone builds on it
2. Next person shares their favorite idea - everyone builds on it...etc.
3. Share your wildest idea - everyone builds on it
4. Next person goes - etc.

*Promotes team collaboration
*Introverts know their turn is coming
*you could eliminate redundancy to ensure the most creative of work

There is so much more that we talked about - especially prototyping which I will touch on more deeply later.

Here are my take homes from the day:

• 3 Goals of Design Thinking:
• build empathy
• be generative when stuck
• give a new outlook on failure
• When you look for a NEED know that kids just have to solve a small part of the problem not the ENTIRE problem
• Wonder Wall
• kids put post-its on the wall with a wonder about anything
• during free time make a Venn Diagram to compare and find connections
• Green Screens
• Paper from Amazon can put put up on the wall for students to use
• Teachers are more apt to use it if it is part of the classroom
• Smaller stations using green poster board and lamps can be used for shooting legos or finger puppets when making iMovies.

There is SO much more to share...but I'm going to stop right here for now. Until tomorrow!!

kb