“The Howwood Illuminations” by me! My little corner of creativity:-)
I am a proponent of creativity and innovation. The problem is that everything we know about the conditions required to maximise our creative activity tell us that we need a lot of “provocation”. Provocation is a word that Edward De Bono used to describe external challenges to our thinking that force us away from known solutions. One example of this is asking people to design a new suspension system for a car while imagining that the car will have square wheels. Of course no-one really intends to make a square car, but the visualising of the square wheel and thinking through the consequences is the “provocation” that might bring a breakthrough in thinking that will make suspension better for round wheeled cars. If you want to know more about the theory, then I urge you to read De Bono’s Lateral thinking.
Anyway, what’s your point blogger? It worries me hugely that in education we have the deadly combination of more internally generated literature than any of us can realistically keep up with and a majority of conscientious educators who attempt to keep up with it. Government and HMIe between them ensure that my desk has a stack of ten to fifteen “essential documents” that tell me, despite what HMIe constantly claim to the contrary, what “good practice” in education is. This, in a time of requests for innovation is a recipe for failure. Central documents should be cut now to a minimum, with only “Building the curriculum” documents and similar frameworks being on our must read list. It would be good now to read some great new outside sources. I really don’t care what you read, as long as it gets you thinking new thoughts, and challenges your assumptions about what we do at present.
My current favourite journals are “Scientific American – Mind”, “New Scientist”, “Wired Magazine (UK edition now available)”.
My recent influential reads are “Business Stripped Bare” by Richard Branson and “The six secrets of change” by Michael Fullan. I would have to include “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins as my most recent read; excellent and thought provoking.
In the audio world, I listen to “This Week in Tech” podcast. They discuss lots of current thinking in web 2.0 and technology business news. From listening to this I have become really convinced that we could learn from how Google works and apply some of their thinking to education.
We won’t move on from the same old ideas folks. The right way to do it might be stifling us all. What sources are getting your creative juices flowing?