More Ted Videos - Play and motivation

I watched five videos today, mostly focused on creativity, but at the end, going where the suggestions took me.

Creativity and Play and Surprising Science of Motivation were great.  Gilbert was interesting but, for me, insubstantial. Tan was a waste of time.  Behar was interesting, but more product oriented - good, but not my focus.

Tim Brown: Ted Talk on Creativity and Play

As Ken Robinson said, kids aren't embarrassed by making mistakes.  Adults are.

Security to take risks.

Playfulness helps us get to better creative solutions

Kids ask "what is it?" + "What can I do with it?"

Test or skill or exercise:

30 circles test.  6 circles across by 5 deep.  Adapt as many circles as you can into objects (give example) Quantity is important:  One minute.

Who used variations on a theme? - Smiley face, angry face, sad face…

Who followed the examples given?

The goal is to break self-editing.  The first stage of brainstorming is to not edit or censor yourself.

I feel, as did the audience when asked to draw their neighbor, I should apologize or defend the small number (and low quality) of my drawings.  If you couldn't tell, there are three faces, two fruit (and you probably couldn't tell.  They are an orange and a watermelon) and a globe.

Purdue Creativity test. - find out what it is.  It seems to be related to the 30 circles.  Find many uses for a paperclip.

Brainstorming rules on wall of Ideo (Brown's company) of conference room - defer judgement, go for quantity,

Rules for creativity - break the old rules and norms.  Better brainstorming and outcomes from following the rules.

Building: Average western first grader - 50% of their time in construction play.  Classic learn by doing.

Mentions 'post it notes' the only creative tool in cubicle-land - one of my favorite tools for ESL class.

If you care, my Post-it in-the-classroom suggestion is to use them

and a blank page to make a board game.  Different coloured tiles

can have different meanings in the game.  Trivia games work well, as do

Snakes-and-ladders type games and combinations - come on, be creative about it!

Creativity and role-play.  Test for flaws in design.

When children role play, they actually follow social scripts closely that they learn from us adults.

Play is not anarchy.  Play has rules.  When kids play 'cops and robbers', they have  an agreed script.

Good teachers spend a lot of time thinking about how to move kids in and out of play.

Generative mode, then development - divergent, then convergent.  A serious, professional adult and be playful.

summary:  We need trust to play and trust to be creative.

Exploration - go for quantity

building - thinking with your hands

role play

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Yves Behar  - Designing objects that tell stories

"…advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal."

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Amy Tan on Creativity

A little boring to me.  Funny, but not informative.

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Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity

After her bestseller book, people would ask her about fear:  "Aren't you afraid that you will never write a book to top this one?",  "Aren't you afraid that you are keep writing all your life and you're never going to write another book that anyone cares about?"

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

The candle problem:  candle, a box of thumbtacks and matches:  Your job is to attach the candle to the wall so it doesn't drip on the wall.

Most people take a lot of time to do it.  Use the box (holding the thumbtack) to hold the candle.

 Image from Lifehacker - also discussing Dan Pink's TED talk.

Motivation and creativity

I will time you on how fast you can solve the problem

one group was told, "You are the control group  I am timing you to find an average time, the normal time, the typical time."

Second group was offered rewards:  top 25% = $5.  The fastest = $20

Second group took 3:30 longer than the first group.

Motivator is meant to enhance creativity but actually blocks or inhibits creativity.  Many motivators don't work or do harm.

"There's a mismatch between what science knows and what business does."

extrinsic motivators - carrot and stick - often don't work and do harm.

Rewards narrow our focus, concentrate the mind, that's what they are meant to do.

Pink shows how the candle problem can be much easier and extrinsically motivated:  Move the tacks out of the box.  Now, rewards enhance the speed greatly -- because the solution is much clearer when the box is there empty. Obviously, use the box.

Old job descriptions were like the easy candle problem, but new job descriptions are like the hard candle problem.

Computers and mechanical solutions can solve the easy problems, people are needed to do the creative stuff.

researchers (Areily, Gneezy, Lowenstein and Mazar) had subjects play games and offered 1) low rewards, 2) medium rewards and 3) large rewards)

"As long as the task involved only mechanical skills, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance."

"But once the task called for "even rudimentary cognitive skill", a larger reward led to poorer performance."

"…higher incentives led to worse performance."

Autonomy: Management is great if what you want is compliance.  If you want engagement, self-direction is better.

Pay people honestly and fairly -get the issue of pay right off the table.

Examples: an Australian software company gives engineers one day every few months off of regular work and orders the engineers to work on something personal and individual.  Google does the same thing with it's 20% plan - spend 20% of your time on personal projects.

Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) - autonomy on schedule and workplace, but deliver content.  How, when, where is up to the staff.

Encarta (Microsoft encyclopedia) vs Wikipedia - Encarta had well-paid staff and managers, Wikipedians work for free, for fun.  Which is more famous and used now?

    Hey, I should check out Wikipedia on creativity!

Other parts of performance but not covered in this TED Talk: Mastery & Purpose

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Dan Ariely - Are we in control of our own decisions?

This one is next for me.  I am not sure how or if it will relate to creativity, but it does sound interesting.

more resources for use creatively, if you aren't distracted

This blog seems to have become merely a place for my store interesting websites and ideas until... well, I get around to them.

Today is no different.  I present to you 40 writing, music and art resources!  A sample:

• ScriptFrenzy-Another social contest like NanoWrimo, except you have to complete 100 pages of a script during April. You may write any type of screenplay, stage play, TV show, short film, comic book, graphic novel, or adaptations of novels. You also have the option of doing this with your students and borrowing  Alpha Smart Neos if you register by February 28th.
• One Word- You are given one word and sixty seconds to write about it. When you are finished, you have the option to publish this to your blog or on Facebook.
• Write Rhymes- students who are writing poetry can find more words that rhyme! Check out Kelly Tenkely’s blog post for creative ways to integrate this tool into a lesson!
• Word Magnets- Mix text up and create new stories, poems, and more. You have a variety of backgrounds and graphic organizers to choose from. Visit Nik Peachey’s post for more ways to use this amazing tool!
• Penzu- A free place to keep a journal or your writings. You can choose to make them public or keep them private with encryption codes.
• Character Chart- This chart will help your students flesh out their characters.
• Seventh Sanctum- This website provides 100s of generators for helping with creating Anime characters to finding plots for your movie or story.
• Cliche Finder- Are you searching for a cliche but only remember a word? Try this search engine.

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• Mac Mosiacs- This free software turns your photos into mosaics.
• Playful Learning Experiences- This wonderful site provides you with many activities in writing and arts and crafts!
• Artopia- Teachers can create art galleries of students work. See Kelly Tenkely’s post for classroom application ideas.
• Odosketch- Another easy tool for students to sketch and draw. For more information see David Kapular’s post.
• Sketchcast- Students can draw in several different colors, add text, narrate the drawing, and embed it into a wiki or blog.

Oh, I do plan to be more active here.  I am currently looking for work and have a few personal problems to work out.  Expect more here by March at the latest. Expect it!

midway through 'Cracking Creativity'

Cracking Creativity describes a teachable process to become (or become more) creative.  I'm finding it interesting, and the steps and instructions feel right.  Still, I have two concerns.


First, I haven't actually used any of the steps, only passively read (two-thirds so far) the book.  The books specifically states that creative people are prolific, although that sounds a bit like a truism.  Anyway, I definitely need to dig in and perform the tasks described.  There are a few techniques given but all start with a problem statement or a focus phrase or idea.


Now, "problem statement" makes it sound like a part of the scientific method.  And that brings up my second concern.  Michalko (the author) goes a long way to demystify how creativity works.  He is not completely successful and I'll visit that point soon, but lets look at where he has succeeded.  The steps he gives are clear and pragmatic.  I am currently reading about how to properly brainstorm.


Here is a short summary.  Start with a problem or focus for your brainstorming, then starting writing down whatever you think of.  It is not exactly stream-of-consciousness but you definitely need to not hold back - this is not the sorting or selecting phase.  It can be hard to start thinking of ideas so setting a goal and a time limit is recommended: 20 ideas in five minutes, for example.  After creating the ideas, it is time to sort.  Typically, one needs to throw away the first few ideas as they are the most cliche'ed or stereotyped.  They tend to be the result of reproduction rather than production, you are repeating things and ideas you have already learned rather than created anything.


I think this would work (again, I have not tried it yet), but I am concerned about my reaction.  The process has been demystified and I feel let down.  This is strange and irrational, I know.  I deliberately chose the book and spent money to get it so that I could understand creativity better.  Now I am complaining that I don't like it?  What did I expect?


Well, that last doesn't have to be a rhetorical question.  I expected or hoped for tricks and easy routes to creativity.   Here is an example:

A study in the scientific journal Brain and Cognition suggests that increasing the "crosstalk" between the brain's left and right hemispheres can increase creativity. Researchers from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey ran an experiment on 62 people to gauge creative thinking. After a first try at the task, some of the participants were told to shift their eyes horizontally back and forth for 30 seconds, an exercise that boosts the communication between the hemispheres.

Now, I know the value of hard work and I have experimented somewhat with meditation (another discipline that appears to be easy, but requires, almost by definition, fierce and tiring concentration) but I guess I wanted a magical answer.


Earlier, I wrote that I would return to the point that creativity is still mysterious. As I have described on this blog, the actual ideas still appear seemingly from nowhere. When I wrote my story about Russell's teapot, which didn't win the contest, by the way, the focus of the idea sprang nearly complete in my mind.  The sudden appearance of these ideas is still wonderfully unexpected for me.

a short update

I received 'Cracking Creativity" by Michael Michalko and am slowly getting into it.  I am busy with other things right now and can't give it the time I want to.
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Fun with lateral thinking and movie titles.
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Learn something novel every decade. A blog post about research into brain research and learning new things.

Furniture I will probably never make

In my current (rented) apartment, in a foreign country, I am uncomfortable making big renovations.  when the opportunity arises, I would like to make my son's bedroom feel like a coral reef or the like.  You know, dark (ocean) and light (sky) blue walls with waves, fish and birds, maybe an island and possibly even a few mythological sea-creatures.
I have been working in my head how to make a 'whale bed'. There would be a standard sized mattress inside, but the bed would be enclosed, looking from the outside like a whale.  Perhaps the tail would be arched up, to reduce the length, but if it pointed out the back, it could have a rod for hanging clothes from.

Inside, I guess the pillow and blankets and such could be chosen for the ocean prints or colours, but I would also include a small bookshelf, radio (is that so old-fashioned?) and a light or two.

I don't have the tools or any good idea on how to buy the materials for such a bed.  In my head, it is made of wood, like a cabinet, but I have also considered a metal frame and nylon or fabric walls.

Basically, it would look something like this, but an aquatic rather than a pre-historic theme (my son would love either one):


Image fromLisa Katayama of Boingboing, who found it here.

The other bit of furniture I just thought of was a dresser for clothes that open forward (as a dresser normally does) on it's wide side, and to the side.  I feel you could take clean clothes to the dresser, open it on the wide side and push the current contents to the side opening, then place the fresh clothes furthest from the side opening.  I don't have that many clothes, I think, but i always put clean clothes on top of what is already in the drawer, then wear them again, leaving the contents deeper in the drawer to waste space, basically.  I liken my idea to the way grocery store clerks fill the milk from the back, keeping the older milk closest to the consumer.

I thought of this second idea when I found some summer clothes that haven't been worn since last year.  I didn't notice them or think about them five months ago, when they would have been useful.

Creating things online

On my iMac, I have photo editing software (that I am not entirely thrilled with), movie editing software (which does have a lot of great features) and software that makes MP3s.  Oh, and iWork, which includes presentation software.

There are lots of programs that create content online though, and they fill wonderful, specific niches.

Bitstrips allows non-artists, like me, to makes comics.  This is handy for ESL teachers, again, like me, but also for people who simply like comics.  I have used it a little and find it still takes time, but the results are so much better than what i would make holding a pen in my own hands and drawing.

Xtranormal creates movies based on the text or script you give it.  The computer generated voices are so much better than I recall from my Commodore 64 days.

A cool site I just found today is screenr.  You prepare by opening various windows on your computer.  Screenr is something like taking 'screenshots' and adding audio, although the effect is not stills,  but video. This looks great for making 'how-to' videos.

This site, remixgalaxy, looks like a place to make MP3s.  I am not musical, but I do make podcast-type audio fairly often for students.

Since I finished my introduction with presentation software, let me finish the post by mentioning Google Docs and their simple-but-useful presentation option.

Sex, love and creativity

Boy, with that first word in the title, searchers will now find this blog!

Dr. Shock has a post comparing how brains and minds work when thinking about Sex and Love.

But if love and lust aren’t completely the same, what different psychological effects do they have in humans? Researchers from The Netherlands and Germany proposed a cognitive model for the effects of love and sex. They hypothesized that when in love, people start thinking globally, love entails wishes and goals of attachment, needing a long term perspective. Love triggers global processing in the brain. This is closely linked to creative thinking.

When reminded of sex people start processing cognitively details of objects, it exists in the here and now. Sex triggers local cognitive processing, this is closely linked to analytical thinking.