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A really nice Video that uses voice and animation to explain the the things you need to do to use other peoples stuff legally and reduce your legal risks. Its aimed at people creating Open Educational Resources (OERs) but is equally useful to anyone thinking of using other peoples content.
If you need more info after watching the video then head over to this E-Content IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) Audit and Risk Management Tool to quickly get a handle on managing your resources, which was developed for the LCC NAM project - at this link http://alto.arts.ac.uk/950/ 
Sobering article on American university education and why student debt may serve to hasten the end the traditional system of graduate education in favour of online learning paradigms.
"It’s easy to sell books and other commodities on the web. It’s not easy to deliver a quality education. But two converging trends point toward a future when we will see the traditional university give way to an online alternative — something I wasn’t willing to bank on two years ago. First, Silicon Valley is finally focusing on e-learning. Udacity, Coursera, Kahn Academy, EdX — they’re all looking to lift e-learning out of a long period of stagnation. And, second, times are tough, and the traditional university system doesn’t care enough about managing costs, while wrongly assuming that it has a captive audience."
Steve Portigal explores the value of 'bad' ideas and finds that they are more useful and creative than one might at first imagine.
"I once participated in a fascinating creativity exercise around the theme of bad ideas. The room was broken up into teams. Each team was assigned a topic and asked to come up with the worst possible idea. As you can imagine, we all dove in, producing ideas for products that assaulted eyeballs with steel blades and no end of other horrible silliness. After all the groups had finished, the exercise leader asked us to pass our ideas to the next table. Now each group was asked to design the circumstances within which the previously bad idea would become a good idea.
No matter how disgusting the original bad idea was, each team was easily able to flip things around. This quick and fun exercise made the notion of that framework within which "bad" is defined into something very tangible, and could be a great way to warm up a group about to begin an ideation activity. " 
Is intelligence important to innovation? Who creates the innovator: The parent, the teacher, the mentor, or the innovator themselves? Can passion pay the bills?
Who Creates The Innovator? A review by Dr. Jonathan Wai
Tony Wagner’s latest book—Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People That Will Change The World—contains his thoughts on how we might nurture the important skills and attributes of children to become the innovators that we so desperately need for the future. The book itself is quite innovative in that it combines written storytelling with video storytelling (produced by Robert Compton). Wagner does not disappoint—the book is well written and the people he interviews have much to teach us.
Thumbnail descriptions of the thinking strategies commonly used by creative geniuses.
Article, Michael Michalko. Synopsis:
How do geniuses come up with ideas? What is common to the thinking style that produced "Mona Lisa," as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Einsteins, Edisons, daVincis, Darwins, Picassos, Michelangelos, Galileos, Freuds, and Mozarts of history? What can we learn from them?
How do geniuses come up with ideas? What is common to the thinking style that produced "Mona Lisa," as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Einsteins, Edisons, daVincis, Darwins, Picassos, Michelangelos, Galileos, Freuds, and Mozarts of history? What can we learn from them? 
An exploration of how creativty is restrained by inherited values from both family and the education system.
Blog post, Adam Webster. Synopsis:
From an early age our creativity is restrained by conformity. It is our responsibility to help those around us break free from this 'cage' and think more freely.
Once we go to school, or perhaps long before that, we are coerced into putting all of our thoughts and ideas into a cage which is then labelled ‘preconceptions and limitations’ or ‘reality check.’ We are not born with, or in a cage; the cage is more a sort of family heirloom, passed down by previous generations of children, parents and, crucially, educators. Some cages are bigger than others and some cages even grow, or at least stretch, as time goes by.
Sadly though, what is more common, is for the cage to shrink. Ultimately of course, the cage represents our creativity, or at least it measures our ability to think creatively. What too few people realise, is that creativity was never supposed to live in a cage. When it is first put in there, it struggles and fights against the bars that have surrounded it and sometimes it might even slip through the bars and briefly escape, but it is quickly told ‘no’ and is scooped up and put back in the cage.
Eventually, the creativity stops trying to escape and simply resorts to bouncing off the walls of the cage, constantly retreating back over ground that has been covered before. Finally, the creativity stops moving; the cage has won and begins to close in around it. This is an old article (Dec 2010) but it's highly relevant for anyone involved (as Iam) in the education of Chinese students at graduate and post graduate level.
According to the editorial, the survey confirmed what Chinese parents know, that their children rarely are challenged to use their imaginations to solve problems. Undoubtedly, teaching students to think creatively is important. A July Newsweek Magazine article entitled "The Creativity Crisis," concluded that the "necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed." The Magazine cited a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs which identified creativity as the No. 1 "leadership competency" of the future.
MF President Theodora Kalikow said the question Chinese educators most often asked her last month on a visit to Beijing was, "How do you teach creativity?". Without providing specifics, President Kalikow hinted that American educators could teach Chinese professors a great deal about the subject. Other recent reports suggest that China has already begun to teach creativity. The "Newsweek Magazine" story featured an exchange between Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University and colleagues at Chinese universities.
When Plucker was asked to identify trends in American education, he described America's focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. The Chinese professors laughed. "They said, ‘You're racing toward our old model. But we're racing toward your model, as fast as we can.'" 
Inspiring Creativity In Others...by Jeffrey Paul Baumgartner [article]
If you want to push others—such as colleagues, team members, children, students, sweethearts or friends—to be more creative, there are a few simple things you can do.
ASK QUESTIONS The best thing you can do is ask lots of questions. In particular, ask open-ended questions (questions which require more than a “yes” or “no” answer). Answering questions makes people think, particularly if they believe you are genuinely interested in their answers. Hence you also need to acknowledge answers.
“Why” and “Why do you think…” questions are particularly powerful and this is doubly true if the question relates to a problem for which you are seeking creative ideas. “Why do you think sales of our electronic toilet paper dispenser are so poor?” “Why do you think people do not separate their rubbish in this neighborhood?” Such questions force people to use their imaginations in order to understand a problem, sometimes from the perspective of other people. This is great for creative thinking.
Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of the student centered approaches and has been considered by a number of higher educational institutions in many parts of the world as a method of delivery. This paper presents a creative thinking approach for implementing Problem-based Learning in Mechanics of Structure within a Malaysian Polytechnics environment. In the learning process, students learn how to analyze the problem given among the students and sharing classroom knowledge into practice. Further, through this course’s emphasis on problem-based learning, students acquire creative thinking skills and professional skills as they tackle complex, interdisciplinary and real-situation problems. Once the creative ideas are generated, there are useful additional techniques for tender ideas that will grow into a productive concept or solution.
The combination of creative skills and technical abilities will enable the students to be ready to “hit-the-ground-running” and produce in industry when they graduate. Keywords—Creative Thinking Skills, Problem-based Learnin The first part of this paper explores the issues raised by attempting to introduce creativity into the broader context of Higher Education (HE) where creativity is seen as important but its very nature involves risk and challenge to the status quo and
Traditional attitudes towards knowledge transfer by lecture, however, still pervade many disciplines and institutions. An accountancy-led view of education in HE tends supports the apparent efficiency of lecturing to large numbers. The commodification 
MIT is teaming up with Khan Academy (whose founder went to MIT and will deliver MIT’s commencement speech this spring), and together they will produce ”short videos teaching basic concepts in science and engineering” for K-12 students.
The videos will be produced by MIT’s ever-so-creative students themselves and then be made available through a dedicated MIT website and YouTube channel. 
Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales is to help the UK government make the academic research it funds freely available to all...
The decision will have major implications for the publishing industry. Firms currently charge access to peer-reviewed papers covered in journals. Science Minister David Willetts outlined details of the plan in an article in the Guardian newspaper ahead of a speech to the Publishers Association. He noted that the state currently spent about £5bn a year funding university studies.
"Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration, and will put the UK at the forefront of academic research," he said.
Jackie Barrow isn't a granny yet but as a retired teacher she felt she might qualify for an advert in The Guardian newspaper calling for volunteers to help teach children in India.
She did and today, three years on, she is reading "Not Now Bernard" via Skype to a small group of children in the Indian city of Pune.
They love it and are engaged in the experience as she holds up an Easter egg to show them how children in the UK celebrated the recent holiday. Advice and praiseThe Granny Cloud project is the brainchild of Prof Sugata Mitra, best-known for his hole-in-the-wall computer scheme which put basic PCs into some of the poorest parts of India.
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Get free online courses from the world’s leading universities. This collection includes over 400 free courses in the liberal arts and sciences. Download these audio & video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player. For all our L-E-G-E-N-D-A-R-Y fans that couldn't make it to the WORLDS FIRST INVISIBLE AD in Sydney -- this is what went down.... babes, swimming dogs, fire ...
[YouTube video] Very clever viral advert from Lynx featuring an ordinary house in Sydney, a bundle of modified LCD screens made to look like the house windows and polarised sunglasses. The windows look blank until viewed through the polaroid sunglasses, upon which all is revealed... 
Scientific studies on creativity require an understanding of “creativity-in-context”, a multilayered, critical investigation of data coming from different disciplines.
Article: Milena Z. Fisher Ph.D.
The subject of “creativity” is awfully popular these days, and yet nobody knows exactly what “creativity” really is. Johan Lehrer, in his book Imagine tries to tackle the subject. He elegantly and effortlessly skims through different aspects of creativity, telling fascinating, artfully crafted stories about creative people and various aspects of the “science of creativity”. The book is charming and engaging, so it is quite disappointing that along with this beautiful literature some of his claims aren’t very well supported. Lehrer worked in a neuroscience lab, so he should know better that we are far, far away from the real “science of creativity” and even more importantly we are probably not on the right track yet.
In my opinion, the right way to approach the subject is by establishing a model of interdisciplinary studies on creativity. I don’t believe that we can research creativity without paying attention to its context, and to say it even stronger: some fast-and-loose generalizations and impressions of “how creativity really works” might backfire and stifle further research. 
Do you work in a creative industry? In the digital age, the answer is ‘yes,’ whatever your profession. All you need to do is understand your potential – and then unlock it.
The digital revolution has popped the cork on creativity. Filmmakers no longer need to rely solely on studios to release their movies when YouTube and Vimeo reach an audience of millions. Writers can choose traditional publishers, or newer options like Amazon and eBooks. Musicians can skip six months in a studio for five minutes in a bedroom with a laptop. We have more outlets for creativity than ever before, but how do we harness the tools at our fingertips to make the most of our potential? Does it take a certain type of brain to produce these results, or can we learn to be creative, no matter what field we work in? 
'Thinking cap' makes a virtually impossible problem — possible.
In their prior research, Allan Snyder and his colleagues have found that zapping the brain leads to increased insight. Enter a recent study. Richard Chi and Allan Snyder wondered: would their electric 'thinking cap' make performance on a virtually unsolvable problem-- the nine-dot problem-- solvable?
They gave 28 healthy right-handed participants (aged 19-63) the nine-dot problem to solve. Before brain stimulation, 0 out of 22 participants solved the problem. Then they used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which is a safe, non-invasive technique that can increase or decrease cortical excitability and spontaneous neuronal firing in targeted regions. Specifically, they simultaneously decreased excitability of the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) while they increased the excitability of the right anterior temporal lobe (ATL).
After 10 minutes of right lateralizing tDCS, more than 40 percent of the participants got the problem correct. For contrast, they placed sponge electrodes in the same positions of 11 other participants but they turned off the electrical current after 30 seconds. Therefore, these 'control' participants received the exact same experience as those in the active condition but didn't actually have their brain zapped. None (0/11) of the folks in this placebo condition solved the problem at any point during the experiment. 
My 11 year old son just took a course at Stanford. That has a nice ring to it but it is actually meaningless because these days anyone can take a course at Stanford. You don’t even have to pay.
That doesn’t make for an interesting post except that this ‘bunch of videos’ is currently being heralded as the future of higher education. In the New York Times, David Brooks saw courses like the one my son took as a tsunami about to hit campuses all over the world. And he isn’t alone. Harvard’s Clay Christensen sees it as a transformative technology that will change education forever. And along with Stanford many other institutions, most notably Harvard and MIT, are leaping into the online mix. This is attracting attention and investment dollars. It has people nervous and excited.
So I wondered, what happens when someone who has grown up online encountered one of these new ventures?
This Prezi was produced for students at Coventry University on the MSc Industrial Design and MSc Transport Design Courses. The students were required to produce an A1 sized poster that described their research project, its methodologies, outcomes and how it would be used to feed into their major design project.
The presentation itself may be of use to others who are required to create information rich documents and features advice on the creation of inforgraphics and poster layouts as well as links to external sites that are both supportive and critical of infographics. 
You Are The Problem, by Jeffrey Paul Baumgartner...
Recently, I came across a sign informing…
I thought this sign was brilliant, not least because my bicycle is my preferred means of transport for journeys under 10km or so. But it is also a handy reminder that we humans tend to blame problems on others, and then expect others to solve those problems for us. Sadly, those others often have the same thoughts as us! They blame us and everyone else—but themselves—for the same problem. Meanwhile, everyone is waiting for someone else to solve the problem. But the truth is, if we are the problem, we also have a responsibility to solve the problem. 
Design commentator Bruce Nussbaum shook up the world of design thinking this week arguing that it is a “failed experiment” and that Creative Intelligence is an appropriate term to replace it. What might this mean for design and its increasing role beyond its traditional boundaries?
Nussbaum’s rally against design thinking has not to do with its successes (in which he outlines many, including the widespread application of it to service and non-profit development), but rather where it becomes a barrier and where it fails to deliver: But it was creativity that Design Thinking was originally supposed to deliver and it is to creativity that I now turn directly and purposefully. Creativity is an old concept, far older than “design.” But it is an inclusive concept. In my experience, when you say the word “design” to people across a table, they tend to smile politely and think “fashion.” Say “design thinking,” and they stop smiling and tend to lean away from you. But say “creativity” and people light up and lean in toward you. 
Kalani Hausman, an author, educator, InfoTech/InfoSec professional and researcher in high-performance computing launched an education-focused program: STEMulate learning through personalized 3D printed robotics.
This robotics course is designed to interest boys and girls in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) by allowing them to pick the type of robot (bug, tank, hand, bipedal walker, etc) and color for the robot framework. Each student will then use common components (Arduino, servos, sensors) to build their robot rather than a standard bot that all will use.
This program is currently participating in the #SciFund Challenge on rockethub.com - You might find this research interesting, then help fuel this exciting project and become part of the STEMulate Learning effort.
MakerBot, the manufacturer of 3D Printer, is providing a dual-color Replicator from their next production run to the STEMulate Learning program. Besides, MakerBot is putting him in contact with 25+ schools that have MakerBots as part of their Education program to perform his research in educational settings. 
MIT has teamed up with its Cambridge neighbor, Harvard, to create a new non profit venture, EDX. To date, Harvard has barely dabbled in open education. But it’s now throwing $30 million behind EDX (M.I.T. will do the same), and together they will offer free digital courses worldwide, with students receiving the obligatory certificate of mastery at the end. The EDX platform will be open source, meaning it will be open to other universities..
Classes will begin next fall.
What’s going on in artists’ brains when they create?
A recent article in The Atlantic on MRIs pointed to a TED video by Charles Limb, a scientist who researches jazz musicians. “I’m just astounded,” he says, “How can this possibly be, how can the brain generate that much music, that much creativity, spontaneously?” It’s a good question: from jazz musicians to performance artists to live painters, artists and creative people constantly have to create in the moment. Many artists are brilliant at this. How is that possible?
It turns out that two things are happening: the part of your brain responsible for self-expression turns on. That makes sense. But then the part of your brain responsible for self-monitoring turns off. That means jazz musicians in the throes of improvised creation aren’t paying attention to their mistakes. As Limb explains, it was just one study, but the results make intuitive sense.
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