Why one UK hospital is operating on virtual patients. The body in question is a virtual one, appearing on a touchscreen "operating table". It could represent the future for both teaching would-be doctors about anatomy and preparing for real-life operations.
Students and surgeons can interact with it either via touch or with a traditional mouse. The body can be stripped back to expose internal organs, areas can be enlarged for more detailed study and the software can work with real patient data.
Philip John, research fellow at Imperial College, describes the table as a "giant iPad".
The benefits as a teaching aid are obvious. Now imagining how this could work with learners of any age -- maybe as an interactive table with the solar system or parts of insects. It's not okay to continue to be mediocre. Build an environment that allows students the opportunity to learn. Every learner has access to everything they need whenever they need it.
Follow the SLC on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SLCedu Teachers and students are at the core of the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC). Blogger Duane Lester confronts a newspaper editor for plagiarizing his work. Things get tense. This can be a model for plagiarism that students can use for great discussions. Some questions:
> Should bloggers fight for their original work? > Did Duane do the right thing taking the check? > If someone stole your work and didn't give you attribution, what would you do? 
Learning how to play again! Yes. Look at this graphic and then think about how you react to stress.
SSUQIOC: Sense, Self-Control, Understand, Question, Imagine, Offer, Collaborate:
• Sense: Observe, listen, pay attention. Reflect. Be Open. Perceive. Intuit.
I'm going to write more about this. I do know when I play, giggle, laugh, and even daydream, I am more creative. 
What is the number one innovation killer at your company?
Innovation is the Trojan Horse that can be sent in to break down silos. But this can only work if the leaders do what they're supposed to do: embrace change. Organizations don't change because they want to. Here are the first two critical steps in breaking down silos: 
Everyone is born creative. Kids are so creative, and human beings made the civilization and modern technology with this gift. But, when people hear what I’m doing, they always start to ask similar questions like: How can one become creative?
So, what’s blocking creativity? In most cases it’s the knowledge and time. 
“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries,” A.A. Milne, of Winnie-the-Pooh fame, once noted.
Julia Kirby, editor at large for Harvard Business Review, writes a clever review of three books about creativity and innovation. > Jonah Lehrer's "Imagine: How Creativity Works" > Phil McKinney's "Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions that Spark Game-Changing Innovation" > Jon Gerner's "the Idea Factory: Bells Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation"
Kirby writes "It is rarely a coincidence when three books exploring the same territory arrive in the same month; a trend in nonfiction publishing is often a barometer of societal anxiety. Creativity has become that." and then ends with "At all these levels, the flip side of our growing celebration of creativity is a growing uneasiness at our dependence on a phenomenon we can’t really control. Yes, we can design workshops to challenge assumptions, and we should. We can design workspaces that make ideas collide more often. We can allow smart people to spend 15% of their time on the half-baked ideas they believe in.
Creativity in schools. This is not a possibility with standards and testing. However, if we look at this phenomenon happening in the rest of the world, we can learn ways to challenge the status quo and accustomice tool kit that isn't working anymore or we will just...
get better and better at doing things that don't work. 
Why didn't a company like Kodak dream up Instagram?
How does a company re-invent itself so it can be more innovative? First, it must look in the mirror. What happens in large organizations is akin to how films are made in Hollywood -- many can say no, but few can give the green light. There are many obstacles to "yes," but that can and should change. Not so a company can create new products per se, but so it can be agile, nimble, and responsive. So it can continue doing what it does and serve its customers more effectively.
Schools need to re-invent themselves so they are innovative. Maybe it will mean starting over. Just like Kodak, schools only know the way they are doing it now and it is not working. 
Aspects of creative thinking that are not usually taught. 1. You are creative. 2. Creative thinking is work. 3. You must go through the motions of being creative. 4. Your bain is not a computer. 5. There is no one right answer. 6. Never stop with your first good idea. 7. Expect the experts to be negative. 8. Trust your instincts. 9. There is no such things as failure. 10. You do not see things as they are: you see them as you are. 11. Always approach a problem on its own terms. 12. Learn to think unconventionally. This component provides the ‘something extra’ of creative performance and creativity thinking skills can be applied in any domain. Assuming that an individual has some incentive to perform an activity, performance will be “technically good” or “adequate” or “acceptable” if the requisite expertise is in place. Via wlonline 
During the creative process, the brain shuts off its normal inhibition of new ideas. Most of the time, it's important to self monitor so you don’t say everything you think or do everything you consider.
Many people question whether creativity can be taught and learned. They believe that creative abilities are fixed, like eye color, and can’t be changed. By using a creative thinking method, you will learn how to jump-start your innovation engine, and you will fully appreciate that every word, every object, every idea, and every moment provides an opportunity for creativity. It costs nothing to generate amazing ideas, and the results are priceless. 
Apple will launch a new, smaller, cheaper iPad in the third quarter of 2012, according to new reports from China. I knew it. Now will I get one? Will they be iPad 3 or using the iPad 2 system? 
‘A good poem is never easy.It must be pulled out of us, like a splinter.’...
Lehrer, a neuroscientist-turned- writer, finds that these moments emanate from a certain part of the brain.
Creativity, he finds, corresponds to a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the brain’s right hemisphere. And that is stimulated by relaxation. “Why is a relaxed state of mind so important for creative insights?” he writes. “When our minds are at ease – when those alpha waves are rippling through the brain – we’re more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inward.... In contrast, when we are diligently focused, our attention tends to be directed outward.” |
America's education system has become obsolete. "It needs reinventing, not reforming," says Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner. It's time to start with the learner and shake things up. Wagner's new book "Creating Innovators" provides background information, research, and strategies to personalize learning. 
Mobile devices and apps continue to climb the list as game-based learning stays in the same spot for three years.
Several examples share how they changed their policies so students can use mobile devices including Foryth County Schools in Georgia and Osseo Area Schools in Minnesota started a "bring your own device" initiative. Now personal learning environments moves up to two to three years. 
I'm also reading John Lehrer's new book "Imagine" and plan to write about it. This article piqued my interest because I see how the role of emotions affect the subconscious in decision-making. I didn't read his book "How We Decide" but now I get an idea of it from this article by Renee Hopkins:
There is a a two-step process for accessing Type 1 thinking in decision-making would be to: 1. Absorb data. 
Kevin McLaughlin writes a great post sharing: What is Digital Literacy
Futurelab, an organisation ‘committed to developing creative and innovative approaches to education, teaching and learning’, gives the following definition in its publication Digital Literacy across the curriculum:
To be digitally literate is to have access to a broad range of practices and cultural resources that you are able to apply to digital tools. It is the ability to make and share meaning in different modes and formats; to create, collaborate and communicate effectively and to understand how and when digital technologies can best be used to support these processes. 
There is a lot of talk about finding flow these days. Cziksentmihaly coined the term for his research that describes that state we crave when we are doing something and we lose all track of time.
There are two types of flow, one that is fear-based and the other is passion-driven. We may gain more clarity on how to achieve Flow by knowing which type of Flow we are striving for and calling on the appropriate operating systems. 
Carmine Gallo, has written a book called The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty. 1. Stop selling stuff. 2. Enrich lives. 3. Hire for smiles. 4. Celebrate diversity. 5. Unleach inner genius. 6. Empower employees. 7. Sell the benefit. 8. Follow th steps of service. 9. Create multisensory experiences. 10. Appeal to the buying brain. 
Next time you catch yourself daydreaming, remember this: you do your best work when your mind is wandering. Do you daydream?
Maybe if we rethink how creativity needs to be part of the learning process, then we can allow time to tinker, pace, walk outside of the classroom, and just daydream. 
Walt Gardner taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District and was a lecturer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education. He shares why schools don't allow kids to learn from failure. Some of the most important lessons come from failure. Schools penalize kids for failing instead of their effort and progress in learning.
Just imagine a toddler not being allowed to fall while they are learning to walk. This is how we learn. Innovation only happens by learning through failure. Standardized tests suppress innovators. Schools, seek to identify (and overvalue) hard skills, such as competencies with spreadsheets, rather than soft skills, such as persistence. 
'Creativity is not a talent.It is a way of operating.' Much has been said about how creativity works, its secrets, its origins, and what... Via wlonline 
Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step by Edward de Bono is a book about lateral thinking that means thinking outside the box. Be creative.
If we look at the problem from a different perspective, we may see something that we didn’t see before. 
In our connected world, it is easy to think that the more informationwe have the better our chances of success. Mindfulness in business is not something that everyone understands how to achieve. But with a few pointers, it is within reach.
Pay Attention The Impact of Mindfulness Doing Less Means Doing More Don't Just Fill Your MInd, Empty It Create Space
Education Musings by a Pernille Ripp in her fourth year of teaching.
I never thought to say, "I don't know..."
"Third year of teaching and I realized I wasn't the only expert in the room. One child knew more about wars at 10 years old than I would ever be able to cram into my head. Another was an expert on poetry. The questions kept coming but my approach to them changed; I stopped being afraid of them and realized that not knowing something was powerful. Not knowing something and admitting it was a sign of strength, a learning opportunity to model how I would find out. Now instead of nervous glances at the door, hoping no one would ever discover that I didn't have all of the answers, I asked the students for help. How would we find out, why was this a great question, did anyone else know?"
Knowing that you are not the expert is very powerful. Saying "I don't know" opens doors and allows lots of questions. |
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