The Five Factors To Be Creative

Creativity is a word that is generating a huge uproar in the educational circles. Experts as well as parents are questioning the efficacity of todays educational system in developing and sharpening students' skills. It seems that while the world is changing and new learning needs emerge as a result of the interplay of all the new emerging technologies in students life, schools are still resisting this change. Teachers are still using the same traditional methods that they themselves learnt under when they were students.The rigidity of the schools system has driven many students to give up schooling forever. 'I am feeling bored ' is a sentence we hear so often from our students.Isn't this fact alone enought to sound the alarming  ring and wave a red flag at the trajic situation in which our school system is living in ?

In fact many high profiled thinkers and many other educational illuminaries have already started to draw educators attention to this problem. Ken Robinson is one of the most renowned creativity theoriser and the video he made in TED has been watched by millions of people all around the world. John Cleese is also another great thinker whose insight on creativity recipe has been well received in the four corners of the world. Brain Pickings has recently featured one of his great videos in which he talks about the five factors to make your life more creative.

I have embedded the video below together with an excerpt on these factors. Watch and share the knowledge.

" 1.     Space (“You can’t become playful, and therefore creative, if you’re under your usual pressures.”)  

2.     Time (“It’s not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.”)

3.     Time (“Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original,” and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision.) 

4.     Confidence (“Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.”) 

5.     Humor (“The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.”)  "

 Here is the entire lecture if you want to watch it all.


 

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Five Great Motivational Videos for Your Students

Below are some of the inspiring videos made by teenagers at TedxTeen which is the adolescent version of TED talks. Show your students what other teenagers are doing apart from being glued to their mobile phone screens texting all the time.Let them see the  potential inside of them that they are wasting in playing stupid and violent games all the time. Our students are living in a merciless commercial world where surrounded by savage advertising companies whose sole purpose is to make gains in the growing  teens market. We should give them a hand and help them out. They are desperate for  motivation and passion and with just some simple but creative ways we can make a change in their lives.

I hope that you would watch  at least one of the 5 videos with your students. These videos are really wonderful and they deserve your time.

1- Natalie Warne- Anonymous Extraordinaries

" Born in an underserved part of downtown Chicago, Natalie and her five siblings had to survive on her mother's humble teacher salary, moving from city to city to find work. No stranger to adversity, Natalie was determined to make something great out of her life. "

  






2-  Tavi Gevinson: Still Figuring it out

"Tavi Gevinson is editor-in-chief and founder of RookieMag.com and writes thestylerookie.com. Rookie, a site for teenage girls, broke 1 million page views within 5 days of launching in September of 2011, and contributors have included Miranda July, Dan Savage, Joss Whedon, JD Samson, Zooey "

3- Tara Suri & Niha Jain : Learning to Fail

" Tara Suri, galvanized by sexism and poverty, she encountered at 13, founded Turn Your World Around, an organization that engages youth in making a global difference. The organization has since raised over $100,000 and impacted and engaged people globally in various initiatives, garnering  "

4- Curtis Klig: The Art of Obsession

" Curtis Kulig was born in 1981 in North Dakota. Atage 13, he began screen-printing in his father's shop,laying the foundation for his work as an artist. Hiscollaborations include projects with fellow artists"

  






5- Khadim Diop

"On August 18, 1997, in Harlem Hospital kicking and screaming, a star was born (premature). At the age of 5 Khadim Diop stated aspirations of making a ..."

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Easy Way to Print out Infographics and Posters

Infographic are great learning materials that we can use with our student( Search Engine Optimization ) purposes.Anyway here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning we have allocated a whole section to feature those infographic we deem are educational and can be an addition to you.

The thing about infographics, however, is that you can not print them in poster format because the standard printers do not support that format. Infographics can be great posters to hang in your classroom wall and thanks to Block Poster you can now do it.

Block Poster is is a web based tool that you can use to print out your poster sized pictures in a very smart way. The way to do it is very easy, just upload your high quality graphic and then divide it into letter-sized chunks for printing. You can then print 0out each section and put them together on a poster board to make your own poster.

Head over to Block Poster and give it a try.

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