Week #3: Encouraging Creativity at School and the Workplace

The third week of my MEIT Course, CEdO515 - Technology Tools, has us exploring ways that technology can be used to incite student creativity. What I found interesting in the readings from the Egbert text is that creativity arises from prior knowledge. Oftentimes, it is when we are presented with a new problem that we have to use critical-thinking skills and originate a solution.

According to Egbert, effective creativity tasks encourage divergence versus convergence. Students are not penalized for thinking outside the proverbial box, but are encouraged to elaborate and support their findings. I believe that this should apply to business as well. Companies should embrace and reward divergent thinking. Many companies advertise for employees who can ‘think outside the box’ - but do they really embrace it? If a company is to survive and thrive, then divergent thinking will help it adapt to new situations and problems in the market.

One of our assignments this week was to research lessons that use curricular spreadsheets. I utilized netTrekker and found an existing lesson that asks students to investigate water usage at home. The lesson has a downloadable Excel spreadsheet for recording water usage over the course of a week. Each cell contains a value for gallons of water used which is tied to a total water used formula at the bottom of the sheet. The lesson further asks students to play ‘what-if’ scenarios with the data to find ways to reduce water use. Students can change the line item values and see the impact on the total gallons of water used.

The lesson enhances student familiarity with spreadsheets but also challenges the student to ‘think’ about ways in which water might be conserved. If the household dishwashing machine uses 30 gallons the student might arrive at ways to reduce its use. Should all students have the same conclusion and graded on the basis of same results? No! Doing so would punish creativity and dull inquisitive minds.

At work, I train new hires on our software products, internal procedures and plant the first seeds of the corporate culture. I explain the workflow of the company and the needs our products fill in the market. I emphatically tell the new hires that they should maintain a critical eye and question how things are done internally and with customers. They have unique life experiences, prior knowledge and ‘fresh eyes’ to see opportunities for improvement. I follow-up with their supervisors and gently remind them that I told the new hires to question everything. The divergent results pull us out of our comfort zones - but fresh approaches to problems take all of us to a new, creative plane - and that is exciting!