Innovate

The key to engagement is involving students in transforming information into something new or a different ways of thinking. When you're on the computer, you're likely to copy and paste. Move between on-computer and off-computer activities to help students with transformation.

Turn website content into a skit. Use the computer's camera to record the skit. Use objects in the room to tell the story of recycling.

Combine Legos and website resources for creative projects.

• Go to Lego City Comic Builder. Create your own comic.
  Open Lego Digital Designer on your desktop. Create Lego models and tell exciting stories.

In The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen, the authors identify five skills of innovators in business and industry. These five ideas can easily be applied to creative thinking in the K-12 environment.

Associating

The key to associating is connecting the unconnected. Use chains, cycles, patterns, and associations to help students build associations.

• What makes this person, place, thing, creature, or situation different from others or like others?
• What elements are common and uncommon?
• Are are examples and non-examples?
• What connections can be found with prior knowledge?
• What connections can be made related topics?
• What patterns can be identified with this content?

By the time students are in high school, they've seen most of the online interactives. Reach beyond the classics and introduce resources where students can draw comparisons. For instance, use the interactives from the Puke Ariki Museum in New Zealand or the National Museum of Australia. Ask students to examine an interactive and compare this experience with a current classroom topic.

• The Gold Rush: Australia. Compare the information found on this interactive with the California or Klondike Gold Rush. How are they alike and different? Go to the interactive.
• Heroes of the Air: Australia. Compare the Australian experience with flight with the American experience. Go to the Interactive.
• European Voyages: Australia. Compare this voyage to other early explorers. Go to the interactive.

Zoom In and Zoom Out. Students are accustomed to zooming in and out on the computer. Involve students in zooming into one example and zooming back out to see the big picture. How does this one example fit the big picture? Then, make comparisons with other students. Examples: one food in a food group; one battle in a war; one phobia to reflect the idea of phobia.

Lego Thinking. You need lots of ideas from many different directions. Then, ideas can be recombined in many ways. The more Lego you have, the more combinations are possible! In addition, you need many different types of pieces not just a bunch of blocks. Students need both breadth (many types of pieces) and depth (lots of pieces). When applied to the classroom, students need breadth across subjects and depth of expertise in each subject.

Making Associating Happen

The Innovator's DNA recommends five tips:

• Focus new associations. Provide students with two examples and ask them to brainstorm connections.
• Take on the persona. Ask students to put themselves in the place of a person, place, thing, event. Look from a new perspective.
• Generate metaphors. Create an analogy.
• Build a curiosity box. Put items in a box to stimulate thinking. For instance, ask students to do then and now comparisons. The box contains a GPS, flashlight, headphones, and other items. How did people in a particular time exist without these ideas?
• SCAMPER. Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify, Minimize, Modify, Eliminate, Reverse, Rearrange.

Start with website content and ask students to create an off-computer visualization of what they've learned.

Questioning

Questioning is the key to creativity. In addition to the standard, who, what, where, when, why, and how. Ask why-not?, what caused? and what-if? questions.

Get students involved in both critical and creative thinking through quality content and evaluation skills. Provide access to databases and deep web resources that go beyond wikipedia. The ability to systematically ask deep questions, use reasoning, and apply evidence to develop arguments, solve problems and make decisions.

• Accuracy (How do we know information is correct?)
• Bias/Balance (How do we examine and evaluate multiple perspectives?)
• Connections (How do we assimilate and synthesize information?)
• Depth (How do we identify and address the complexities of this issue?)
• Evidence (How do we organize information to build arguments?)

Observing

Watch the world around you. See how school is connected to the larger world.

• Visual. Observe animals through video.
• Trace. Use Google Financial to track companies.
• Record. Video record experiments, steps in an art project.
• Senses. Use all of your senses.

Observe from a distance with webcams:

• Nestcams

Networking

Connect with outside experts and people beyond your classroom.

• Experts. Connect with government and city experts.
• Creative community in the classroom.
• Roles. Each person takes on a role and shares.
• Use video conferencing and virtual field trips as a way to escape the everyday classroom.
  • Skype in the Classroom. Check out projects for the classroom.

Experimenting

Try new experiences.

• New Locations. Rearrange your room for technology and experimentation.
• Reach Outside. Move into the hall or outside.
• Go Global. Explore newspapers and magazines and website from other countries.
• Disassemble. Tear things apart and see how they work.
• Build prototypes. Become inventors.

Try It!
Select one of the five skills of innovators. Design an activity that that develops or applies one of these skills.

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