I’ve decided to expand my creativity over the summer with the help of Edward De Bono’s new book “How to Have Creative Ideas”. I’m a big fan of De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and I’ve seen the method used in schools to good effect. So I’m going to spend 10 minutes a day or so working through the excercises in the book and chart some of my experiences on the blog. Like a good action researcher I intend to extract my significant learning! What I will blog about are my reactions, thoughts and reflections on the process rather than the experiments themselves. If you want the actual experiments you’ll need to buy the book
Day One
Context
I read through the introduction, recognised some familiar stories and some stuff about lateral thinking. The book looks interesting and I’m feeling quite positive about the games. I spend a short time reminding myself that De Bono is talking about creative ideas not artistic creativity.
(Sudden flash of negative memory – a nasty, destructive, but witty teacher once wrote on my report when I was about 14 that I had “an artistic temperament with none of the talent to justify it” Ouch!)
Ok so I decide to try the the first in the book and set a 10 minute deadline. It seems simple enough……
What?
It was quite hard to get going and fight off the feeling that I wasn’t doing it right.
Once I’d got my first idea I carried on and by the end of the ten minutes I had one quite good solution to the task that fulfilled the criteria and one (the first) that slightly missed the point.
So what?
Ok extract my learning from this:

Now What?
What do I take forward to the next game?

About Linda

I blog here and at the Classroom Displays Blog. I am also involved in Usefulwiki, an educational resources wiki. I teach both on and off line and occasionally write for educational magazines.
You can also find me blogging at various other places on the web.