"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
...
On one of my recent posts,
snip
Is there a method or exercises to develop creative thinking? Cutting
metal and drilling holes is the easy part, how do you completely forget an
idea in order to "see" a new idea? This may come easily for an
intelligent person but I struggle with my mental limitations.


Could I recommend a look at:
http://www.edwdebono.com/

Many years ago I taught a CoRT course (google on Edward de Bono) to grade
5/6 students in a rural area of British Columbia - we did it for 2 years I
believe. Honestly I don't know what effect it had on the students, I can
only report on some of the results I saw. One of the lessons had the
question "What would it be like if all the cars in the world were painted
yellow?" and the students, in their groups of about 5 (including one
acting as recorder) had to voice all their ideas under the headings "Good,
Bad, Interesting". I imagine many of you could come up with similar
answers to those which the students brought out(remember - grade 5/6);
however one student thought, under Interesting, that it "would sure make
funerals brighter and cheerier". Not a particularly bright student at
that. Similar rules to those mentioned in other posts - no "Man, that's
stupid", no putting down, all ideas are valid initially. My recollection
is that in the example above there were over 60 DIFFERENT responses out of
a class of 24 kiddies. Unfortunately things changed and the idea of
actually teaching thinking was dropped by the wayside. I would tell the
English and Social Studies teachers especially, what we were looking at
each week and encourage them to use that as a basis for their class
assignments. eg. OPV (other people's viewpoint), perhaps you're teaching
the settling of the West, give the kids an assignment perhaps "You're a
Cree from Saskatchewan and you hear about these 'blue eyes' coming - what
is your response to this?" You see the point. Hard to get other teachers
to get into this though, and that's where I feel I missed out - and the
kids. So, yes! there are formal methods to help you think differently,
much more fun (now there's a mis-used word) in a group though.
HTH, Mike
in BC