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Creativity Learning in Education and Training
The subject of creativity has been researched and investigated in a scientific way for the past half century. The result, so far, has been that we have only been able to realize and determine creativity when it has occurred, but not been able to find methods and tools to generate creativity or creative actions.
The reason for this is that there has not been a universal definition of creativity in the current literature, and, therefore, it has not been possible to define a unified creativity science; subsequently, learning creativity has not been included in education and training programs.
Drawing from work based on modern physical sciences, the speaker presents a universal definition of creativity and explains its fundamental origin and nature. This provides the foundation for the development of a new creativity science that will facilitate further research and development of the subject. It also provides a basic tool for the development of creativity learning courses in all official education and training programs, from secondary school to university levels.
Who should attend: All interested in education and training for our life and work.
What you’ll learn: Participants will learn some tools and methods for being creative—or how to generate creative actions in life and work.
How this new knowledge can be applied: The tools and methods used can be directly applicable in our life and our work.Anders Lennart Swahn, independent consultant, NvisioN: Creativity in Action, Hedgesville, West Virginia.
key words: education, learning, leadership
issue area: Learning and Education, Technology and Science, Futures Methodologies
The Construction of a Network Hierarchical Feedback System for Taiwanese Universities
These speakers will discuss a network hierarchical feedback system based on the integration of total quality management (TQM) and innovation. A decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method is adapted to address the complex, interdependent relationships among variables and thereby construct a relation structure among the measurement criteria for evaluation purposes. A fuzzy analytic network process is employed to overcome the problem of dependence and feedback among each TQM measurement criterion. A fuzzy analytic hierarchical process is used to evaluate the measurement criteria for innovation performance. A grey relation analysis is finally utilized to find optimal alternatives. The value of this study is that it provides all types of universities in Taiwan the most complete evaluation of operation performance, as well as opportunities for improvement, with attentiveness to competitive advantage and the enhancement of future survival.
Who should attend: Educators, managers, and all university personnel.
What you’ll learn: From the result of this study, they will have a clear direction to improve the overall organizational performance based on total quality management and innovation.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Faculties as well as top managers of universities can follow the result of this study to conduct innovation to improve the quality performance and finally to achieve high organizational performance.Jui-Kuei Chen, director and associate professor, Graduate Institute of Futures Studies, Tamkang University, Taipei, Taiwan
I-Shuo Chen, postgraduate student, Institute of Business and Management, National Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwankey words: education, hierarchical feedback system, innovation
issue area: Learning and Education, Technology and Science, Business and Careers
Topics, Tools, and Tasks for Teaching Futures
Whether you want to include futures in your course or workshop or you want to build a course on the future, this workshop provides practical “how-to” information. Attendees will review existing futures courses and learner exercises that can be practically applied to their academic environment. Participants will also create new exercises directly related to their needs and will have an opportunity to share experiences with others. We will give actionable advice on how to create templates for course/learner syllabi, online credit and non-credit courses, outlines for crafting futures exercises, and unique learning experiences. Workshop leaders are experienced futures instructors from the Institute for the Future at Anne Arundel Community College, who can share their knowledge and guide creation of new learning opportunities.
Who should attend: People particularly focused on, and those just starting, the “futures teaching” process. High school and college educators, trainers, and those who want insight into some topics and strategies in teaching and learning the future will benefit from this workshop.
What you’ll learn: Participants will add new futures learning and teaching strategies to their repertoire. They will also find out how to create their own futures exercises and courses.
How this new knowledge can be applied: This course is practical. Attendees will take away new processes and procedures for futures teaching and learning.
Stephen F. Steele, professor, sociology and futures studies; director, Institute for the Future@AAAC, Arnold, Maryland
Kay Strong, associate professor of economics, Bowling Green State University, Huron, Ohiokey words: futures, learning, tools, education
issue areas: Learning and Education, Futures Methodologies
A New Paradigm in Higher Education for the Innovation Age
Universities pride themselves on the quality of the knowledge workers they produce, but the future of the universities will depend upon their ability to develop knowledge creators. As the communication of knowledge flows around the world, any job that does not require proximity can be outsourced. Our students must be motivated to experience the world through the eyes of a creator and entrepreneur. Universities’ curricula started to include cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary education during the last century, which spawned new domains and explorations. This century must focus on transdisciplinary education. Transdisciplinary education is between and across all disciplines. Inventions in field trials now and technologies yet to be discovered will create the new domains of this century. Narrowly focused fields of study are in peril.
Who should attend: Educators, businesses, scientists, change agents.
What you’ll learn: Students must be innovative and knowledge creation will dominate the future. Knowledge worker jobs will be outsourced to the lowest bidder.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Businesses and educators will realize that knowledge creation will dominate the future. Knowledge worker jobs will be outsourced to the lowest bidder.Rodney Hill, director, Institute of Applied Creativity, Texas A&M University, Department of Architecture, College Station, Texas.
Blake Godkin, futurist, planner, SHW Group, Plano, Texas
Jonathan Aldis, principal in charge, SHW Group, Plano, Texas
Jorge A. Vanegas, interim dean, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texaskey words: invention, innovation, creativity, cross cultural learning styles
issue areas: Learning and Education, Social and Cultural Trends, Business and Careers
Creativity and Innovation: The Torrance Legacies
E. Paul Torrance, the father of creativity, dedicated his entire career of more than 40 years researching and writing over 2,000 books, tests, and articles about identifying creative and critical thinkers of all ages. There is a great deal of potential for instruction from the Torrance Tests and from his Future Problem Solving model. In some places, workshops and courses exist to develop and nurture creativity. The panel members will speak about creativity in their lives and careers, and present profiles of highly creative people years after they were identified as highly creative. Let us continue efforts to systematically identify, teach, and nurture creativity and critical problem solving.
Who should attend: Those interested in capitalizing on the human capacity for complex higher order thinking and for all from preschool to adulthood into business and governmental leadership.
What you’ll learn: Creativity and innovation are where we can find it. Using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, attendees will learn Future Problem Solving and how to apply the principles of creative problem solving through research-based teaching and individual development.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Creative and critical thinking and principles of future problem solving enhance everyday lives, businesses, organizations, and other staid institutions in need of renewal and restructuring. With early school emphasis on young people's creativity, business will have those highly creative individuals required for survival in this new and the future global economy.John Kauffman, vice president of marketing, Scholastic Testing Service, Inc., Bensenville, Illinois
Scott Rich, assessment specialist, Scholastic Testing Service, Inc., Bensenville, Illinois
Berenice Bleedorn, retired professor; founder of Institute of Creative Studies, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Cheryl Whitesitt, executive director, Minnesota Future Problem Solving Program, Brownsville, Minnesota
Greg Sedbrook, owner, Sedbrook Management, St. Paul, Minnesota
Joan Smutny, co-founder and director, Center for the Gifted, National-Louis University, Wilmette, Illinoiskey words: education, assessment, creative problem solving
issue areas: Learning and Education, Futures Methodologies, Social and Cultural Trends
Children, Creativity, and the 21st Century
In the next 20 years, the world will change more dramatically than in any previous 20-year period in history. Advances in biotech, nanotech, and robotics, along with shifts in the global economy, will make life in 2028 dramatically different from today. Success will hinge on individuals' ability to think creatively, accessing right-brained skills in order to accommodate and take advantage of these changes. Today’s children in Boston will be competing with children in Beijing and Bangalore. If their creative sides have not been developed, they will have little hope of finding fulfilling careers, and the United States will lose its position as the world leader in innovation and technology. The way in which children are prepared for life—our approaches to parenting and to schooling—must change to incorporate the development of creativity as a nonnegotiable skill, not just in the arts but for all fields of endeavor.
Who should attend: Those interested in preparing children for an uncertain future and those interested in the United States' ongoing ability to compete and to lead in the years ahead.
What you’ll learn: Attendees will learn that the future will require right-brained thinking, that American children today are not being prepared well, and that the United States is in danger of losing its competitive edge.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Once their awareness has been raised, policy makers and the public can insist that K-12 schools and preschools shift their focus away from obsolete, twentieth-century skill building and rote memorization, and begin to attend to children's creativity.Richard Winefield, executive director, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Sausalito, California.
key words: children, creativity, change
issue areas: Learning and Education, Social and Cultural Trends, Technology and Science
Engaging Global Youth through Innovation Design Challenges
Destination Imagination is the world's largest creative problem solving program for kindergarten through college-aged learners. DI participants develop life skills while solving challenges through their unique, hands-on experiences in the sciences, technology, mechanics, engineering, theater, improvisation, goal setting, time and budget management, team building, and leadership. The University of Minnesota’s Leapfrog Institutes builds positive futures for human capital development through the infusion of creativity and innovation in education. DI’s collaboration with Leapfrog Institutes extends the organization’s creativity and imagination program with knowledge construction, innovation, and active futuring components.
Who should attend: All those interested in youth and the development of life skills.
What you’ll learn: Attendees will learn how youthful participants respond to specific Innovation Design Challenges (e.g., in energy, environment, social capital development, communications, conflict resolution, etc.) and how to continue and expand youth involvement in Innovation Design Challenges into the future.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Participants will be presented with innovation design challenges in a random “surprise” process. The Leapfrog Institutes and DI organizers will discuss their experiences in engaging youth in active futuring, and will present a framework for opening the futures to younger generations.Arthur Harkins, faculty director, Leapfrog Institutes, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
John W. Moravec, director, Leapfrog Institutes, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Pamela F. Schroeder, affiliate director, Minnesota Destination ImagiNation, Minneapolis, Minnesota.key words: learning, creative problem solving, youth
issue area: Learning and Education
Youth Can Change the World: International Models and Networks for Addressing Global Challenges of the 21st Century
David Bornstein’s book and PBS TV series How to Change the World tells stories of remarkable individuals whose vision, foresight, and creative action have had a major impact on improving the world. This panel showcases three international models of how youth can collaborate in a similar way to create the conditions, generate inventions, or be catalysts for projects that can improve the world and address some of humanity’s major global challenges. Some of the projects discussed include kids creating inventions for handicapped people in Israel; student-inspired community projects to promote clean drinking water through behavioral changes in homes in rural India; and three groups of high-school students and teachers from three continents who traveled to meet with the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India, to understand the nature and practice of happiness.
Who should attend: Educators, teachers, parents, and anyone who values the energy and creativity of youth to be able to help address global challenges and to help make positive changes in the world.
What you’ll learn: Attendees will learn about three major international education projects that have directly involved or have been influenced by students’ creativity and collaboration.
How this new knowledge can be applied: This panel presents the power of creativity and energy of having young people directly involved as co-participants in helping address global challenges for the twenty-first century. The projects, technologies/digital media, and community project-based learning approaches used by all these projects can help others learn how they can be involved in these or similar projects, and are models of how to best engage students.Ted Kahn, CEO and chief learning officer, DesignWorlds for Learning/DesignWorlds for College and Careers, Cupertino, California.
Linda D’Acquisto, president and founder, KidCurators, LLC, Middleton, Wisconsin.
Max Marner, senior, Lick-Wilmerding High School (San Francisco) and student intern, Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California.
Koki Moribe, junior, Cupertino High School, Cupertino, California. He is a student client of DesignWorlds for College and is active in a major global science philanthropy project of his senior class, called Kenya Dream.
Ayushi Roy, junior, Leland High School. San Jose, Californiakey words: education, technology, youth, future networks
Issue areas: Learning and Education, Values and Spirituality, Technology and Science
Complexipacity
In 1970, British cyberneticist Stafford Beer forecast that the great challenge of the Information Age would be “managing modern complexity.” Today, universal connectivity is making us all “parallel-processors” and “multi-taskers,” while the Internet is inundating our decisions with input. Every day, science tells us more about how we affect the environment and how our environment affects us. with growing transparency, every institution exudes information, while the pace of innovation and change continues to accelerate.
Do humans—individual and collectively—have the capacity to assimilate all the newly accessible knowledge and use it to improve our policy decisions, buying habits, and personal choices? Will educators be able to equip us with the skills to manage our complex new world, or will our increasingly complicated decisions ultimately have to be made for us by computer algorithms and intelligent systems?
Who should attend: Educators from pre-K to postgraduate, human resource managers and recruiters, computer games developers and players, parents.
What you’ll learn: Latest findings on new workplace skills and the growing use of serious games to teach skills; problematic trends that will constrain the future of traditional education and training.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Educators can use examples of successful cyber-learning to promote the adoption of edu-gaming by their schools and in their communities; employers can implement online recruitment programs and adopt eLearning in-house.David Pearce Snyder, principal partner, The Synder Family Enterprise, Bethesda, Maryland; contributing editor, The Futurist, Trend Letter, On The Horizon, and Innovate.
key words: education, online games, digital natives, workplace skills, decision making
issue area: Learning and Education
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Do Libraries Have a Future?
The Status of Online Education in the 21st Century
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What Students Need to Know and Be Able to Do To Be Prepared for the Future
Education is the engine of our civil society and our economy, wherever we live on the planet. However, discussions about education rage about everything from the mechanics of organization to test scores. Often, schools and colleges become political footballs as candidates run for or against certain programs or advocate a one-size-fits-all approach that they hope will get them through the next election. What will students need to know and be able to do to be prepared for life in a fast-moving global knowledge/information age? What academic training, skills, attitudes, and behaviors will be essential? A viable education system should meet the needs and cultivate the talents and abilities of individual students while providing society with civil, employable, and fulfilled people who are eager to enrich us with their genius.
Who should attend: educators; business, government, and nongovernmental organization professionals; futurists and forecasters
What you’ll learn: Participants will learn from ongoing observations about what students might need to know and be able to do to be prepared for life in an always–on, non-stop, world. They will be involved in a process they can use to stimulate that conversation in their own communities or countries. They will learn why simply pursuing one-size-fits-all biases about one education remedy or another might not be constructive.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Leaders at all levels in every type of organization or community can apply this information and approach in considering what people know, what they might need to know, and the unrealized opportunities that are embedded in the diversity of genius that surrounds us.Gary Marx, author; president of the Center for Public Outreach, Vienna, Virginia.
key words: leadership, education
issue areas: Learning and EducationHow to Start a New Career as a Futures Educator
Have you ever watched those “Extreme Makeover” reality shows and wondered what you might look like—in a new career as a professor of Futures Studies? Have you ever dreamed about rolling over your work experience into a teaching position at the college or graduate level? Despite the small numbers of foresight educators today, the prospects have never been brighter. In this session, speakers will share the “ins and outs” of recreating yourself as a professor of foresight for academic programs ranging from business to organizational leadership to technology and the political and social sciences. Join the new vanguard of futurists who have decided to build their next career now.
Jay Gary, director and professor, of Strategic Foresight, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship, Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Sue Whitfield, president, White Tree Consulting; member, Association of Professional Futurists; Crystal Lake, IllinoisWho should attend: Consulting futurists, business leaders, entrepreneurs, anyone who has something to give as a foresight educator.
What you will learn: Attendees will learn how to: 1) assess your own personal, professional, and academic assets, 2) deepen your understanding of how foresight relates to various disciplines, 3) identify schools that are more likely to hire futurists, 4) engage in "just-in-time" learning when asked to create online courses, 5) avoid the three common pitfalls which sideline those making this journey, and 6) find foresight educators who can mentor you, while you exceed all expectations.
How this knowledge can be applied: Participants can use this knowledge to recreate the second half of their life as futures educator.keywords: self-efficacy, higher education, career migration
issue areas: Learning and Education, Business and Careers, Futures Methodologies
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