6 Thinking Hats for Instructional Design

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Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity and peer interest.

Student Council Presentations

Dear Student Council Members,

Congrats again for being part of the SC! (That itself proves you rock!) Had fun with the planning and blain-storming?!

As promised, the slides for Synergy-related themes (which was really Stephen Covey's 6th Habit) are here; the ones for Creativity are below. Do also check out some other stuff.

View more presentations from Alwyn Lau.

Hi, Dr Nelson here. Here is the Prezi on Leadership. Just click play and give it a few seconds to load.

Leadership on Prezi

It was great to meet you all. Have fun learning and leading!

Thinking Hats for Doctoral Studies

Dear Participants of the UUM-CAS Workshop,

Thank you for the lively participation yesterday. Do not hesitate to ask questions or share your comments regarding the session, the hats, application and so on.

Feel free also to browse around for topics related to thinking (you may start here if you wish but the Search field is yours to fully exploit).

We certainly look forward to hearing from you.


Regards,
Alwyn

View more presentations from Alwyn Lau.

16 Habits of Mind

Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick's 16 qualities of high-performance individuals - I love no.8!

1. Persisting
2. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
3. Managing impulsivity
4. Gathering data through all senses
5. Listening with understanding and empathy
6. Creating, imagining, innovating
7. Thinking flexibly
8. Responding with wonderment and awe
9. Thinking about thinking (metacognition)
10. Taking responsible risks
11. Striving for accuracy
12. Finding humor
13. Questioning and posing problems
14. Thinking interdependently
15. Applying past knowledge to new situations
16. Remaining open to continuous learning

The Hidden Workings of Our Minds

PsyBlog has a good series on how our minds work (or how we don't know how they work!). Check it out, the intro's below:

"What is true of great scientific and artistic leaps of imagination is also true in everyday life. When people are asked why they chose one career over another, one partner over another or one flavour of ice-cream over another, the same problems emerge. Often, people's answers are unconvincing or they just don't know.

Psychologists no longer find this inability to explain our internal mental processes strange. Like Freud all those years ago, modern cognitive psychologists have come to accept that a lot of the time we don't have much of a clue what's going on in our own minds, and there's evidence to prove it."

Distractions & Creativity

"How many times have you spent hours slaving over an impossible problem, only to take a break and then easily solve the problem, sometimes within minutes of looking at it again?

"According to Galinsky and fellow psychologists Chen-Bo Zhong from the University of Toronto and Ap Dijkstererhuis of Radboud University Nijmegen, distractions may be helpful in coming up with creative solutions to a certain problem, but must be followed by a period of conscious thought to ensure that we are aware of those solutions and can apply them.

"Likewise, while distractions are more useful in solving difficult problems, it may be better to stay focused on finding the solution when confronted with easier problems."

Read full article here.

Good Ideas Have Lonely Childhoods

Hugh MacLeod has an upcoming book called Ignore Everybody, where he writes about the life of fresh ideas and idea-makers.

Here are some random points from his first chapter:

1. "Good ideas have lonely childhoods". When I say, "Ignore Everybody", I don't mean, "Ignore all people, at all times, forever". No, other people's feedback plays a very important role. Of course it does. It's more like, the better the idea, the more "out there" it initially will seem to other people, even people you like and respect. So there'll be a time in the beginning when you have to press on, alone, without one tenth the support you probably need. This is normal. This is to be expected. Ten years later, drawing my "cartoons on the back of business cards" seems a no-brainer, in terms of what it has brought me, both emotionally and to my career. But I can also clearly remember when I first started drawing them, the default reaction was "people scratching their heads". Sure, a few people thought they were kinda interesting and whatnot, but even with my closest friends, they seemed a complete, non-commercial exercise in futility for the New York world I was currently living in. Happily, time proved otherwise.

2. "Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted." The older I get, the truer this sentence seems to be. Especially in industries that are more relationship-driven, than idea-driven.

3. "Fight The Power". The good news is, creating an idea or brand that fights the powers that be can be a lot of fun, and very rewarding. The bad news is, they're called The-Powers-That-Be for a reason i.e. they're the ones calling the shots, they have the Power. Which is why the problem of selling a new idea to the general public can sometimes be a piece of cake, compared to selling a new idea internally to your team. This is to be expected: having your boss or biggest client not liking your idea and firing you, hits one at a much more immediate and primal level, than some abstract housewife in rural Kansas hypothetically not liking your idea, after randomly seeing it advertised somewhere. Which is why most team members in any industry are far more concerned with the power relationships inside their immediate professional circle, than what may actually be interesting and useful for the customer.

4. Idea-Driven vs Socially-Driven businesses; which one are you in? The answer is, of course, both. "What you know" determines what kind of access you're given to people. "Who you know" informs what kind of access to ideas you're given, and when. Though all businesses tend to skew differently in either direction. My experience in the wine trade is a good example of an industry that's primarily socially-driven, at the expense of being idea-driven. I've heard a lot of wine trade folk over the years yakking endlessly on about "Innovation!" Why? Not because they necessarily had any actual new ideas worth talking about, let alone acting on, but because "Innovation" seemed to be a word that their big customers [the supermarkets] liked hearing. So they used the word whenever possible, gratuitously or otherwise. In other words, they were acting in a socially-driven manner. Primarily, they just wanted to be liked.

5. "I want to be part of something! Oh, wait, no I don't!" I've seen this before so many times, both first-hand and with other people. Your idea seems to be working, seems to be getting all sorts of traction, and all of a sudden you got all these swarms of people trying to join the team, wanting to get a piece of the action. And then as as soon as they get a foothold inside the inner circle, you soon realize they don't really understand your idea in the first place, they just want to be on the winning team. And the weirdest bit is, they don't seem to mind sabotaging the original idea that got them interested in the first place, in order to maintain their newfound social status. It's probably the most bizarre bit of human behavior I've ever witnessed first-hand in business, and it's AMAZINGLY common.

6. Human beings are messy creatures. I suppose the main thesis to this post is; the hard bit of having a "good idea" is not the invention of it, nor the selling of it to the end-user, but managing the myriad of politics and egos of the people who are supposedly on the same team as yourself. Managing the vast oceans of human chaos that all enterprises ultimately are, underneath the thin veneer of human order.

Directed Thinking for Planning, Analysis & Reflection

This was a session conducted for the Diploma in Engineering students.

Guys and Rebecca, I hope it helped somewhat. Keep planning and thinking, always.

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: thinking directed)

The Art of Visual Thinking

Guy Kawasaski, of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame, says:

"The more slides and pages that you need to explain your business, the less likely you will succeed. Truly, the best pitches and plans require nothing more than one page or a picture to explain them."

The picture? That's how Southwest Airlines was pitched. Find out more about visual thinking from Squidoo.

You may also the Multiple Intelligences self-assessment and/or the Memletics Accelerated Learning Styles test helpful.

Do You HATE Reason?!

The New Scientist has an intriguing write-up on seven reasons why people hate reason. These include the point that

1. Reason stands against values and morals (from Archbishop Rowan Williams)

2: No one actually uses reason (from neuro-scientist Chris Frith) Watch a related video

3: I hear "reason", I see lies (from sociologist David Miller and linguist
Noam Chomsky) Watch a related video.

4: Reason excludes creativity and intuition (from artist Keith Tyson) Watch a related video.

5: Whose reason is it anyway? (says bioethicist Tom Shakespeare) Watch a related video.

6: Reason destroys itself (says mathematician Roger Penrose) Watch a related video.

7: Reason is just another faith (according to philosopher Mary Midgley).

How to Apply the 6 Hats to Your Studies (Pt. I)

First, review your understanding of the hats by:

• Looking through the slide presentation again
• Looking at the previous blog-post
• Googling on the six hats
• Asking your friends about what they remember and know about the hats

Secondly, try to list down THREE 'new' ways of thinking that you've learnt from the 6 hats. How has it changed your 'normal' methods of thinking? If you can answer this, you're well on your way towards applying the hats effectively in your studies.

Thirdly, view this comparison between traditional testing and 6 hats testing. Notice the difference in the nature of the questions asked. Then start thinking about your study and assessment methods right now.

(More coming up)

What Can the 6 Thinking Hats Do For You?

White Hat: With this thinking hat, you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

Red Hat: Wearing the red hat, you look at the decision using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally, and try to understand the intuitive responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

Black Hat: When using black hat thinking, look at things pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan or course of action. It allows you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans to counter problems that arise.

Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans tougher and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance, leaving them under-prepared for difficulties.

Yellow Hat: The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and spot the opportunities that arise from it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

Green Hat: The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.

Blue Hat: The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, and so on.

Find out more.

21st Century Assessment