6 Degrees of Possibilities - Creative Learning Tool
2011
Description
Personal Project in conjunction with AIGA Chicago and No Right Brain Left Behind Design Challenge, a call to action to the creative design industries.

Working to develop design ideas that address the lack of right brain/creative thinking teaching in schools.
Cliche but true, we are teaching to test.

6 Degrees of Possibilities aims to encourage not only creative thinking and exploration of ideas in students, but teachers as well. Building on a collective knowledge of creativity and an environment (real in the classroom, or virtual on the web) where creative thinking, or more simply said, "thinking different" is encouraged.

I can look back and realize how lucky I was to be encouraged to "think different".
Fields
Design, Graphic Design, Storyboarding
  • 6 Degrees of Possibilities
    Submission for No Right Brain Left Behind - Innovation Challenge
  • http://rightbrainsare.us/ideas/6-degrees-of-possibilities/

  • Excerpt:
    We no longer lose ourselves in a set of encyclopedias, exploring knowledge and making surprising discoveries.  Let’s create classroom worksheet for teachers that fosters a sense exploration and creative thinking in students. Making a subject interesting and memorable, makes it easier to understand and reinforces creative analytical thinking.

    Description:
    We learn and remember best when we can make the information relate to ourselves. We understand the information better when we see how it could relate beyond the classroom – to our street, our community, city and beyond. How do we create the opportunity for sparks of A-HA! or intense creative questioning and discovery? These opportunities need to be re-woven into the daily school program, allowing students to see creative connections in everyday life, and how it’s all around us.

    Solution:
    An open-source worksheet template that would live on the web.
    This worksheet will ask students to creatively examine/explore a specific subject.
  • Teachers will input:
    - subject/idea for students to explore
    - supplementary information relevant to the subject
    - “6 degrees” students are to examine and explore
  • Examples of “6 degrees”
    (it = subject being taught)
    - How is it relevant to you?
    - How is it relevant to your city?
    - How could it influence a sports game?
    - How often do you see it in a day?
    - How could it be important to you 10 years in the future?
    - How could it affect how you get to school?
    - How could it affect a newspaper?
    - How could it be useful in a trip around the world?

    *The idea is to get students and teachers thinking outside of the box & outside the classroom about the subjects they are learning. Putting 2 seemingly dissimilar ideas together and searching for the connection…
    creative thinking!

    How does geometry influence newspapers? How is geometry relevant to my city?
  • The worksheets creatively educate in several different ways:

    - Teachers have the opportunity to expand their assumptions of a given subject – to think outside of the box.
    - Students will be tasked to think creatively and explore an idea beyond the classroom setting.
    - The class as a whole can learn from eachother’s responses thru classroom discussion – deepening their own understanding of the subject matter.

    “What math means me to me, is something totally different than what math means to you.”