Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility. Rosabeth Moss Kanter
You need to think of the possibilities to complete this week's interactive exercise. Click on the daisy to launch the activity.
Welcome to Week 8, the final week of the course, which we will finish by examining how creativity and students’ experience with the creative process transfers from the classroom to the real world, including the social, emotional, and intellectual areas. What will the future hold for our creative, gifted students once they leave school? Does the creative process and desire to achieve the most self-actualized versions of themselves stop?
Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, maintains that:
“The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of the ‘left-brained’ dominance, the information Age to the Conceptual Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which ‘right-brain’ qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate.” He also says, “There will be plenty of work not just for inventors, artists, and entrepreneurs but also for an array of imaginative, emotionally intelligent, right-brained professionals, from counselors to massage therapists to school teachers to stylists to talented salespeople.”
All the more reason to provide creative opportunities to our brightest students. Our country was founded on the premise that we have the freedom to think and problem solve, and other countries look to us for the next creative/problem-solving breakthroughs. Who will be the next Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Page or Sergey Brin (Google), Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (Ben & Jerry’s), Patrick Moore, (co-founder of Greenpeace), Oprah or Barak Obama? As educators, we cannot excuse ourselves from the creative process. The future might literally be in our hands.