Drawing for learning matters I do not know my community of students. They are new to me. I am new to them. We come from opposite sides of the world. In what ways might I provide content that is visually interesting and stimulating for students? Put another way, what is the value of me sharing my visual world for their meaning making? toward a collaborative approach “Draw whatever you want,” was the instruction. One thing I do know about the student community, maybe even the communities in this part of the African world, is that people really love arts. That was enough to go on and take a risk ..read more

Baby Steps to Sustainability We met Paulette one Saturday morning during our weekly village clean ups. When we asked if she’d consider separating her sweeps, - leaves and natural waste to one side and plastics to another, a translated answer came across. “She says she doesn’t care.” I’m going to take a wild guess and imagine that people in a fishing village in one of the poorest countries in the world do not know much about the chemical mix of plastic waste. There is no garbage collection, no information about waste. I asked students how long they’ve been throwing trash on the ground. “Depuis ..read more

People Power over Plastics #CleanupNosyBe Complexity defines the 21st century. Take garbage, for example. Plastics are literally choking the planet, washing up on islands everywhere. Nosy Be is no exception; this tropical island is as beautiful as it is littered. Well, not quite. Holiday resorts have waste management systems of different sorts while local villages have none. What it’s like to live amidst exposed garbage ? As I write this blog overlooking the seemingly pristine Mozambique Channel, wafts of burning plastic amix into the hot gusts of wind, begging an obvious question: How might p ..read more

Visual literacy. If seeing is believing then how might seeing learning help? Quite a lot actually. Consider 80% of sensory impressions are visual. We can take in some 10 million pieces of information in per second. So why write every thing? Mind mapping is simply capturing information in a way that replicates nature to include how we think and perceive things, through association and by making connections. Replace written learning with the five-branch flow of a mind map for visual clarity, ease and speed for comprehension. Whether teaching, learning or reviewing, Mind Maps conveniently also pr ..read more

We must have light. Day light, moonlight, phone light, candle lights, spotlights and the like. The lights that naturally occur and that we need change over the course of the day, and night. During a 24 hour period different light-types hand off to each other in a simple, seemlessly quiet collaboration making life possible. And then there’s guiding lights. At different times for different purposes people come into our lives to teach, to guide and to collaborate to make it true: We must have light. There’s a we-ness to life. Even though it might not be obvious, there’s always light. Collaboratio ..read more

Tolerate Ambiguity. It’s the first rule for developing creativity. It’s also great for working in third world countries. And of course complex situations…which is just about everything. Unclear situations are the norm. That'‘s why tolerating ambiguity is a 21st century skill. Maybe there is too much information, maybe there’s not enough. Either way, tackling the unclear situation can be done. This is when creative processes come in. Real world problem solving as an experiencial lesson gets to the heart of what tolerating ambiguity feels like, both as an individual and as a group. Here’s what w ..read more

Here we go! Its that time of the year when school kicks off anew. Remote education has tripled since the pandemic. How to bring 21st century skills and especially creativity into remote education is the focus of this blog. Why creativity ? Why indeed. Let’s start with that. Creativity. Three words are bundled in this one word. To create, a verb; creative, an adjective; and creativity, a noun. Hmm. Ok, that’s ambiguous. Tolerate for just a minute or two longer. Pro tip- Tolerating ambiguity is one of the golden rules for being more creative. Creativity is our highest order thinking skill. That ..read more

Develop for delivery. Transforming ideas into solutions. It’s a process. Transformation so cool. Like when a chameleon changes color to attract a mate. How amazing is that? Seriously. Change in nature is, well, natural. Duh. What if we accepted change more naturally? And because change is natural, it is important. In fact, change defines the cycles of life. Nothing is static. We are all in motion. Solutions emerge by allowing for ideas open up a bit. We play with them, almost like toys. Get curious about an idea to explore it. Incomplete thoughts are like an incomplete paint job. It just doesn ..read more

Formulating Challenges How to get from here to there? A map is an obvious answer. What if there is no map? No Google Maps? No Wifi? What if there is no obvious answer? Ugh. How to achieve a goal, wish or challenge is a challenge in and of itself. This is why spending time on discovering what is in-between the current state and the desired future state is important. There is a gap between now and the future desired state. What might be all the things in the way, as obstacles or as unforeseen challenges? What must be overcome to achieve the goal? A strategic gap analysis identifies critical issu ..read more

The Executive Step: Where to Start Knowing where to start in working through a challenge is a skill unto itself. It also marks the very first step in Creative Problem Solving, a process that makes use of different thinking skills for solving complex problems. Gathering information preceeds how to proceed. And gathering matters because data, lots of options, has value when it comes to decision making. How to make a face from nature? This is an unclear challenge. A gathering of data or plant material provides a variety of possible options. Select what makes sense. What would makes good eyes? Wh ..read more