Posts in Educated By Design
Using The "Bad Idea Factory" To Help Build Creative Courage

Years ago I heard about the "Bad Idea Factory" like any buzzword I try to plumb the depths of Google to find the creator of these actives. The best I could do is find a 2012 article by Kevin Brookhouser tilted, 20% Project: Bad Idea Factory. In the article he shares that he learned about this activity from Ewen McIntosh at NoTosh but the link to his article is broken. I reached out to him on Twitter to get more information so hopefully he will respond and I can embed the tweet…

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21st-Century Competencies, Design, Design Thinking, Educated By Design, Education, Experimental21st century, brainstorm, collaboration, creativity, design, edtech, ideas, Ideation, Innovation, Michael Cohen, The tech rabbi Comment
Creativity Is About Combining The Unexpected, Not Just Drawing It

I share during many talks that creativity is a mindset not an art set. The elephant in the room is once you buy into the mantra, what steps can you take to act on the mindset? There are so many cool ways to build up our creative abilities. What I am striving to do with all my work on the Educated By Design project…

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Design, Educated By Design, Innovation, Technologyadobe, adobe park, art, combophoto, creativity, design, divergent thinking, Education, graphic design, photography, Stephen mcmennamy, visual, Visual Communication Comments
Why We Can't Fail Forward If We Don't Know Where We Are Headed.

We leave almost zero time for reflection in education today. Outside of a student sitting and wondering why they didn't get at least a 90% on the big test, how much time is allotted for reflection? The challenge we face is that reflection is not a “measurable” data set when you compare to data hungry areas of growth like reading and math literacy. So how can you measure reflection? While a student summary on the experience might be a good method to assess understanding, it will do little to evaluate their ability to take this failed experience and do something more significant because of it.

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21st-Century Competencies, Educated By Design, Experimental, Technology Integrationcareer ready, Education, educator, embrace failure, fail foward, fail often, failure, guy kawasaki, Innovation, Learning, MBA, monster-com, risk, soft skill, startup, technology Comment
Why Education Needs To Understand That Failure Is A Process Not A Destination

There is a movement in education that promotes, and even glorifies failure. Graphics proclaiming that we should fail forward, fail ofen, and of course view F.A.I.L as a First Attempt In Learning. I too am I proponent of failure, and believe that is has been a key ingredient not just in my own success, but for so many successful people I look to for inspiration and guidance. Recently Tim Ferris, a famous entreprenuer and author of "The 4 hour work week", reflected on 200 episodes of his podcast.

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21st-Century Competencies, Educated By Design, Educationbusiness, classroom, college, curiousity, fail, failure, ideas, Innovation, Learning, lightbulb, school, startup, Student, Teacher, technology, university, wonderComment
Why Functional Fixedness And The Fear Of The Unknown Are The Greatest Obstacles Of Creativity.

So if we are open to shifting our thinking, what is the next step? It lies in a famous quote from Steve Jobs who said “creativity is connecting things”. The ability to connect things lies in how we look at the relationship between people, places, and ideas. It's in how we overcome one of the greatest obstacles to creativity - Functional Fixedness. 

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Design, Design Thinking, Educated By Design, Technology, Technology Integration21st-Century Competencies, 21stcentury, creativity, critical thinking, Daniel Pink, Drive, Education, Functional Fixedness, idea, Ideation, Innovation, problem solving, technology, The tech rabbi, thinkingComment