Vinu’s Online Cloud

Innovation tools mentions ways to enrich your brainstorm sessions. I think this could also be added to collaborative learning. I agree strongly to making almost all of them. Have strongly benefitted from Prepare, Metaphor, Draw, Setting a Goal and Making Combinations. I remember clearly how I was curious about how he was studying Metaphors and finally in the end was able to appreciate their powerful use in Story telling aspect of Design.

• Look at Problems in different ways
• Ask them to look at the issue from the perspective of another group –
  accounting, HR, or sales for example.
• Ask them to think about how their
  Grandmother or an 8 year old would solve the problem. These are simple
  ways to force people into a new perspective and the new perspectives
  will generate more ideas.
• Make novel combinations
• Have the group look at the initial list and look for ways to combine the ideas into new ones.
• Force relationships
• Once a group is finished with their initial list, provide them with words, pictures or objects.
• When people have their random word, picture or item, have them create
  connections between the problem and their item. Use questions like,
  “How could this item solve our problem?” What attributes of this item
  could help us solve our problem?”
• Make their thoughts visible
• Have people draw!
• Think in opposites
• Rather than asking your direct problem question, ask the opposite. “How could we ensure no one bought this new product?”
• Think metaphorically
• This approach is similar to
  forcing relationships (and is another way to use your words, pictures
  or items). Pick a random idea/item and ask the group, “How is this item
  like our problem?”
• Metaphors can be a very powerful way to create new
  ideas where none existed before.
• Prepare
• Too often people are asked to brainstorm a
  problem with no previous thinking time
• If people have time to think
  about a topic, and let their brains work on it for awhile, they will
  create more and better ideas.
• Set a Goal
• Research shows and my experience
  definitely confirms that the simple act of giving people a quantity
  goal before starting the brainstorming session will lead to a longer
  list of ideas to consider.

Continuing on the openguru category, these are thoughts by Steve Wozniak … just thought would share:

Education is so huge — you can’t have one quick solution. The solutions are very far in the future.

We technologists can figure out how to get more education at a lower price. That’s a big key.

But the amount of money for education is always going to be too low. The government has a certain about of money to spend on things. And you think, “Oh, they’re just going to determine the priorities: Here’s what percentage should go to education, what percentage to the military, what percentage to forestry, what percentage to roads.” But those percentages tend to map to how many votes there are.

And there’s a little problem in the United States: A family of five gets no more votes than a family of two. So, the families with the kids, [for whom] education is a top priority, don’t have a say [proportionate to] the size of their family. Kids aren’t really considered in the votes and [in the] money for education, which is just backwards. Every farmer gets to vote on farm bills. Every elderly person gets to vote on elderly issues. Schooling is a problem because young kids don’t get to vote.

According to me, in addition to price technology also enables education on demand, convenience and many more things. But the human element can never be replace.

I have been wanting to write this post for a long time but delayed it beyond 9 to 10 months! I finally have internet and computer to write from close a year after. As I am usually ‘do in the flow’ kind of person, my blogging i.e the core dump (put in geek terms) had reduced considerably Feel like a free bird. I feel like blogging in the morning before reading the paper / having the cuppa of milk or late in the night when everyone in my house has slept off

Coming back to the post - I am opening a new category in my blog today. Guess thats an indication of new area of interest .. ha ha. I am calling ‘openguru’. Quickly and abstractly the following tags explain the category well:

open, learning, collaborative, technology, internet, mobile, media

I get a huge sense of enjoyment when I am learning and I don’t this desire will ever go away (fortunately I have been good at getting things fast!). And I want to just point you to certain cool websites were you can learn. However point to be noted - they structed content for you to assimilate. Nothin collaborative about it!

• Video lessons lectures notes
• National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning - (IITs & IISc)!
• OpenCourseWare (MIT)
  • MIT World » Distributed Intelligence
• World Lecture Hall - (UT Austin)
• WGBH Forum Network | Free Online Lectures
• Entrepreneurs (HBS)
  • HBS Working Knowledge
• Knowledge@Wharton

I have used Knowledge@Wharton and am a regular reader, got the hang of it when I was invovled with their team to launch their mobile India website during their Indian Launch!

 

However yet to explore any other site. Do you have any links to throw?