inspiration

Design....ed

A Creative resource for teachers

Inspirational / critical / Creative
thinking Page

This page is for material that helps to inspire, motivate and support the development of creativity and thinking. It is designed to provide as much example material and information as possible to help with strategies for encouraging and extending students own ideas and thoughts through their design exploration.

If you have any of your own material that you would like to share please make contact
This site is a place of open source development and belongs to all of those who wish to contribute

Ok, Time to explore some resources that can help to facilitate creativity and critical thinking (metacognition)

Why is this necessary. What is critical thinking? Many of the achievement standards now require students to discuss their ideas or describe
a reason or purpose for using certain material or shapes, forms, colours etc. The more we can use appropriate
questioning the better it will be to help students understand the need to be more critical about their ideas.
This then leads to students being more descriptive in their design stages.

Temple Grandin Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the sutism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kind of smart geeky kids	• Improve the depth of thinking associated with designs through the use of Blooms Taxonomy question - Try printing this resource and putting it on the classroom wall to refer to when depth of thinking is required when solving problems and add depth to students information when describing individual thoughts. Also helps students to think about the appropriateness of their ideas.	Adora Svitak What adults can learn from kids
	• Essential skills checklist • Printout this banner and stick it on the wall " think smarter not harder" • Thinking maps and charts	The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun
• Use de Bono's 6 hats to extend students thinking about their own, or existing designs - This type of conversation can help to encourage students to be a little more eloquent about their own designs which can help with information required in achievement standards that expect a good use of design language. "The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child." Thomas Edison	• Article on planning models and framework for developing creative learning environments	• A brilliant resource to get students to use and follow when undertaking the design process. Helps to encourage critical thinking about their own ideas
Sand Animation from the Ukraine the winner of Ukraine's "You Got Talent" award expressing the history of her country via sand animation. Unbelievable creativity	• A great web site to obtain some useful teaching/critical thinking resources. Try it out In2edu • Article on critical thinking and purpose of this for developing ideas • Thinking - set of posters to encourage deeper thinking • great ideas for encouraging thinking. Thinkers Keys for Kids - Tony Ryan	A Peek Into the Future A good reason to encourage creative thinking skills
• Use this resource to as a wall chart to help students engage in deeper discussion about their designs - & click to download • A great web site for reading and seeing articles about innovation and creativity Idea champions • Article on Learning	• Use this chart to help students compare, contrast and describe their ideas

It is worth recognising the wonderful web site of Bendigo Senior Secondary College for some of these resources