iCreate

How do geniuses come up with ideas? What makes them innovative and original?

How do we know it? What are the most influential ideas of our

time? Is being smart enough for creating something new? What makes a creative person?

What makes you one of them? Those are the question that we invite you to explore and

discover the world of ideas that shape our world today. The class will use a variety of media, web-based resources, articles, and books to explore the concepts of originality, creativity, and innovation.

4. By understanding the principles and rules of a system, this student indentified the interconnections, patterns, and relationships that exist between individual parts of the whole. 20. This student assumed personal responsibility for his/her learning and creative process, while also showing a willingness to collaborate. 37. This student defined and persuasively articulated his/her own perspective on key topics, which led to a more personalized writing voice and/or artistic style. 58. This student employed a variety of tools and/or resources to strengthen his/her reasoning and/or problem solving process. 74. Students' responses and assignments followed directions and met set deadlines.76. Student carefully analyzed stories read in class and/ or information collected fromthe Internet and drew appropriate and inventive conclusions.82. This student easily used the tools available in MOODLE to communicate ideas, find information, organize their time, and share images and project with the class.

Structure of the Class and Class Assignments

Each week you will be presented with the series of assignments that will involve:

Guiding Question A big question defining the theme of the week.Group Discussion Online collaboration with your peers through

brainstorming, problem solving, and posing questions.Reading Responses Mosaic of readings from different books on creativity and

innovation will be posted online for weekly individual and group responses.

Online Tools We will explore variety of online tools and software that are just fun to play with.

Video Response We will watch presentations about inventions by famous inventors of our time.

Unjournaling Weekly writing assignments that are not personal, not introspective, and definitely not boring .

Week 1 Guiding Question: What is Creativity? Activities: Write down 20-30 words that come to mind when you think about creativity. Go to www.wordle.net and enter your list of words. Play with “Layouts” and “Randomize” to find the best presentation for your collage. Share your collage online with your peers

Reading Response: Explore inventions webpage http://www.ideafinder.com/history/timeline.htm and http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/1_4_0_channels.asp Out of all invention select three that you think are the most important inventions in the last 2000 years. What are they? Explain why you made these choices. What criteria did you use when evaluating inventions?

Video Response and Online Group discussion: Watch a video at: http://vimeo.com/1321803 What is your vision of creativity? Respond by completing the sentence: “Creativity is like…because...”

UnJournaling:1. Describe yourself in 26 words each starting with a different letter of the alphabet. You can use only one word starting with “A”, one word starting with “B”, one starting with “C”, etc. You don’t have to keep alphabetical order, and are welcome to use different parts of speech. 2. Write four questions about yourself.The answer is, “No”. What is the question?The answer is, “Yes.” What is the question?The answer is, “Maybe.” What is the question?The answer is, “What is the question?” What is the question?Week 2 Creative personality

Guiding Question: What makes a creative person? What characteristics do people who create innovative ideas have in common?

Reading Response: Read 10 biographies of famous inventors from http://web.mit.edu/invent/i-archive.html. What inventors did you choose? What patterns did you notice in the lives of the prominent scientists/inventors? Which patterns seemed to be the most surprising to you? What personality characteristics did they possess that helped them be more creative than most of the people of their time? Advanced Reading: p. 79-115 creativity forever

Online Group DiscussionReview kids inventions at http://www.inventnow.org. what is the coolest invention you saw there? If you were to invent something, what would that be and why? Do you have an idea to share on http://www.inventnow.org?

UnJournaling:Out of the following four tasks choose and complete two that you like the most.

1. Write a sentence that makes sense reading either from left to right or right to left. See how long you can make the sentence (Example: Bob liked Mary and Bill. Bill and Mary liked Bob.)

2. Write a conversation between two people, making the conversation consist entirely of questions. Example:

“Do you want to grab a hamburger?” asked Chris. “Do I look like a person who would ever let beef pass her lips?” asked Amber. See how long you can make the conversation.

3. Three people are stuck in an elevator: a teenager with green hair and many body piercings, a pastry chef, and a church organist. Write the conversation they have as they wait.

4. What would blue taste like if you could chew it?

Online Tools: Go to http://fontpark.morisawa.co.jp/. Make a creative painting using only letters in your first and last name. Play with the letters by adjusting their size, changing the fonts, zooming in and out, rotating, flipping the letters, putting the letters on top of each other, etc. Post a link to your art for your classmates to enjoy.

Week 3Guiding Question: Can creativity be developed? Can creativity be measured? Why or why not?

Online Group Discussion: What is the most creative thing you ever did? Product? Idea? What makes it creative?

Reading Response: Take creativity tests (link to the document) What did you learn about yourself as a result of taking the tests? Did you change your initial opinion about possibility to measure with tests how much creativity you have?

UnJournaling:

w o r d p r o j e c t

Choose one word from the list below. Arrange this word to express its meaning. The composition is 6 x 6 inches square. You may vary the size, spacing, placement, andorientation of the letters. You may execute your project by tracing letters, cutting and pasting photocopied letters, using a computer, or any combination of these methods. You may repeat, Consider the entire space of the square. Use tape or glue stick to mount your trimmed 6 x 6 compositions to a sheet. Bring your project to our face-to-face meeting. compressioncontractionadditionsubtractionrepetitioneliminationmigrationexpansion

Examples:

Week 4 Guiding Question: What is the role of mistakes in discoveries?

Reading Response:Read “The 20greatest mistakes in history” article from Mental Floss magazine (scan). What are three things that surprised you when reading this article? What did you learn about the role of mistakes in making discoveries?

Video Response and Group Discussion: Watch “Wacky inventions from 1930” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lqDxKQ300k “1920 inventions” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAGAeTC9fIo&NR=1 What wrong assumptions that inventors were making about their inventions did you notice? Why those inventions did not work out?

UnJournaling: Out of the following four tasks choose and complete two that you like the most.

1. Why does it snow? Why do we have earthquakes? Why do leaves turn brown? Write a farfetched explanation to any natural phenomenon. For example, you could explain how rain is a result of a sun sweating because of the excessive heat.

2. What if sky were not blue but red? List five practical effects this would have on everyday life.

3. See how many adjectives you can use in a paragraph to tell us as little as possible about a person walking into the party and catching everyone’s eye. Choose value adjectives that don’t really help create a picture. (Adjectives, to refresh our memory are words that describe nouns. Example of boring adjectives: a nice boy, a good time, a happy baby.)

4. Do the opposite of what you did in a previous task. Take the same paragraph and replace the boring adjectives with more interesting adjectives. Examples: agitated alligator, slimy bowl of soup, stone-aged computer with a pea-sized hard drive.

Week 5

Guiding Question: Is thinking creatively requires thinking in different “languages”?

Reading Response: Reading Chapter 6 from Conceptual Blockbusting (scanned). Is thinking creatively requires thinking in different “languages”? What “languages” do you personally prefer to think in?

Group Discussion:Ask two people of different generations in your family what were the three biggest inventions when they were in school (K-12)? How those inventions changed the environment they were growing up in? Did it help them to be better students in school? Compare the responses you got from your family members to your experiences now. What things that were recently invented changed the way you learn and interact with your friends? Share your findings with your classmates online.

UnJournaling: Out of the following three tasks choose and complete two that you like the most.

1. What advice would dog give about life, if it could talk? Write that advice.

2. Create a much more interesting version of this sentence:The dog barked.

What kind of dog was it? Where was it? Why was it barking? How would you describe the barking? Make the sentence as interesting as possible by choosing your words and details carefully.

3. Write about yesterday morning from the perspective of an everyday object or item – a salt shaker, a swing set, a cell phone, a computer, or a license plate, for example.

Online Tools:Blabberize one of the stories that you did this week for Unjournaling. Go to http://blabberize.com/. If you did Unjournaling task 1 or task 2, upload a picture of a dog (it can be your dog, a dog of your friend, or just a funny picture of a dog that you like).If you did Unjournaling task 3, find or make a picture of the object from which you wrote the story.. Read your Unjournaling story aloud to create an effect of a talking dog/talking salt shaker/talking computer, etc. Follow the directions on the website to blabberize your picture. Post the link to your story for other classmates to enjoy.

Week 6Guiding Question: How to stay updated about recent discoveries? What source do you use to keep yourself updated?

Reading Response: How to stay updated about recent discoveries? What source do you use to keep yourself updated? Share one source (a journal, a website, a TV program, a blog, etc.) with your peers. Ask them one challenging question that they would need to answer after visiting the website you shared.

Video Response:Watch the video:Triumph of the Nerds. ( 3 hours) What three things did not you know about computers? What facts in history of computer making impressed/surprised you the most? Do you think that personality of the personal computer inventors influenced their invention and way our computers function and look right now? Explain your opinion. What did you learn about Apple vs PC race? Compare approaches to personal computer building of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs? What were the main differences between their philosophies?

UnJournaling:

Out of the following four tasks choose and complete two that you like the most.

1. Shoot the moon. Write a story that includes 20 “oo” words. 2. Write a sentence with every single word beginning with either a or t. 3. Write a paragraph that includes twenty words with double vowels (Examples:

poodle, peep, needle, etc).4. Prepositions are those little words that we don’t pay much attention to but use all

the time. Just a few examples: of, into, at, by, to, up, on, in.

Week 7Guiding Question: What are the most important discoveries of the last five years?

Video Response and Group Discussion:Watch Download: True history of Internet (one hour) and answer the following questions:1. Share three memorable quotes from the video. 2. What characteristics make the most popular websites grow/ remain popular?3. How the purpose of internet changed throughout the years? What is Web 2.0? How Web 3.0 will look like?

Online Tools:Explore Internet Timeline http://science.discovery.com/tv/download/timeline/timeline.html What does it take for idea to become popular? How much time did it take from initial stages to the wide use of internet? How many inventions/inventors did it take to make World Wide Web as we know it today? What previous inventions were necessary for the idea of Internet to become possible?

UnJournaling: Out of the following four tasks choose and complete two that you like the most.

1. Write a paragraph that starts and end with the word computer.

2. How many ways can you find to say NO? Write ten sentences that say NO in various ways, but without using the word NO.

3. Many products today come with warnings that seem pretty obvious – and ridiculous. A hair dryer warning reads, “Do not use in tub.” The carton for an iron says, “Do not iron clothes on your body.” A jar of peanuts includes this note: “Warning: May contain peanuts.” A chain saw box reads, “Do not attempt to stop chain saw with your hands.” Write five original and obvious warnings for anything you choose.

4. You are a writer who has a secret arrangement with the automobile industry. You will be paid $10.00 for every words you publish that includes the word car. (Examples: scar, cart, carp, carton, etc.) The hope is that repetition of the letters c-a-r will encourage people, subliminally, to want to buy cars. You are starting a short story for a magazine. Write your first paragraph. How much money can you make using c-a-r in just that paragraph?

Week 8

Guiding Question: Seeing the big picture. How one discovery influences other discoveries?

Video Response and Group Discussion:Watch Jeff Bezos history of electricity. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_web_innovation.htmlTED What three interesting things did you learn about the history of appliances we use every day? How does internet history parallels the history of inventions of electric appliances? What are the similarities? What are the differences?

UnJournaling:

Out of the following five tasks choose and complete two that you like the most.

1. In on sentence communicate “fear”. Do not actually use the word fear. 2. In one sentence describe something (not someone) very ugly. Create a vividly

ugly image without using these actual words. 3. How many different ways can you say that precipitation fell – without actually

using the words “precipitation fell”?4. Write a paragraph about the final moments of a tied basketball game or

someone’s encounter with a used car salesman at a dealership – without using any of the prepositions just mentioned.

5. Describe someone who looks bored. Don’t use any form of the words yawned or stared or sighed.

Preparation for a final project

Week 9

Guiding Question: What are the big ideas of the future? What big ideas/problems do inventors work on right now?

Video Response and Group Discussion:Watch Kevin Kelly’s presentation about future of the web on www.ted.com What is meta-data? What are your predictions about future discoveries? How will the web change in the next 5000 days? How will the world look like in 50 years from now?

UnJournaling: Out of the following four tasks choose and complete two that you like the most.

1. Invent new words. Choose a six-letter word. Add a letter to invent a new, original word. Define this word. Now change one letter in your new word to create another new word. Define these words as well. Use the original words and both of the new words in a paragraph.

2. Get ten useful pieces of advice to a specific person or group, beginning each piece of advice with “Always…” for example, you might consider advice to your future child, advice to a parent, advice to a teacher, or advice to the President of the United States.

3. Write a paragraph that starts with the sentence: The grass smells purple.

4. Write a paragraph that starts with one-word sentence, followed by a two-word sentence, then a three-word sentence, then a four-word sentence, etc. Can you get as high as ten sentences?

Preparation for a final project

Final Group Project:

Video about coolest latest inventions Review your favorite websites and websites we shared during week 6. Compile a list of the coolest ideas/ inventions of the last two years or the inventions that are still under elaboration and make a video presentation about them that can be shared on the websites like www.voicethread.com, www.teachertube.com, www.schooltube.com.

Fill out the Group Brainstorming column on the right. Each group member is supposed to contribute to EACH of the Group Brainstorming question for EACH step!! Right your name before each of the ideas you contribute.

Group BrainstormingStep 1 How will you go about selecting the

coolest inventions? What qualifies as cool? What are your criteria? Where did you look for it? What websites did you use? Why those websites are the best to refer to?

Step 2 Nominate 4 coolest inventions in the last two years in any category (innovative technology, computers, cars, gadgets, software, etc). Evaluate the list and vote for the ones that meet your “coolest inventions” criteria the best by putting your name next to it.

Step 3 How will you present it? What programs/software will you use? Will you need text, music, photos to illustrate your presentation?

Step 4 How will you share your presentation with the world? What video sharing website will you use? Why did you choose it?

You can review the following videos to give you some ideas about how your final video presentation can look like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dnAJK4eHII&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_j9O4b9_Es&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mjVt7RhMfw&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDLBsxgTTU&feature=related