Playing catch up. Week 8 (almost two weeks ago!) followed the reading break week — which of course necessitated getting us all back in gear. One of the challenges of having the studio only once a week is momentum and the feeling that you have to pack a lot into 3 hours. On the other hand, it sometimes takes some time to get us all into design mode — transitioning from previous classes or activities.
The Techniques Tool Kit is taking shape (and will eventually be available on this site). The students are gradually being introduced to the various Thinking Strategies and techniques that can be utilized. This week we focused on Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.
de Bono’s concept is that we need to be more conscious about thinking. The idea of putting on your thinking cap lead to the notion of consciously putting on a hat that signifies a type of thinking.
For example: WHITE HAT: concerned with objective facts and figures RED HAT: gives the emotional view BLACK HAT: negative aspects, whit it cannot be done YELLOW HAT: optimistic, hope, positive thinking GREEN HAT: creativity and new ideas BLUE HAT: control and organization of the thinking processes.
I have found the hats a useful tool for group work (let’s all take our black hats off, and put our yellow hats on) or even when trying to problem solve a personal or professional problem. Running through the hats consciously allows for a more complete picture or analysis of the problem or opportunity.
In this session we also talked about some conditions for creativity (Carl Rogers, 1954):
- Being open to experience
- Having an internal focus of evaluation
- Being able to toy with elements and concepts
Trying to engage the students with short “content cookies” that make them think about their own thinking. Ideally, this then helps them in the studio as they grapple with the design of the Climate Smart Business workshop — and also in their other classes.