Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Nurturing Creativity

 

With all this talk on trying to measure creativity and intelligence, how should we nurture creativity? Many people do not think that they are creative, but we are all creative humans in one form or another. Remember back to my first blog post on Gardner’s Theory of Multiple IntelligencesEveryone has the capability to strengthen areas of intelligence that they are weak in. Listed below are a few examples on how to nurture your creativity.

§  Learn a new word a day. Use it three times in a sentence, correctly. It will never truly leave your memory once that word is used three times. Use the new word whenever possible. I love what we call “$20″ words. What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean anyways?
§  Learn a new musical instrument in only 15 minutes a day. That’s right. I tell all my students that they need at least 15 minutes a day of practice to maintain or learn new skills.
§  Learn a new language in 15 minutes a day. There is an interactive book series that makes this possible. You can also use audio CD’s in your car on your way to the doctor’s office or any other errand.
§  Scour the internet for projects. Most often, your local parks and recreation departments will have inexpensive classes in art, technology, or physical activities to enjoy.
§  Snag some friends and play board games or console games. Spending time with friends is a must to creativity. Learning from people whose perspective is different from yours allows you to create new solutions to problems.

  Why all this push for creativity? More and more studies are showing that if we remain active and learn new things, it promotes the connection of neural networks in the brain which may stave off the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. It also promotes a concept of lifelong learning which America really needs right now in order to fulfill the high technology jobs that are available that do not have enough qualified people to fill them. We are becoming a high tech nation and we have an important job to fulfill in the world economy.

Try some of these out this weekend!

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