Thursday, July 30, 2009

Creativity Test

I'm interested to know how The Art Institute of Vancouver created this test (if, in fact, they are the ones who created it).  If you have a bit of free time, take the test and record your scores and thoughts about the test in the comment section.

Idea:  if you are a teacher, have your students take this test.  If the test indicates the student is highly creative, consider altering the way you evaluate their work, i.e. give them different options to demonstrate their knowledge on a certain subject.  Instead of taking a multiple choice test, the right brain student might prefer creating a multi-media presentation.  You might even have them design a right-brain oriented test... what better way to have them review and analyze course content.

Click the title above to go to the test.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Right brain will steer you through chaos

Daneen Skube suggests that your right brain can get you through chaotic times.  Another way to look at this is that if you are right brain dominant, you stand a very good chance of handling the times we are in currently.  Intuition and ideas are, perhaps, more important now than a linear, methodical approach.

Right brain will steer you through chaos

Monday, July 27, 2009

Jill Bolte Taylor and Her "Stroke of Insight."

What is the function of the right brain? What are the critical differences between our left and right brains? How can we use our right brains to connect to the more important things in this world? Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist, had to unfortunately suffer a stroke on the left side of her brain to find the answers.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Why do we give standardized tests to "right brained" people?

Question: if "right brain people" demonstrate their intelligence by thinking abstractly, by creating new combinations of things or by possibly communicating concepts through music or art – how can it be fair to give them a left brained test (traditional IQ test) as an objective measure of their intelligence!! Furthermore, how can you objectively compare their scores to the "left brained" population when the test will likely favor left-brained people?!

In other words, is it fair to give right brain people left-brain oriented IQ tests and college entrance exams like the SAT?

Thus, the new study shows that basic differences in brain activity between creative and methodical problem solvers exist and are evident even when these individuals are not working on a problem. According to Kounios, “Problem solving, whether creative or methodical, doesn’t begin from scratch when a person starts to work on a problem. His or her pre-existing brain-state biases a person to use a creative or a methodical strategy.”

Take a look at this last line. One way to interpret this is that a right brain person taking a standardized test will naturally try to be creative in answering a question. The only problem is that on many of these problems, it’s not necessary and will probably slow you down!

Solution: begin work on creating a whole brain standardized test or consider giving different types of tests to people who classify themselves as “right brained.”

Source: posted by Rebecca Sato on The Daily Galaxy (link is on the title of this post).

Study: Kounios, J., Fleck, J.I., Green, D.L., Payne, L., Stevenson, J.L., Bowden, M., & Jung- Beeman, M. (2008). The origins of insight in resting-state brain activity. Neuropsychologia, 46, 281-291.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Will Wright Talks About Games and Education

Will Wright, inventor of Sim City and the Sims, makes a good point about the value of games; it's more about motivation than content. That said, if we can weave the two together, haven't we solved a major problem in education?