We are visual creatures. Our eyes probably give us more information about the world than any other sense organ. But are you looking or seeing? Although many people use the words looking and seeing interchangeably, there is a big difference between them. Looking is a physical act. It is about focusing your eyes in a particular direction. While seeing is a different skill altogether. Seeing is a cognitive process of perception. It is about connecting what you look at with knowl

Are you waiting for an apple to fall on your head? ​ I met Phil Roberts a few months back and enjoyed meeting a school principal who is open-minded and innovative in their thinking. Are you familiar with having a conversation with someone you have just met and feeling like you are talking with an old friend? It's how I felt in my first conversation with Phil. ​ Last Monday, we had another chat. We had an interesting conversation about creativity and innovation, and one of the

Today is the World Creativity and Innovation Day. Creative thinking is the special spice in our lives. It provides us with fun, playfulness, innovation, enjoyment and happiness. An idea is a seed that can be the starting point of something great. You just need to believe in it and nurture this new idea with love and care. Creative thinking is not about creating beautiful Art. ✅It is about your ability to find new ways to solve problems. ✅It is about your ability to turn obsta

Unleash your creative superpowers! I am happy to share that I will be facilitating a webinar on creative thinking as part of Sir Ken Robinson Imagine if... festival. I invite you to join us for this fun, playful, interactive session and develop the most critical skill for success. “There is no price tag for creativity” Walt Disney. What does participating in this webinar means for you? Developing your creative thinking will: ✅Reduce your stress levels (Life is full of ch

Do you love oranges? On a recent business trip to Sydney, I went to see the opera house, and it blew me away. This building has such fantastic architecture that it Wows you away. But for me, it wasn’t just about the aesthetics and uniqueness of this world heritage building. It was about the story behind it. The opera house is a story about having inspiration, thinking big, and innovating. The Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries and dream big.

When we think of inventors and innovators and their creative processes, we often picture in our heads the lone person who suddenly has a Eureka! moment to come up with a unique idea. You may be familiar with the story about Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. When an apple fell on his head, Newton came up with an idea he formulated into his famous Law of Gravity. Or the story about Archimedes who took a bath and figured out how to precisely calculate volume and density

Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with Dovi, a five-year-old boy, at the beach. Dovi told me he wants to build a sandcastle and needs a bucket for this purpose. He looked around, searching for a bucket, but there was none in sight. I asked - why do you need a bucket? He answered he needed it to carry water, get the sand wet, and build a castle. I said – you can bring wet sand with your hands, from near the water. Dovi looked at me unconvinced and firmly said - I need

Do you want to come up with innovative ideas? Start thinking like an outsider. Why do outsiders come up with new concepts that disrupt an industry, a culture or a scientific field? (Think Netflix, Uber, Airbnb) Why aren’t the experts in these fields come up with these innovative ideas? It might surprise you to realise that being an expert can limit your ability to come up with unconventional solutions to problems in your field of expertise. It may sound counter-intuitive that

The secret lies not in what you look at, but in what you can see. When you develop and practice your creative thinking, suddenly you will see things that others can't. With your unique creative thinking, you will be able to imagine new ways. Look at the picture below. What can you see? Let your imagination run wild. Don’t limit your creative thinking. Do you see – A garbage pile? Swings? Material for building roads? Soft landing at the playground? An obstacle course? Material

We are very excited to share that we are back at schools! Last year started with the excitement of expanding and launching Glittering Minds program in several schools. The government was interested to learn more about our innovative program - Mr. Tim Richardson, the Parliamentary Secretary for Schools in Victoria, visited our program in one of the schools. Tim heard from educators about the great outcomes of our program and took part in one of the sessions. He was impressed b

Want to surprise your students with an awesome brainstorming session? Next time your students need to come up with ideas, after presenting the challenge/question, ask them to come up with the most terrible ideas they can think of. Instruct them to think about the most shocking ideas which will never work. Encourage them to take it to the extreme. You will see your students setting their imagination free and having fun with coming up with one terrible idea after the other. Ask

STEM is not enough. Our brain has two very distinguished ways of thinking: 1.     Convergent thinking – which is about critical, logical, narrowing down and evaluating options. 2.     Divergent thinking – which is about imagining, exploring possibilities, generating many ideas and having no boundaries. STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) has gained significant traction in recent years as a focal point in education. These four important subjects focus mainl

Are creative people happier? I find being creative to be fun and rewarding. The process of coming up with ideas and creating something new provides me with a great sense of achievement and satisfaction. It turns out, that being creative is doing much more than that to our health and happiness. When we are working on something that requires our creative-thinking, our hear rate slows, our worries disappear, and our brain is flooding our body with the feel-good hormone – dopamin

What impact do schools have on creativity? NASA wanted to test their engineers’ creativity. So they hired scientists to develop a test that measures creativity. After testing NASA’s engineers, the scientists were left with few questions. Where does creativity come from? Are we born with it? Do we learn it? They gave a group of 4-5 years old the same test. To their surprise, 98% of the children fell in the genius category of imagination. Now they were more curious to find out

Do we hold the right perception on creativity? Throughout the years we have been helping people develop their creativity, we found there are two common misconceptions about it. The first one is that creativity means being artistic. Many adults (And children too) confuse being creative with the ability to draw well and being artistic. Therefore, if they think they are not good at drawing, if they think they are not really the artistic type, they believe they are not creative.

At Glittering Minds we believe children learn best by doing, and we don’t stop there. Children learn better when they learn in a highly collaborative and playful environment. An environment that promotes exploration and hands-on learning. An environment which enables agency, where children take on ownership over their learning experiences. Through our learning environment, children develop resilience and an ability to cope as they try out different possibilities and test thei

It is always important to hear from your stakeholders what is the impact of your innovative program on the users. We recently finished facilitating a HCD for kids fundamentals course with year 3 students. We interviewed the class teacher in order to understand what is the impact of this 4 weeks course. Let’s hear from Ashlee her observations on the impact of Glittering Minds HCD for kids fundamentals course on her students. #futurism #hcdforkids #innovation #humancentreddesig

How can we help children develop resilience? Life is not easy. We face setbacks and disappointments along our life journey. A key attribute for success is the ability to see these experiences as a way to learn and having confidence that you can make it. How do we help children develop this mindset and confidence? We recently ran our HCD fundamentals course for year 3 students. The input we got from their teacher was that before the course, the students’ reaction to criticism

In one of the Human Centred Design sessions we ran this week with a year 3 class, we talked about empathy. We started the discussion by asking – what is empathy? Some children didn’t know what it means. Some children said it has something to do with feelings. One of the children mentioned that the teacher once told them “Walk in someone else’s shoes”. This was a trigger to a whole new conversation as someone else respond to it by saying “But it can be difficult to do if the

What kind of thinking is required to solve a problem? As humans we love to solve problems. We love it so much that when we are given a problem, we often jump straight into solution. Are we stopping ourselves and asking, “is this the right problem?” or “do we have the correct solution?” Problem solving is an important skill in our everyday life. We need to use it in our personal and professional life. Are primary schools today enable student’s success by developing this capabi