Creativity Resources for Educators

http://www.ted.com Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin.

In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.

Need a burst of inspiration? Wildly creative thinkers share ideas, strategies and warmhearted encouragement to let your genius out.

Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. In his talk, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think. (Filmed at TEDxNYED .)

How does the metaphorical lightbulb go off? Is it a flash of genius? The power of crowds? These heady talks explore the nature of ideas themselves: Where they come from, how they evolve, and how each of us can nurture them.

Is your school or workplace divided into "creatives" versus practical people? Yet surely, David Kelley suggests, creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few. Telling stories from his legendary design career and his own life, he offers ways to build the confidence to create...

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't).

How are we inspired? Where might our imaginations take us? What does creativity look like in its wildest form? These clever, invigorating speakers plumb the wellspring of invention. Writer, director and producer J.J. Abrams' exuberant talk explores the nature of storytelling, the changing face of filmmaking and the possibility that mystery is more important than knowledge.

A recent blog by Grant Wiggins affirmed what I have long believed about creativity: it is a 21st-century skill we can teach and assess. Creativity fosters deeper learning, builds confidence and creates a student ready for college and career.

Promoting creativity and innovation in the classroom, this short professional development video from ASCD helps facilitate conversation among educators about what we can do to improve.

Accidental Creative helps creatives and creative teams be more creative, collaborate effectively, and be more productive.

Mindmapping: Your Personal Guide to Exploring Creativity and Problem-Solving [Joyce Wycoff] on Amazon.com. FREE super saver shipping on qualifying offers. Readers can finally break down the blocks that hinder free thinking and discover their vast stores of innovative ideas involving whole-brain thinking techniques presented here. A no-nonsense

"Shows you how to expand your imagination." --Newsweek "A special find. Period." --Executive Edge "A must-have book in any business setting." --Women in Business

"Creative-thinking expert Michael Michalko offers a series of idea-inspiring resources and techniques. . . . CRACKING CREATIVITY is peppered with anecdotes and exercises to help push you to your creative limit." - How"Sometimes the craziest ideas are the most inspired. . . .

You have heard about how a musician loses herself in her music, how a painter becomes one with the process of painting. In work, sport, conversation or hobby, you have experienced, yourself, the suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity.

Based on interviews with 91 internationally recognized creative people-among them Nobel physicist John Bardeen, arts administrator-performer Kitty Carlisle Hart, writer Denise Levertov, jazz musician Oscar Peterson, electronics executive Robert Galvin-this book offers a highly readable anatomy of creativity. As Csikzentmihalyi (Flow) argues, creativity requires not only unusual individuals, but a culture and field of experts that can foster and validate such work.

Once more, with feeling. Having written more than 20 books on the themes of prayer, spirituality and concern for the earth, Episcopal priest and New Age icon Fox doesn't plow much new territory in this intermittently eloquent meditation on tapping into the power of human creativity.

Robert Epstein, Ph.D. (San Diego, CA) is Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today, host of the magazine's nationally-syndicated radio show, and University Research Professor at United States International University. Dr. Epstein holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and his research has been reported in Time, The New York Times, and Discover.

Amazon Exclusive: Seth Godin Reviews Making Ideas Happen Seth Godin is the author of Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, and Permission Marketing, as well as other international bestsellers. He is consistently one of the 25 most widely read bloggers in the English language.

Art, Mind, And Brain: A Cognitive Approach To Creativity [Howard E. Gardner] on Amazon.com. FREE super saver shipping on qualifying offers. In a provocative discussion of the sources of human creativity, Gardner explores all aspects of the subject

In this boldly ambitious study, Gardner ( Frames of Mind ) profiles seven creative giants. Creativity, he argues, is not an all-purpose trait but instead involves distinct intelligences, as exemplified by Picasso's visual-spatial skills or by Gandhi's nonviolent approach to human conflict or Martha Graham's search for a distinctly American form of bodily expression.

"Sawyer has put together a mountain of research from a variety of fields to create a unified approach to understanding how people manage to do something different. His book is readable and learned, origninal, but mindful of its relation to all that other work, and well worth the attention of anyone who wants to think seriously about innovation in the arts and in social organizations."

4 New York Times Best Seller (Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous) #8 New York Times Best Seller (Hardcover Business) #2 Wall Street Journal Best Seller (Hardcover Business) #9 Wall Street Journal Best Seller (Hardcover Nonfiction) #9 Washington Post Best Seller (Hardcover Nonfiction) #1 USA Today Best Seller (Money) #10 Entertainment Weekly Best Seller (Hardcover Nonfiction) #10 Publishers Weekly Bestseller (Hardcover Nonfiction)"In today's fiercely competitive global marketplace the most important resource any business has is the creative thinking of its people.

The late Peggy Van Pelt, Ph.D., co-author of Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show, The Imagineering Way, and The Imagineering Workout was at Imagineering for over thirty years. She spoke extensively on the topic of inspiring creativity and imagination in the workplace.

Sometimes we need some otherworldly force to shine down and grant us divine inspiration, especially when we're experiencing blocks in creativity. But in this comic, Josh Mecouch of Formal Sweatpants shows us that it's not all that easy - even the goddess of creativity needs us to make some sacrifices.