New TED Talk and Practical Tips for Innovation

We watched this TED Talk yesterday over lunch and, while Derek Sivers takes us on a cool 3 minute ride, his idea worth spreading would not surprise a Ninja in the Patterns of Thinking Method. What's Sivers' Big Idea? Americans name streets; Japanese name blocks. Maybe things

aren't weird, just different.

A Ninja in the Patterns of Thinking Method would immediately see Distinctions and Perspectives at play. Even the 2nd graders in this video know that any idea is a Distinction and has the structure of Identity/Other. As soon as we name an idea (identity), we're also implying its other. We tend to miss out on the other, just like the American missed the NOT street and the Japanese missed the NOT block.

But what are we missing when we forget the other? In the example of this map,

the implications of poor Distinction-making weren't terribly earth-shattering.

Cool! If you switch from an American to a Japanese perspective, identity and other flip-flop.

But what are we really missing when name the Identity but not the Other? We're missing half of everything, including opportunities for tremendous innovation. Creativity and innovation are topics we've blogged about before, but another example recently caught my eye. Or more accurately, my ear.

Once upon a time in music, performers played song into a microphone and onto tape. They were admonished to "Keep the signal loud enough. You don't want empty tape!" Common wisdom held that NOT signal would make your song sound lousy.

Well, over time some recording artists started thinking long and hard about the NOT signal. "What's it called? How can we use it? Are there cool things happening over there?" And a new genre of music was born: Noise. Noise - the thing that was once not signal - now has its own history, journals, festivals, and fan base. Innovation, all because a few musicians decided to make better Distinctions and quit ignoring the other.

Street/NOT street....block/NOT block....that's cool. But it's barely scratching the surface of what the Patterns of Thinking Method can do. Now that's an idea worth spreading.

Increasing Students' Recall and the Patterns of Thinking Method

A couple of teachers using the Patterns of Thinking Method wanted to share some classroom anecdotes about how this method to teach thinking skills has impacted their students' ability to recall information.

1. One Head Start teacher explicitly uses part/whole (Systems) when introducing new topics or reviewing them later. She puts a large ThinkBlock in the middle of the circle and gives each student one medium ThinkBlock. She asks students to tell her one thing about the idea (farm, store, or family, for example). They go around the circle, each student placing their block inside as they name an idea AND naming the ideas that have already been placed inside. This becomes a game similar to "I'm going on a picnic, and I'm taking..." The teacher reports that her students recall of each other's parts more than they did prior to learning about parts and wholes.
   
   This is a great activity for accessing students' prior knowledge in a non-threatening way. Even left-field answers that don't pertain to the topic have a place in the NOT pile (identity/other; Distinctions) outside of the large ThinkBlock. Because every response has a place, students feel that their responses are validated and are motivated to stay engaged in the activity.
   
   The ThinkBlocks also facilitate classroom management in this activity. At the start of the activity, every student holds one ThinkBlock. They know that they'll be called on eventually and devote less attention to being called on and more attention to their classmates' responses.
   
   
2. Another Head Start teacher uses the Patterns of Thinking Method to transition from group discussion to individual work. For example, students create a birthday book for their classmates by drawing a picture of a birthday. The teacher wasn't satisfied with their drawings and challenged them to include more details in their drawings. She used Systems (part-whole) to talk about the parts of a birthday celebration. Her students had lots of ideas to contribute. Before she sent them off to draw their next birthday picture, the teacher reminded them that the parts of the birthday they talked about as a group should also be the parts of their pictures. When the students began their individual work, she heard fewer complaints of "I don't know what to draw" and saw less off-task behavior. The drawings included more details from their group discussion.

Have a story about how the Patterns of Thinking affected students' recall (or motivation, creativity, etc)? Drop us a line!

Neuromarketing, DSRP and Manipulation

Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing that studies how your brain responds to ads and brands. Information on response to stimuli (e.g. marketing messages) is gathered through the use of medical equipment that measures: Heart rate (EKG), brain waves (EEG), and brain activation (fMRI).

Many companies are taking advantage of this new field of knowledge and performing their own research of consumer response to their products. What they are finding is that consumers generally respond to products and services that activate a strong emotional response. The implications are quite substantial.

To find out more about how this research is being used to influence our spending and reactions to messages, see our news article.

New to the Blogroll: First Grade Superstars

Check out this new blog, First Grade Superstars.  This teacher uses her blog to keep parents up-to-date on what's happening at school.  Keep up the good work, Superstars! 

If you've seen an innovative education blog, please add the URL in the comments below.

Ever wonder how DSRP fits into the "Big Picture?"

Peter Mason, Director of Marketing and Communications for Water For People  recently published an article in which he uses the Patterns of Thinking Method to deconstruct the potential problems faced with organizing and successfully building capacity for a community in West Bengal, India. 

When asked about the importance of thinking skills to solve any problem, Mason commented, "There is often a fine line between success and failure; but by monitoring, asking hard questions, evaluating, and most importantly thinking critically, you can create solutions for present and future success.  In this case the Patterns of Thinking Method enabled my team and the community to work hard and smart when completing this important project."

From the classroom to the boardroom...all the way to a rural village in the developing world, the Patterns of Thinking Method can be used to deconstruct ideas, identify problems and discover solutions that will work.

The full news piece is available online, along with links to the original article and additional resources.