Blender Handout
Assume you belong to a group of volunteer speakers. The group has met to brainstorm
ways to improve their speeches. Group members silently generate ideas in writing for
about 10 minutes. Then Mary reads her idea: “Ask the audience to submit questions on
your topic before you speak.”
Next, John reads his idea: “Tell an opening story to get the attention of the audience
and to illustrate your major theme.”
The group members think about these ideas and integrate them into one idea: “Ask
the audience to submit brief stories illustrating a theme, take a break to analyze their
responses, and then tell them the outcome.”
After everyone agrees on this idea, Fred reads his idea: “Have audience members pair
up with one other person to introduce themselves.”
The group members attempt to integrate this idea and come up with this: “To illus-
trate how people miscommunicate, tell one audience member in a row a ‘secret’ and have
that person tell it to the next person in the row who tells it to the next person and so forth.
After the secret makes it to the end of the row, ask the last person to tell the entire audi-
ence the secret. The final version of the ‘secret’ usually is a gross distortion of the origi-
nal.”
Melvin then suggests his idea: “Project your image on screens around the room.”
The group attempts to integrate this idea and comes up with the following: “Continu-
ally project audience members’ facial reactions on a screen to demonstrate feedback
through nonverbal communication.”254 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving
101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &
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