101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &

Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.com

12. Wake-Up Call

Background

Most of the activities in this book help generate ideas by actively engaging our brains.

That is, we consciously use our brains to free-associate or force together stimuli to pro-

duce something new.

There is another way to bring out ideas, however—a more passive way. It actually

requires little effort and involves nothing drastically different from what

we do every day. All you have to do is go to sleep and then wake up. A

definite “no-brainer.” Going to sleep can help harness the power of our

brain waves. Our brains function at varying levels of intensity depending

on the time of day. Theta waves appear during sleep, whereas beta waves

are predominant when we are active during the day.

Some research suggests that different brain wave patterns are related to different

problem-solving actions. For instance, theta waves help generate ideas, whereas beta

waves are better for analytical thinking. Theta waves are abundant just before we fall

asleep and just after we wake up.

Objectives

• To help participants generate as many creative ideas as possible


• To help participants learn how to use the activities to generate ideas

Participants

Small groups of four to seven people each

Materials, Supplies, and Equipment

• For each group: markers, two flip charts, and masking tape for posting flip-chart
  sheets


• For each participant: one sheet each of three different colors of sticking dots
  (^1 ⁄ 2 ” diameter) and one pad of 4 x 6 Post-it®Notes

Time

45 minutes (also requires one week prior preparation time)

Basic Idea Generation: “No-Brainers” 73

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