Strategy of the Week:
Conceptual Blending for Creative Thinking

Robert King

Conceptual blending is a strategy that businesses use to inspire creative thinking, but it can also help your students think about and engage any topic.

What is conceptual blending?

Conceptual blending is combining two dissimilar concepts and using creative thinking to work out the dissonances. Here’s an example:

“How can we make our workplace more like a playground?”

At first, you might ask—why would anyone want the workplace to be more like a playground? Work is work. Play is play. The two concepts don’t blend. But let’s think about what playgrounds do well:

• bring people together
• get them to collaborate
• offer equipment that inspires creativity
• encourage users to return repeatedly
• create multisensory engagement
• make people happy and healthy

Aren’t these desirable attributes for a workplace?

[Read more.]

In the News

Recent articles on 21st century skills, inquiry, project-based learning, media literacy, and education reform

2012 Google Science Fair Begins: What’s Your Question? Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina of Scientific American announces the second annual online Google Science Fair. Kids excel at asking questions, and this fair lets them not only ask but also find answers through hands-on science. This year, Scientific American will add a $50,000 Science in Action award for the project that best tackles a social, environmental, or health issue in a practical way. The competition is for “anybody and everybody” ages 13-18, and entries are due April 1, 2012.

Life in a 21st-Century English Class: This article by Shelley Wright, posted on KQED’s Mind/Shift Web page, defines what an “inquiry, project-based, technology embedded classroom” is. Wright’s high school students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, reflect on it, and then apply the knowledge, using appropriate technology along the way. After experiencing this avant-garde classroom for one semester, students begin to design the curriculum units themselves, under Wright’s careful guidance. This post shares plenty of details to explain how this “technology/constructivist” shift in the classroom was accomplished. (Also on Mind/Shift, read Shelley Wright’s post for teachers who want to shift their classrooms but aren’t sure where to begin.)

Two Fourth-Graders Find a Way to Share School’s Food: Matt Stevens posts this report on the Los Angeles Times Web site about 9-year-olds Lesly Heredia and Paulina Sanchez. These fourth-graders at Jaime Escalante Elementary School noticed their classmates tossing a lot of untouched school lunches in the garbage. Their civic mindedness went into high gear. The girls got to work gathering and graphing data about the discarded food items, writing a letter to the school district’s food-service director, getting the attention of the mayor, and coming up with a plan that distributes the unused lunch items to families who need the food. The process these young citizens went through and their enthusiasm for the project is encouraging to read.

Design Thinking: Lessons for the Classroom: On Edutopia, Betty Ray posts about using design thinking to solve problems, sharing what she learned at the Big Ideas Fest, a collaborative workshop. Beginning with a question, participants break into groups called “collabs” to pursue answers. A set of ground rules keeps the atmosphere positive and the goal manageable—“solve one aspect of the problem,” not the entire issue (whatever that may be). The writer very neatly explains the six steps in the design-thinking process and further shows how each can be applied in the classroom.

Longer School Day Brings Promise and Questions: The New York Times offers this article by Rebecca Vevea, who addresses Chicago’s plan to implement a 7.5-hour school day. Thirteen “pioneer schools” began the new schedule in January 2012, and the rest will do so next year. Genevieve Melody Elementary is one of the thirteen, and although the school has been struggling, it is “pushing aggressively to improve.” Having time for extra instruction in reading and math in all classes may be part of the solution. Harvard-educated Principal Hanks believes the district-wide plan for a longer school day must not only address the obvious scheduling details but also consider how to “mentally prepare” teachers and parents for this shift in their routines.

MU Students’ Web Site Helps Homeowners Decipher Water Use: Karen Herzog of the Journal Sentinel tells how students turned a project in their environmental politics and ethics course into a start-up consulting business. Basically, students collected water-use data from Milwaukee and surrounding communities and, with the help of a local software developer, created a Web site that allows a homeowner to type in an address and get a “water score.” The score tells how many gallons of water the household averages daily and offers a percentage comparison to the water use of similar-sized households. Conservation tips and a link to water conservation products are also included. The business is still operating, and other students have joined in, thankful for the “real-world business experience.”

Thoughtful Learning: Upcoming Events

ASCD Convention (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

Thoughtful Learning will be exhibiting at the ASCD annual conference from March 24–26 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA. We’ll provide more detailed information as the show approaches.

In Focus: Improving Social and Emotional Intelligence, One Day at a Time

We are developing a new line of products titled In Focus: Improving Social and Emotional Intelligence, One Day at a Time. The author of the line, Thomas McSheehy, has taught elementary school for 21 years and has been a social worker and family therapist for 16 years. Each book (K–2, 3–5, 6–8) provides concise daily activities to help your students develop their social and emotional intelligence by

• increasing attention and focus,
• reducing bullying and impulsive behavior,
• elevating self-esteem and confidence,
• strengthening social skills, and
• improving teamwork and collaboration.

For more information, download a free sampler of In Focus grades 6–8. Also, watch for more in future editions of the Thoughtful Inquirer!