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How Technology Can Foster Divergent Thinking in Our Students

By EdTechManiac, Darin Anderson

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell lines out the differences between convergent thinking and divergent thinking by discussing two different types of questions.

raventest.net

The first question type, Gladwell explains, is the convergent kind, often used by prestigious universities and high-powered corporations to measure intelligence and aptitude of potential applicants and employees. Convergent assessments, such as the Raven's Test (or Raven's Progressive Matrices), developed by psychologist John C. Raven in 1939, are typically used to determine a person's IQ.

Raven's assessment gives users a series of multiple choice questions in the form of patterns, and they are to identify the shape that will complete the pattern. Simply stated, the convergent mind will be better able to decipher the patterns and ultimately end up with the single correct answer. From the total number of questions answered correctly, the test-taker is given a final IQ score. If it is high enough, Gladwell notes, he or she receives a free pass to Harvard, Cambridge, or another such institution. If it is too low...hello, State U!

Gladwell also touches on a second question type - those of a divergent nature. This style of questioning opens up opportunities for creativity and imagination, as well as analysis and cognition (landmarks of convergent tests). Outliers describes just such a question:

"Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects:

1. a brick

2. a blanket"

The testing subject is then given a fixed amount of time to provide as many responses as possible. There are no "right" or "wrong" answers...just answers. Thus whatever direction(s) the test-taker chooses to go, the results are divergent.

A quick comparison between the two types of questions may lead to some of the following conclusions:

• Only Smart people do well on convergent tests
• Average and Below Average people do not excel on convergent tests - they're too hard for them
• Smart people can also do well on divergent tests...because they are smart...Duh!
• Average and Below Average people can do well on divergent tests because there are no wrong answers; they are fail-proof
• Convergent tests are a better method of assessing intelligence than are divergent tests
• Analysis and reasoning are more important to intelligence than creativity and imagination

I suppose in the world of "logical" thinking, these theories might pan out. However, before you draw your final conclusion, take a look at the divergent test responses of two people tested by Liam Hudson, a noted British psychologist:

1. High School Student named Poole: (Brick) To use in smash-and-grab raids. To help hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces, turn and throw—no evasive action allowed). To hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty Coca-Cola bottles. (Blanket) To use on a bed. As a cover for illicit sex in the woods. As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As a sail for a boat, cart or sled. As a substitute for a towel. As a target for shooting practice for short-sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping out of burning skyscrapers.*
2. High School Student named Florence: (Brick) Building things, throwing. (Blanket) Keeping warm, smothering fire, tying to trees and sleeping in (as a hammock), improvised stretcher.*

*Source: Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

Given the choice to associate with either student, which of you would pick Poole and who would chum around with Florence?

Now, how about a closer look at their respective aptitudes?

Poole is defined in Gladwell's book as a student "in a top British high school," while Florence was described by Hudson himself as "a prodigy, with one of the highest IQs in his school."

Both able and willing, but, as Gladwell poses it, which student is more likely brilliant and creative enough to win a Nobel Prize?

Looking back at some of the most successful people of our time, we see names like Walt Disney, Martha Stewart, Steve Jobs, and Oprah Winfrey. Certainly, these folks, and hundreds of others, have exhibited a certain creativity and innovation along with astute cognitive abilities that helped them on their path to greatness.

But what about this list of similarly successful folks?

(L-R) Taylor Swift, Rhonda Rousey, Kevin Hart, and Lionel Messi (Highlights here!)

While this group exhibits notoriety in pop culture arenas, they each certainly display the same kinds of creativity that we look for in sports and entertainment figures. Those qualities and ideas have even crashed their way into the corporate world. Enterprises like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are famous for offering - even requiring - their employees to spend time being creative. This freedom to explore and create without fear of failure has led to some groundbreaking technology that most of use daily without so much as a cognitive thought.

It is this kind of philosophy that should permeate each and every school system across our country. So much is said in education today about creativity, imagination, and risk taking...but nothing ever really has happened on any kind of large and meaningful scale. There is so much resistance to change.

However, the ball is rolling and it is gathering steam (S.T.E.A.M. - get it?) as is evidenced by the huge movement towards education technology and associated programs such as Ed Camps, Maker Movements, and Hack-a-Thons that pop up all over the country on an almost daily basis.

And that is the crux of my argument. Technology use - in and out of the classroom - can help foster divergent thinking in a way that was unheard even 5-10 years ago. Divergence has typically been seen as an anti-societal norm, especially by the so-called establishment. Going against normalcy was met with detention, suspension, or expulsion when in fact it could have been an opportunity for exploration and development. (Understand I am not talking about malicious behavior in school, although such is often exhibited as a result of boredom or irrelevancy of content in the classroom.)

Now that divergent ways of teaching, learning, and thinking are becoming more mainstream, educational technology is poised to make an even bigger splash.

Here are a few examples of how technology can help foster divergence in the classroom:

• Collaboration with other like-minded users via social media. No matter how big or small one's location is, a student cannot always rely on having someone nearby who shares the same ideas and interests. With the ease of social media, students of all ages can find and reach out to others with similar goals and aspirations. In the case of October Sky, for example, how much would those boys have benefitted from social media contacts outside of West Virginia?
• Access to various points of view. With careful and calculated consumption, our students can learn as much as they want about nearly any subject and from all angles. A wolf protector in Chicago, for example, may learn how the predator affects the very way of life for a farmer in the Intermountain West. Or an avid hunter might understand how some Native American cultures view certain animals.
• Access to material that was once only available for the social elite. No longer must the teacher or the textbook be the sole sources of information. In fact, we have more access available to us in digital format now than ever before. In Good Will Hunting, there is a famous line that goes as follows: "You dropped 150 grand on a (expletive) education you could have got for $1.50 in late charges at the public library." First uttered in 1997, the words seem to be even more true now, and we don't even have to leave our couches!
• Avoiding functional fixedness with online gaming. Growing up, you perhaps thought that your mother's sauce pan was made for just one thing...a drum, of course! Then one day, you had a crazy idea - what if you could make macaroni and cheese in the inside of your drum?? Viola! Functional fixedness destroyed. Daniel Pink is well known for his book Drive, in which he offers this set of pictures that depict and experiment conducted by psychologist Karl Dunker in 1945. The task was to attach the burning candle to the wall with only the thumbtacks. With some creativity, it becomes possible...as long as the box is seen as more than just a container for holding tacks. This kind of divergent problem solving is on display in a game called Limbo, available here. It's a bit dark, but it does get the job done. As do many, many other games.

The notion of divergent thinking is nothing new. However, encouraging our students (and teachers) to think that way has often been viewed as a bit of rebellion at worst, or non-compliance at best. Changing the perceptions of "it-worked-for-me" parents, community leaders, and legislators has been a struggle as well.

The fact is, while some aspects of traditional education are irreplaceable, so many others are outdated and irrelevant with 21st Century teachers and learners.

In the early 1900's, Robert Frost penned words that turned out to be well ahead of his time:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." #EdReform #EdTechChat #EdChat

— Darin Anderson (@coachdarin22) August 4, 2015

What if Frost's teacher had told him there was only one road to take?

IPad Lit Circles: Daniel Pink, Aurasma, Wikispaces and Interclass Collaboration

While reading Daniel Pink's book Drive, I came across for me a very earth shattering passage. In his chapter entitled "The Rise and Fall of Motivation 2.0." Pink sets up a an interesting thought. To paraphrase, he asks his readers to imagine that it is 1995. He says, “I’m going to describe two new encyclopedias—one just out, the other to be launched in a few years. You have to predict which will be more successful in 2010.”
Below, I would like to set up his binaries.

Encyclopedia 1	Encyclopedia 2
Microsoft Funded	Doesn’t come from a company
Well paid Professional Writers	Written and edited by a thousands of people for fun.
Well compensated Managers	Contributors work 20 and sometimes 30 hours per week, for free.
Completed on time and on budget	There are no deadlines and no budget
Sold on CD Rom Later sold on the internet	The encyclopedia exists completely online and costs nothing

He continues saying "According to my crystal ball, in 2010, one of these encyclopedias will be the largest and most popular in the world and the other will be defunct."

Now, we are lucky to have the hindsight to know that Encyclopedia 1 is MSN Encarta, which Microsoft ended on October 31st, 2009, and Encyclopedia 2 is none other than Wikipedia.  Pink goes on to talk about why this is the case. I do not plan on getting into that today, however if you'd like to dive into that, I very much suggest you read Daniel Pink's Drive, or at the very least check out his Ted Talk.

After reading this, I wanted to test this out in a classroom setting. In our state, my Junior English Students are asked to do a lit circle at the end of the year. This body of educational evidence is known as "the Reader's Choice". In this assessment, students are to read a book of their choice and engage in class discussions surrounding theme, vocabulary, literary devices, special quotes and a handful of other topics. They are then asked to synthesize all of this information into a visual presentation.
I chose to do this a bit differently than what was done in the past.

All year long, we had done many group projects within classes. I felt like there were few combinations that I could make that hadn't already been done. So instead I took all 4 of my classes (this totaled roughly 105 students) and threw them all together in a pot. I wanted to see if I could have students working on a project completely online, and where they never once met face to face in person. I understand there are social aspects of group work that were missed here, but with our world operating on such a global scale, I thought this would definitely be a 21st century skill.

I began looking for an educational online platform where students could read, chat, post ideas,  and present their findings together. I essentially was looking for a wiki. I came across wikispaces.com.
I plan to post a few "how to's"  and specifics on what we were able to do with wkispaces. Suffice it to say, it had everything I needed and even things that I didn't know I needed that became essential to the process.

We essentially used 4 iPad apps for this activity:
Wikispaces
Bcontext
Aurasma
Todaysmeet

I will go through how we used all 4 of these programs in upcoming posts. This activity was extremely successful. Not just by my standards, but I used an anonymous poll and found that the kids really enjoyed it as well. The students mentioned that they "felt like (we were) doing something special every day." I also had one student say "I usually read something and then forgot it. With this project, I was able to see the progress and remember."
Our website, which I give complete credit to our students for what they created, was featured on wikispaces as an outstanding use of their software. As a representative of the class, I had the opportunity to do a google hangout with Wendy Gorton from wikispaces on how we used it in the classroom. You can check it out below.
Here is the article.

Below you can find the link to the wiki, if you'd like to check it out.

Mr. Einfeldt's Class Wiki Page

Star Wars, PBL, Goodwill Hunting, and 20% Time in My Classroom

A couple of years back I came to a stark realization that as a teacher, everything (and I mean everything, thank you very much, Kahn Academy) that I teach is taught on the internet and probably in a better way. I would liken this moment of realization probably to the moment when Luke found out that he had kissed his sister. I had felt like I had picked the wrong field. What did I do as a teacher that provided meaning to my students more so than what they could get from the internet?

One of my favorite scenes in modern cinema is the “How About Them Apples Scene” from Goodwill Hunting (Note: the aforementioned link has some mature language).  To paraphrase the scene Matt Damon argues with a Harvard undergrad about the economic structure of the pre-revolutionary war colonies. Matt Damon says in the argument, “You dropped 150 grand on an education that you could have gotten for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.” Now this isn’t to say that a college education is unnecessary; far from it. In fact the movie, I believe, argues that false dichotomy completely. I guess the realization I had and this particular scene both hit home for me as a teacher and make me wonder how or even if I can do more for my students than what they can get for $1.50 less than even Matt Damon had mentioned through the internet.

Last year I asked many of my students (Juniors and Seniors in High School) why they came to school. I was not surprising what their answer was. Far and away, the most common answer was friends and the social aspect. The second most common answer was to get into college. This is very encouraging. The third most common answer, however, was that they only came to school because their parents/the state/my probation officer is making me. Now, this wasn’t a controlled scientific poll, but just something I asked in a very informal way. However, it led me down a path of questioning myself. If, according to my generated data, less than 30% of my students were coming to school for an education, then that just wasn’t cutting it. I needed to find a way to motivate the others.

This summer I was lucky enough to have a google hangout with an amazing teacher by the name of Kevin Brookhouser. I could go on for days on how impressive he is and all his titles. He is a certified Google instructor, Certified iPad Instructor, English Teacher at a private school in California; his list goes on and on. He recently did a TED Talk on what is called 20% time. If you have a second, check it out.

One of the most important things I got from him, however was to read a book called Drive by Daniel Pink. What Daniel Pink suggests is that historically our best motivating tools, in business and schools, are carrots and sticks; meaning if you are good then you receive a sweeter carrot, if you are bad you get hit with a bigger stick. Carrots and stick, or extrinsic motivation, is not beneficial to properly motivate people today. At least not in the sense of promoting 21st Century Skills and real world creativity for solving real world problems. If you have about 15 minutes, check out his TED Talk as well, he can describe this better than I can, and he’s a tad bit more entertaining. Suffice it to say, he claims that carrots and sticks hinder creativity, rather than help it.

I was as guilty as any teacher at this. I would ask for creative responses and try to foster it by throwing out candy right and left. I would joke with my students and say that I was throwing tootsie rolls like Tebow throws footballs (This clip is a great one about muscle memory and bad habits–another topic for another day). I gave out treats for the most creative answers, and in return, probably stifled other creative responses. Granted, it was unintentional, but detrimental much the same.

I had remembered back into high school and college and all of my great teachers and lessons learned. Again, I will probably leave out some great teachers. That being said, I had a Visual Narratives course from Dr. Todd Petersen at Southern Utah University. This class was life changing for a million different reasons. But one specific reason was that I remember not caring what my grade was. I did not care how sweet the carrot was that I got at the end, nor did I care if I got hit with a big stick for failing. I enjoyed every second of it. I spent hours working on the class project, I put off other school work for his projects. While coaching JV basketball that year, I was often found working on this project on bus rides and even in the bleachers during our Freshman and Sophomore team’s games. I even specifically remember calling in sick to work once so that I could finish up a post I was doing on the class wiki regarding the Watchmen. Bear in mind, this assignment wasn’t extra credit, nor was it part of a specific grade for the class. To echo what Pink talks about, I actually gave up carrots (a hourly shift at a local pizza store) to be able to work on extra aspects of this class. I was motivated, invested and had no interest in the extrinsic reward yet I was extremely interested in the end outcome.
Pink talks about the three motivating factors for creativity: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. He claims that people need to be in charge of what they are doing or at the very least how they do it. I have noticed this in the classroom. Many times students can’t get involved or engaged because they aren’t interested in the subject. Mastery, involves the aspect that the individual feel incremental improvement. It is not about perfection but seeing themselves get better. Finally, and in my opinion the most important, is purpose. Too many times students will complain by saying “when am I ever going to need to know this.” Giving them an actual real life purpose eliminates that.

Pink details many great companies leading the way in motivating their employees. Among these companies, Google, 3M, Facebook and a company named Atlasian that have given their employees 20% of their time to work on whatever projects they would like. These projects are later presented to the companies. The amazing thing is that after implementing this, the productivity has gone up and they have developed some amazing inventions as a result.
This is what I was looking for. This is what I want for my students. However, the question now becomes how to do this in my classroom. How can I turn my classroom into a place where they can create.
Here is my plan

• Students will have every Friday to work on a project that is new to them and they are passionate about. Only 20 Time work can be done on Fridays.
• Students will write a weekly blog post updating the world on how their project is doing.
• Students will do a small presentation to the class at the end of the first semester to update the class on their work.
• Students will do a final “TED” style talk at the end of the second semester to the class and any others that wish to attend during school.
• Some students will be selected by students and staff to present at a “TED” style event after school hours that will be open to the community and streamed live.
• (My personal favorite) Failure IS an option. As it says on Facebook Headquarters “Done is Better than Perfect”

Next week we will be incorporating Brookhouser’s Bad Idea Factory, an structure that is set up to eliminate aprehension and to help kick-start brainstorming efforts. They will then be asked to present their ideas to the class as well as the world. The class will help them decide if this project has worth or if they should retool it, repackage it, or junk it all together and try something else. Students will choose a mentor to help guide them through their project, but the vast majority of the work will be up to the students. I’m very excited to see the different types of projects students will come up with and all of the amazing things they will accomplish.

If you are interested in doing 20 Time in your class, please check out these resources. They were a huge help to me.

Kevin Brookhouser’s Website: http://www.iteachithink.com/

10 Reasons to Try 20% Time In The Classroom – AJ Juliani 

20 Time in Education - Watch the video and check out the site!

Karl Lindgren-Streicher’s 20 Time blog.

I’ll be tweeting about my adventures in 20 Time and you can follow them on the hash tag #20Time or the hash tag #geniushour or my specific tweeting #mre20time. Thanks for stopping by and please share any experience you have had with 20 Time in the comments below.