Albert Schneider [00:00:00]:
In general, what you want to do is be more inclusive. So be more inclusive. And typically, the best solution is the solution that the three of us come up with. You have a really good idea. Matt makes it a little better. I put the cherry on the cake. That’s how things work most of the time, and that’s how they work most of the time in research as well.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:24]:
Hello. Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:27]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:29]:
This is the fueling creativity and Education podcast.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:33]:
On this show, we’ll be talking about creativity topics and how they apply to the field of education.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:39]:
We’ll be speaking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and digging deeper into new and varying perspectives of creativity, all with the.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:49]:
Goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers and parents with knowledge they can use at home or in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:57]:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:59]:
Welcome to another episode of the fuelling creativity in education podcast. And in today’s episode, we have an opportunity to explore an industry perspective to creativity and discuss how IBM’s P tech program is partnering with schools around the world to support the skills of the future creative. Now our guests recently retired from IBM, Albert Schneider is currently the managing principal at a Schneider consulting. However, in his almost 35 years at IBM, Albert has led a variety of different projects while also working closely with school districts throughout the state of Connecticut. So Cindy and I thought it would be great to bring Albert on the show to give us this unique perspective of creativity, but also to talk about how private public partnerships are working to support schools. Albert, welcome to the show.

Albert Schneider [00:01:50]:
Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Cindy.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:51]:
So, Albert, I kind of want to start off with a question about what is creativity? Because I know within education circles and even at the university context as well, people often cite a study that IBM have done, an industry survey that constantly lists creativity as one of the most important skills of the future. But what I’m always sensitive about when these industry surveys go out is that creativity can be a little bit subjective at times. And so in this podcast, we sometimes spoken about definitions of creativity, but I don’t think we’ve ever really looked at creativity from a corporate perspective. So given your background at IBM and your work in education, when we’re thinking about the future workforce, could you kind of define how you interpret creativity as an important skill of the future?

Albert Schneider [00:02:44]:
So creativity actually is something I believe can be taught. There is a lot more science to it. It’s not just an art. It’s been known that IBM has led in patents worldwide for, I think, the past 28 years. What people don’t know is that many of the patents are something that are built on prior patents. So what we often find is that you may not have the best idea and I may not have the best idea, but I build upon your idea, which gets it to be the best. So often we see that you take a problem and you begin to solve it. And there’s many methodologies how to do that.

Albert Schneider [00:03:31]:
There’s design thinking, which is a way of brainstorming quickly to get quickly funneled down to a certain set of ideas. So there’s a lot more science, I guess, is the net of this than there is art. You don’t have to be just an absolute brilliant person. You can be taught how to be creative.

Matthew Worwood [00:03:50]:
And that is a theme that we’ve had. One of our previous guests, Jonathan Plucker, quite often talks about. And Cindy, if I do a really bad job of summarizing this, jump in. But talks about, he defines creativity as kind of like taking old stuff and making new stuff, which I think relates very similar to what you’re talking about. You need this level of knowledge, you need some old stuff in order to produce the new stuff. And so from what you’ve shared, there is that kind of like, that kind of like industry corporate perspective. You’re coming into an industry. We’re not necessarily looking for you to reinvent the will, but we’re looking for you to continue to move forward, to build and innovate on what already exists, past and present.

Albert Schneider [00:04:30]:
Yeah, and you hear the term often think outside the box. So often you’ll get a game, an activity that draw lines that connect without lifting your pen from the paper. Well, what you find is that you have to go outside the box to do that, and you can do that. So there is, as I mentioned, a lot more science to this. We teach you how to look at things differently, to think differently, to see a problem. And how do you connect the dots and form the right picture? Most people will see a picture and they say, oh, yes, it’s a dog. Well, we’ll teach you how to connect the dots. And now if you connect the dots properly, you’ll see it actually is a wolf.

Albert Schneider [00:05:21]:
You’re not really a dog because there were dots there that you didn’t connect, that you were thinking too linear how to do it. So, again, there’s methodologies on doing that. There’s activities, but there’s a lot more science in this than there is just artistic. You have to be brilliant from the day you’re born, you can teach. A lot of that. Smarts help, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a lot of that that can be taught. Albert.

Cyndi Burnett [00:05:47]:
It reminds me of a recent workshop I led, which was around adopt, adapt, create. And sometimes when we talk about our students, we say we want them to be creative, and coming up with new ideas, like truly original ideas, takes a lot of effort, and it’s really hard to do. So this workshop I led was about when you have a challenge, can you adopt what someone else is doing, just, like, take someone else’s idea and adopt it to your own solution? Can you take something and adapt it to help you with your own solution? And I think that’s what you’re talking about, is taking something and improving on it, is adapting it, and that’s what we do most of the time. And then finally that third piece around create. It’s like if you cannot find anything that even fits into that box, then you have to go outside. But most of the time, we’re adapting what we are creating because there are so many things out there, and I’m sure you’re seeing at IBM a lot of things. You don’t totally create something new. Rather, you just take it and adapt it to make it your own.

Albert Schneider [00:06:58]:
What you’ll find is that, for instance, IBM has a long history with NASA and the space program and the infamous Apollo 13, and they had issues. And so they locked people in a room with only the things that they would find on that spaceship. They couldn’t introduce something, they couldn’t build something because obviously you couldn’t get it up to the spaceship. So it’s things like that. How do you then take that and make those things work? And a lot of it is trial and error. A lot of it you’ll see again, just looking at something different, stepping back, getting a different perspective, and a lot of that thought process, a lot of those activities, a lot of the brainstorming, a lot of the creativity can be, in fact, taught. Now, there’s some people that just see things better than others, but you’ll be surprised how often. If I teach you how to, well, look in this corner, then look in there, then look at that, then step back.

Albert Schneider [00:08:00]:
There are different steps that you can do to allow people to be more creative. In general, what you want to do is be more inclusive. So be more inclusive. And typically, the best solution is the solution that the three of us come up with, not you or I or Matt. Again, it’s the three of us. You have a really good idea. Matt makes it a little better. I put the cherry on the really, that’s how things work most of the time, and that’s how they work most of the time in research as well.

Matthew Worwood [00:08:34]:
What I love about this as well, and we probably will shift toward a conversation around collaboration now more purposefully. But the idea of kind of like reuse, readapt, repurpose, I think the social, cultural theories that we’ve explored in this podcast thinks about how we as individuals are interacting with our environment and sometimes interacting with other people in our environment. And there’s a level of kind of, like, perception that comes into play. And I think there’s this really unique blend of, well, this is how I see this problem, or this is how I see this product or service as it applies in this environment. But then somebody new can come along and say, you know, I can take this same thing, make some subtle adjustments, and now actually, it can actually solve a problem in another context. And it kind of gets exciting that you’ve got all of these different teams, and each individual can bring that different perspective that leads to creativity. So if you’re facilitating these environments and you’re building these teams, Albert, what do you kind of look for to kind of make sure that you’ve got a lot of diversity in that space?

Albert Schneider [00:09:40]:
So I often use the word diversity, but it isn’t necessarily in the purest sense, as one would think. I use the term diversity of thought. I really look to reach and include people that think differently. Now, mainly you get that because Sydney looks different than I do, right? Let’s say, Matt, you and I look the know. So right off the bat because she looks different. More than likely, she has different thoughts. Not necessarily, though. Her and I could be perfectly know.

Albert Schneider [00:10:17]:
So candidly, then she’s of less value to me if you have the diversity of thought. So really what I look for is, how do we bring more thinking, more different thinking, constructive thinking. And often you get that from different perspectives. If you’re from a different country, from a different race, a different gender, you have different experiences coming up, you have that, a diversity of thought. The comment about using or reusing some of the technology, one of the relevant things today is COVID, right? So the predominant vaccine for COVID is either Moderna or Pfizer that uses a technology called mRNA method, you know, research reconcleric acid. And that is actually something that was developed years ago. And now they’re looking to not only solve issues like we have with COVID but things of possibly cancer and other things. Can we use that technology to look at it differently? We see now how it’s worked here.

Albert Schneider [00:11:32]:
Are there other things in the body that react similar? Let’s extend it further. Same thing in the classroom. Are there things that work well for you in one class, in one type of class that might work for you better in another class? Are there activities, whether it’s sports, whether it’s the bait team, et cetera? Are there characteristics that help you there? One of the things that we found at IBM is that if you’re a gamer, as an example, so you’re gaming with your friends, you’re online gaming. Well, if you think about the characteristics that come from a gamer, very focused, you think of all the different collaborative, because people working as a team, you think of all the different characteristics that make you a good gamer, probably make you a good programmer or researcher or et cetera, et cetera. So we look for what are the things today that work well in the world, and can we apply those, extend those out to the environment that we’re in, in this case, education?

Cyndi Burnett [00:12:37]:
So all of my mom friends want to know this right now, because I hear them talking to me about this conversation, and they’re saying, so is it okay if my child is a gamer and my teenager loves to game and doesn’t really like to do anything else? What would you say to that?

Albert Schneider [00:12:53]:
So my son is a gamer. You put the qualifier on there, which was kind of where it went south for me. Do nothing else. Are there great things that come from gaming? Absolutely. To do nothing else, I mean, brings other issues. I mean, you obviously need to be physically active. You need to diversity. What we find in sports is that there’s a tendency now to concentrate someone.

Albert Schneider [00:13:20]:
He’s a great soccer player, he’s a great basketball player, great baseball player. What we find is the best athletes are ones that play all the sports because you develop different thinking, different muscles, different, et cetera. Same thing with gaming. Is gaming bad? Absolutely not. Is it bad if it’s the only thing? Probably.

Matthew Worwood [00:13:39]:
So just bringing this into the classroom environment, this conversation, I’m sensitive to the fact that sometimes professional development, that there is typically a school wide professional development session that can take place once a month, but there can be a lot of professional development sometimes that takes place within subjects, within disciplines. And going back to this idea of making sure that there is different types of thinking that exists on the team, it makes me wonder how many administrators listening to this show should think about what opportunities am I providing for the social science teacher to interact and work with the math teacher. And what opportunities am I creating for the math teacher to work with the art teacher? Why is it that we kind of, like, find ourselves constantly? Well, you’re similar, so you’ve got to work together. When it seems to me that there’s so many advantages, making sure that we are diversifying our teams.

Albert Schneider [00:14:31]:
I mean, I’ve used the phrase for many years, I am the best thinker. Like me, that I know. That doesn’t mean I’m the best thinker. Just I perfected the way I approach things. I do things. That doesn’t mean that thinking differently, which for whatever reason, because of behavior, because I’m used to it. I like what I know. I know what I like.

Albert Schneider [00:14:58]:
I think this particular way and I perfected that. But I want somebody who thinks differently. I want somebody who’s going to come at it from the left, not the right or the top, from the bottom. I want someone who’s going to give me a perspective that I can’t see. Sometimes you can’t see the forest from the trees. And that’s why the infusion of a different person. That’s why I love the term diversity of thought. I love to go out and talk to people who don’t share my values, who have a different perspective.

Albert Schneider [00:15:32]:
Now you want at some level that have common values in terms of morality or different things, but a different perspective. A Democrat, a Republican, a this or know, that’s what I think makes things better.

Cyndi Burnett [00:15:48]:
So in education, we’re seeing an increase in public private partnerships, one being IBM’s P tech program. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your perspective of this type of project, its strengths, its weaknesses, whatever you’d like to share.

Albert Schneider [00:16:05]:
Well, what I love about it, and I kids sometimes that I am myself, one of the early Ptech students. So I started at IBM when I was 19 years old. Now, I went on and get a four year degree, but I started after just two years of school. What you find is that you have a variety of tasks that you need to do in any company, right? You have finance, you have marketing, you have operations, et cetera, et cetera. And often you don’t need a four year degree. Often you need, whether it’s an apprenticeship or you just need some basic skills. So when I joined IBM, I joined as a computer operator. I would say probably the majority of the people that I worked with did not have a college degree at the time, or at least not a four year degree, because P tech does.

Albert Schneider [00:17:07]:
You know, the framework of that is that it’s a compressed schedule that incorporates both a high school degree and a junior college degree or community college two year degree. So that is exactly what I had. And what we find is that, frankly, I was never a great student. I never liked education. I love to learn, but the school wasn’t the way I love to learn it. So I like to go out. I like to do it with my hands. I like to see it visually.

Albert Schneider [00:17:41]:
I mean, I like to be more active in the middle of it. Ptech. What the nice thing there is, it takes a group of kids, and not everybody’s bent out, to be a four year degree or master’s or PhD, and allows them a path, know whatever field. In this case, we’re talking IBM. But there’s p techs that involve other companies than IBM. So it’s the framework. It’s not so much the destination. We have p techs with industrial companies, we have p techs with the hospitals.

Albert Schneider [00:18:16]:
We have p techs with many different companies. So it is a path into that career that starts very focused on what are the things that are relevant to that, to that industry in particular. So if IBM, one of the frameworks of the P tech is that the company sponsor, in the cases where it’s know, it’s easy enough, it’s technology related, but it could be a hospital, it could be industrial company, we’re going to include things in the curriculum that are specific to that. So you get a person, not with a general degree when they graduate, you’ve truly begun to mold them into the type of employee, the skill set they have, the values they have. Literally, you’re now molding that employee into what it is you’re looking for. So the higher rate is tremendously high. Very few do not continue into the industry that they’re aligned with the ptech, because, again, their curriculum is tailored to that, et cetera. And the partnership with the state, the states are just wonderful.

Albert Schneider [00:19:32]:
There’s Ptechs right now. I lost track. I mean, I think there’s over 500 ptechs. There’s now in, I think, 13 different countries. So again, it’s not a us phenomenon either, but it’s the taking of industry, taking of education, and aligning those into creating students of the future, employees of the future, workers of the future in that particular industry, and connecting that back.

Matthew Worwood [00:20:01]:
To what we’ve just been talking about. I think that model allows us within the school system sometimes we’re learning these skills that we know have value. We’re learning knowledge that we know can be applied in the world. But sometimes we lack that context. And so having these relationships with these industry partners allows us to think creatively within the context of maybe what the needs of the healthcare system of the future need, or the needs of a company like IBM in the future. And I think that’s something that I feel education, the system will find challenging without that partnership from industry. Would you agree?

Albert Schneider [00:20:40]:
Very much? You know, much like creating a patent that normally is not an individual idea, takes your idea, I approve upon it. Same thing with this. You need those partnerships, you need that framework, you need that higher education, you need that industry, you need that state and local government, you need that partnership to make these things work.

Cyndi Burnett [00:21:03]:
Can you tell us, Albert, is there any type of creativity that can be found in the training? Do you deliberately teach for creativity? Is it integrated?

Albert Schneider [00:21:13]:
The. Because you create the curriculum, there is a entrepreneurial piece of that, there is a creativity piece of that, there is a finance piece of that. What we try and do is incorporate these life skills that people, whether you continue in that industry or field or you go elsewhere, these are skills that will serve you well anywhere. They’ll serve you when you get stranded in the woods. They’ll serve you when you’re going for the highest level attainment in your field. They’ll serve you when you’re raising children, they’ll serve you, et cetera, et cetera. So these are all types of skills that we try to do. And one of the things that we do, at least I do frequently at work, when we bring in people to be creative, when we bring them to solve a particular problem in a necessarily creative way, I’d like to draw upon their experiences.

Albert Schneider [00:22:15]:
Who is a mom, who is a farmer, who is this, who has a children child who has that, all of these experience, because you learn techniques on how to deal with that, how to master that, all of those things, similar to the mRNA, how do you take a skill over here and now apply it over there? And most of these things, whether it’s your home finances, whether it’s raising children, whether it’s taking care of your elderly volunteer, I mean, it doesn’t matter what it is. You develop a methodology, a set of practices, a skill set that applies many different places than what you’re doing today. So it really is, how do you take that skill set? How do you identify that? People say, well, that’s just what they do. I didn’t know that was special. Well, it is kind of special, and it’s special in the way you do it. I do something similar, but again, not the same. So, boy, what you’re doing? Oh, I’m going to pick up that tip. I’m going to make my improvement better.

Albert Schneider [00:23:21]:
So most of these things we find are iterative. The idea that you have just this brand spanking new way of doing things often is not the case. Normally, I’m improving upon what I’ve done before, and I really believe the only two ways you learn are when you taught and when you fail. You continue to do the same thing over and over again. You’re not learning. Right, but it’s when you fail and you make that little adjustment or when you’re taught for the first time, that’s when you learn, when you’re taught, and when you fail.

Matthew Worwood [00:23:58]:
And I appreciate you bringing that up, because we’ve been speaking about failure earlier on in season four and really getting into the weeds of what that can look like in the classroom. Albert, we’re getting a little bit tight on time, but before we ask you our final question, I just want to get your perspective with your technology background and the work that you’ve done at IBM. Cindy and I have been looking toward this concept of the future creative. One of the themes, for example, that we’ve discussed is this idea of cobots collaborative bots. But we’ve also spoke about the importance of the human piece, the empathy, the emotion that we as individuals can bring to a team, including a team that’s working in collaboration with AI. I was just wondering, when you’re thinking about that future creative, what are some of the skills that you think are going to be particularly relevant for when it comes to creativity in the future? That perhaps we either don’t have an abundance yet, or we need to have more of as we move forward.

Albert Schneider [00:24:55]:
When I hire someone, I often say I hire for attitude, and I train for skill. So it does start with the right attitude, some of the skill sets, problem solving. So I remember, and still to this day, my mother, God bless her, she’s still alive. Every Christmas, she gets me a little toy. Why does she get me a little toy? Because when I was younger, I’d like to solve problems. So it’s problem solving skills. How do you approach things to do that? So that’s certainly one collaborative. You need to be able to work with people.

Albert Schneider [00:25:33]:
That’s clearly a skill, whether it’s someone in the same office or whether it’s someone on a screen like we have here around the world, but you have to be able to do that diversity of thought. I look for people to fill out my best team much like you would do at a sports team or different things. I mean, you can’t have eleven kickers on the team. You can’t have eleven pitchers on the team. You have to have that diversity which gives you so that diversity of thought, the collaboration, problem solving skills, those are some of the types of things that we look for. And most of the people have that, whether it’s a problem they have, or fixing their sink or changing a tire or building. How do you take those and relate those now to real problems you have in the workplace?

Cyndi Burnett [00:26:29]:
Well, Albert, our time is coming to an end, but we really appreciate your time and energy and thoughts today. We conclude every episode with three tips that you would give to educators to bring creative thinking into the classroom. So what would be your recommendations?

Albert Schneider [00:26:45]:
You need to be inclusive. So you need to find a way to reach out to every student. You need to be inclusive. And sometimes that’s with a carrot and sometimes that’s with the stick. But it’s how do you be inclusive? Positive. But from the perspective of encouragement, not everything is great. And you shouldn’t say that everything is great, but you should encourage them to be better and be prescriptive on how they can be better. And then you have to give them a framework where they can fail.

Albert Schneider [00:27:23]:
The majority of things come or perfected only through failure, time after time after time. So I am a big proponent of if you fail, you have an opportunity to do, maybe it’s a makeup test or extra credit or things in that. So it really is allow a space for people to your students to fail, but give them that opportunity that if they fail, it’s not the end of the world, it’s not a death sentence for them. They have an opportunity to succeed. So those would be the three things.

Matthew Worwood [00:28:02]:
Albert, thank you so much for joining us on the show. This concludes this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love for you to rate it on your favorite listening platform. And of course, if you have any questions about this episode or past or future episodes, please reach out to Cindy and self at questions@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:28:26]:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This podcast was produced by creativity and education and in partnership with dabsforcreativity.com. Our editor is Sina Yusefzade.