Matthew Worwood:
If you increase engagement, you are going to have better success in terms of student learning outcomes as well. Research is pretty clear on that. Different types of engagement, different levels of engagement, all of those are factors to consider. But if we generally increase engagement, we’re going to have better learning outcomes in our classrooms. Hello, everyone. My name is Doctor Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Doctor Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
This is the fueling creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field of education.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin. Hello and welcome to the fuelling creativity in education podcast. And we know how all of you are feeling right now because you can smell and sense that we are transitioning into summer, and that means it is another, hopefully highly productive and fun academic year coming to an end.

Cyndi Burnett:
That’s right, Matt, and I am so excited. We have had such a phenomenal season eight and season seven, and I’m already excited about season nine.

Matthew Worwood:
You should be, because I think we’ve got pretty much half of our guests already lined up, and we’ve actually already begun to conduct some of our interviews, right?

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. And we have some amazing scholars like Ruth Richards, Robert Sternberg, and Theresa Mable coming on the show.

Matthew Worwood:
That’s going to be super duper fun. And we shouldn’t jinx it too much because we’ve got provisional yeses from them, but we haven’t recorded any of those episodes as of yet. So we should kind of cross our fingers because sometimes we have challenges with schedules to be a fantastic lineup, and it has been, to your point, you know, I feel like we’ve made some real good progress. Not only have we kind of like, you know, hit another milestone in terms of the downloads, but I was really excited to get our YouTube channel up and running. So, because we actually had more debriefs in season eight, because we extended the season by adding two additional episodes, we also added extra debriefs, and we did video recording debriefs as well. So for those of you who listen regularly, and perhaps you missed this, you can go onto our YouTube channel and we will share a link to that YouTube channel in the notes and you can actually watch Cindy and I kind of like navigating our way, recording a live episode on YouTube. But that’s kind of like been something that’s fun to play around with and I certainly have enjoyed as well. And also, we shouldn’t forget we picked up a sponsor as well for our podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, we did. Curiosity to create and the creative thinking network is now sponsoring our podcast. So make sure you check them out in the notes below. So, Matt, in this episode, we are going to close down the academic year with six questions to one another. So the first question is, what is one of your professional highlights from this academic year?

Matthew Worwood:
Hmm. So I think a professional highlight for me, and I’m probably going to squeeze two in because I’ve kind of got one classroom highlight and then one highlight associated with me trying to promote and work with teachers around teacher creativity. The classroom highlight for me was, was teaching my w course. I think I’ve shared this before, someone who’s kind of struggled a little bit with writing. I really enjoy writing, but I was dyslexic. I was actually just, I say was dyslexic. I’m still obviously wrestling with this a little bit, but I was actually going through my learning statement, I want to say, last week. And so it was a real big professional accomplishment for me last year when I actually taught a w course, and I really enjoyed it.

Matthew Worwood:
And this year I enjoyed it even more. And I think one of the things that I’m realizing is that because writing has always been difficult for me, or let me rephrase it, because writing was difficult for me when I was going through education. I think I was able to kind of relate and leverage some of those difficult experiences that I suffered from when I was a student tasked with writing and bring that into my classroom. And I think I just had some additional passion and excitement for teaching that course. And I will add in terms of it being a highlight, is that it was really fun and challenging working with students this year, producing their papers, making sure that they were constructing their own knowledge, making progress while navigating the use of generative AI. And I’m not going to sit here and say that I generate a perfect formula, but I actually did enjoy that challenge and that was my classroom highlight. In terms of my other outside the classroom highlight, I had another opportunity to work with a group of teachers around this framework that I’ve created for teacher creativity. And a lot of the teacher creativity stuff, it brings in some design thinking.

Matthew Worwood:
It certainly brings in some of the stuff that you and I talk about, and I know stuff that you do a lot in your work as well. Cindy around creative problem solving and divergent and convergent thinking skills. But the other big piece of it is just navigating the challenges, the environmental challenges that exist within the school year and learning to kind of like identify the constraints and opportunities that exist every year in our classroom environment and still going and engaging in some form of deliberate creative act that benefits either our students or ourselves when it comes to teaching and learning. And obviously having an opportunity to go through this. As second year, I was able to kind of continue to work on some of the kinks that existed in the framework. But I think a big highlight for me at the end of this experience is running another teacher innovation showcase at this school. And, you know, I’m not going to share the school’s name, but they were just amazing group of teachers to work with. And I think the biggest highlight for me is that I felt like some of the teachers at the very beginning of the academic year were, I don’t want to say the word resistance, but like any teacher out there, right, you’ve got so many things you’ve got to do.

Matthew Worwood:
And typically when I go in, this is initially perceived as an add on. And so one of the challenges that I always have is kind of making the connection, no, no, no. You can do anything you want. It can be connected to your interests, it connected to a problem. And actually, if you can solve that problem, maybe you actually could have a more successful year this year because you’ve addressed something that actually takes time away or causes you unnecessary stress. And I also tried to really promote teachers, trying to find kind of things that are unique about them and their passions and their interests. To cut long story short, at the end of the year, this teacher innovation showcase is where they share their innovation story with their community. And I have to say there were some amazing presentations and booths by the teachers.

Matthew Worwood:
Incredible passion in that room. But there was a couple of teachers out there that the beginning of the year, they had that approach of, I’m overwhelmed, this is an add on. And they presented a project and it was just incredible. And I would love to expand on the project a little bit, but I feel like I’m going to kind of like provide too much information about who those teachers were if I was to do that. And obviously, I was working with the whole school, but it was just really great to see how passionate they were, to see how proud they were of their accomplishments, but also to see the knowledge that they had developed because of this experience. It wasn’t just about being creativity. They had actually grown as teachers. And then the other really exciting thing from it was the fact that interacting with them, you knew it wasn’t going to come to an end.

Matthew Worwood:
They had plans on how they were going to expand and build upon this for the following year. So that was just their excitement and enthusiasm for their projects at the end of the year. It was just wonderful. It was great.

Cyndi Burnett:
Oh, that’s wonderful, Matt. It sounds inspiring. And I know I’ve loved hearing all of the stories around it, and I know that we’ve also had some of your teachers on our podcast from the teachers innovation studio.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes, absolutely. And I have to say that the one thing I will add to do due diligence, there’s a teacher creativity framework within the Teacher innovation studio. But what was really exciting about this year is that we actually kind of working with an incredible coordinator and administrator at this particular school, and they deserve all of the credit. They kind of saw an opportunity to take teacher innovation studio and this framework for teacher creativity and kind of merge it with the current systems around teacher assessment. So it was almost like it was a pilot year trying to merge multiple frameworks together, multiple programs together, which created some challenges but also made it fun at the same time. I think that additional component has really kind of helped elevate the value piece when we’re talking about creativity, because I always propose the fact, I know you do as well. This idea of creativity is about professional growth and it is about bettering your classroom experience. And we’re not always using the same language, but I think connecting it to ways that we value and observe and identify strengths and opportunities with teachers.

Matthew Worwood:
I think that the merger of this framework, I think there’s a lot of potential in where it’s heading. And so it’s morphed a little bit from teacher innovation studio because of that addition. But again, I think it’s improved significantly because of that. So, Cindy, what was your professional accomplishment or accomplishments for the year?

Cyndi Burnett [00:09:01]:
I would say my biggest accomplishment was finishing the infusing creative thinking entire education book, which John Cobber and I have been working on for three years and which we’ve just done an episode on. So I would say that has been a huge, huge accomplishment. I don’t think I’ve really taken the time to celebrate that in the way that I think I should, but I’m really, really happy with the way it turned out. Having the book in my hands and having it be 368 pages, which was never meant to be that big. Right. But having all of these contributors contribute their ideas, such as yourself, has been just really interesting and lovely. And now being able to go into higher education classrooms and talk to different professors about how to bring and infuse creative thinking into the classroom with all these examples in my back pocket is just a gift.

Matthew Worwood:
I mean, it’s been happening over a few years, right? This transition to higher education. And I’m not in any way trying to kind of pit one part of the system against another. But from my observations, I see incredible creativity, typically at the elementary level. And I think maybe that the environment and the system itself perhaps accommodates more opportunities for creativity by teachers. Whereas when we go into higher education, things like general education classes, and don’t forget, some faculty who are absolutely brilliant within their fields don’t always have that background in teaching and instructional design. And so I know that you’ve been pulled in through some of your consulting work to work with some different higher education groups. And kind of like that experience has kind of like then led to, oh, we really kind of need a specific infusing creativity creative thinking skills book for higher education. So it’s been really fascinating to see that journey.

Matthew Worwood:
And I could be wrong, but I’m not sure I have heard much around infusing creative thinking skills in higher education before. So I think that that in itself also represents a significant accomplishment as well as the physical book.

Cyndi Burnett:
And Matt, you know, because you’re in higher education that there’s a lot of universities that are closing down programs, and my former university just closed down a bunch of programs that they posted on their website because they’re just not getting enrollment. And I think that with the change in the landscape of how people learn and what they need to learn and building skills, the cost of higher education needs to match what they’re going to walk away with. And I don’t think it’s enough anymore to just stand up and lecture based on your knowledge because so much knowledge can be acquired through reading books and watching videos and things like that, online courses that are often free, what are you getting from going to university? And it has to be part of that has to be connection and it has to be engagement, and it has to be a facilitation of greater knowledge than what we already have.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes to everything, but a key word is engagement. And I know you and I have spoken about this, but when you ask teachers to try and define or explore any type of concept associated with creativity and teaching or instruction, engagement is typically within my experience, and I’ve been asking that question now for at least five, six years. Typically, engagement is one of the primary words or themes that emerge from those conversations. And one of the things I really enjoyed in the conversation, conversation that I had with, with you and John about this book a couple of weeks ago was exactly that, that it’s not just about infusing creative thinking skills for students to develop, but it’s the fact that you can actually take a creative thinking skill. And I wonder if it’s a skill at this point. Maybe it’s a strategy, but a creative thinking strategy, and you can also infuse that into the lesson. And to me, the conversation that we were having was that. But by doing that, you actually can increase engagement for the material, for the learning experience.

Matthew Worwood:
And there were some fun examples that not only have you shared in the book, but obviously examples that we had shared in our discussion a couple of weeks ago. And we also know that if you increase engagement, you are going to have better success in terms of student learning outcomes as well. Research is pretty clear on that. Different types of engagement, different levels of engagement, all of those are factors to consider. But if we generally increase engagement, we’re going to have better learning outcomes in our classroom. Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, curiosity to create.

Cyndi Burnett:
Curiosity to create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org comma or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. All right, Matt, let’s go to the next question. What was your favorite episode from this academic year?

Matthew Worwood:
All right, I think there were some really good episodes, and I have to say I could go in terms of the conversations that I enjoyed, the passion, you know, inspiration and this so many that come to mind, but in terms of my knowledge acquisition and things that I’ve continued to think about in terms of how they relate to my practice. And it’s only because I have been so immersed with generative AI. I really enjoyed Todd Lubart’s episode slash conversation, that segment where we started to talk a little bit more about the idea that the divergent thinking piece has somewhat got easier and the convergent thinking piece has got somewhat harder because now, because you have the capacity to produce a lot of ideas more quickly and efficiently, and I understand that we have prompts and all of that contributes to the type of ideas that you get. But now you’re in this situation where your knowledge, you know, we, I believe more importantly than ever now we have to bring in our experience and our knowledge and our intuition to evaluate, judge, refine and modify the ideas that come about. And I think that’s going to represent a significant shift in how we go about designing and developing learning experiences. And so for that reason, that particular episode over the course of the year is probably the highlight for me. But there were some amazing other episodes for other reasons. What about you?

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, Matt, I’ll show you my card and what I wrote. I actually wrote Todd Lubart, but it wasn’t the episode. We did a double espresso, if you remember, we did a double espresso with Todd Lubert. It was the episode on creative potential and measuring creative potential with him that has continued to stick with me, that I continue to reflect upon and that I continue to talk about over and over at every conversation that should we be measuring students creative potential? What are the benefits of that and what are the risks of that? And I remember when we were at the creative learning in the brain conference and we did our presentation, we had a wonderful gifted educator who approached us and started talking to us. And she said that she has students, parents who are now helping their children prepare for the Torrence test of creative thinking before they take it so they can get into gifted programs early on. And I think, oh, that’s terrible. Like, I don’t want that to happen. But what if we can measure creative potential in different ways? And not just creative potential in writing, creative potential in music, creative potential in invention.

Cyndi Burnett:
Like, what would be the ramifications of that and how might we do it? And having that conversation with Todd Lubert, who is just brilliant and also extremely down to earth and kind, I just love that conversation. I’m probably going to hang up and go back and listen to it again.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, it’s funny because you and I have continued to talk about that episode with Todd Lubar, and I think I shared this with you, and I’m somewhat comfortable sharing it now because we have a signed contract. But as you know, I’m doing a book around creativity and AI with James Kaufman, and it looks like Todd Lubite is going to be contributing with a co author to one of the chapters. And that came out of the last couple of weeks. So I was really excited to kind of see that edition come in and excited to see what he brings to that book. Now, our next question is, what theme emerged within education this year and whether that relates to this theme or not. What’s your predictions for the following year? So we kind of got a sneaky two questions in one there.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay. So I think the biggest thing that came out of our podcast episodes is interdisciplinary learning. So if you think about the episode that we had with Alyssa and her principal around interdisciplinary learning, we talked with Sherrilyn Yeoh about science and art and bridging those two. I just feel like we’ve had a lot of conversations about teachers bringing in other disciplines and merging them together. And so that has just been a huge theme, I think, across the podcast. Now, is that a theme in general, in terms of education? I’m not quite sure. I have a different thought around that, but I think in terms of our podcast, the biggest insight has been around interdisciplinary learning.

Matthew Worwood:
There’s knowledge transfer related to that. I know I’ve shared this in one of the episodes, but when I was working with a team to put on the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which is almost like a school within a school, and this was about, dare I say, over 15 years ago now, maybe not that long, but I always remember, like, we were kind of doing a project based learning environment, and we had all these different teachers working together. And for the most part, the project was typically conducted within the technology class, but applying the science and mathematic pieces of the curriculum. And I always remember that we would have these meetings with the team, and the technology teacher would say, well, they’re doing this, but I can’t remember what it was. It might have been like molecular bonding or something like that, for some reason, molecular bondings in my mind. And the teacher would be like, well, they don’t seem to be very clear on molecular bonding. And the science teacher would say, what are you talking about? Like, they’re all scoring really well on the test. They know molecular bonding, but they didn’t seem to be able to transfer their knowledge of molecular bonding outside the classroom, outside the test, outside the science assignments.

Matthew Worwood:
So it wasn’t getting into that project. And I think that really speaks to what you’re talking about, about this interdisciplinary piece, because, realistically, you know, we do need to apply our knowledge outside of our subjects, and we do need to apply the knowledge in the real world, as everyone knows. It’s why we love community projects. It’s why we like project based learning, because they provide a way to facilitate that type of learning experience. But we’re still talking about it. We’re still talking about it still coming up, and it seems that some schools are able to do it better than others, and I think that might be something that we might want to tease out in the following year. You know, what type of learning environments are better at facilitating interdisciplinary learning experiences versus others that might find it more of a struggle.

Cyndi Burnett:
So what about you, Matt?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, of course, it did emerge in the podcast because we had a whole bunch of episodes around AI. We did a mini listen and learn series, the first few episodes of season eight, all centered around AI. It’s not new anymore. Everyone knows about it. And so I think a big theme is implementation. We have now got to a point where we know most of our students are using AI. If you are at a point where you are thinking that the student is possibly using AI than they are using AI, and I can tell you that my 13 year old is using AI outside of the podcast. I have noted, though, that I think students are becoming more developing.

Matthew Worwood:
Actually, some ethics around AI use at least some of their students. So I think some of the students are still wrestling with when is it appropriate to use AI? And I know you’ve spoken about that, and you shared some stories with your son about that as well. So I think that’s really been a big theme for me this year is the implementation, implementation and use of AI. Last year it was new and it was here. Now it’s being used, and we’re trying to navigate our way on effective ways to use it and the ethical ways to use it.

Cyndi Burnett:
I agree with you, Matt, and I think that it’s really interesting to watch it all emerge. And I feel like it all started with that conversation with Brian Alexander back in season one. And watching it unfold through the podcast with creativity and with all these conversations with scholars and practitioners and educators has been absolutely fascinating. And I almost wonder if we do sort of a little storyline on our website that showcases all the different conversations we had with AI leading up until the current day.

Matthew Worwood:
That’d be really fun, like almost like a timeline, because it was great. One of the things, you know, if you haven’t listened to our mini listen and learn series on AI, which, dare I say, might be actually already a little bit dated now, but it was really fascinating because when we were listening back over that episode, which we always credit as the first episode that was recorded well before chat GPT came out in November 2022, that was talking about these concepts of co bots, it was just incredible to hear how dated that was. And we were talking about the future and envisioning it being four or five years away, and suddenly, bang, it was there within 1415 months. And that was just incredible. And to your point, all of the conversations that we had that was kind of, in essence, building up to that release of opening eyes chat GPT in November 2022 was incredible. And I will say, I don’t think you’ll mind me sharing this. I was talking to Michael Mino, who we had a guest on the show last week, and I think he’s going to be okay with me sharing this. I know he listens to the episode, so I’m sure he’ll reach out to me if he’s not.

Matthew Worwood:
But he’s kind of like at that point where he’s like, should he retire? Should he not retire? And he’s being posed that question. He said, are you crazy? He said, he’s been in education for x amount of years. I don’t know how long he’s been in, but he’s been in for a very long time. And he’s like, this is the most exciting time right now to be in education and innovation. And of course, his background is education technology. He’s always been at the forefront of everything, the world, world wide Web and virtual worlds and always doing incredible, innovative things with education. And he is referring to this as his most exciting time. And he is determined not to retire right now because it is such an exciting time for him and his work.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love that. And I agree. I think it is an exciting time for creativity, for education, to think about the future, thinking about my own children and what they’re going to be doing in the future. Even talking with my daughter recently about education and, you know, she’s had a little bit of interest in becoming a teacher herself. And she said, I just don’t know what it’s going to look like. I’m like, I don’t know what it’s going to look like either. But isn’t it fun to see what will happen? And I think we’ve got some great guests, even a great guest that we have coming up in season nine. We’ve already done an interview with a woman that runs and founded the School of Humanity, which is an online high school that is all project and challenge based learning and thinking about those sorts of things versus our traditional classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
I mean, things are changing, and it’s really exciting to be in this space.

Matthew Worwood:
And also probably overwhelming as well. We should acknowledge that, you know, and I’m kind of like interacting with some work at the University of Connecticut right now around AI and the word overwhelming has come up and, you know, it’s very exciting, but because it’s moving so quickly, it’s also overwhelming. But I think the key point if you are feeling overwhelmed, is that no one is an expert in this and we’re all in this together trying to navigate what is quite a challenging landscape. Again, as I referenced earlier, when it is appropriate to use AI and in terms of its long packed impact on teaching and learning, we just don’t know. But I will quickly transition into predicting the following academic year because it is related, my one and I think the upcoming academic year. I think what we’re going to see is, I think we’re going to see more large language models emerge that are specific to education. I think we’re going to see a lot more. Probably some new edtech companies emerge, but some existing edtech companies begin to release their own large language models that are very specific for teaching and learning and probably are going to mitigate some of the risks that we associate with the more common large language models from the big technology giants.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think that’s going to kind of further accelerate and use cases for large language models and chatbots in AI. And I think with that we might even start seeing some of those personalized learning tutors and personalized teaching assistants come in in terms of helping administer a feedback and personalizing the learning experience as well. I do believe that’s going to happen within the next twelve months. So that’s my prediction for the next academic year.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, and we’re already seeing that with things like conmigo that, you know, it’s giving students feedback in the way we want it, to give it feedback and a voice and helping students learn through the process, which is really amazing. I mean, if it can lessen the workload for teachers, that could be hugely beneficial.

Matthew Worwood:
Absolutely, absolutely. And I’m going to say one more thing. Nothing that I’ve seen so far suggests that teachers have to worry. I mean, this really is a tool that they can leverage and it’s a tool that actually, I think, is going to allow them to focus in on the things that they do really well and the things that are actually most effective for them to do, but sometimes they don’t get to do because of all the other stuff that they’re having to do. And I’m hoping that AI is going to continue to relieve the burden to certain extent on some of those other things. So I think it’s an incredible positive. There’s a lot of ethical issues around this. I’m not being, you know, but I just want to kind of like, say that in case there are any concerns about there in regard the kind of continued expansion of AI in education.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, one of my future pieces has to do with connection, because we just talked about how AI can help with feedback and helping students with personalized learning journeys, but it changes the role of the educator a bit. Not completely, but a bit. And I think especially after, after the pandemic, we were all in these little silos with masks on and not able to really connect with one another. And something Katie Trowbridge, who is the president of curiosity to create, and I have been talking about is how do we build stronger connections with our students, with the content, between students, with administration, with teachers? How do we build these connections, like these real life, in person connections? And I think as we move, move toward more technology, we also need to move in with building those strong connections that really engage students in meaningful and relevant ways and helping them to make the bridge, when artificial intelligence just can’t make that bridge right. So it might be able to say, hey, you need to go in this direction and learn this, learn that. But here’s how it’s going to be beneficial for you as a person and really seeing the students that they matter and teachers matter and finding that meaning and joy and fun in learning. And so Katie and I were just talking right before we met, and we said we’re going to run a workshop for teachers with curiosity to create in August that will be free. And we’ll put the link in the show notes to come to this workshop on how to build connections right from the first week of school.

Cyndi Burnett:
Because I think as we look at problems like absenteeism, which is a huge problem right now across the board, how do we get students to really connect with us? To say, I want to go to school because I have connection with my teachers. So that’s something that I’m personally focused on for the next year.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. And actually, if you think about it, it’s part of the wider theme that we’re seeing throughout society, western society at the moment. And funny enough, I think in some ways, during the pandemic, perhaps we were better connected to friends and family than we were before because we probably actually missed the physical connections. But generally speaking, I think that we’ll see it through some of the legislation regarding social media. Social media, I believe, has contributed to a reduction in some of the physical connections that we can make with people. And I think there’s a relationship with that. And what you’re saying in the classroom as well, because I think that young people and preteens and teenagers probably are lacking some of the opportunities that we were afforded when we were young when it comes to developing connections with other people within physical, real world environments and revisiting what’s potentially been lost and rekindling those connections, I think, is something that’s already begun as we start questioning the impact of social media on teens and preteens. So I certainly think that that’s a really good prediction to make and not just a really good prediction to make, but something that hopefully we can begin to address and start making some headway on.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. So, Matt, we end every episode with three tips, but we’re not going to give three tips because, well, we’re the podcast hosts, but we are going to give one new tip we’ve learned or new strategy or new technique on how to bring creative thinking into the classroom this past academic year. So what’s one new thing that you’ve tried that you would like to share?

Matthew Worwood:
Hmm. I don’t know if I like it. If I’m honest with you, it looks like I’m keeping on a theme with AI at the moment. This is just one simple tip, but I’ve started to try out some of the large language models. I’m really enjoying PI AI, by the way. I shout out to PI AI. I’ve got all the different popular platforms up and I keep going back to PI AI. I have been asking PI AI to challenge me with with some creative thinking exercises every single day.

Matthew Worwood:
And that’s been fun because interacting with this chatbot, asking it to kind of challenge my creative thinking has been fun. And I’m sitting there and I’m like, this is a really easy activity that we can actually bring into the classroom environment. So I think that’s probably the tip that I’ve been playing with. And if you don’t want to do a creative thinking exercise, just doing some kind of active recall, getting them to test your knowledge about countries around the world or something like that, these have been really fun things that I’ve been playing around with right now with the chatbots.

Cyndi Burnett:
Fun.

Matthew Worwood:
What about you?

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, I love doing this exercise called no bad idea. And it’s an activity warmup that helps with keeping open and delaying judgment. And I used to use pictures from Amazon of products that are ridiculous, like a dog butler. So you could put food on a dog’s back and the dog would walk around with food on its back. And then students like, say what they like about it instead of what they don’t like about it. But I thought, I don’t have to use Amazon images. I could create my own images. So I went to chat GBT, and I said, give me 50 ridiculous invention ideas that people would immediately judge.

Cyndi Burnett:
And it gave me all of these funny ideas. So then I took the ten I liked the most, and I asked the generative AI art piece to create images for me. And so now I have a whole new slide pack of ridiculously silly ideas, like microwavable salad and pepper spray perfume and his and her toothbrushes that are like, one toothbrush, right? And I’ve been using these for workshops, and it is so much fun. So I encourage you to go onto your favorite generative AI platform and look up some ridiculously silly ideas for inventions, and then have your students create those with images, or have them do it, and then ask them to try to delay their judgment and find something that they might like about it.

Matthew Worwood:
I love that, Cindy. What an amazing activity. And listen, there’s some president for that I cannot remember. I think one of Google’s special R and D labs, and I think there’s a TED talk on this. I think one of their approaches to creativity, or rather design, is that they come up with the most wild and wacky ideas, and then they try and work out why you can’t do it. Why can’t this happen? And then they go and test to prove that it can’t happen. But then, actually, if they find out they can solve that problem, then they keep going and keep going. And so it’s like they start off with the most wild and wacky idea, and their objective is to prove why it won’t work.

Matthew Worwood:
Work. But what happens sometimes is they actually keep going because they can keep solving all the reasons why it won’t work. And so this wild and wacky idea suddenly starts becoming more and more real as they go through the process. So something in there, I think, is connected to the activity that you’ve shared. So even microwavable salad. I don’t know. I actually was just thinking this morning, how might I get my middle son to eat more vegetables? And I was coming up with, what are all the things that might provide those nutrients? So maybe microwavable salads might be something that we can, we have in the future. Who knows?

Cyndi Burnett:
Who knows? Actually, one of my participants said he does microwave his salad because he doesn’t like it cold.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, interesting. All right, well, there you go.

Cyndi Burnett:
There you go. So, before we go, we have some big news for you. Matt has spent the last few months building us a website which is fueling.

Matthew Worwood:
Creativitypodcast.Com dot yes, I am excited about this. We’re excited about this because we’ve been talking about the need for a website for a couple of years now and just haven’t had the time to get around it. And it’s still in development, but I think it is certainly ready to share and be available for everyone. So far we have all of season seven on there, all of season eight on there. Each episode obviously has its own page, and then at the end of that page is also our debrief episode. So you can kind of listen to the episode, read about the episode, but then also access our debrief for that episode. But the thing I’m really excited about the website is our continued categorization of episodes. So if you visit the website, what you’re able to do is select from different categories or different topics that have emerged on the show.

Matthew Worwood:
For example, you can go and click gifted and talented. And within that topic, you’ll see our episodes with Doctor Sally Reese, Doctor Joe Renzuli, Doctor Jonathan Plucker. There’s also categories around art and creativity, categories around STEM and creativity. We’ve got categories around learning differences, a category for emerging scholars which has all of kind of the creativity researchers on it. So there’s lots of different categories. And I think that’s really helpful. And as we kind of continue to populate the website, we’ll be able to add things like transcripts and other additional information that hopefully make our podcast more accessible to educators who we know want to utilize some of our episodes in their classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, Matt, it’s been a great academic year. It’s time for Summer. Are you ready?

Matthew Worwood:
I am super duper ready. And I am ready for our listen and learn series, which actually we start recording in a couple of days, and therefore, we probably already recorded it by the time this episode comes out. But I am super excited about this that I know that was a big hit with some of our listeners last year. Remember, these listen learn series are kind of short episodes that can kind of support some kind of light professional development over the summer months. We’re not going to give too much away because we got our introduction session, but it is coming. I think it’s probably coming next week, isn’t it, Cindy? I can’t remember what our program schedule is.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah, it is. It’s next week.

Matthew Worwood:
It is. This is the problem when we sometimes record episodes in advance. Yes. So next week, stay tuned because we will be introducing our listen and learn.

Cyndi Burnett:
Series my name is Doctor Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
And my name is Doctor Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
This episode was produced by Matthew Warwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is curiosity to create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.