Answers to Questions About Coaching |
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California Coaches |
Brainstorming is an exciting, creative part of the FPS process that students at all levels enjoy! You may want to begin your brainstormimg session by teaching your students the 4 rules of FPS:
- No Judging—All ideas have value and may lead to other better ideas. Judgement of ideas tends to make individuals shut down and halt the brainstorming process.
- Hitchhiking—Encourage students to build off of another students ideas. Because we work in teams to develop the best ideas possible, there is no need to take individual ownership of an idea. Definitely enourage as much piggy-backing as possible!
- Freewheeling—Students tend to enjoy this opportunity to think of those ideas that are “outside of the box”. Sometimes the silly, crazy ideas are the ones that lead to the brilliant solution to a challenge.
- Quantity—The more thoughts the group develops, the more opportunity for selecting the best ideas. Encourage your teams to focus their energy on free-flowing brainstorming sessions. Later in the process, they can eliminate some ideas and select others to work with in detail.
A great way to ease into the process of brainstorming is by using fun ideas as introduction topics. Brainstorming “things that go up” or “uses for a dictionary” is a creative fun way to begin the brainstorming process that gives students an opportunity to think outside the box. For example, things that go up include balloons but also eyebrows and gasoline prices. Other methods for teaching brainstorming include jot boards and playing “around the world” brainstorming. For a jot board, one large piece of paper is put on the table within reach of all the kids and they each write messily in their corner as they work. Some find that sticky notes are best and each kid says the idea while writing it on one sticky note which goes in the middle of the table. Some kids find it is easier to take 2 minutes to write down their ideas quietly first so that they don’t forget them when the out loud brainstorming starts. In around the world, all the students stand in a circle and each one must say a new idea related to the topics. If a student repeats an idea someone else says, or cannot come up with a new idea, he or she must sit down.
If you have other brainstorming strategies not discussed here, please post them on our message board.
One method is called clustering. They can take their challenges and organize them by category. The ideas will probably cluster. Then they can look at their clusters to determine which area the team wants to solve. The I's apply here. I for impact - which area can they pick to make the most impact on the future scene? I for interest - which area is the team most interested in solving? I for influence - which area does the team think they have the most information to have the most influence over. I for imagination - which area sparks the team's imagination the most?
Another method involves creating a chart that uses impact and probability to determine which challenge is the most important.
high impact
high probability |
low impact
high probability |
high impact
low probability |
low impact
low probability |
Clearly, if the team charts the 16 challenges into the appropriate box, they can determine which of the challenges are both high probability and high impact (have a good chance of happening and would greatly affect the future scene). Then they can choose from these.
Students often have trouble picturing the future scene other than to include lots of high-tech devices. You might want to consider subscribing to a futuristic magzine such as The Futurist. Discuss general trends as published in these types of magzines even if they don't always apply directly to the FPS topic.
Try playing a game where you assign each student or team a group that may be affected by the future scene. For example, if the topic is organ donation, you could use people who need transplants, doctors, priests, politicians, etc. Then make up a situation such as, a new law has been passed that makes everyone an organ donor unless they sign a form to exempt themselves. Then make each team explain their position on the new situation based on the interested party they have been assigned. A twist is to have them state their position and have the others guess who they are.
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