AlmaU Winter school: the first day
At Almaty Management University a Winter school for teachers started on the theme “Innovative and creative tools and technologies of teaching in modern education sphere”. 68 people attended seminars and trainings.
The first day of the event was devoted to the solution of non-standard problems in TIPS (theory of inventive problem solving). The speaker of the first day Anatoly Gin is a teacher, consultant-expert on TIPS, the founder and scientific Director of International Association "Education for a new era", the Vice-President of International Association of TIPS in education issues, author of more than 15 books.
The speaker suggested to the audience many interesting examples of inventive problems and even offered to find a solution to some of them together.
So, one of the tasks was the following: how to feed a baby with porridge, using minimum efforts. It was necessary to take into account that the child already knows how to bring the spoon of porridge to his mouth, but he cannot fill the spoon with porridge. His mother is busy with cleaning and it is very problematic for her to fill the spoon with porridge every 10 seconds. The seminar participants suggested a number of interesting solutions, including: 1) buying a special, newly invented gadget which is putting porridge into the spoon for a baby; 2) putting porridge in a bottle and making a big hole in the nipple; 3) giving the child a big spoon with porridge (better a ladle) etc. All these solutions are, of course, correct and have the right to be implemented, but the speaker gave his own one: to put porridge in 5-6 spoons and it can save time for a mother - housewife.
Anatoly Gin and the seminar participants considered a lot of unusual tasks that day, including wildlife, experience of industrial enterprises, real business, etc. According to the speaker, a good memory and superior intelligence do not always go hand in hand with ability to solve inventive problems. On the contrary, often it also happens that a person with a phenomenal memory feels lost, when he faces an unusual situation. Undoubtedly, the ability of people to solve such problems need to be developed and TIPS-pedagogy is a means of development of creative potential of students, their readiness to apply universal educational actions in life situations.
