Creative Problem Sloving

This week in Open the theme was creative problem solving. Our program is based around the idea of four main tenets, and creative problem solving is one of the four. So this week we centered our activities in open lab to focus on improving our creative problem solving skills as a group and individually. We started our week with what seemed like a very standard classroom activity. I'm some of you guys have done things like this in school. Your teacher splits the class into groups, gives each groups a bag of materials, and tells each group to build the tallest tower possible with the given materials in a certain amount of time. Most of the time it's seen as a competition. Which group can build the tallest tower. But our teachers gave different materials in each bag. Also it was never explicitly stated in the instructions that it was a competition. So while we did find creative solutions to lack of materials in each our bags we could have solved our problems together as a class by pooling our resources. Another activity we did was called Saving Sam. We were given a  problem where Sam, a gummy worm, was stranded on a capsized boat, a plastic cup, and his life preserver was under the boat, a life saver.  Individually we were given four paper clips and told to find as many ways to save Sam without touching the boat, Sam, or the life preserver with our hands. This really helped with my creative problem skills because you had think outside of the box of normal thinking. Also you had to find more than one way to solve said problem instead of finding one way the works and being done. That was really helpful to me because I tend to find one way to do something and just stick with it. A teacher of mine once told me that was a very math-minded way of thinking, but it is also helpful to have a least one failsafe in case your first method ends up not working for everything. I think there are several ways to be successful in solving problems creatively. First, you have to be able to look at the problem from every perspective because if you don't you will never get full picture. There will always be the possibility you missed a side of the problem that would have provided you with information that was crucial to your success in solving the problem. Second, you really should try to find more than one way to solve a problem because sometimes you come up with solutions and they can't be implemented or do not work quite perfectly with your situation. Creative problem solving is a very important skill to have at one's disposal. It can help you in everyday life and in the work place. If you were curious and wanted to know more about creative problem solving check out the  links below. The first link is for the Creative Education Foundation. It defines what creative problem solving is and list specific steps on how to do it successfully. The second link is about being a creative problem solver in the work place.
http://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org/our-process/what-is-cps
http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/12/24/how-to-be-a-creative-problem-solver/
Question of the day:  How do you guys use creative problem solving in your lives?
Let me know in the comments!