Human Intelligence & Creativity Creating learning environments for all types of abilities Howard Gardner has identified eight multiple intelligences which are beneficial for teachers so that they can reach every student. The first intelligence is linguistic, which is the ability to use language and communicate either orally or in writing to make sense of the world. Linguistic students are those who are stimulated and excited about language. They enjoy storytelling and word games. The second intelligence is logical-mathematical, which is the “ability to reason and calculate” and “the ability to use mathematics” and science. Logical-mathematical students are comfortable with numbers, patterns, categories, relationships, and reasoning. These students would enjoy more left-brained activities relating to who statistics and analyzing situations. The third intelligence is visual-spatial, which is the ability to visualize mental pictures and recreate them in one’s mind using colors, lines, shapes, forms, and space . Visual-spatial students would rather read charts or visual materials, look at images or pictures rather than words. The fourth intelligence is musical, which is the ability to comprehend or create music and understand meanings of sound using rhythm, pitch, melody, or timbre. A musical student might be tapping his desk, making a rhythm or humming to himself. The fifth intelligence is bodily-kinesthetic, which is the ability to use one’s body to communicate and solve problems. Bodily-kinesthetic students are able to express their feelings and ideas by using their body and skillfully handle objects A student who loves physical education or one that would rather do a project instead of a worksheet has this intelligence. The sixth intelligence is interpersonal, which is the ability to work with others in a group and recognize other’s feelings, moods, and motivations. Interpersonal learners are able to relate to other individuals. These students are the ones who work best in a group and relate well to others. The seventh intelligence is intrapersonal, which is the ability to “know one’s strengths and weaknesses” and know one’s own feelings. Intrapersonal students relate to themselves and focus on themselves. Intrapersonal students prefer to work alone rather than in a group. The eighth intelligence is naturalist, which is the ability to “make other consequential distinctions in the natural world and to use this ability productively”. Naturalist intelligence is also described by Gardner as “the human ability to solve problems”. Naturalists relate to the world around them and discover that nature has all the wisdom and all of the solutions. Please refer to the diagram on the next page.
The Eight Types of Human Intelligence & Creativity
Creating learning environments for all types of abilities
STEP 1: BEING CREATIVE The Seven Keys To Turning On Creative Thinking 1. You know you are creative. An actively creative person is not a special, each one of us has a special kind of unique creativity in which arises in our life. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker (just look at children). The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people simple believe that they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. 2. Creative thinking is fitness. You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are never used. Inventors like Thomas Edison, music composers like Mozart, and playwrites like Shakespeare all created thousands of versions compared to the few we have honored. 3. You must go through the motions of being creative. When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to how your brain is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons (and the more creative you become). If you want to become an artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an artist. The same goes for any area of the left or right brain. 4. Your brain is alive. Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences (real or fictional). You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios of space/time travel that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. 5. There is no such thing as failure! Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have learned something that does not work. You may ask “What have I learned that I didn’t set out to discover?” Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a mistake, you are talking to someone who never tries anything new. Trust your instincts. Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged. Oh, and never stop with your first good idea! 6. You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are. Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. You give them your unique meaning by the way you choose to interpret them. If you are a priest, you see evidence of God everywhere. If you are an atheist, you see the absence of God everywhere. College dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, looked at the same absence of personal computers and saw a massive opportunity. While around the same time, IBM observed that no one in the world had a personal computer. IBM interpreted this to mean there was no market. 7. Always approach a problem from a fresh view. Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from multiple perspectives. Always remember that innovation is finding a perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at the problem. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Creativity effects our: actions - our daily ability to act with bold power and creative geniusness structures - our cultural systems and the architectural and natural spaces we move through consciousness - our cognitive ability to access billions of years of creative evolution into conscious practice and the art of living
Creativity also effects our common Universal Experiences:
Creativity and Your Personality Type: Understanding the Many Voices of Creativity. Your type of personality naturally translates and uses creative energies. • What is your essential energy pattern? Are you comfortable with it? • How can you shift your energies to open yourself to new perspectives? • How can you use helpful tools to deliberately inspire the release of creativity in others as well as yourself?
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Time Space Embodiment Food Thought Environment Community & National Culture
You don’t just have one talent or one gifted ability. You have several. Creativity helps you awaken all of these, and balance and navigate this multidimensional realization. Then your life can become more productive, more connected in your relations to the bigger picture, and remove your stubborn ego. Creativity is being who you are! There are as many ways to be creative in your daily life as there are different aspects to our personality.
use the box to the right to enter your creative strategy for success
to global challenges
to human relations
to human progress
How can you be and do more from your creative abilities?
BEING
Take two—two minutes of silence and affirm: “I AM Creation”. Just BE it.
KNOWING
Recall something you have created. Remember. You know how to create.
FEELING
Notice what you are passionate about creating in your life right now.
DOING
Create something original today.
The Universal Mind of Creativity
Our world has evolutionary actions that take place through repeating patterns and processes. They appear to be releasing all inherent potentials for experience and relationship while creating all possibilities for increasing, improving or developing. This process of life emerges from: 1. Creativity, which births 2. Complexity, which creates 3. Novelty/variety/diversity, which eventually creates increasing uncertainty, and then... 4. Expansion/growth/development and in some cases reproduction (here productivity is found to be an intrinsic universe value interest within reproduction.) 5. Awareness, starts with sensing awareness of physical universe then expanding to self-awareness then expands to awareness of other as selves, which then expands to awareness of the greater Universe and eventually toward awareness of Ultimate Reality [what some might even call Total Reality or God awareness] 6. Learning, intelligence 7. Adaptability 8. Energy Exchange that is appropriate (fair) for the establishment of sustainable and dynamic energy balances, unions) 9. Union, toward new, larger and more sustainable unions of increasing environmental control and evolvability where the self interests of the parts have been aligned to the interests of the union and to the value interests of the Universe 10. Self-organization and freedom/choice for parts in unions 11. Integration, order and harmonization of parts in unions 12. Robustness, redundancies and reserves of parts and unions 13. And finally, toward a new created and aware super-union of all Universe parts, then possibly toward a new transcendence of the universe itself when all universe value-interest possibilities for releasing, increasing, improving, developing or transcending experience and relationship (sharing,) have been exhausted. The Universe could be said to then have completed a cycle of the Universe’s own potentials having achieved manifestation/distribution, development, realization and transcendence.
Please record your results as you use this manual over time. How has your creativity and your energy developed by using these techniques?