Region 8’s first leadership forum will be on September 11, 2014 and seats are already filling fast!
When: 9/11/14, 5-7 p.m.
Where: Santa Clara County Office of Education, Oak Grove Room
Guest Speaker: Kenneth Wesson, www.sciencemaster.com
Topic: Teaching Creativity and Innovation through STEM and STEAM
Over the last millennium, the human species transitioned from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age and to the Information Age. Today, we are entering a new epoch known as the Innovation Age, where interdisciplinary inventive problem-solving, creativity, and imagination are the highest currencies. Researcher Jonathan Plucker at the Indiana University found that one’s Creativity Quotient (his/her “CQ”) is three times more accurate than his/her IQ as a predictor of lifetime accomplishment. Creative thinking has become so critical in our global economies that the European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation. Their declaration was accompanied by conferences on the neuroscience of creativity and innovation with a sharp focus on learning how to play with ideas in order to generate new ideas. Instead of teaching facts and memorization, shouldn’t the focus of American education shift to innovative thinking embedded in a STEM or STEAM curriculum?