At the beginning of a new decade, our focus is on creativity and critical interventions. We think that humanistic and artistic impulses are needed in addition to rational thinking, technical skills and business acumen.
While January has officially been proclaimed international creativity month, we have already been enormously creative in December. First, our Advent Calendar Conversations - a bite-sized online creativity training that is offered in the month of December - are in full swing. A group of international participants have been exploring the different relationships they have with digital and 'real' places that surround them. Trying to explore and understand 'sense of place' is a complex endeavour. Doing so in your second language - English - is even more complex. The creative thinking activities applied in the context of the Advent Calendar draw on personal anecdotes and thoughts of participants on how places make them feel, how they affect their daily lives, their thinking, their productivity.
At the same time, geographically dispersed industrial engineering and business management students - learning workers - have produced their first-ever podcast episodes in their second language - English. This highly experiential educational adventure has fully paid off. Producing a podcast challenges learners in many ways: They need to choose a relevant topic, do their research, collect interesting information, draft a neat script, pick the appropriate tone, produce an audio file, demonstrate their collaborative team skills, present their project and reflect on the lessons learned while giving peer feedback. Students loved it - they shared some outtakes.
January, the official month of creativity, is yet to come... Want to work with us? Contact cmerl@talkshop.cc