It’s the week of Thanksgiving and I am on vacation. I’ve been doing a lot of “stream-of-consciousness” reading on the internet. One article about something leads to another about something else and so on….A couple of good reads on GapingVoid – one on creativity and one on Idea Amplification. Another good read about Constrained Creativity on by Kathy Sierra on CreatingPassionateUsers.

Hugh MacLoud Talks about how the actual manfufacture of a product is incidental to how they make us feel about the product. He mentions three companies – Apple, Starbucks, and Nike. The attractiveness of these companies is not that they make a wonderful product (though I’m personally partial to Starbucks and Apple) but that they promote the belief of our human potential and that’s what we buy into because that is what we all want to believe in. In a related article he says “The market for human potential is infinite” and “the soul cannot be outsourced”.

The article on creativity is a list of suggestions he expands on and because it is a thoughtful list of what has worked for him it includes some very practical advice – such as keeping your day job – along with some just plain inspiring ones such as “Merit can be bought – passion can’t” and “Don’t try to stand out in the crowd – avoid crowds altogether”.

Kathy sierra’s article “Don’t Wait For the Muse” tells us to do something! The ideas will follow. “You can’t try things if you’re waiting for the muse to show up”

As I read Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” I worry about the jobs that are being outsourced. I also think about the wealth of creativity we have in this country and wonder what we need to do for our students to encourage growth in that area. I want to be able to say that the “company” or industry that gets me excited and makes me believe in the potential of humanity is education. Creativity takes energy and energy comes from passion. We have to be willing to try new things sometimes even when we are running low on energy. Trying new things will allow us to experience the creativity that comes from the learning process and I believe that is how we can keep our passion alive. Passion and creativity are the greatest gifts we can give our students.