Page 119 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

To interpret the resonance interference effects of our brainwaves, there must be minimal background electrochemical noise from other conscious thinking activities. In this state, our daydreaming can give rise to new ideas and concepts and this happens in just fractions of a second. What this demonstrates is that the busyness of our lives can dramatically reduce our capacity for being creative, simply because we are rarely consciously thinking about nothing. We need those reflective times and places where we can reflect and actively and passively look for solutions to the problems and the opportunities that surround us.
No matter what their age we need to provide all our learners the time to daydream then we will benefit from a more creative community of learners. But, with our learners having little time to get bored they are not getting the chance to daydream and consequently, they potentially become less creative. Boredom can be an important trigger for being creative!
To be creative we must be comfortable in the daydreaming space, totally disconnected from technology and other people. We all, including children, need to be bored or consciously choose that daydreaming space and allow our creativity to flourish. Allowing our creativity to flourish enables us to become learners, creators, and innovators, and leverage our daydreaming to be ingenious.
One of the key purposes for sleep is the trialling and sorting of potentially new and productive associations of knowledge, ideas, and concepts.150 Whether awake or asleep, it appears our brain can recognise new knowledge, ideas, concepts or concept frameworks that have value, but only when in a quiet electrochemical state by daydreaming, sleeping, falling off to sleep, and waking in the morning, for some.
There is often no rational, conscious thinking process for knowing which connections of ideas, concepts or concept frameworks will be fruitful, and it is a stunning tribute to our brain’s functionality that we can handle hundreds, if not thousands, of possible connections in one creative thinking session. Our brain consciously recognises only the combinations that appear to have value. These combinations that have value arrive accompanied by our ‘aha!’ moments,’ and these are the ones that prove most fruitful. But where did the inspiration come from for these ‘aha!’ moments?
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150 Penelope A. Lewis & Simon J. Durrant. Lewis. ‘Overlapping memory replay during sleep builds cognitive schemata.’ Trends in Cognitive Science. 08 Aug. 2011. Print. 07 Jul. 2016. Retrieved from http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(11)00109-4