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Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Monday, March 19, 2012
Music I Love (Particularly Today)
...hopefully you will too...randomly and variously {of course}
Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2 (Arthur Rubinstein)
Monday, November 7, 2011
Report: Video Games & Creativity
Video game playing tied to creativity
IMAGE: A study by Linda Jackson, Michigan State University psychology professor, found that kids who play video games are more creative.Click here for more information. 
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Both boys and girls who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether the games are violent or nonviolent, according to new research by Michigan State University scholars.
A study of nearly 500 12-year-olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories. In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than for video games) was unrelated to creativity, the study found.
Linda Jackson, professor of psychology and lead researcher on the project, said the study appears to be the first evidence-based demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity. About 72 percent of U.S. households play video or computer games, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
The MSU findings should motivate game designers to identify the aspects of video game activity that are responsible for the creative effects, Jackson said.
"Once they do that, video games can be designed to optimize the development of creativity while retaining their entertainment values such that a new generation of video games will blur the distinction between education and entertainment," Jackson said.
The researchers surveyed 491 middle-school students as part of MSU's Children and Technology Project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The survey assessed how often the students used different forms of technology and gauged their creativity with the widely used Torrance Test of Creativity-Figural.
The Torrance test involved tasks such as drawing an "interesting and exciting" picture from a curved shape, giving the picture a title and then writing a story about it.
Overall, the study found that boys played video games more than girls, and that boys favored games of violence and sports while girls favored games involving interaction with others (human or nonhuman).Yet, regardless of gender, race or type of game played, greater video game playing was the only technology to be associated with greater creativity.
The study appears online in the research journal Computers in Human Behavior.
IMAGE: A study by Linda Jackson, Michigan State University psychology professor, found that kids who play video games are more creative.Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/msu-vgp110211.php
New study links video gaming to creativity
For those who like to play video games, or who let their kids play, a new study linking gaming to creativity in 12-year-olds may be very validating.
It reminds me of the little flutter in my chest that occurs every time I read about the health benefits of dark chocolate. Or perhaps that flutter is due to how quickly I race to the chocolate stash in my pantry.
But I digress. The research out of Michigan State University, published online in the journalComputers in Human Behavior, suggests that of the 491 12-year-olds studied, the ones who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether those games are violent--and that the more they play, the more creative they are.
Head researcher and psychology professorLinda Jackson says these findings should encourage game designers to investigate which aspects of gaming are more responsible for this creative effect.
"Once they do that, video games can be designed to optimize the development of creativity while retaining their entertainment values such that a new generation of video games will blur the distinction between education and entertainment," she says in a news release.
But before we exchange those dusty books for Portal 2 (I drool over this game almost as much as that dark chocolate), a few aspects of the study are worth considering further.
First, there is the issue of how one goes about measuring creativity. Jackson suggests this study provides the first evidence-based demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity. Measuring technology use was easy. To measure creativity, her team relied on the "widely-used" Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, which involved having the kids perform various tasks, such as drawing pictures from a curved shape and then naming and writing stories about those pictures.
Some of the resulting work was labeled "interesting and exciting," while other work was, well, not. So what does this tell us? That kids who play video games meet one set of criteria for creativity more than kids who don't.
Even if creativity is an objective quality, this one measure for it might not sufficiently determine one's overall creativity, and risks ignoring other types of creativity altogether. (i.e., one kid might be able to draw creatively, while another can make up new songs creatively, so only measuring the drawing could result in missing other forms of creativity.)
And then there is the issue of what is being compared. Instead of measuring one type of activity against another, this study measures one type against the absence of it, leaving a lot of room for variables. Are the kids who don't play video games watching TV? How would the video game cohort compare to kids building their own puzzles, or making mud pies, or drawing pictures from a curved shape and then naming and writing stories about those pictures?
This study may be the first of many to come. For now, I'll continue enjoying Portal and chocolate, possibly at the same time, with the added pleasure of knowing that I might possibly be maximizing my creativity. Of course, whether it's working will depend upon whom you ask.
ARTICLE DATE : November 3, 2011
By Leslie Horn
Despite what your mother might have told you, a new study suggests that playing video games might not rot your brain.
According to a report from researchers at Michigan State University, as first reported by CNET, children that play video games tend to be more creative.
The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, studied 491 12-year-old boys and girls and found that those who played video games were more creative at performing tasks like drawing pictures and writing stories. It didn’t matter if the games they played were violent or not, the study said.
Linda Jackson, the MSU psychology professor who headed up the study, said game developers should take this information and try to identify which parts of games stimulate creativity
“Once they do that, video games can be designed to optimize the development of creativity while retaining their entertainment values such that a new generation of video games will blur the distinction between education and entertainment,” she said in astatement.
But creativity is a rather subjective trait, so just how is it measured? The study explored how these kids’ technology use affected their creativity using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. This “widely used test” charged the subjects with various tasks like drawing an “interesting and exciting” picture based on a curved shape, titling the drawing, and writing a story about it.
The study concluded that there is no link between creativity and the use of other types of technology including cell phones, the Internet, and computers (unless they’re used for video games). However, games of all genres were found to have a distinct correlation with creativity for both boys and girls, regardless of race.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Firms should embrace crowdsourcing and employee-led innovation, say Dell and Intel
02 Nov 2011, Daniel Robinson , V3
Much has been written about the consumerisation of IT, but the implications of this trend go much further than just companies allowing staff to bring their iPad to work. In the longer term, it could lead to a wholesale reorientation of the way businesses are organised, as well as radically changing the way IT services are delivered.
Dell and Intel are halfway through a project to examine the issues that are likely to confront enterprises in the future, and are to deliver their full findings in January.
In the meantime, the two companies have published an intermediate report entitled The Evolving Workforce, which identifies a number of trends indicating that companies will need to change the way they measure productivity, and foster greater employee involvement in coming up with solutions to IT problems in the future.
The main trend that will have an impact over the next five to 10 years is the consumerisation of enterprise IT, according to Bryan Jones, Dell's executive director for public and large enterprise.
This blending of personal technology and corporate technology, typified by 'bring your own device' policies, has been much discussed already, but Jones claimed that it is happening at an increasing rate, and that it is radically changing the expectations of end users.
"They want the same functionality, accessibility and productivity they get on a smartphone for their personal life in their professional environment, but right now in a lot of IT environments those two things don't intersect," he said.
The problem with a growing number of device types is picking the correct tool for the job, while the need for compatibility and interoperability becomes paramount, according to the report.
Another issue that will have to be overcome is security. New security models may have to be developed to cope with staff accessing data from outside the network, and companies will no longer be able to assume that data and applications are safe simply because they are behind the firewall.
But all of this will be nothing more than pie in the sky if IT chiefs see 'bring your own device' as simply an extravagance that they are unwilling to indulge, especially given the current economic conditions.
While this might be the case, IT managers are going to have to face the issue, according to Ian Jones, director of strategy at Intel.
"The classic IT manager might be caricatured as asking: 'How can I most easily keep my estate secure, and how can I keep costs down?', but what we are seeing is the emergence of forces that are influencing his hand in terms of people who are already bringing smartphones and tablets to work," he said.
Dell's Jones agreed, saying that cost avoidance and the lock-it-down mentality will "always be with us to a certain extent", but that the changes now taking place in IT offer potential opportunities for those prepared to take them.
"There will be a handful of organisations that find a way to embrace these concepts, and that is going to create a competitive advantage over everyone else," he claimed.
"The people that are going to take a chance and move out of their comfort zone are going to be the early adopters and pioneers, but I think over time everyone is going to have to deal with this idea of consumerisation on some level."
Both Bryan Jones and Ian Jones reiterated the view that companies adopting a more progressive attitude towards greater IT freedom will be a more attractive proposition for newly qualified workers, whereas those that are unwilling to change may struggle to fill vacancies.
Again this seems unlikely in the current economic climate. Few vacancies are on offer, and only the highest calibre graduates will be in a position to pick and choose employers.
Another development highlighted by Dell and Intel is changing work practices driven by greater mobile technology and always-on cloud services, which mean that workers are no longer confined to a single location, or to office hours.
This is having the knock-on effect of forcing companies to consider new ways of measuring productivity based on output instead of hours put in.
There is also the possibility of a rift developing between older and younger workers over the new ways of working, according to Intel's Jones. Older staff may be less accepting of technologies that may be perceived as intrusive, or may reject new IT-driven ways of working.
He cited an example where Lloyds of London moved from a paper-based system to using tablets, but ended up making the new system look and feel like using the paper system before it was accepted by the older staff.
However, new ways of working could also prove an opportunity for some companies through trends such as crowdsourcing and employee-led innovation, according to the Dell and Intel report.
Employee-led innovation is based on the notion that getting staff involved in all areas of developing IT solutions will ultimately deliver a better end result.
"The person best suited or best positioned to help you develop the right solution for your business internally, or the right product externally, is the end user of it," said Dell's Jones.
Of course, there are problems with this approach in terms of building up the right processes and infrastructure to facilitate employee input versus the traditional top-down approach of imposing solutions from above.
In a similar vein, the report found that some companies are exploring the concept of crowdsourcing ideas and even using crowdsourcing services to deliver products, as a method of streamlining the development process.
"It's centred around the concept of having a set of experts that can come together, create something, then disband and move on, and more and more businesses are interested in how to get some of that," said Dell's Jones.
Dell and Intel said they are focusing on the IT challenges required, such as the kind of infrastructure required to implement such an approach, but Dell's Jones conceded that there are "huge challenges" around this entire strategy, not least in keeping ideas and information confidential during development.
All of these trends are being driven by the consumerisation of IT and the blurring of boundaries now being seen between work and personal technologies, he said.
However, Jones added that "you've got to have some control" in order to keep sensitive information secure and make sure employees have the appropriate tools for their roles.
"How do you implement your IT to take account of this, and how do you take advantage of some of these things that may not on the surface appear to be a business application?", he said.
Source:http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/analysis/2121223/firms-embrace-crowdsourcing-employee-led-innovation-dell-intel
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