Attended an all day brainstorming session yesterday which was very productive. Why?
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Attendees knew what was expected of them before the event - we received topics we were due to brainstorm around, were given some related background reading and a timetable for the event
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The plan for the day involved morning divergence (opening out the discussion to brainstorm new ideas) and afternoon convergence (organising the ideas and turning them into achievable actions)
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First part of the day was spent capturing insights around the topic areas ie our thoughts on the topics
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From this we then spent some time brainstorming around selected insights.
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In the afternoon we reviewed the morning, set out all ideas on the table mapped them to domains - there were three that grew out of the ideas
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We then mapped these clusters of ideas on to a time/competencies graph
We left with tasks that we had the competencies and time to complete and development strands that plotted development of more complex and time-consuming project.
Here is an example of the time/competencies graph (ignore boxes).
Final discussion points were around competencies in the organisation and what would be needed to deliver on the ideas.
Overall a highly focussed and creative meeting.
Some useful brainstorming resources:
Training World list of brainstorming resources
Teacher approaches to brainstorming from Lesson Planet
Great links on Wikipedia brainstorming page
PPT Google search on brainstorming