(cover image by NoName_13 from Pixabay)

Steve Jobs once said: “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.” Scientific studies show that creativity is, in fact, something that can be triggered by specific boundary conditions and that everyone can come up with creative solutions to problems. Indeed, these techniques allow you to break boundaries and see connections between things that you weren’t aware of before. The following list of resources will help you understand the concept of creativity better and introduce you to some strategies to unleash your creativity.

1)  The secret to creativity! By PBS Digital Studios and Braincraft, @nessyhill

This is a brief, 5-min video explaining what creativity is and busting some persistent myths about it. Nessy Hill very briefly discusses strategies that you can use to boost creativity.

2) The science of improving brain's creativity? By Nick Skillicorn, TEDxDurhamUniversity, @Improvides

This is a 20-min TEDx talk by Nick Skillicorn, who is a leading innovation coach and blogger. In his presentation he highlights some key elements of creativity with his main message being that everyone can be creative. A nice touch to his talk is that he busts some myths about creativity and tries to answer the question why some people think that they are more creative than others. In addition, he presents scientific findings to support his arguments.

3) Boost creativity: 7 unusual psychological techniques by Dr. Jeremy Dean, @PsyBlog

In his blog post, Dr. Jeremy Dean describes seven techniques that may help you to increase your creativity. Each technique is backed up by scientific studies from Psychology and concrete tips are provided to help you start using the techniques.

4) The science of creativity by Amy Novotney, gradPSYCH staff at American Psychological Association 

If you are searching for yet more things you could do to reveal the creativity in you, check out this blog post. More research findings on creativity are presented in a concise way and helpful recommendations are extracted from the findings.

5) The science (and practice) of creativity by Diane Cadiergue, Senior Chief Editor at WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education), @WISE_Tweets

This blog post offers plenty of resources on how to introduce and teach creativity in the classroom because “innovation and education experts agree that creativity can fit perfectly into any learning system”. A brief introduction to creativity is provided here and different ways of integrating it into the curriculum are outlined. A great resource for educators.

Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:

Weekly Digest #38: Teaching Spelling with Deep Underlying Structures

Weekly Digest #39: Writing Strategies for Students

Weekly Digest #40: Teachers' Implementations of Principles from "Make It Stick"

Weekly Digest #41: Preparing a Syllabus

Weekly Digest #42: Are You Writing Yet?