Waggedy, the Jack Russell Terrier puppy, turned his head and cocked one ear. He sniffed the air and yawned. Something was fishy. Super fishy.It was the smell of a Blue-and-Gold Macaw parrot from the Brazilian Amazon, probably from the area close to the Ucayali river, he thought. And very recently, it had been eating fish.
What was a Brazilian macaw doing on a mountainside overlooking a lake in British Columbia, in a two-person pup tent?
We’ll, he’s gone now, thought Waggedy. He could be miles away right now. This wasn’t going to be easy. Waggedy sat and scratched his chin with his back leg.
You should know that Waggedy was not just a white puppy with brown patches. He was the best tracking agent there was in the Whenabout Adjustor Bureau. Waggedy checked the giant gold pocketwatch hanging from his collar. The time event he had to beat was only a few hours in the future.
I’ll have to check satellite pictures of the area, Waggedy thought as he sniffed the ground. It shouldn’t be hard to spot a flash of Blue-and-Gold against all this greenery.
“Rawwwk! Won’t work!” came a voice from above his head. Waggedy rolled over and looked up in the pine tree. A Blue-and-Gold macaw was looking down at him. “Satellite too blurry. Rawk!”
“OK, parrot,” said Waggedy. “Start squawking. Who are you? Why are you here? How did you know what I was thinking? And why’s the satellite too blurry?”
Just then the zipper on the orange tent went Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip! Inside the tent was…another parrot!
Waggedy’s head went back and forth between the two parrots, trying to work it all out. He accidentally whimpered a little bit. “Two parrots!”
“Rawk, wrong again!” said the tent parrot. “One parrot. Two whens.” The tree parrot laughed and the tent parrot echoed him.
Waggedy growled. He didn’t like shenanigans, and he knew these macaws were known for their playfulness.
Whenabout Adjustor Bureau agents like Waggedy traveled into different whens to find homes for lost pets. If you find a lost animal in your street, you call the WAB and they send agents, especially puppies and fishies, to search the future and the past for where the animal belongs. Waggedy knew that he only had a few hours left to figure out where these macaws, or multiple copies of the same macaws from different whens, belonged. At the next time event, the world would reset and the parrots would be lost forever.
“No time for playing, parrot 1 and parrot 2!” barked Waggedy.
“Rawk! Call me Floaty,” said the parrot that had been in the tree, and now flapped his wings, floating in the air. “Rawk! Call me Stickety,” said the parrot that walked away from the tent, as his feet got stuck in the mud.
“But why do you have different names if you are the same parrot from different times?” Waggedy yelped.
“That’s what you’re going to call us when you write the report,” said the two parrots, alternating words back and forth.
“How do you know so much about me?” Waggedy asked.
“You’ve got to save us, Waggedy!” they said. “You’re the only Watch Dog that can do it. There are hundreds of me now. I keep going into the Whenabout Adjustor machine and making more copies of myself.” The last few words were spoken by two more Blue-and-Gold macaws as they came out of the tent.
“Oooooooo,” said Waggedy. He covered his muzzle with his paws. “I knew I should have stayed in the pound today. Now my brain hurts.”
And then the adventure really began….
We’re dangerously close to raising a generation of kids who interact with the world only as far as it takes to swipe to a new movie on Netflix or add a comment to some social media site.
They’ll watch the movies, but won’t create them.
They’ll post pictures to a website, but not create a new platform.
They’ll wander through an art gallery and criticize the talent of the artist (or hopefully, delight in it), but will never pick up a paintbrush.
Of course, there are some wonderfully creative kids out there…but are we stifling their potential?
Passive consumerism.
It’s rampant…fun, but ultimately useless.
We now live in a world where it’s enough to create a blog on a pre-existing platform, using a template designed already, and still consider ourselves creators. We have thousands of “custom” templates to choose from when “designing” our online presence, and it gives the illusion that we’re really creating something new and different…when all we’re doing is interacting with something that already exists.
Painting is by numbers, and puzzles are pictured right there on the box. There are “interactive” video games, but they teach facts instead of creativity and imagination.
We watch movies, plug our opinions into pre-formed websites, and play video games with a “go here, now here, there’s the finish line” mentality.
Set goals are so…predictable.
Natural Imaginative Urges.
Kids are naturally curious and imagination is ingrained, all we have to do is nurture those urges. Our kids love that our phones have cameras, and many kids go nuts with digital cameras of their own. Drawing apps and creating-things games are popular, but go unnoticed.
Kids love to create things, they just don’t get the same opportunity for this as we did when we were kids. Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Science fairs where we had to actually invent something and make it work?
With all the new computers, games, tablets, and other technology, we have a perfect platform to encourage imagination and creativity.
Unfortunately, most “new” forms of entertainment are engrossing, but really require no real interaction. They certainly don’t encourage the creative impulses.
By integrating some apps and games that encourage imagination and true interaction, we can gently steer the next generation into a more creative and innovative society. Kids LOVE the new techie-geared forms of entertainment. We should take advantage of that, and give them some options that stretch their imagination.
Creating Creators.
Story games that let kids create their own stories would be a great way to encourage the next generation to think for themselves. We can mold our future generations into entrepreneurs and artists, writers and inventors…instead of passive consumers.
By promoting creative-thinking, we can create creative-thinkers!
4 July 2012 Sydney, Australia
Two entrepreneurs from Sydney, Australia have developed a simple to use, yet extremely powerful, iPad app to help stimulate creative thought and increase our capacity to think creatively. The Thinking ThingamabobTM app coaxes the brain into thinking new things.
“The brain is just an endless knot of connections. And a creative thought is simply … a network that’s connecting itself in a new way” – Jonah Lehrer
The first decade of the 21st century has come and gone, providing a range of brilliant new inventions and technologies, like the iPad, yet seemingly intractable problems like climate change, terrorism, poverty and war still remain.
Conventional thinking alone will not be enough to solve these problems. In future years extraordinary, creative thinking will make the difference. Bright, fresh, creative thinkers will be the ones to solve these major problems and to shape the future. The question is will you be left behind?
Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation, argues that it probably won’t be school and believes that “We are educating people out of their creative capacities”. He explains it this way “We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.”
The Thinking ThingamabobTM app was developed to stimulate creative thought and to develop the creative leaders of tomorrow.
The Thinking ThingamabobTM app is deceptively simple to use, but its real power is that it is based on the latest research on theories of the mind, in particular brain neuroplasticity – that thoughts can change the structure and function of your brain. Using the Thinking ThingamabobTM app coaxes the brain into creating new thoughts that didn’t exist before. Thus unlocking the potential of your brain. Better still, using the app helps one to learn how to think differently.
“Using the Thinking ThingamabobTM is the creative thinking equivalent of taking a relaxing warm shower and letting your mind wander.” – Steve Brodie, CEO and founder.
At the moment the Thinking ThingamabobTM app offers a creative thinking module specifically designed for young children and a standard module designed to help anyone think more creatively. In the future the team plan to release more tailored modules focused on creative problem solving, creative story writing, inventing and many more.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
Viva la revolution – download the Thinking ThingamabobTM right now, for free.
Contact:
Dr Steve Brodie, CEO, Thinking Thingamabob Pty Limited
steve@thinkingthingamabob.com
http://itunes.apple.com/app/thinking-thingamabob/id527827870?mt=8
www.thinkingthingamabob.com
+61 (0) 431 977 182 (Sydney, Australia)
