Monthly Archive for June, 2021

Creativity and Innovation Course

Published
by
M Jacks
on June 23, 2021
in Other Articles
. 0 Comments

Perhaps we don’t often think about being creative at work, but it isn’t just limited to the arts or sciences; creativity is extremely important to business. Using creativity properly can find new solutions to problems, foster teamwork, generate higher revenues and help deal with change. More and more research shows the tangible benefits of creativity in an organisation.

Is your workplace a creative one? There are many examples of creativity at work:

In Leadership. – A creative manager promotes creative thinking in employees and takes novel approaches to interactions and work. 

In Problem Solving – Taking an alternative method of approaching issues, a creative problem-solver will use a different kind of thinking to develop different kinds of solutions.

In Project Management – Being creative in project management can transform a company’s ability to complete quality projects on time, by using ‘big-picture’ thinking. 

And other areas such as marketing, sales and production can benefit from the correct use of creativity. The creative touch will be transforming at every level of your business. Creativity is a good thing, but, better still, it’s something anyone can learn and utilise.

Infero’s Creativity and Innovation course teaches students about creative thinking in the workplace. Students will develop creative thinking skills, mentally and physically prepare for creativity, incorporate innocence, intuition, and adventure into creative thinking, and use creativity to generate ideas and solve problems. The course describes exercises that can be used to prepare the mind and body for creative thinking and explains the most common ways creativity is incorporated into problem solving. Course activities also examine recruiting and retaining creative individuals, performing a creativity audit, communicating with creative people, defining creative rhythm, and exploring ways to implement a creative culture. Students also learn how to organize creative teams, conduct effective team sessions, avoid roadblocks to team creativity, increase creativity in a team, and use the creative problem-solving process. The manual is designed for quick scanning in the classroom and filled with interactive exercises that help ensure student success.

Delivery Method

Instructor led, group-paced, online or classroom-delivery learning model with structured hands-on activities.

Target Students

This course is for people thinking about creatively in the workplace.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

Course Objectives

Course activities examine recruiting and retaining creative individuals, performing a creativity audit, communicating with creative people, defining creative rhythm, and exploring ways to implement a creative culture.

Course Content

Unit 1: Creative thinking basics

Topic A: Creative thinking

Topic B: The creative process

Unit 2: Personal creativity

Topic A: Preparing to be creative

Topic B: Increasing creativity

Unit 3: Creativity in organizations

Topic A: Creative organizations

Topic B: Using creativity

Unit 4: Fostering a creative environment

Topic A: Employing creative individuals

Topic B: Maintaining a creative environment

Unit 5: Promoting team creativity

Topic A: Organizing creative teams

Topic B: Conducting team sessions

Topic C: Promoting and using creativity

Contact us to find out more about this course.

25 Ways to Be Creative

Published
by
M Jacks
on June 16, 2021
in Other Articles
. 0 Comments

The BBC Arts Great British Creativity Test suggested that being creative is good for you and can help avoid stress and improve self-development. Multiple past studies confirm that being creative can increase positive emotions, decrease anxiety, and even improve immune system functioning. And more, a study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology said that engaging in creative activities outside of the office can result in better work performance.

“You Can’t Use Up Creativity. The More You Use, The More You Have”

– Maya Angelou

Being creative doesn’t have to be hard and if you think you are not creative, it is just not true.

“If someone tells you they cannot read and write, you don’t assume that they are not capable of reading and writing, but that they have not been taught. It is the same with creativity. When people say to me that they are not creative, I assume they just haven’t learned what’s involved.” –  Ken Robinson 

There are countless creative things that you can do, some achievable very easily (although some take a little more work, obviously); some that you can do right now and some that can be accomplished with things you already have. Here are twenty-five ideas to get you started:

  1. Write a Song. Pen just the lyrics, or just the music or both.
  2. Make Origami. There is plenty of help and ideas here.
  3. Write A Short Story. Fiction. Nonfiction. Romance, western, sci-fi, contemporary. Whatever.
  4. Draw A Picture. Use Crayons, paint, chalk, pencil, pens, or whatever you have to hand. You can draw digitally to on a tablet or laptop.
  5. Work on a Book. Novel, nonfiction, whatever and whenever you want. It can be about anything you want it to be.
  6. Get creative in your Garden with Flowers and Vegetables.
  7. Write Some Poem. Poetry can be almost anything. Here’s one list of nearly 200 different forms of poetry.
  8. Take Some Photos. Go to a park or some other interesting place near to you.
  9. Build A Website. It can be on anything. Just Google ‘how to create a website’ for almost endless help.
  10. Create a Playlist. Video or music. Or both. It’s up to you. Have different playlists for different moods.
  11. Upcycle a Piece of Furniture. Get it from a market or from your own home. Change that old piece of kit into something spectacular
  12. Get an Adult Colouring book. You can be incredibly creative just colouring in. You can even download pages to print out and colour.
  13. Rearrange Your Home or Paint and Decorate. Your project can be small or large.
  14. Try Candlemaking.
  15. Make a Video. We all have smartphones with the ability to take high quality video that we never use. There are plenty of free apps for video editing Try Shotcut to start off with
  16. What about Knitting, Needlework, Quilting or Crochet?  
  17. Create a New Recipe and Get Creative in The Kitchen. The TV schedules are full of cookery shows, so there are plenty of ideas. 
  18. Create a Photo Album. If you have a lot of photos hanging around, then buy an album and organise them. Or you can put those hundreds of digital photos into an online Photo Album
  19. Start a Journal and write about anything and everything.
  20. Buy a Model Kit and put it together and paint it.
  21. Design Some Clothes or a Bag or Shoes. Or customise some you already have.
  22. Make Some Recycled Art. Turn something you don’t use anymore into something great. It doesn’t have to cost a lot.
  23. Restore Something. If you have an item that is broken or past it’s best, do a little research and get it back to where it was.
  24. Research a Subject that you have always been interested in. You can use MS OneNote to organise what you find. (We have and upcoming blog on OneNote.)
  25. Practice an Instrument. If you ever once started to learn an instrument and still have it lying around, then pick it up and practice a little.

“Creativity is Intelligence Having Fun!”​

– Albert Einstein

And there are lots more things you can try. Go on – get creative!

Amazing Things You Never Knew About MS OneNote

Published
by
M Jacks
on June 9, 2021
in Other Articles
. 0 Comments

OneNote is a part of Microsoft Office and like Evernote can be used for taking notes and storing information, making it perfect for research and other projects.

It allows the creation of notebooks for different areas and topics; each of these notebooks can then be divided into sections and pages. The basic structure then is Notebook > Section > Pages. However, pages can also have subpages.  And subpages can also have subpages, which allows for many levels to arrange your information in. It is also possible to have multiple notebooks in OneNote, each dedicated to a different topic.

When you have created a notebook, a section and put in your first page, you will be able to type notes in, just as in any word processor. OneNote offers the same tools as Word in its ribbon: font, text style, bullets and numbering, highlighting etc. Tables can be created and it is possible to insert images, photos, audio, and video. Audio can also be recorded. Images that appear within notes can be enlarged, shrunk, and cropped. It is possible to create links or paste in URLs from web browsers. 

OneNote differs from Word and other word-processors in one crucial respect. Its pages act more like a pinboard than a Word document. Every piece of content put into a page is placed in its own field or box. Boxes can be re-sized or dragged to change their position on the page.

If you use OneNote on a tablet or a touchscreen laptop, you can also draw, sketch, and write notes freehand. It is even possible to get text from an image and paste it right into the note (or anywhere else). This is one of OneNote’s best and surprising little-known features.

OneNote notebooks synced to OneDrive can be opened on any device connected to your Microsoft Office account, be it a phone, tablet, PC, or laptop.

Microsoft also provides a web clipper browser extension that allows the copying of content from a webpage directly into OneNote, eliminating the need to cut and paste. Ads and other unwanted er page elements can be stripped out and there are options to clip the whole page or just a specific section.

The best thing about OneNote is that it is pretty much free. It comes as standard with all Office installations, but even if you haven’t got one of these it can be downloaded for free on Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, or accessed as part of an Office Online Account.

If you want to learn how to use OneNote effectively, Infero Training has a course and you can find the details here.

World Watercolour Month

Published
by
M Jacks
on June 2, 2021
in Other Articles
. 0 Comments

World Watercolour Month is celebration of the medium of watercolour painting, encouraging everyone to take up a brush and give this form of painting a try. Not only that, it is an event which encourages and supports arts education.

Watercolour is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution and the term ‘watercolour’ refers to both the medium and the artwork itself. It’s an extremely ancient form of painting, dating perhaps to the cave paintings of palaeolithic Europe. It has been used for manuscript illustration since at least Egyptian times but especially in the European Middle Ages.

World watercolour month was founded by Charlie O’Shields, creator of the Doodlewash, a website dedicated to all things watercolour. The event Partners with the Dreaming Zebra Foundation which provides help to those who may otherwise not be able to develop their artistic creativity.  They are a non-profit organisation that encourage children’s individuality, help them to express themselves creatively, and to follow their dreams within art. The aim is to raise awareness and to raise funds for this worthwhile cause.

Dreaming Zebra also have an:

“..art recycling program that is free to the public. Reusable art & music supplies that would otherwise be discarded, along with new or unsold materials, are donated by individuals and businesses and matched to recipients who have requested those materials for arts education purposes in the community.”

Art is important to us all. Many would argue that it absolutely essential. It has always played an important part in education, being a great leveller and being one of the things that everyone has access to and that everyone can take part in. It’s for this reason that it is so terrible that it is often the case that art classes are first in line when budget cuts are made in education.

During World Watercolour month you can take the ultimate challenge of painting 31 watercolours in 31 days. Even if you are not up to that, you can dust off your old palette and have a go. Watercolour paints are available very cheaply in many shops and also online, so there is not excuse. If you need tips, try here.

You can post your masterpiece online with the hashtag #WorldWatercolorMonth. And, if you can, donate to The Dreaming Zebra Foundation to help children across the world reach their artistic potential.

Happy painting!