#integrativethinking

Grandomastery is a powerful platform designed for educators whose students enjoy meeting, competing, discussing, and exchanging ideas outside of traditional learning. It is also targeted at advanced English language students who want to learn about novel and thought-provoking topics.

We value individual opinions, regardless of how contradictory, instead of only providing correct and rational answers as the majority of intellectual quizzes do. We welcome your insights and reflections based on your personal experience. By recording our participants' bright solutions and interesting insights, we make sure that their creativity and commitment are recognized.

Our work as educators includes working with both intermediate and advanced students, attending master classes, and participating in discussion clubs with our peers. The participants who are focused on prepared, structured tasks do not show much enjoyment, whereas spontaneous detours to unexpected topics can capture even the most reserved.

Additionally, we have noticed that HR professionals themselves are not sufficiently engaged with interview questions designed to check a candidate's creativity by asking off-topic or non-standard questions during hiring processes. Consequently, we have added thousands of questions to help hiring managers and candidates gauge the flexibility of their thinking. Our observation of the responses of participants has shown that those who did not struggle with our questions tended to be analytical thinkers with strong emotional intelligence. We deliberately choose random topics. A new concept is inserted into the language on a daily basis, ensuring the project is continually challenged with new tasks to complete. We continuously enhance Grandomastery's resources library with new original and relevant content.

Isn't it strange that our tasks are all random?

Banality, boredom, and burnout should be avoided. All tasks consist of random content, so the responses are likewise spontaneous and unrehearsed.

Originally, the word "random" originated from the Old French words "randir", meaning "to gallop," and "randon", meaning "great speed.". Our activities are random because neither parties preplanned nor anticipated them. They consist of the grandoministers and the grandomasters, each of whom are the hosts and participants in the game. It is neither up to the grandominister (the facilitator, educator, or entertainer) nor the grandomaster to determine what task they will receive. The freedom of spontaneity and responsiveness that randomness allows us enables us to fly through different activities without the constraints of order or structure. Grandomastery is an ability to face challenges creatively and successfully, a skill that is invaluable in many of life's scattered endeavors.

Our goal is to help you achieve your creative and educational goals. Traditional education providers and course material creators tend to discourage or downplay autonomy and free-thinking, while traditionalism and conservatism remain strongly emphasized. There is no propagation of new ideas in Grandomastery, because its participants are active, rather than passive objects, and its facilitators are not the ones who harvest new ideas - it is the "grandomasters" themselves who create the concepts that will inspire and amuse others.

Inspiration: what made us do it?

Books. In particular, their inefficiency on a number of fronts. The vast majority of textbooks we encounter as educators are outdated and over-simplified, providing a superficial and misleading impression of society. Content parameters in educational programs are determined by players including education departments, especially those in countries that demand citizens conform to social norms and bias viewpoints. The absence of critical thinking or the suppression of critical thinking are often the outcome of such situations.

The minimum expectations we have today for creativity. The current approach to creative activity or process does not ensure that results are of high quality. Results, no matter how boring or unoriginal, are accepted as legitimate. Schools and colleges - and even during some board games - often discard and forget narratives, which diminish the creative process' significance. Imagine completing a physical "DIY" project, only to dismantle it or discard it without showing it or using it. While the work of an unskilled celebrity is valued and made famous, that of a genuine master is often overlooked. The notion that their creations will remain insignificant discourages people from expanding their skillsets. Within our project, you are respected and appreciated for your stories.

Distinguished fellows. A concept called Slow-Motion Multitasking was coined by Tim Harford, who suggests working on multiple projects simultaneously and switching between them based on mood and circumstance. Multitasking is the key to creativity, which is best accomplished through the use of "slow motion". According to Harford, multitasking is similar to physical cross-training, as it is cross-training your mind. According to Duncan Wardle, another expert in creative thinking, it is important to "get out of the river of thinking". You can accomplish this, again, by diversifying your tasks. According to Balder Onarheim, PhD, a creativity researcher at DTU and founder of Copenhagen Institute of NeuroCreativity, the ability to generate and adapt to random and spontaneous information is crucial. As we live in an age of immense information, it is common to perform tasks based on cross-domain knowledge, a task that requires constant and rapid switching between types of information or sources.

In our tasks, do we have any "correct" answers?

Answers cannot be categorized as either correct or incorrect. A founding member of “Says You!”, said: “Knowing the answers is not important; liking them is.”

It is important to allow wittily and shrewdly written responses to evolve to the point of absurdity. It is clear that today's tests emphasize single, "correct" answers which don't require the participants to apply logic and analytical skills to arrive at the solution. It is amusing to provide alternative answers, and they are never taken into account when assessing the students or participants.

Grandomastery: What's so special about it?

There is a wide range of tasks. When grandmasters focus on certain tasks and take only brief glances at others, they achieve their full potential. Some questions or tasks may only require a second to come up with a brilliant solution, but others may be more challenging for several minutes.

New, current, profound ideas. We have a number of activities that are devoted to ideas, phenomena, and paradoxes that are of significance to all of us. Several of these topics have appeared recently, while others are somewhat controversial. Others are historical matters that still have relevance today. It's possible that many of the topics covered will be new to both grandomasters and grandoministers, allowing everyone to fulfill the sacred "Learn something new every day" principle.

Abstractions are the focus. The primary purpose of Grandomastery is to compare two abstractions. We feel that abstract nouns should receive more respect for their inobjectivity. Popular culture such as textbooks, board games, video games, TV shows, or video games rarely exhibit abstractions. We created an activity that generates abstracts randomly and compares them using bisociation (a term coined by Arthur Koestler, a 20th Century intellectual) and synectics to address this problem. A synectics session is a more sophisticated and demanding form of brainstorming in which you bring together elements that seem unrelated, demonstrating a metaphorical and analytical approach to problem solving. Combining concepts from seemingly unrelated areas is one of the most fundamental and efficient techniques described in numerous scientific works on neuroplasticity.

Multiple functions. As a game, as a tool for language learning (with the adaptability to translate into any language within a short time frame), and as a tool for evaluating creativity in job interviews, this project can satisfy all of these needs. In addition to being available both online and offline, Live Streaming can be used for engaging online participants. Any person over the age of 12 can use it regardless of their knowledge of the topics and themes presented in it.

A simple look. Only two buttons - "PLAY CYCLE" and "RANDOM". No preparation or preparation for the facilitators is necessary in advance of a meeting, since they need to be as knowledgeable as the participants. Both parties will likely be unfamiliar with the content generated by "Random.". Questions can arise spontaneously and are always novel and random.

Here's how grandomastery.com works

The Grandomastery site is a collection of randomized tasks within 30 types of activities aimed at ESL learners and ESL teachers seeking out high-quality, offbeat and extravagant tasks with Integrative Thinking elements. Grandomastery.com offers two methods for randomizing tasks. They are "CYCLE" and "RANDOM.". Using grandomastery.com is explained in this guide.

"RANDOM" (Method 1)

On the right side of the page is the "RANDOM" button, which generates a random activity per page from all 27 types in random order. It is based on the "weight" given to each task - a coefficient defining how often a particular type of task should be performed. Since there are thousands of questions within a random question activity, it is likely to occur frequently, whereas a random advertisement activity is designed to occur as infrequently as possible, considering its specificity. Using the "random" button is most advantageous when working on the most methodologically and didactically valuable activity type in each case, as opposed to all possible types of activities. The "RANDOM" script lets you click the title of the activity - between the "RANDOM" and "CYCLE" buttons - to repeat the same activity over and over again. The button "Random IELTS cue card" at the top of the webpage allows you to generate only my Random IELTS cue cards.

In situations where a particular practice activity is undesirable or overly repetitive, it is recommended simply to skip this activity and load another.

"CYCLE" (Method 2)

You can use the "CYCLE" button to run a Sprint that takes you through all the randomly selected 30 types of activities with randomly selected tasks within each activity. If you wish to run a full-time session, this is the perfect cycle for you. It is estimated that 30 activities will take about 90 minutes; an hour-long class can focus on certain activities and shorten discussion times on others, based on what the educator or student (grandomaster) deems most important. As soon as the cycle is completed, a "end of cycle" page is displayed from which the cycle can be repeated with another order of activities introducing different tasks.

Presented by Susan (@mintlodica) at Refactr.Tech 6.6.19

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Integrative Thinking definition:

“The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at  the expense or the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas, but is superior to each.”