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The world of education is mourning the death of Melina Furmanan emblematic researcher and popularizer who died on Friday night at the age of 49 from colon cancer that she had been suffering from for two years. In addition to the sensitivity and generosity that characterized her, the thinker will be remembered for the wisdom she transmitted through her writings and lectures.
Among his most notable works are: Extreme curiosityexperiments to train your brain’s superpowers (21st Century), which was presented in April 2024 during the Book Fair and shared with LA NACION in an exclusive interview. It is a work that he developed together with his two twin sons, Ian and Galo, aged 11.
In the book, which Furman categorized as a “laboratory,” she reflects on aspects related to the human brain and experiments through drawings, in order to adapt it to all ages. She proposes a question-answer game to reach conclusions together with her children.
How does the human brain work? What superpowers does it have? Do we use it without realizing it? Biologist and doctor of education Melina Furman never tires of sowing science into our daily lives. She has just published her new book Extreme curiosity, experiments to train your brain’s superpowers (21st Century). The peculiarity of this work is that it was written by six hands together with her two sons, Ian and Galo, 11 years old, two curious extremes like their mother.
In this “laboratory” book, the experiments are first explained, accompanied by drawn vignettes and instructions for carrying them out. Then, some questions are presented to reflect on the experience and finally, the expert explains the scientific concept to which we have been exposed by experiencing them.
One of the proposals is “measuring our creativity.” In this case, Ian and Galo have to think of creative ideas for their grandmother’s 70th birthday and they start asking themselves questions based on how many different uses they can give to a glass. Furman explains the Scamper Method (which in English means running fast) that is used to generate a brainstorm about something that you want to create or improve. Each letter means an action and you have to think of a creative proposal to carry it out, as with this example of rasti-type building blocks. The actions are replace, combine, add, modify, purpose (what else can I use it for), delete, and reorder. “Sometimes we feel that creativity is like a magic spark that appears the moment we come up with something, but today we know that it is not a quality that you either have or don’t have: it can be developed throughout life, with practice and different exercises that invite us to imagine new things,” explains Furman. These alternative uses that we learned about using the Scamper method allow us to measure our divergent thinking and put the four characteristics of creativity into play: originality, with which we can create something that no one else thought of or did before; fluidity, the ability to think of many ideas in a short time; flexibility, which consists of changing ideas and adapting to new situations; and relevance, which is what we want our creations to be meaningful and really useful for something.
Although it is a book to experiment with children, believe me it also works with adults. Here we tried many of the experiments and had a great time learning and being surprised by how our sense of touch, smell, and sight work, and putting our memory and creativity into action. There is an infallible formula for “raising curious children” (that is the name of Melina Furman’s previous book): being adults who are genuinely willing to learn throughout our lives.
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