Abstract: Pick Your Brain!
The Pick Your Brain! project was designed to encourage students
to think creatively and logically. By writing and solving brain teasers, students also learn
to express their thoughts carefully and clearly.
- To encourage students' critical and logical thinking skills
- To encourage students to use the Internet responsibly in
corresponding with others on a broad geographic scale and age
range
- To encourage interaction between students within and among
classes through joint problem solving
- To encourage interaction between students within and among
classes through reciprocal questioning
- To learn to compose and reply to electronic mail
- To learn to clearly and logically explain the solution to a
brain teaser
- To learn to express creativity through writing a new brain
teaser
The idea of writing brain teasers and solving them was very
interesting to us. Moreover, since we had already thought of a few
good brain teasers, we could use them to encourage others to share
theirs. We were interested in discovering what brain teasers other
students (ages 12-18 years) would write. It was our original
intention to see if such brain teasers from students all over the
world would transcend cultures; i.e., problems would be challenging to
students of similar age and the essence of the problem and solution
would be universally understood.
We also noticed there are very few times when a student has the
opportunity to express his or her creativity in class, especially in a
math or science class. Hence, we thought that this project would
offer a wonderful encouragement for students to become more interested
in math and science -- they would not only write their own problems
and solutions, but also get to appreciate how others pose theirs.
The process of writing a problem and explaining the solutions to
others helps the students formulate logical thought processes. The
process of solving a problem requires students to read and think
critically about which clues are crucial to solving the problem
and which phrases are redundant or irrelevant. They can then use the
clues to piece together the answer to the problem, thereby sharpening
their information processing skills. Students also receive
satisfaction and build confidence from solving a difficult problem and
from contesting others with their own.
If you are interested in following-up with this project or need to
cite our brain teasers, please feel free to contact us and let us know
how you intend to proceed. Please e-mail us at ea-chen@uiuc.edu or jahk@uiuc.edu.
We believe you will enjoy doing this project in class with your
students. It will be something very different from regular
textbook activities. Good luck!
Jack and Emmie
3 May 1997
Jack Tan / jahk@uiuc.edu
[Pick Your Brain!]