Fostering creativity as a problem-solving competence through design: Think-Create-Learn, a tool for teachers

Although there is no doubt about the relevance of creativity within education, theory has not been always translated into the practical level, for many reasons. In this paper we analyse the state of art, studying the methods through which creativity is understood and applied by teachers, and identifying problems and opportunities. Accordingly, we conducted a literature review to identify what should be considered to foster creativity in classrooms; from this review, we define fifteen key indicators of creativity in education: incorporation, practicality, novel, atmosphere, stimulation, analysis, cooperation, intrinsic motivation, participation, flexibility, uncertainty, time, divergence, self-evaluation, and redefinition. Based on these indicators, we provide a methodological proposal and a set of practical resources to help the teacher to encourage creativity in any classroom. ‘Think-Create-Learn’ relies on open, accessible, and intuitive design-based tools, facing challenges through a creative, problem-solving approach; connecting the contents with the student’s interests and reality; and generating new competency learning possibilities. The assessment of the methodology, with teachers and students, demonstrates its positive integration into the lines of current teaching curriculums, its validity to support mentioned factors, and its ability to aid teachers to produce more creative people. In short, this paper evidences how design discipline and the methodology proposed could have a relevant role in the creativity development inside educational centres

Making design thinking for education sustainable: Training preservice teachers to address practice challenges

The effectiveness of design thinking (DT) education is increasingly demonstrated; it allows teachers to face complex challenges in their day-to-day work. However, few teachers have training in this discipline. This study presents the ‘Think-Create-Teach’ (TCT) methodology to help preservice teachers to create instructional materials guided by DT. The TCT methodology is applied and assessed through quantitative methods in a project-based learning subject with 56 preservice teachers (experimental group). Subsequently, the work processes and instructional materials developed by the experimental group were compared to a control group of 52 preservice teachers who did not use TCT. The quantitative results were supported with qualitative methods to understand the reasoning behind. This paper demonstrates the TCT contribution to designing better instructional materials, its integration into the teaching curriculum, its validity as design training, and its ability to help teachers answer today's changing education. This paper shows that design discipline and the methodology proposed have a relevant role in the training of preservice teachers

A Study of the Relationship between Weather Variables and Electric Power Demand inside a Smart Grid/Smart World Framework

One of the main challenges of today's society is the need to fulfill at the same time the two sides of the dichotomy between the growing energy demand and the need to look after the environment. Smart Grids are one of the answers: intelligent energy grids which retrieve data about the environment through extensive sensor networks and react accordingly to optimize resource consumption. In order to do this, the Smart Grids need to understand the existing relationship between energy demand and a set of relevant climatic variables. All smart “systems” (buildings, cities, homes, consumers, etc. ) have the potential to employ their intelligence for self-adaptation to climate conditions. After introducing the Smart World , a global framework for the collaboration of these smart systems, this paper presents the relationship found at experimental level between a range of relevant weather variables and electric power demand patterns, presenting a case study using an agent-based system, and emphasizing the need to consider this relationship in certain Smart World (and specifically Smart Grid and microgrid ) applications

Performance Study of the Application of Artificial Neural Networks to the Completion and Prediction of Data Retrieved by Underwater Sensors

This paper presents a proposal for an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-based architecture for completion and prediction of data retrieved by underwater sensors. Due to the specific conditions under which these sensors operate, it is not uncommon for them to fail, and maintenance operations are difficult and costly. Therefore, completion and prediction of the missing data can greatly improve the quality of the underwater datasets. A performance study using real data is presented to validate the approach, concluding that the proposed architecture is able to provide very low errors. The numbers show as well that the solution is especially suitable for cases where large portions of data are missing, while in situations where the missing values are isolated the improvement over other simple interpolation methods is limited

Quorum sensing network in clinical strains of A. baumannii : AidA is a new quorum quenching enzyme

Acinetobacter baumannii is an important pathogen that causes nosocomial infections generally associated with high mortality and morbidity in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Currently, little is known about the Quorum Sensing (QS)/Quorum Quenching (QQ) systems of this pathogen. We analyzed these mechanisms in seven clinical isolates of A. baumannii. Microarray analysis of one of these clinical isolates, Ab1 (A. baumannii ST-2-clon-2010), previously cultured in the presence of 3-oxo-C12-HSL (a QS signalling molecule) revealed a putative QQ enzyme (α/β hydrolase gene, AidA). This QQ enzyme was present in all nonmotile clinical isolates (67% of which were isolated from the respiratory tract) cultured in nutrient depleted LB medium. Interestingly, this gene was not located in the genome of the only motile clinical strain growing in this medium (A. baumannii strain Ab421-GEIH-2010 [Ab7], isolated from a blood sample). The AidA protein expressed in E. coli showed QQ activity. Finally, we observed downregulation of the AidA protein (QQ system attenuation) in the presence of HO (ROS stress). In conclusion, most of the A. baumannii clinical strains were not surface motile (84%) and were of respiratory origin (67%). Only the pilT gene was involved in surface motility and related to the QS system. Finally, a new QQ enzyme (α/β hydrolase gene, AidA protein) was detected in these strains