Creativity and Innovation Talk for English Learners at NUS
By Shen Xijiao
EG1471 E25
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Singapore -- Last Friday Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr, the Associate Professor from Department of Mechanical Engineering of the National University of Singapore, was busy with settling his projector at Lecture Theatre 7 where a large group of NUS students taking “English for Academic Purposes” were waiting for his speech- “Creativity and Innovation.”
Dr. Ang started by making students ponder what drive people to innovate. It was the desire to raise the standard of living so that we can enjoy better life. Giving current problems in daily life, people tend to start to dream in which anything can happen, including the solutions to the problems in real life. The tip to start to dream about something new is not to be easily satisfied with things around us so that we could consistently think about ways to improve. Dr. Ang also used the development of tooth brush and shower as examples to show that improvement is continuous since we could always innovate based on current products.
In order to let students think about what makes a good invention, Dr. Ang then showed several interesting pictures of small inventions such as plastic material around an umbrella and a hat with tissue paper on the top. The criterion for a good invention was the popularity of the invention among users.
The most important part of the talk was that students were educated to link dream with reality which means how to put ideas into practice. We should first know what resources are available and we need the knowledge and technology to put things together.
Unfortunately, when Dr. Ang tried to illustrate this important message by using a video, the computer broke down and it took quite a long time to settle down everything. Due to lack of time, Dr. Ang was unable to finish his talk but left one take-home message to encourage students, “You Can Do It!”
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(comment from Liu Yangfan)
ReplyDeleteIt is really a very inspiring lecture. Maybe because of the advance of the morden life ,a lot of people, including me, recongnise invention as such a difficult thing that it seems only genius like Edison can make it. However, it is wrong. The world is constantly changing and it will never stop. All the aspects of our life are waiting to be improved. All of us have chances to make a different. And everyone can really be a great inventor as long as we dare to dream. Do not accept things so easily just because everyone else thinks it is right. Actually most of the things commonly used now were thought to be ridiculous when they were put forward as a new idea at the first time, such as the plane. People often laugh at those who are different from the most. However, it is always those who have been laught at that finally change the world. Make an invention maybe very difficult, but we can not shrink back. Every innovation starts from a seemingly absurb dream and must go through a rough period to be eventually accepted. Dr. Ang is right, " You can do it" as long as you dare to strat.
(XUE YUAN comments)
ReplyDeleteThat was a fantastic speech by a fantastic lecturer. I never think of a professor from Faculty of Engineering can be so humorous and so attractive. I had thought that such sense of humor should only belong to those professors from Faculty of Arts and Social Science. He delivered a perfect speech except for the sudden breaking down of the computer. He did encourage,if not all, most of us and give us a brand frontier of creativity and innovation.
In my opinion, all the NUS lecturers and tutors should learn from Dr. Ang about his ability of attracting students and making students full of energy.
For the content of this speech, I think he was well prepared, and thus makes the speech full of interesting things and meaningful information. I strongly agree with Dr. Ang that innovation comes from dreams. I think we should spend more time on gathering and analyzing our ideas which we come across when we were day-dreaming. Some great ideas may knock on our door when we day-dream.
Above all, I think this is really a good speech. We can only describe it as "fantastic"!