Meta-cognition for Innovation

Meta-cognition for Innovation

Cognitive abilities of students are immense and the teachers should activate them in the right way. Cognitive abilities vary from individual to individual and yet they are immense. The first step towards developing these mental faculties is to create awareness among the students about them. The power of mind is immeasurable and invaluable. Hence the students should know the value of it. They have acres of diamonds in their minds. In a life time a man has the power to store more than seven trillion informations in his mind. It is the best computer in the world, with the power to create new ideas.

When the students are taught to think in different ways, it is like the opening of a thousand eyes. “Innovative or die” is the latest slogan of the CEOs of major MNCS.

Present day students learn without thinking and memorize materials without understandings and forget them as quickly as possible. Self-learning speed learning and life-long learning should be taught to collect new ideas. For this purpose, they should go beyond their text books.

“Cognition” means the conscious mental processes.

It means the skill related to the use of mind in various activities like thinking, mental process, judgment, the power reasoning, communication, recall, generate new ideas, imagination, preserve or store the collected ideas in the form of knowledge and make use of them whenever necessary in life. In other words we call it as creativity, originality, innovation, invention etc. All learning depends on the use of cognitive abilities. The students should be cognizant of their latent mental faculties. They should not be branded as slow learners or poor learners. Only mental handicapped students are slow or poor in their cognitive powers.

The chief tool of mental faculty has been the language. Hence the sure method of activating cognitive abilities for innovation .The second one is the training of the mind is to think in different ways.

Wrong food habits, sleeplessness, ill health, bad habits etc., will affect the mental health. Forgetfulness and lethargy are the two greatest enemies of the brain affecting the power of cognition and innovation.

The higher order of learning is problem solving. The students should learn to think for a long time. There are different types of thinking like abstract thinking, linear thinking, lateral thinking, and multi-disciplinary thinking and inter disciplinary thinking. Constant and continuous training would help the students to activate their cognitive abilities leading to discovery, innovation and creativity.

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