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In recent years, there's been an awareness among some educators that there's a need to encourage students to be more imaginative. It can also be observed that recent literature reinforce this perception, considering the fact that there are many books guiding readers on improving creativity. I am associating imagination and creativity together as there's a relation between the two terms. While creativity stems from imagination, creative individuals are often be considered to be imaginative as well.

Imagination is something that begins with a person, and not an institution. Hence, while it is important that educators guide students to be more creative, it is equally (if not more important) that students develop their creativity in their activities outside schooling hours as well, such as learning to draw, organising educational events with their friends or penning personal journals during their leisure time. Parents are thus able to contribute to the creative development of their children by encouraging them to engage in activities that enable one to be more imaginative.

With the increased usage of Information Communication Technology (ICTs) in schools, it seems that educators and school administrators are beginning to combine technology with education. While this is useful, there might still be some challenges in using technology to drive imagination. One example will be the use of online games to encourage teamwork among students. In one of the educational seminars that I have attended, several students are asked to form a team to defeat a "boss" from a game. Through a combination of teamwork and strategies, the students manage to do so, to the applause of the audience (yes, the game is shown on a large screen to the audience).

While all is well and good, a question posed by a member of the audience proves to be rather worrying. He said that the game scenario does improve team work but in reality, the challenges in the workplace (where the students will be in a few years' time) are more complex than this. For a while, there is silence in the seminar hall. Indeed, there are challenges in the workplace that students need to be exposed to. Conflict resolution techniques, adapting to the different personalities/working style of colleagues and meeting deadlines are some issues that are not addressed in the game play described above. More importantly, gamers are always locked in a particular scenario/ setting designed by game designers and thus, the game players' imagination are never given the opportunity to be fully developed.

Thus there are limitations to improving students' imagination through gaming. While the use of games in the field of education does not encompass the use of ICT on the whole, it's advisable to assess the usage of ICT in education, especially when exploring the probability of ICT improving students' imagination.

ICT aside, I will like to suggest a few ways that students are able to develop their imagination in schools, as follows:

- Personal Journal
- Asking questions that improve students' imagination
- Use of photos and images in students' imagination
- Encouraging students to make presentations
- Exploring issues from various perspectives

On the whole, there are numerous ways to encourage students to use their imagination. And like most things in life, it gets better with practice. The abovementioned techniques are not all there is to it. As educators gain teaching experiences in the classroom, I believe that each of them will encourage students to use their imagination creatively in their own ways.

P.S: I am editing this article as there seems to be a word count limit. Thus some part of my article has been truncated in my first article submission.

Learn more about this author, Patrick Tay.
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