BRAINSTORMING

Brainstorming is an effective way to generate lots of ideas and then determine which idea(s) best addresses your topic. Brainstorming is most effective with a group of people and should be performed in a relaxed environment. If participants feel free to be silly, they'll stretch their minds more and therefore produce more creative ideas! But you must remember to stay on task. In order to brainstorm, you will need a sheet of paper   State your topic. this is done to be sure that everyone in the group understands what you are working on. Give yourselves a time limit - as you become more familiar with brainstorming, you will be able to gauge how much time you will need for future brainstorming. Assign a secretary. It is the secretary's job to write everyone's ideas down. Assign a time keeper. It is the timekeeper's job to make sure you don't go over your time limit. Everyone must say aloud the things that come into their mind about the assigned topic. There are no right or wrong answers.  There must be ABSOLUTELY NO CRITICIZING OF IDEAS. No matter how  impossible or how silly an idea is, it must be written down. Laughing is to be encouraged. Criticism is not. Why? We want to encourage the free flow of ideas; as soon as participants of the brainstorming session begin to fear criticism of their ideas, they'll stop generating ideas. Moreover, Ideas that first seem silly may prove to be very good or may lead to ideas that are very good. Once your time is up, select the five ideas which you like best. Make sure everyone involved in the brainstorming session is in agreement. Give each idea a score of 0 to 5 points depending on how well it meets each criterion. Once all of the ideas have been scored for each criterion, add up the scores. The idea with the highest score will best solve your problem. But you should keep a record of all of your best ideas and their scores in case your best idea turns out not to be workable