N.V. Rubina: Creative Imagination Development (CID) Course Textbooks (Children Education)

TRIZ Textbooks: CID Course for Children, Top
Course of Creative Imagination Development (CID) based on TRIZ: Methodical Guide-Books and Children Workbooks for Three Grades
Natalia V. Rubina (Petrozavodsk, Russia) 1998, 1999 [published in Russian] English translation by Irina Dolina (Tokyo, Japan) 2000, 2001 Technical Editing by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin Univ.) 2000, 2001, 2002 Posting: Started on: Jan. 30, 2001, Finished on: Feb. 17, 2002
Published in this "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" in English translation starting on Jan. 30, 2001 under the permission of the Author. English version of the six Guidebooks and six Workbooks has been published here volume by volume and finishe posting on February 17, 2002. (C) Natalia V. Rubina, Irina Dolina, and Toru Nakagawa 2001, 2002

Dates of postings in this Home Page:

Feb. 17, 2002	3rd Grade/2nd Semester "Planet of Unsolved Misteries"	Introduction, Topics 1, 2, Supplement (Finished)	Guide-Book	Workbook
Dec. 17, 2001	3rd Grade/1st Semester "Planet of Unsolved Misteries"	Intro., Topics 1, 2, 3, 4, Supplement (Finished)	Guide-Book	Workbook
Sept. 11, 2001	2nd Grade/2nd Semester "Fantasy City"	Intro., Topics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Finished)	Guide-Book	Workbook
Jul. 17, 2001	2nd Grade/1st Semester "Fantasy City"	Intro., Topics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Finished)	Guide-Book	Workbook
May 8, 2001	1st Grade/2nd Semester "Fairy Tales School"	Intro., Topics 1,2,3,4,5, Appendix (Finished)	Guide-Book	Workbook
Feb. 28, 2001	1st Grade/1st Semester "Fairy Tales School"	Topics 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Finished)	Guide-Book	Workbook
Jan. 30, 2001	1st Grade/1st Semester "Fairy Tales School"	Preface, Intro., Topic 1-2	Guide-Book	Workbook

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Editor's Preface

Author's Introduction

Contents of the CID Course

Author's Message

Editor's Note (Feb. 2002)

Japanese page

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Editor's preface for posting here in English (Toru Nakagawa, Jan. 22, 2001)

It is my great pleasure to start posting this course material for guiding children to be creative.   This posting is a fruit of my visit to Russia and Belarus in August 1999. As I wrote in my trip report on this Web site, I met many TRIZ specialists who are working for education of children of various ages and their teachers. At first it was almost imbelievable for me that they are teaching the concepts of TRIZ to children of elementary schools and even kindergartens. What in TRIZ are they going to teach to children?   How can it be possible? Do children understand the essence of TRIZ, which even well-educated engineers often feel difficult and puzzling? Responding to my questions, Mrs. Natalia Rubina in Petrozavodsk gave me a copy of the full set of her course material.
The course is called "Creative Imagination Development (CID)". The course has been developed in ex-USSR for these almost 40 years by Genrich Altshuller at first and then a large number of his students, associates and followers. The course name is sometimes written as "RTV" in Russian abbriviation written in English alphabets or "Improvement of Creative Imagination" (ICI) as in Salamatov's TRIZ Textbook. The necessity of creative imagination, such as the ability to write a new scientific fiction (SF), was recognized by Altshuller in the early stage of his teaching TRIZ to engineers. Altshuller was also trying to teach young people the creative thinking ways; for instance, around 1961, he wrote a series of inventive puzzles every Sunday on a newspaper for children. Thus the CID course always have two faces, one for children and the other for adults.
Mrs. Rubina has taught this course for these seven years to children of 1st to 3rd Grades at Petrozavodsk School. #17 (Note: In Russia, children of 1st through 11th Year are taught at the same school.) The course materials translated here were prepared in 1998-1999 for her classes. They form a full set of Workbooks for children and Methodological Guidebooks for teachers for the six semesters of 1st to 3rd Grades.   Such a set is most valuable for us to understand what and how they are actually teaching.
Translation into English is done excellently by Dr. Irina Dolina, to my sincere thanks. She graduated Moscow University of Foreign Languages and did reseach at Institute of Oriental Studies, USSR Academy of Sciences.   Since 1993 she has been living in Japan with her husband. She was my teacher of Russian language for two and half years before her moving to downtown Tokyo. English translation of this material is often difficult because of a plenty of riddles and word plays in Russian and imaginary stories.
Technical editing for these Web pages is done by Nakagawa, with trying to keep the layout of the books as much as possible. With the aids of hyperlinks, readers may easily refer to various relevant sections of the material.
Translating and posting in English (i.e., not in Russian or in Japanese) aims to present this work as widely and quickly as possible. We are going to post this series chapter by chapter in the coming two or three years. Together with the readers of this site, I wish to learn the full contents of the CID course, which have not been published in English so far.
It must be the author's and our pleasure that readers of this work find the course instructive for new insights into children education and also into understanding of TRIZ itself.   With obtaining deeper understanding of the essence of TRIZ, education of children in various ages will become more creative and fruitful. I am very grateful to the Author, Mrs. Natalia Rubina, for her permitting this public posting without any commercial reward in our not-for-profit Web site, "TRIZ Home Page in Japan". Her Message cited at the end of this page was delivered to me via e-mail as her Christmas gift to all the possible readers, teachers and children in the world.
Feedbacks from the readers are heartily welcome to the Author and to the Editor. We wish to publish this course material in future in a book series in English and in Japanese, if possible. So, please observe the copyrights of this English version. If you are interested in using this material in your classes or in publishing or circulating widely, please communicate with the Author and the Editor via e-mail at the following addresses:
        Author:   Natalia V. Rubina:    "Natalia Rubina" <rubin@onego.ru>         (email address is changed.   Feb. 19, 2002)
        Editor:    Toru Nakagawa:     "Toru Nakagawa" <nakagawa@utc.osaka-gu.ac.jp>

Author's Introduction to the Course (Natalia V. Rubina, 1998)

     We live in a changing world. Bare knowledge like a frozen copy of the past, can not fully help us to solve the arising problems. An ability to solve creative problems, an advanced imagination are the qualities that mostly define a personality not only of tomorrow but of today, as well.
     On the basis of Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) the author of this book has worked out and tested "The Program of the Course of Creative Imagination Development for the elementary school". The controlled imagination allows a person faster and simpler to adapt himself to changing conditions, therefore the course CID is actively used by psychologists for diagnostics and psychological correction of elementary school students.
     In order to simplify the work in the framework of this program a student book and a workbook were prepared to be presented here.
     The whole program is meant for three grades: "Fairy tales school" - first grade; "The Fantasy City" - second grade; "The Planet of Unsolved Mysteries" - third grade. This program was used to instruct the kids of the first to third grades of School #17 in the course of 4 years. The classes were conducted once a week, the classes were divided into two groups.
     The author expresses her deep gratitude to the TRIZ creator G. S. Altshuller, and also to I. N. Murashkovska, A. N. Nesterenko, M. C. Gafitulin, to Sergey and Svetlana Sychovs, N. N. Khomenko, V. I. Timohov, Anatoly and Svetlana Gin, M. S. Rubin, whose work helped a lot in creating the CID course and the workbooks. And of course the help of the first-third grade students of School #17 of Petrozavodsk was very valuable. Thank you, my dear little magicians!
     Send your remarks and proposals at the following address:
     185014, Petrozavodsk, mail box 8, OO "TRIZ- Karelia", to N. V. Rubina.

Contents of the Three-Year Course of Creative Imagination Development (CID)

Book Title; Year/Semester	Contents	Guide- Book	Work- book	Posted date
"Fairy Tales School" 1st Grade, 1st Semester . Guide-book Workbook .	Preface & Introduction to the Course			Jan. 30, 2001
	Introduction at the Class			Jan. 30, 2001
	1. What does this or that consists of? (System is a whole, consisting of parts)			Jan. 30, 2001
	2. Where is this or that located? (System - a part of a super-system)			Jan. 30, 2001
	3. How feels this or that? How seems this or that? (Properties of the systems)			Feb. 28, 2001
	4. How to find out? (Organs of Perception)			Feb. 28, 2001
	5. Whar can one do and why? (Functions of the systems)			Feb. 28, 2001
	6. What was in the past and what will be in the future? (Changing systems in time)			Feb. 28, 2001
	7. Glass City			Feb. 28, 2001

Book Title; Grade/Semester	Contents	Guide- Book	Work- book	Posted date
"Fairy Tales School" 1st Grade, 2nd Semester . Guide-book Workbook .	Introduction and Weekly Topic Planning			May 8, 2001
	Invitation to the Fairy Tale (Introductory Lesson)			May 8, 2001
	1. Fairy Tales about the systems (Reviewing)			May 8, 2001
	2. Fairy Tales from the word "why"			May 8, 2001
	3. "Spoiled" Fairy Tales.			May 8, 2001
	4. Constructor for the Fairy Tales (Propp's Cards)			May 8, 2001
	5. "A Fairy Tale is not true, but there is a hint in it." (Proverbs)			May 8, 2001
	Appendix 1. "Yes-No" from the Fairy Tales Appendix 2. Commentaries to Propp's Cards Appendix 3. Proverbs for the works in class	--		May 8, 2001

Book Title; Grade/Semester	Contents	Guide- Book	Work- book	Posted date
"Fnatasy City" 2nd Grade, 1st Semester . Guide-book Workbook .	Preface and Weekly Topic Planning			Jul. 17, 2001
	Introduction. Acquaintance with Fantasy City (Introductory Lesson)			Jul. 17, 2001
	1. Card Index - First step on the way to creativity			Jul. 17, 2001
	Sdventures in Fantasy City 2. Morphological Box (Method of fantastic subtraction)			Jul. 17, 2001
	3. Unususal Inhabitants of Fatasy City (Animation Method)			Jul. 17, 2001
	4. Magic shop (Methods of focal objects)			Jul. 17, 2001
	5. Methods of Making Images (1. To increase - to shrink) (2. To assemble - to disassemble) (3. Upside down) (4. To speed up - to slow down) (5. Transit in time) (6. Binomial of fantasy)			Jul. 17, 2001
	Topic 6. Reports from Fantasy City (Fantogram) References & Cards for Card Index			Jul. 17, 2001

Book Title; Grade/Semester	Contents	Guide- Book	Work- book	Posted date
"Fnatasy City" 2nd Grade, 2nd Semester . Guide-book Workbook .	Preface and Weekly Topic Planning			Sept. 11, 2001
	Introductory Lesson			Sept. 11, 2001
	Methods of Solving Problems 1. "We Wouldn't Be Happy If Misery DidN'T Help Us" (Contradictions)			Sept. 11, 2001
	2. Both Cold and Hot (Physical Contradictions)			Sept. 11, 2001
	3. "... Sledge, Go Home ByYourself!" (Ideality)			Sept. 11, 2001
	4. "Use What Is at Hand, and Don't Look for Anything Else" (Resources)			Sept. 11, 2001
	5. Problem Solving 6. Project "Ideal City"			Sept. 11, 2001
	Reference Supplements			Sept. 11, 2001

Book Title; Grade/Semester	Contents	Guide- Book	Work- book	Posted date
"Planet of Unsolved Misteries" 3rd Grade, 1st Semester . Guide-book Workbook .	Preface and Weekly Topic Planning			Dec. 17, 2001
	Introduction			Dec. 17, 2001
	1. Method of Solving Problems (Contradictions, Ideality, and Resources)			Dec. 17, 2001
	2. Methods of Solving Contradictions			Dec. 17, 2001
	3. Scheme of Solving Problems			Dec. 17, 2001
	4. Card Index (Problem Synthesis)			Dec. 17, 2001
	Supplements 1 & 2	---		Dec. 17, 2001

Book Title; Grade/Semester	Contents	Guide- Book	Work- book	Posted date
"Planet of Unsolved Misteries" 3rd Grade, 2nd Semester . Guide-book Workbook .	Preface and Weekly Topic Planning			Feb. 19, 2002
	1. Modeling with Smart Little People			Feb. 19, 2002
	2. Practice Work on Solving Problems			Feb. 19, 2002
	Appendices 1 & 2			Feb. 19, 2002

[Finish of this series]

Author's Message for this English Version (Natalia V. Rubina, Dec. 25, 2000)

Preface or About Small and Big Miracles

Sometimes miracles happen in our life. The opportunity to have met with you [Toru] was a real miracle for me. It is an amazing feeling to realize that lots of people whom I even don’t know will learn about my ideas, my dreams, my work [in this Web site]. It’s a pity that it’s impossible to transfer the sparks of the children’s smiles, the depth of their pensive eyes and the joy of an adult, who has come back to his childhood for a short period time.
     During my childhood there were many miracles and wonders. Every day I invented them for myself. Carlson and Winnie the Pooh, a troubadour and the frightful forest brigands were my friends. All of them were as real to me as my nanny, who would read the fairy tales to me. Then I began to compose my own fairy tales, including in them the episodes of my own life. I could tell them for hours and my parents would listen to me patiently.
     Meanwhile life was preparing lots of revelations for me. Once a small, fluffy and very funny creature – a collie puppy appeared in my home. The dog has become a devoted friend and an attentive listener. And it was my favorite dog, as a matter of fact, that has stirred up my interest in the animate nature on Earth. That was very interesting and fine. But a dreamer is no profession! Where and how to realize one’s dreams and fancies?
   My encounter with TRIZ was an “accidental natural result”. At TRIZ classes an absolutely different world has opened to me. The world of a controlled imagination, where I was fascinated by the greatness of ideas, the beauty and the elegance of solving the problems. I came to know a wonderful world of TRIZ while I was a fourth year student of a biological faculty of Petrozavodsk University.   Like all the students I was thinking about my future, my work, about my life, its aims and its meaning, I was looking for the way to make it really interesting.
     At first my TRIZ classes have become another ( maybe the most important) subject in my not so tense university schedule. It was very exciting and we were fascinated by the fantastic ideas, that were born just in our presence and sometimes even in our own heads. There were seminars, meetings with TRIZ colleagues and books, books…
     Later at the beginning of the fifth year we had trial classes at school. Of course I wanted to tell the children about TRIZ. And of course, my first lesson, I believed, had to include all the information I had accumulated. No wonder, the kids didn’t remember much from my confused performance.   Nevertheless a few pupils from the class where I was teaching, soon joined the creativity club “Heretic”, which was organized by us and my TRIZ teacher at School No. 17 in Petrozavodsk. The club activities have become for me a true school of elaborating, preparing and conducting the TRIZ classes, of searching new forms of teaching, and building up the friendly atmosphere of creativity.
     Unfortunately I was not closely acquainted with the TRIZ founder, H.S. Altshuller. I belong to the generation of “his disciples’ disciples”. But even few meetings with the great Master penetrate so deep in one’s soul that often define one’s worldview, way of action, choices in life. I cherish in my memory the amazingly clear, attentive, wise eyes, the eyes of the man, who has looked far into the future. “Time is filtering through the net of hours people, events and facts. A man can not see into the future, but with every moment of his life he creates the patterns of its mysterious look.”
     And another episode lingers in my memory. At the TRIZ conference ( July, 1997) we were waiting for H.S.Altshuller’s appearance. It was difficult for him to speak but the first words he said completely changed the atmosphere of the conference, defined its direction and contents. He said: “On June 1997 the great inventor Jacques Yves Cousteau died. Let’s review his wonderful inventions and amazing life”. A year later Altshuller himself deceased. Many things are changing, many things are seen in an absolutely different way.   And his ideas are being realized; maybe, we see exactly the same things that his wise insight had discovered long before.
     I was very lucky. In my life there is a person who teaches me every day, who teaches me to be wiser, kinder, more inventive.   We are always interesting for each other. And I know: we are together and it means that all will be fine. My husband has taught me everything I know about TRIZ and creativity. Actually, during the years of work with the children and teachers I have obtained my own interesting experience, and my husband is telling me more and more often: “You know it much better than me”. And I won’t hide from you that I am pleased to share my experience with him, and sometimes even to boast my small and big achievements.
      There is one more wonder, created by H.S.Altshuller. It is the TRIZ movement, to be more precise, the TRIZ “brotherhood”. This is a marvelous community of people, whose main core of life is creativity. The communication with them is often interesting, filled with a deep meaning and helps to move forward. This world too was introduced to me by Michael. I am grateful to him and to all those people who have accepted me in their world, taught everything they knew and would always surprise me by their ideas.
      It happened so that all my life was connected to school this way or another: my mother is a teacher, and since my early childhood I have been watching all the aspects of this hard, unpredictable and very interesting profession. However, a proposal to conduct CID classes (Creative Imagination Development) in the second grade was quite unexpected, as the second graders are still very small kids - how to work with them? I was preparing for my first lesson in the second grade for a whole month. The questions have been piling up.
     And finally the lesson started. During the first 20 minutes I told everything that I had planned for a whole lesson. In front of me there were 30 second graders, who were waiting for the continuation of my lesson. Behind them, in the last row there were a second grade teacher, a psychologist and – “a support group”- Michael Rubin. I felt like leaving the class right away.   ”They should be taught by those who know how to do it, I can’t …”. But my activities in the club “Heretic” have not been wasted, plus the self-confidence which every TRIZ member has: there are no unsolved problems. There is a “Yes-Now” game for the children. Its rules are very simple: the players, while solving the riddle, can ask the questions and the performer can only answer “yes” or “ no”. In the course of our TRIZ classes we were solving lots of problems like that. So, I have found the way out of this situation: the rest of the time the kids spent joyfully looking for the answers and asking the questions. And it was then that I realized that it was my life mission to teach the children to create, to think and again to create. Very soon we have come to a conclusion that everything that we needed for the classes had to be made by ourselves. I don’t mean the materials we distributed for the lessons, or the test cards. “What? How? When?” There were lots of questions and very few answers.
      The work on making a file of materials has been going on for seven years already. Since then the second graders with whom we began the CID course have become the high school students. One more year and they will be choosing their way into the adults’ world.
     I would like to believe that our studies have convinced them that “there is always a solution to any problem”, have taught them to solve the problems they face in a creative way.   As a matter of fact, they are true creators of many tests and whole lessons. It was their curiosity, their questions that has made the education at the “Fairy Tales School” so interesting and fascinating: the trip to the “Fantasy City”, the research of the “Planet of Mysteries”. Those are the titles of different parts of CID course for the elementary school.
     Our CID course makes the steps which help children to get into the world of creativity through the means of an interesting and fascinating game, to overcome the routine of life and learn to solve the creative problems.
     The work on CID course is going on. Besides the lessons with the children, there are seminars for the teachers, who begin to conduct the lessons in their own classes. There are contests on solving the creative problems, new courses are being elaborated, new books are being prepared.
     In the course of these years our life was full of various events, pleasant and unpleasant, happy and tragic. But all the time we remember the words: “any problem can be solved, the problems exist to be solved”. My husband and I are the inventors of the new worlds, where the most important things are creation, happiness of creativity and moving forward. Let’s go together into the world of creativity, into the world of future.

Editor's Note at the Finish of Posting (Toru Nakagawa, Feb. 19, 2002)

     We have just finished posting the whole set of the CID Course Material in English translation. The Course consists of 6 Guide-Books for teachers and 6 Workbooks for children of the 1st to 3rd grade. I am very grateful to the Author, Mrs. Natalia Rubina, for her nice work and for her kind permission of publicising her work in this Web site, and to the Translator, Mrs. Irina Dolina, for her fluent translation work in a much shorter period than we originally expected.
     Rubina's CID textbooks have given us much insight into the education of children on the basis of TRIZ. It is amazing to learn how simply, interestingly, and pleasantly we can illustrate the essence of TRIZ to children. "Creative imagination" as stimulated in the settings of Fairy Tales have contributed much to enhance and broaden children's (and our own) thinking ways. We wish that some teachers or anybody who is interested in teaching children should study TRIZ and the TRIZ-based CID Course and actually introduce them in children education in near future. And at moment, TRIZ students and practitioners, mostly working in the engineering fields, should learn the simplified yet essential parts of TRIZ so as to master the way of thinking in TRIZ.
     We have received a number of responses from our readers in USA, Korea, South Africa, Peru, etc. We wish that the present CID Course material should be pubished in booklets in English, in Japanese, in Korean, etc. in near future. Please send your responses to:
     Author:     Natalia Rubina <rubin@onego.ru>      (Petrozavodsk, Russia)
     Editor:      Toru Nakagawa <nakagawa@utc.osaka-gu.ac.jp>