Sembl: Tapping human knowledge and imagination, link by link

We recently had a meeting with Catherine Styles, the creator of the Sembl Project to discuss how Serena and Sembl are both investigating serendipity, but from very different angles.

Sembl Gameboard – this is a board for younger players, at the opening of Round 2, after each of the four teams has added one thing in each corner

The Sembl project is taking place at the National Museum of Australia. They have devised a game where children are given one object in the museum and have to draw a human semantic link to another object, the more interesting and unusual the connection the better. A great example of this is when a group of children linked a piano with the
shackles used for slaves, their reason? They both have keys!

This creative thinking is exactly what we at Serena are interested in.  A teacher recently brought a class of year 5/6 pupils to experience Sembl at the museum. She found that allowing the children to make their own interesting and surprising connections meant they enjoyed their experiences much more, without losing anything from the learning aspect of it.

This idea of creating connections you don’t expect is something we are investigating at Serena, we are keen to show the benefits of Serendipity in all walks of life.

http://sembl.net/blog/