Page 65 - 447

- if it were a ball it wouldn't matter if it got wet
- if the words were all over a ball you could turn it in any
direction and invent your own story
Now ask the class if these would be serious advantages and if they
could really be applied in some way to books.

Invention technique: reversing

Discussion.

Procedure: Write the name of manufactured product on the board,
for example, a book. Ask the students to list the characteristics of a
book. For example:
- it has words in it which tell you something
- it has pages
- it is made of paper
- it is printed
- you can buy it in a bookshop
Now ask the students to try to imagine complete opposites
of all the characteristics of the object. For example:
- it has no words in it, only pictures/symbols/numbers
- it doesn't have pages
- it's solid / a continuous sheet / a film
- it isn't made of paper, it's made of steel/rubber/plastic/air
- it isn't printed, it's empty
- you can't buy it in a bookshop, it's free / you can buy it in a
super market
Ask the students if they can design a new object by choosing some
of these 'opposite' ideas and seeing if any of them could make
sense. For example:
- It could look like a book but it could be empty like a box.
You
could hide things in it.
- It could look like a book but it could be a computer.
- It could look like a book but it could be a sandwich box.
- It could look like a book but be solid. Supermarkets could
give them away and you could put a lot of them on your

63