Digital Storybook of Young Product Innovators: An E-Learning Approach to Support Creative Thinking for Elementary Science

No design, no business. Higher test score doesn't represent better global competitiveness. Creativity is central to the competitive capabilities of 21st century citizens and thus creativity education should play crucial role for every grade curricular. However, the development of creative potential requires work and incubation over time. It takes more efforts than standard curricula can afford. What role can e-learning strategy with focus on science and technology have in sparking innovation? Such e-learning strategy can be the digital storybooks which convey science histories or technology innovation stories with domain knowledge, creative and critical thinking, and problem solving--the basic ingredients of creativity and innovation. Learning occurs within a real world of our daily life. The connections between learners' script memory and contextual learning materials have a positive impact on meaningful learning. Therefore, histories of scientific findings as well as technology innovations would benefit science education especially for elementary pupils. However, there are a few story-based learning materials for primary science curricula. This study design and develop a digital storybook based upon true story of Taiwan young inventors. The process of problem awareness, situation perception, idea generation, solution emergence and selection as well as action preparations are elaborated in the story. Pilot testing of target users show a strong positive attitude toward this digital storybook.