Nine Dots

The “Nine Dots” activity challenged the cleverness and creativity of those who were challenged to answer that puzzle. To be honest I already knew the solution on that puzzle a long time ago. When I was in elementary, our teacher also gave that activity. I never forgot that moment because the teacher did not only teach us the answer on the puzzle, but also a lesson that I still carry on up to these days. But before telling you the story about the lesson I have learned, I am going to tell you first the story about my first encounter with that puzzle. Before the teacher showed us the puzzle, she was also like our facilitator in Technopreneurship 1; she also tackled about the rule of following instructions. I do not but I think that pattern is embedded when an instructor tells his or her students to solve that nine dots puzzle. First, the instructor was going to tell about the importance of following rules and then give the students that tricky puzzle.
Now let us go back to the story. So after she said the importance of following instructions, she at last gave us the main event of that activity. “Connect all these nine dots with just four strokes and without lifting your pencil” that is what she said. So excitedly, I grabbed my notebook and my pencil and started to draw those nine dots. It took me some time to finished drawing those dots cause I want them to look like a perfect square, you know, I also experienced having a mild obsessive compulsive stuff when I was a kid. So I’m done doing my perfect square nine dots. I am ready to answer and show to my classmates how bright I am. So I started drawing lines but before finishing it I screamed internally and said “holy crap I think this is impossible!!” and so I tried asking my teacher if there is a real solution on that problem. Well obviously she said yes so I returned writing down on my notebook and started to draw those none dots again. But instead of making a perfect square, I did not mind what my nine dots look like. I am too busy thinking of answers to finish first so I could show to my classmates how superior I am. Well I hope you will not cringe because you people have to understand that when you go to a private school, everything is a competition. So I have done I think ten plus attempts, still bothered that I might not finish answering the puzzle first. But I think it is okay, everyone is having a hard time answering it also. So after twenty plus attempts something just came out of my mind. “What if I could extend these lines outside the box to solve the problem? Nah, our teacher talks about following instructions I think this is what it is all about”. So I continued answering the puzzle not noticing I am doing the same wrong attempts before. I never tried the idea was actually the key to solve the puzzle. “Times up”, the teacher said. Nobody got the right answer even the one who is always the first honor of our batch. Good news for me. Now the teacher is drawing the nine dots on the board and I feel uneasy because she is not drawing a perfect square, but never mind I am more interested for the answer anyway. So she is starting to draw the lines and I felt a little shock when she was drawing outside the box. “Wait, what?!” I have thought of drawing the lines outside the box but did not do it for I might be not following instructions. But wait, she did not say about that thing. She just said that we should connect all the dots using for strokes without lifting our pencil. So that’s it, I might get the right answer if I followed my instincts; I still boasted that I have thought of drawing outside the box though, silly me. And now we go to the lessons learned part. “Think outside the box” that is the main thought of that activity. When we solve problems, we should not solve by looking the problem alone, use some creativity, and use some clever ideas to solve the problem much easier. I know it is easy to say than to do it but if we practice it everyday then we could live our life much easier. That kind of mentality is what we need in our everyday life and well, since this is a Technopreneurship, this is very useful on this subject too. In Technopreneurship we just do not create project ideas; we create useful ideas to solve some problems we are facing in our environment. We live in a world were technology almost dominates everything, so we should use it properly and use it as an advantage. But as we progress in technology, new problems arise. For example, we have problems on paying cash so we invented credit cards. This system is convenient because if we are short in money for now, we could still purchase some products and pay for it later. We do not have to carry a large amount of cash when we are going to buy something, just swipe the card and we are ready to go. Credit card systems are so convenient until scammers went into the scene. A lot of people have debts and some people benefited from it. So how are we going to solve this problem? The majority are just saying that we should just look carefully on where the teller swipes those cards, but how about thinking outside the box? Why don’t we use a higher technology to solve a problem caused by technology? And this is Technopreneurship 1 is all about. Solving the problems but not limiting the way of thinking on the problem alone. Technopreneurship 1 is thinking outside the box.