Digital Abstract

I've been creating representational art with pastels since I started learning to express myself with the medium, for a rather functional purpose -- to de-stress while writing my dissertation. I love pastel painting but I feel it sometimes cramps my style; I want to be more loose, imaginative, expressive and create from within me.

So at times, I play with PicMonkey to turn my imagination into reality.

I took this photo with my Samsung mobile phone:

I like the look created by the interweaving of the branches, but the image still looked pretty bland to me. I fiddled with the colors. It looked somewhat better but did not exactly capture what my creative muse wanted me to unleash. How do I describe this force? The urge to express is powerful. If I don't find an outlet for it, I feel all bottled up and oppressed like a coil of spring.

Without a digital tablet to brush or swirl colors around the way I do with ink, I played around with layers to change the winter mood to something free-er and more expressive of how I felt at that moment, intuitively, spontaneously.

Here's what it looks like then, when I turn something authentic into abstract art. Just let your imagination lead you, from within. 

P.S. There's no formula for it.  Just play. 

Response to Kevin's "Which Modality"

Wisdom begin in wonder. - Socrates. 

@yinbk I answered your Q with a blog post: Which Modality? Making Music http://t.co/oVxJ8uDD5Y #rhizo15 #clmooc #literacies #nwp Thanks!

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) June 7, 2015

Curiosity got the better of me. I posed the billion-dollar question and Kevin Hodgson responded in a reflective post. Just as he couldn't use Twitter to express his thoughts in 140 characters, nor could I.

To provide a bit of background, I think a lot about the different ways people articulate their thoughts (After all, I'm teaching a course on Seeing Your Thoughts!) -- and primarily, people use text. I often come across Kevin's tweets and they were either presented as cartoon strips, images, sound files or some combo of these. And a must-not-miss, he is a music teacher to impressionable young minds. I had wondered how he picked from his range of creative and communication abilities to express his thoughts? Was there a dominant mode he used for thinking?

Kevin, I could tell that song-writing affects you deeply, in a transformative way. It's where you find your voice. Or which best affords you the opportunity to articulate your deepest thoughts and emotions. Words alone flatten each of us (Sousanis, 2015). If each modality is alleged to afford different ways of meaning-making of this world, I wonder if the combination of music with text produces a powerful alchemy of meaning. I'm not saying this very well. It seems that songwriting is this force, this something that is bigger than yourself, it ensnares you and pulls you in to create something almost incredulously magical to you. You note that:

I revise more with songs than I do with other writing. I admit it: I am a terrible reviser. But with songwriting, every word is a rhythm, and every beat is important.

Alone, without music, writing does not seem to move you to be as meticulous with writing as you do with writing with music. Is it the music then that moves you? Does this point somehow to an educational implication? Should we teach more often with music? With multiple modalities? Have you tried this with your students? Do they write better?

You also mention, Kevin, that you let yourself go, and I'm almost envious and confused by this. Because maybe I don't know how to let go to create in the way you do? Sometimes it happens, and sometimes, it doesn't. Is that the same for you? Powerful emotions move me a lot to write some (crappy) poetry sometimes, mostly prose. I used to want to write a play and stage it. I like singing too, but haven't sung in a choir since I arrived in America. Theatre moves me powerfully. I paint sometimes, not enough. I doodle, not enough. I take photos, and sometimes, I can say I feel that the image is almost incredibly perfect at conveying a mood.

Have you come across Twyla Tharp's book on The Creative Habit and Steve Pressfield's Do the Work? I almost feel like I'm not doing the work. If I want to be powerfully creative or creatively powerful, I have to just act, not think so much.

So, I appreciate your reflective post to my question. One question you didn't answer is a related one. In daily life, you aren't and can't be composing songs to sort out ideas, right? So do you think often in words without music in everyday life? Or words often appear somehow with music? Or does a tune often go on in your head?

Thanks so much for this conversation. I am rambling but what I got away from this reflection is the reminder that we are multifaceted people (I often call myself a boundary/border crosser; a hybridized person). Bringing two dimensionalities together produces something sublime for you. Yet, higher ed is just beginning to see the significance of interdisciplinary work. Ah, let me not ruin the mood.

Looking forward to more creations from you!

The Making of a Course Trailer

The course trailer is up on YouTube. Although it runs for less than 2 minutes, it entails a tremendous amount of work. Many people chipped in to help out given the tight time-frame we had to churn it out. To them I owe a debt of gratitude. Their names were not mentioned in the credits and I would like to use this space to express my appreciation to them.

Thank you, in no particular order, Alice Westerberg, Suzie Fairman, Molly Ransone, Emma Gauthier, Aditi Jain and Arianna DeCastro (both the actresses), Marcus Messner (and his students), Alana Robinson, Mr. Hunt, the cyclist who rode around the block near Lamplighter Roastery, Lamplighter Roastery for the loan of a Sharpie, Dan Silverman who earlier consented to do a voiceover, and last but not least, Max Schlickenmeyer, the videographer, concept designer, and all the roles he had to juggle to rush this trailer out. I hope this didn't ruin his Valentine's Day.

This is a quick recap of what we did to create this video. In time to come, this documentation might provide insight for future revisions.


1. Concept Design

After showing Max, my new media specialist colleague, a copy of my draft syllabus, we strove to craft a script. Since this course is not a content-based course and centers on the abstract topic of thinking, it was a challenge to consider how best to make thinking come alive.

Max came up with the concept to put thought bubbles above the actresses' heads. It was ingenious! Note, if thinking were that simple in real life, we would have less misunderstanding and better communication! But that was the best way in a video to represent thinking visually -- something which cannot be seen.

Hence, and back to the importance of making thinking visible. Visible thinking helps US to clarify and manage our own thinking; it helps OTHERS to become more aware of what we are thinking. It thus improves thinking and leads to deeper learning.

I'm an advocate for getting ideas out of our head and into some form of external representation to facilitate positive action. I'm also an avid learner of all kinds of strategies that can help individuals and groups communicate their thoughts -- using visuals (text and images), movement, sound, and learning as many languages as you can manage. However, unless you are ready to embrace certain dispositions towards thinking, the practice of visible thinking will come slower to you. I'll elaborate on this in my course. It will be an 8-week elective course for undergraduates offered this June. The course site is being developed, but I hope to get it up soon.


*February 18, 2015: There was also location scouting, which I'd earlier neglected to include. We checked out Anderson Gallery but settled on the VMFA.


2. Scripting and Storyboarding

Since we can't see each other's thoughts, Molly encouraged us to use a two-column table to script our thoughts. As I started writing, Max started to draft the storyboard. Even so, these have to be translated into moving images and edited. The first video clip that came out wasn't the final cut version. Why? Two persons can look at the same script and interpret it differently. And there is only so much that moving images can adequately describe a chunk of written text on thinking. Ever wonder how marvelous movies are in condensing a book into a two-hour film? I am more in awe of such feats now. Think of Austen's Pride and Prejudice directed by Joe Wright.


3. Animation of Still Images (and Photography)

Script, storyboard, character development, animation ...

I don't know how Max did it but all I did was help sketch out some characters and he animated them all -- characters and thought bubbles. He could sketch them all himself, much more elegantly; I'm guessing he entertained my efforts because he was too busy. Incorporating my sketches did provide me with some ownership of the video production process and product.


4. Videography (The Shoots) and Acting

VMFA shoot

Lest I forget, the actresses are amateurs who did us a huge favor. In the live shoot at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, I was glad when Molly came along, to hold the equipment (reflector and camera) and at times, to help direct the actresses on how to act.


5. Audio Recording 

Although there is minimal audio in the trailer, there was a part where I did a voiceover to briefly introduce the course. That was completed in our Jazzmosphere recording studio with Emma and Max's help.


6. Evaluation and Feedback for Editing

Several pairs of eyes reviewed it so we could fine-tune it further, including Aditi (who looked at it from the perspective of a student).

Towards the end, we wanted to give greater prominence to the student "who had taken my course" by zooming in on her notes. We weren't able to do that, unfortunately, due to time and weather constraints. We weren't able to reshoot because of poor weather today; inserting it into a scene with a notebook didn't help much either. So, here are the notes by that 'thought-full' student in all its clarity:

Thought-FULL student's notes

PDF version

I once worked in a multimedia company in Singapore in a creative team. This episode reminded me of those days, one of the best jobs I've had in my life, except that I worked in a highly specialized team as an instructional designer/content writer with a programmer, animator, illustrator, project manager, graphic designer and more. Despite this previous experience, there was still something to learn from working with Max and associates. Looking at him shoot POV (Point of View) shots reminded me about empathy in crafting instruction. Max had also invited a cyclist to ride around the block to make the scene less static. All these, and more I cannot detail fully, offered me a glimpse of the workings of an artistic and creative mind. All these learning opportunities filled my mind to overflowing last week, and in a good way!

I'm tired but thankful we made the deadline and probably set a record for producing a course trailer in 5 days, from concept to development. Of course, there is always room for improvement. For me, I was glad when our student actresses enjoyed the shooting process and one of them thanked me for bringing her on this learning adventure. Quite often, it's not about the final product, but the process. I feel privileged to be in a position to add some value to someone's life.

Boundlessness

The limit is not in the sky . The limit is in the mind .

A photo posted by Derek Hough (@derekhough) on Nov 11, 2014 at 9:58am PST

Supporting Faculty to Teach Creatively & Teach For Creativity

[Context: This has been a challenging post to write. I had what I would call a creative-and-memory hangup. So long has lapsed since I started reading this book that I found myself asking, "Why did I underline these texts? Why the sticky notes?" But I'm going ahead to publish these thoughts anyway because this is what learning is all about -- not easy at times. A toast to visible learning!]

Wagner, T. (2012). Creating innovators:
The making of young people who will change the world. New York: Scribner.

[Purchased: February 14, 2014. Done Reading: November 23, 2014.]

It feels good to flip the last page of this book. In Chinese, we say 眼大肚小. Literally, big eyes, small stomach; meaning one's appetite is bigger than one's ability to digest food; i.e. I have more books than I have time to read them. So much has happened since I bought the book. As evidence of my reading achievement and reflection are the sticky tabs in the book.

A couple of colleagues saw me reading this book and inquired about it. This blogpost is partly a response to their questions and a quick reflection for personal application. Bear in mind that I read this book from the perspective of one who initially intended to conduct a dissertation study on fostering creative learning environments. I am thus somewhat familiar with the research literature on creativity and innovation. But there are still some ideas in the book that intrigued me.

1. Creativity can be seen as the confluence of multiple components.

The theoretical research on creativity shows that certain factors are possibly significant in fostering creativity, e.g. Wagner mentions Amabile's Componential Theory of Creativity (1998). The theory has evolved but basically she postulated that creativity-relevant processes (e.g. cognitive style, personality characteristics) and expertise in a domain (acquired formally or informally) provide the foundational raw materials an individual needs to explore and solve problems creatively, but motivation determines what people actually do with their skills and knowledge.

[Several creativity theories and frameworks mention similar components of creativity. I'm going to just list two more:

• Sternberg and Lubart's Investment Theory of Creativity (1991) mentions creativity as being a "confluence" of interrelated resources (intellectual abilities, knowledge, styles of thinking, personality, motivation, and environment) that we need to invest in. 

  

  Sternberg & Lubart's (1991) Investment Theory of Creativity.

• See also Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin's Interactionist Model of Organizational Creativity (1993). ]

After interviewing "scores of young innovators" and studying their ecosystems (i.e. talked to their parents, teachers, mentors), Wagner (p. 200) identifies an innovation-supportive learning culture with these values:

• collaboration 
• multidisciplinary learning 
• thoughtful risktaking, trial and error 
• creating
• intrinsic motivation (play, passion, purpose) 

Although worth repeating, I was looking for something more, as these ideas have been quite widely published in the creativity research literature.  What kept me reading till the end were the many inspiring stories about young innovators and their trajectories to becoming social or business innovators. A thread running through these narratives were the courage and perseverance of these young innovators, their parents and mentors -- how they took the less trodden path to realize or help others realize their dreams.


2. A Few Memorable Quotes 

"What you study is not that important. Knowing how to find those things you are interested in is way, way more important... It's like how I would imagine navigating a satellite through space. You're headed off with a velocity, and, oh, there's a planet over there. I'm going to orbit it a couple of times, and then shoot off somewhere else. How to pick the things you are bouncing off is really about integration -- integration at a personal level...

The classes were transformational for me not because of the content, but because of the people process... This class was great for me because I got to work in teams on these multidisciplinary problems that required bringing together a set of tools to create a solution." Kirk Phelps, young innovator cited in book (p. 32 & 41).

"Here at the [MIT] lab, we take our inspiration from the way people learn in kindergarten, where kids have opportunities to create, design, and build collaboratively." Mitchel Resnick cited in book (p. 182).

Reading as Play. "... the discipline of reading develops the muscles of concentration as well as the habit of self-motivated learning" (p. 211)

... the most important "toys" children needed to develop their imagination and creativity: "Sand, water, clay, paint, and blocks. Once they can use these materials, they can create anything." Beth Wise cited in book (p. 209).

I haven't observed how children learn in kindergartens. But I think frequently about how I learn and my disposition towards thinking and learning. Resnick's quote reminds us not to lose a playful approach towards learning. There is a child in us that still lives on despite our all grown-up exteriors, and it's not a bad thing. Sometimes, when we overthink and overplan, methinks we've killed the inventive spirit, and that child in us has been silenced. Perhaps we've let education and all the bad habits we've learned in schools squash our creativity.

I am privileged. I have many tools, and have access to many more, that allow me to have a voice. Yet I frequently fall back to a few trusty tools to articulate my hopes and dreams -- pen, writing journal, sketchbook, Photoshop, Illustrator, PicMonkey, my blog. We don't need many tools, we just need a few that allow us to express our thoughts. Simple tools facilitate conceptual design. Before I digitize anything, I find that sketching my thoughts out and writing short notes about them are helpful. The questions I ask myself are: What are some tools that best suit your style for exploration and play? Have I set aside time intentionally to play and explore?

I'm very thankful for a set of parents who immersed me in a rich literacy and multilingual environment from young. They didn't and couldn't read to me, but books were always readily accessible. Languages other than English were used interchangeably in my family. Though she didn't know English, my mother would somehow know what English books to borrow for me when I was sick and unable to go to the public libraries with her. The point is, books, and languages, together with tools for exploration and imagination, lead us into real and fantasy worlds where integrative thinking occurs: ideas are unearthed, mixed and remixed. Am I reading and synthesizing ideas?


3. Supporting Faculty to Teach Creatively and to Teach For Creativity

My motivation for reading this book is to learn something in order to better support students of every age and type in their creative pursuits. Creativity is a habit (Sternberg, 2012; Tharp, 2005) and a way of life. I believe we can teach students to cultivate habits that predispose them to think and live creatively.

At the ALT Lab, we advocate that teachers practice connected learning that fosters innovative learning. There is a difference between teaching creatively and teaching for creativity, Bonnie Cramond said. 

There are a lot of teachers who are pretty creative and might think of a creative lesson, but who’s being creative? The teacher is. Teachers can be creative in their lessons but we also want to pull out the children’s creativity.

These are words I want to challenge myself and my colleagues.

My question is: Are we encouraging and supporting faculty so that they can teach creatively and teach for creativity?


References:

Getting Creative about Teaching. (2013, July/August). In SingTeach.nie.edu.sg webzine. Online Issue 43. Retrieved from http://singteach.nie.edu.sg/issue43-people02/ 

Listening with Care

One of my work duties involves observations of learning interactions in an experimental classroom, the Learning Studio. Until I completed the Listening Differently assignment in the Creativity MOOC, I hadn't realized how I had seen the Learning Studio with my eyes, but hadn't captured a lot of other interactions with my ears. The scope of my observation had been limiting and limited. Julian Treasure's video is a fabulous resource to review (Thanks again, Tina Seelig!). He is right; "we are losing our listening." When novelty ceases to be so, we become desensitized to the familiar. It is not just teachers who don't listen long enough for students to articulate their views; we just don't listen very well in these microwave-paced times. And, we don't teach listening in our schools, not very much. We assume we are effective listeners or that our students will somehow pick that up.

Treasure also touches on two other causes to this listening deficit: we are now able to document sounds and images (text, still and moving); there is so much clamor in our environment, we have to shut out noise from the truly deserving sound bites. To quote Treasure, "The art of conversation is being replaced -- dangerously, I think -- by personal broadcasting" (2011, July, Treasure, TED Global). How then could we improve our listening?

I practiced listening more carefully in the class and was able to capture some interactions I had not noticed in the Learning Studio previously (See mindmap above). The most striking detail I had hitherto omitted -- the hissing sound in the room! I wondered if it came from the sound system not being switched off. How ludicrous that I had missed this detail for an entire semester. Yet, it didn't bother anyone in the room, not the teacher, nor the students. It was screaming at my ears that very afternoon!

Silence. Mixer. Savor. Listening positions. RASA. Check out Treasure's explanation in the video for these five ways.

Captioning and transcript available through TEDGlobal link below.

References:

Treasure, J. (2011, July). 5 ways to listen better [TEDGlobal 2011 Video]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better

Treasure, J. (2011, July). 5 ways to listen better [TEDGlobal 2011 Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSohjlYQI2A 

Online Icebreaker: A Life Story Album Cover

Yin's Album Cover A

Yin's Album Cover B

Yin's Playlist

As an online introduction, Tina Seelig invited us -- participants in her MOOC -- to design an album cover of our lives to construct a narrative of who we are. Add to that the creation of a 10-song playlist, fictional or actual songs, and we'll get some bonus points. I created two album covers.  Which one do you think I submitted? A or B? 

I think these ideas are excellent as icebreakers in online teaching. They afford students multiple means to participate in course conversations. It helped me to reflect, synthesize my life experiences and use a succinct title to capture a bit of the essence of who I am. As Tina says, "Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous!" 

April 14, 2014: Although my playlist is in JPEG format, participants were given a space with a text editor to type in text if they do not wish to represent their knowledge in the way I did. 

April 19, 2014: I realized that my visuals are not accessible to screen-readers. So here's a description of each: 

Album Cover A: It has a picture of me seated in a cafe and in a pensive mood. The title of the album is Meditations in Z Minor. 

Album Cover B: It has a main picture of me surrounded by an L-shaped collage of 11 other smaller pictures. Each picture shows a different side of me. The title of the album is Facets. 

My 10-song playlist describes my listening choices at the time of submission. The 10 songs are:

1. No Frontiers (Mary Black)

2. The Rainbow Connection (Sarah McLachlan)

3. Change (Carrie Underwood)

4. Reflection (Soundtrack, Lea Salonga)

5. 天冷就回家 (Come home in the winter)

6. The Fool on the Hill (Beatles)

7. 你的倒影 (Your Reflection)

8. Beneath Your Beautiful (Labrinth ft. Emelie Sande)

9. La Solitudine (Laura Pausini)

10. Rambling Man (Laura Marling)

 

Oblique Strategies to Overcome Mental Blocks

Applicants to All Soul's College at Oxford were required -- until recently --  to write essays in response to a single-word prompt within three hours. These essays were used to gain insight into prospective students' ability to be imaginative and leverage their existing knowledge to make connections (Seelig, 2012, cited in Tina Seelig's MOOC, Creativity: Music to My Ears, 2014).

In a recent meeting, the word "vulnerability" in learning surfaced. I was inspired to associate the word with several books I'd read and some life experiences -- akin to how "oblique strategies" (original concept by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt) are used. [Vulnerability (in learning) will be the inspiration for my next blogpost.] Briefly, Eno and Schmidt joined forces in the '70s to work on oblique strategies after they discovered that they were working on a similar idea. Short phrases or questions were created and printed on cards as prompts to break an impasse and forge a way ahead. 

An online version is available at http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html. There are also mobile apps for these strategies. Thanks to my course peer, Jose Sanchez, from Tina's MOOC for pointing me to these apps. I've installed 2 of them on my phone!

2 Oblique Strategies apps on my mobile phone

An excellent illustration of how oblique strategies work is how Jason Mraz uses a phrase or a song game to spark his creative songwriting process. Check out his video below. Other musicians are also said to have used them for inspiration (Wikipedia, 2014).


Jason Mraz "rain dance" from Stanford Tech Ventures Program on Vimeo.

Again, many thanks to Tina Seelig and my fellow learners in the Creativity MOOC for generously sharing these resources with us!

TyRuben Ellingson: Digital Pragmata Brown Bag

Sketch notes 2/24/2014

TyRuben Ellingson delivered an outstanding talk today at the Academic Learning Commons 4100. I took some sketchnotes for reflection. Two major throughlines for this presentation, as I see it, are:

• How do you become really good at doing something?
• What fosters creativity?

I read and think about deep learning and effective learning -- constantly. TyRuben's talk adds to that mashup of ideas from print and nonprint resources. I see a pattern in learning that is necessary for one to become an exquisite and consummate artist (or an expert in any discipline) over time:

• mentoring or apprenticeship - that is, to be in a position where you can closely observe and pick up the skills and practice of an expert (What would this look like in online learning?)
• obsessive lifelong learning
• sharp observation skills; an eye for detail
• a fearless persistence in looking for opportunities
• never ever think you can't (TyRuben, "I don't allow anything to block [my thinking].") 

Mostly, these are habits of mind we need to cultivate, with grit. 

Thinking through Art: How Prior Knowledge Paralyzes

4th Figure Drawing Class.

We warmed up with 10 gesture drawings. In one minute, I must capture the outline of the model. It is especially challenging when the model knows multiple unusual ways to contort himself/herself. I struggle to capture the essence of the gesture. The bodily muscles exert themselves in peculiar ways that I find difficult to sketch rapidly. Today, I  also have to learn how to use new tools -- it is Conte Pencils instead of the familiar charcoal pencil or vine to quickly build the "armature" that my teacher requires. I try, probably not very successfully. 

He tells me not to use just lines but to use the conte pencil as a tool to show "mass." He walks around again and offers more feedback.

"Don't draw something from what you previously perceived a human figure to look like. You need to capture the impulse." He tells me not to draw something that looks like a human figure and then try to make little changes to it to fit what the model looks like before me. Aha 1.

"Do you mean to capture the essence? The emotion?" I ask. "Do you want us to emote through our drawing?"

He stops the class to address my questions. "I know this sounds abstract. Have you all seen the Raft of the Medusa?" We shake our heads. We google for it on our mobile phones, which we are typically not allowed to use in the class. We found the painting by Géricault. "What emotions does the painting convey?" Danger, shipwreck, fear ...? 

"Try to capture feelings like these in your drawings. Like what Géricault did." [Not his exact words] On the side, the model says quietly, "It is not about likeness." Figure drawing is not about replicating likeness, but about capturing an impulse.

I feel like I have a bad drawing day, but in learning psychology terms, no matter how bad a day it is, I learn how our prior knowledge causes rigid thinking. Art teaches me to let go and to unlearn so that I can have new ideas. Aha (over and over again!) 2.

"Use your imagination. Look at what is before you, not what you think it should look like." Am I looking? Paying attention?

In a previous class, we had to draw with a paper covering what we were actually drawing. I love figure drawing.

#CrashCreativity Thoughts Post 1

This MOOC, Crash Course on Creativity, is taught by Prof Tina Seeling (http://about.me/tinaseelig) of Stanford University and runs on Venture Labs' e-platform. There is a lot of interest in this course with over 35,000 enrollees from all over the world. The platform is pretty minimalistic in a good way, with a menu bar that lets students navigate to Home, Lectures, Assignments and Community.

I've watched a short course video intro so far and a week 1 TED talk by Prof Seelig on the Innovation Engine. Both were not captioned, nor do they have transcriptions (Just observing, I'm not the Accessibility police person!) These are my preliminary thoughts, so far, of the MOOC experience:

1. Energy and Diversity

The nature of the course has attracted many people who are allegedly creative, inventive and entrepreneurial. Designers, artists, entrepreneurs, the wannabes... There is this high energy and intensity about the course and the participants that is palpable. My team of 5 has all these, and probably more. Four have responded to conversations and emails. I hardly know them, but yet, I know them, in a sense. I'm at a loss for words now. It'll come to me. Through preliminary descriptions, I feel that there is something that runs through us all. Before the course officially started, many of these self-directed learners were already active in the course. The course has spawned Groups in the major social media outlets - a FaceBook group, a hashtag on Twitter, a Google+ group, a LinkedIn group. Greetings were issued from various corners of the world. It is truly a group of global learners. Here is where community starts for a MOOC. Students use third-party collaboration tools to connect. Someone has offered to map locations of all learners in the course. Course statistics show 10K people have been active today.I venture to say that a MOOC is all about connecting with someone who has some shared interest with you.

2. Repetition

With large numbers also come repetitive questions about the same concerns.Where are my team-mates? Why don't we do this? ... try that?

3. Teaming with Strangers

The first assignment had people thrown together randomly to complete an assignment on finding commonalities among all members. Well, nice thought, but many groups are voicing their concerns that their teammates are non-existent and unresponsive. Of course, the lurkers and those who just want to audit the course are silent. As a result, a FAQ announcement has been drafted to answer salient issues. The next assignment will be an individual assignment. Prof Seelig is learning that until she hears back from individuals, they should not be placed in teams. Well done!

4. Assessments

Asking creative people who are independent thinkers to find commonalities is an apt challenge, except that some people are just not ready at the first lesson to share their lives. Still, there are 2 more days to go.

Let's see how the community emerges as I participate in the course.

J K Rowling: "I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination"

Rowling is such a beautiful writer. Here are a few quotes from her 2008 Commencement Speech at Harvard.

"Talent and intelligence never yet innoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates..." 

"And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." 

"Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes." 

"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

I love her choice of words. An exquisite speech and masterpiece of writing. A transcript of her speech can be found here: http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/06/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

Assessing Creativity Sternberg's Way

On a little break from dissertation writing, I chose to read something on creativity research. I know, "You call this a break?" Much too serious? *smile*

I'm reading Robert Sternberg's (2012) article on The Assessment of Creativity: The Investment-Based Approach (IBA). He like Tharp (2005), writes that "[c]reativity is a habit" (Sternberg, 2006a, 2006b; Tharp, 2005), "an attitude toward life" (Maslow, 1967; Schank, 1988; Sternberg, 2003b).

He writes about some habitual practices (p. 3) of creative people that have been reported previously.

Creative people regularly do a few things:
(a) look for ways to see problems that other people don’t look for
(b) take risks that other people are afraid to take
(c) have the courage to defy the crowd and to stand up for their own beliefs, and
(d) seek to overcome obstacles and challenges to their views that other people give in to, among other things (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995b, 1995c; see also Kaufman & Sternberg, 2006, 2010; Sternberg, 1999; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2007).

He provides examples of how creativity may be assessed using his IBA to creativity. Interesting certainly, but what intrigued me in the article was also this sentence: "Motivation is not something inherent in a person: One decides to be motivated by one thing or another" (p. 6). This disrupts the traditional perception that motivation may be intrinsic. Sternberg is suggesting that motivation is an intentional way of thinking. The question is, does one always consciously think about and decide what will provide the impetus for one to act?

Some break from dissertation writing.

ID and Educator's Role in Online Learning Part 1

As a certified Quality Matters peer reviewer, I was following the QM thread on online facilitation and teacher engagement in a community board. It brought me back to those days when online learning was just a buzzword. I'd taken ID courses and read quite a bit initially due to my professional interest. I'd even advocated for workshops on facilitating online learning (inspired by a terrific book by Collison et. al) to my boss. Little wonder that I was fascinated by the discussion  in the QM community. The debate on TD (transactional distance) is intriguing. Kay Shattuck, the director of QM, shared some research from various perspectives - Vandergrift, Anderson, Garrison etc. Research, of course, thus far, is inconclusive.

Take these as my evolving thoughts. I've been ruminating about the significance of instructional design vs. the teacher's/educator's role for a while since my Research Apprenticeship study. I've also watched people who weren't trained in ID succeed in instruction way better than those who were. They have a compelling way of teaching. It seems to boil down to delivery which is influenced by teacher characteristics like teacher experience (leading to effective improvisational teaching) and positive affective learning climate supported by the teacher. I've also read bell hooks' amazing book on Teaching to Transgress and couldn't agree more that it takes collective effort to make learning exciting. I don't question which is significant, rather which appears to be more influential most of the time. To me, the teacher holds the key to success in learning: he/she is the instructional designer and delivers the instruction. I definitely think that faculty development or teacher ed is extremely important. I must state outright that the processes of teaching and learning are very complex. I am not demeaning any particular field or discipline by stating that any factor is more important.

With regards to F2F vs Online Learning (OL), I can't say it better than Mike Scheuermann, Associate VP of Instructional Technology Support at Drexel U on LinkedIn when he wrote that "F2F vs. OL is NOT the issue - it is simply not the venue that determines the meaningful learning experience. Instead, it is and always will be - the instructor/facilitator. -- A great teacher can make a bad (or mediocre) course great!" On the other hand, "a mediocre educator cannot make a great course - a great course."

What is critical is channeling resources and efforts to support and enhance how educators function in all learning spaces. [Think Richard Clark, it is not so much the media that makes the difference!]

Creative Problem-Solving in Reality

(Image Source: Tashi Mannox website: http://bit.ly/f8jkfN) 
Note: I learned about these clouds through Dr. Julia Marshall's presentation. Beautiful and iconic -- representing nature, energy, heaven. And I stumbled upon Tashi Mannox by accident. Gorgeous design!

I feel like an instructional designer with a complex problem that requires a novel solution! How ironic! I am studying myself constantly, because 1. I have read up a LOT on creativity, and 2. never tire of learning about it. When someone told me he was interested in studying innovation but not creativity, I am perplexed. How can a person be interested in one (outcome) and not the other (process and means) when they are intricately linked? Why bother? What for?

With my earlier dissertation topic, I knew I wanted to study creativity and sought to match it with the instructional design field because I wanted to extend knowledge in both fields. Now, I have this complex and very important real-life problem I want to solve and I'm figuring out how to craft the most creative and valuable solution. I find this approach to be more engaging and authentic, a tad easier than problem-finding. Maybe the real creative challenge is in finding a problem, which I think Mark Runco wrote about somewhere. I'm really really grateful to be a part of a team that is seeking to solve this complex problem. Kudos to the Access team: Mj, Mi and R and my wonderful friends Mm and EY!

Expert Advice on Community-Based Arts

I'm having a lot of fun right now learning and conceptualizing my yes, new study! I've attended a talk on art-based research (See Nov 30 posting). Today, I had the honor to talk to Dr. Jan Cohen-Cruz, Director, Imagining America, author and expert on community-based performance (CBP). That is, on an unforgettable day of rain and snow, making the walk to Tolley Building a wet and slushy one. Nevertheless, still memorable.:)

Marj had recommended I read her book(s). I've started with Local Acts. It documents the historical origins, establishes the field and introduces the principles, methodology and performance structures of CBP. As an amateur in theater productions in Singapore, it's never crossed my mind before how theater/arts can be such a collective grassroots, hyphenated and cultural event, (possibly guided by a professional) at the same time.

Her book engrosses me in many parts. Reading about her positionality(?) vis-a-vis CBP fascinated me. I could make a similar comparison with myself. An avid arts lover and coordinator in a high school, producing amateur productions for national youth competitions, a first encounter with a Deaf student, then my HOH niece going profoundly Deaf, learning ASL in Singapore and Syracuse, and then being on this Access project. I see several parts of my life connecting me to this dissertation interest.  

Dr. Cohen-Cruz was amazing. She shared many website links, names of people to contact and stuff to read up. How incredibly helpful!

Resources to explore:
Project Muse database (I'd always been using Web of Science!)
www.communityarts.net (archived resources, but on Facebook as CAN, which I'd already "liked")
CAN writer John Sullivan
Linda Frye Burnham
Society for the Arts in Healthcare
Center on Age and Community, Anne Basting, U Wisc-Milwaukee
forgetmemory.org
ESTA, Elders Share The Arts, Susan Perlstein, founder
National Center for Creative Aging

So here I go, again, deep diving into new literature! *SSS-PLASH*

We Remain Ourselves

(Image source: http://bit.ly/idu9Xa)

I was definitely intrigued by the title. Art-Based Research and the Intersection between Making Art and Teaching Art.

"Her primary scholarship is in curriculum development, arts integration, the uses of contemporary art in art education and the intersection between creativity and cognition." Of course I had to make the trip to Shemin's Auditorium at 6:30PM!

Dr. Julia Marshall's presentation was fascinating. She spoke on her art practice and how much she learned from teaching art to younger people, like undergraduates and graduates. That if she had just remained an artist sans the teaching aspect, her life wouldn't have been so enriched. She also presented her own art-making ideas and her students' art pieces. I took away from her presentation several ideas on how to express creativity. And to keep collecting and documenting ideas that fascinate me. Someday, they will come in useful. Like the one above, one of the Beijing Olympic Mascots, Yingying, the Tibetan antelope.

She teaches her students to keep research or reflective sketchbooks which document their development and interpretation of different source ideas juxtaposed to create some novel concept or metaphor of their understanding about an issue.

Dr. Marshall (mentored by Graeme Sullivan, just like Dr. James Haywood Rolling Jr.) believes that art research is facilitated by curiosity, purposeful art-making, investigation and creative interpretation, just like social science or scientific research. Students construct their own knowledge or understanding by observing, collecting, drawing, mapping and reflecting.

She counts Mark Dion and Simon Evans as artists worth following for their insights on art. Some primary sources for art, mapping and metaphor-making? Brace yourself: scientific illustration, maps and diagrams (e.g. acupuncture/reflexology charts), conceptual maps, packaging, popular visual culture. These were some types of maps she used to frame stories.

One clever metaphor was the use of seeds or plants to illustrate the concept of seeds of social change. Dig-plant-seed. *light bulb on*. A seed was painted up and had a propeller stuck on one of its ends to illustrate the idea of accelerating change. Fab.u.lous idea! My mind kept racing as I thought of how her ideas could be applied to the Access project and my dissertation.

She also showed us a student's Map of Printmaking. This particular student placed a veil of tissue over a graph paper and then drew an intricate web with annotations of the history of printmaking. Wow! More student work included metaphors on the Dance of Making Art and Making Meaning (drawings of dancers with words). Dr. Marshall concluded with her own art pieces. As a cartoonist (illustrator), her drawings included maps of the Art of Research. She used snowglobes with images of fallen "empires" on a theme of Snow Globes from Iraq and Afghanistan. Another collage piece was called the Game of Juxtapositions; unexpected elements brought together to unlock creative potential.

She presented a conceptual collage of imagery she created with her sculptor husband, Pangea (Greek for the ancient supercontinent), commissioned by some Korean organization. An enormous collage with images of American and Asian icons.

I'd have loved to ask a few questions but I was famished and everyone seemed eager to get out as it was 8 on a cold night and the winds were howling. I decided then that I'd write about her presentation first and then email her if I wanted to ask her anything later.

Her presentation made me think of how we could work with art students to create a performance with an exhibition. We need to think of several things first: who is our audience, what is our theme, what metaphor can we use to illustrate our message. Think, think.

At the end, Dr. Marshall said, "There is this germ (seed, bud...) in us that doesn't go away. We remain ourselves through life's trajectory." Well said. Through the years, I have stayed close to my interest in the arts and social science, and of helping others express their creative potential.

It's in the blood

Hough agreed, saying that after he began dancing with her: 'I knew that it was in her body, that it was in her blood'

(Image Source: http://bit.ly/cj5NQ5)

Some things are just genetic. I know that I'm more inclined towards the arts. It's a part of me. But it doesn't stop me from learning and growing beyond. However, as I've always been told, be an expert in an area and don't spread myself too thin. It takes too much commitment to be good in more than an area or two.

I got Schmapped!

In the first week of January 2009, I received an email from Schmap, a company that produces electronic travel guides for tourists. They said they had shortlisted one of my digital photos (taken in Vienna) that I had uploaded on my Flickr pro site for inclusion in their e-guide. Of course, I was surprised since I never in a million times considered the thought of taking photos for use commercially or even for any e-zine. Anyway, since it wasn't a big deal, just 1 photo, and the one I least imagined would be artistic and award-winning, I agreed to let them use it for free.

I did go on the Internet however, and found avid discussions as to whether Schmap should pay us. Apparently, that's how they are making tons of money; asking Flickr users for permission to use their photos. Hah! Well, it was certainly a new learning experience for me. I'd never heard of Schmap till I was contacted.

I did think they asked me in a nice way so it was a pleasant transaction. Well, it is now official, my photo is in the 6th edition of the Schmap Vienna Guide. Take a look at the widget on the right of my blog.

Love this talk: do schools kill creativity

So funny & inspiring!