Technologies for Creative Thinking and Learning

Uncategorized kimiko | 05 Feb 2008 04:49 pm

Week 3

12 Responses to “Week 3”

1. on 05 Feb 2008 at 8:16 pm 1.kevin_lim said …

   As a teenager, I was obsessed with late night host Conan O’Brien, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Animaniacs.

   We had a really cool social science teacher in middle school, and we were really encouraged to stay up with current events. One item that hit the headlines was religion, faith in school curricula. I was asked to present on the question “What is faith?”

   I brought two of my best friends aboard for the project, and we decided to make a variety show out of it. We shot an introductory video in which we used a bit of stop-motion animation and some puppeteering to discuss dinosaurs, creation, cavemen and evolution. The video segued nicely into my running in from the back room (my stage persona was “Kevin O’Brien”), as variety show hosts have been known to do. I did an opening “monologue,” interviewed a couple “celebrities” (my friends) on stage. We even did a variety show staple: we went out on the street with our camera and asked people “What is faith?” We showed clips of strangers’ answers, and even had a musical performance by some of my friends.

   Boy was that a fun week!

   I see the Florida readings about “The Creative Class” and reflect on my junior high variety show, and I can’t help but think of what the current writer’s strike says about the magnitude of importance of creativity and the ability to originate. I feel that creativity includes aspects of synthesis (quality screen writing clearly pulls in threads from the cultural zeitgeist) and origination (screenwriters are also called upon to create new memes and trends).

   The writer’s strike makes me worry about the view on creativity from the tops of these media companies.

   I’ve written far too much, I’ll be sure to have this discussion continue in class!

2. on 05 Feb 2008 at 9:51 pm 2.maryanne_berry said …

   As an English teacher my most creative experience was the design of a project called “Minicourese.” Over a three week period, my school’s 12th graders devised and taught literature to teach the younger students. The process of facilitating the development of curriculum was very exciting. Instead of 4 grade levels of English, for three weeks we offered 75+ courses. Over the 7 years that the project ran, students offered courses in every topic imaginable: The Rebel in Literature, Angel Island Poetry, The Western, Shakespeare, Screenwriting, Historical Fiction. A group studying “AIDS”through literature viewed the AIDS quilt when it came to San Francisco. Another group reading a novel about quilting produced a quilt. Student interest in particular topics would prompt teachers to investigate literature they had never included on their syllabi. Some students who had barely spoken in class, found new confidence when leading a group. We had 1200 students and during Minicourses the dynamic of the school really changed.

   I think what struck me most in the readings was emphasis on the conditions that contribute to or promote creativity. Fischer referencing Engestrom writes, “Creativity does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a socio-cultural context.” I’ve always been interested in how to create an environment in which a person (student) feels both welcomed and challenged to demonstrate his/her creativity. In Chapter 2, Florida highlights many “dimensions of creativity” that also point to creativity as a socially embedded phenomenon. He writes, “creativity flourishes best in a unique kind of social environment: one that is stable enough to allow continuity of effort, yet diverse and broad-minded enough to nourish creativity in all it subversive forms” (35).

   I think that the key for creative thinking and learning is to consider what is at stake for the learner. Sometimes it’s winning. (Florida uses the wonderful example of the Pinewood Derby competition). In the case of my students, it was the opportunity to be in charge, perhaps to be an “expert,” certainly in lead younger students. It’s risky to express one’s creativity. Not everyone needs to win, or even to have the possibility of winning. People also long for acknowlegement, recognition, belonging. Structuring activity so that these are possible rewards can also do much to invite healthy risk taking and prompt creativity.

3. on 06 Feb 2008 at 8:52 am 3.jessica_kline said …

   (Hopefully this week my formatting isn’t crazy. But if it is - my apologies!)

   Before coming to the ischool I ran a library sponsored training program that taught storytime activities to local child care providers and preschool teachers. While the program had a never ending supply of books, there weren’t other props that often accompany storytimes (felt board stories, letter cutouts, and other visuals). However, there where ample materials and supplies to create these props. When I wasn’t out in the community conducting this training or planning upcoming storytime sessions, I spent my time using the materials at hand to make these props for the program. It was fun. I felt like I played half the day. And my friends at work tried to come up with excuses so they too could make their own felt set of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. With this experience in mind, my idea of creativity is the ability to use ones imagination, take advantage of available materials and resources, and experiment in order to complete the task at hand.

   While my creative experience was largely an individual experience (funding limited the program to employ only one person), Sawyer emphasizes the social components of creativity. Specifically, he states that “innovation is rarely a solitary individual creation” and “the most important creative insights typically emerge from collaborative teams and circles.” Although the influence of such social settings is incredibly important, I don’t think that the creative activities of individuals is any less important. Therefore, I tend to agree more with Resnick’s definition of creativity: “learning to come up with innovative solutions to unexpected situations that will continually arise in ones life”. In essence, team work is ideal, but not all situations provide such opportunities. In my case, I would have preferred a team environment, but made do with friends occasionally brainstorming and helping create potential storytime props.

4. on 06 Feb 2008 at 8:53 am 4.seungwan_hong said …

   On Conceptual dimension and new media applications:
   After reading Social creativity: Turning Barriers into opportunities for collaborative design

   Without doubts, creativity is based on social activities. Please, remember your art class, you discussed with your friends about your or their picture, or you observed other friends’ well made sculptures. Fischer’s article mentions such creativity through social collaboration through technological aids. On conceptual dimension chapter in his article, I add my opinion on that.

   Firstly, I support more “Community of Interest(COI)” model than “Community of Practice(COP)” model for increasing student’s creativity. Creativity is based on improvisational moments through discussion and collaboration, as social activities. It includes exploratory studies and unexpected discoveries, not just making art-products or efficient product making process what COP model usually do. Especially, in art class, students can share their common knowledge about mediums, ideas about topics, and expressional technique through seeing and talking each other. Technological application might consider such fundamental behaviors.

   Secondly, for COI, Fisher just mentioned “making all voices heard” in technological solution. I want to more specify his ideas according to technological applications. On drawing or painting projects, I think three functions are needed: an online-based image viewer to display student’s artworks, and chatting and voice-chatting for evaluating, and attaching memos for recording the evaluating. Current web-pages or MSN is some what useful for drawing and painting collaborative projects. On sculptures or three-dimensional artworks, online three-dimensional viewer/place seems appropriate with chatting and attaching memos. The spatial structure of Second Life will be useful for sculpture-art work classes. Displaying and evaluating 3D sculptures in virtual place are possible to give unexpected chances for creativity with students. Like the examples, technological application might reflect the characteristics of artworks in collaboration.

5. on 06 Feb 2008 at 9:58 am 5.jonathan_brack said …

   One of the most creative experiences I have ever been involved in a was as an undergraduate, here at UC Berkeley. I was taking a course that was focused on the experience of men of color in the United States. My final project was with a partner — we created a short video documentary of the social construction of the black male image in hip-hop culture. Through the use of a VHS camcorder and a couple of VCRs, my partner and I spliced together hip-hop videos, interviews and commentaries from local artists and college students on what it meant to be a black, male and in hip-hop.

   This was by far the most creative experience of my undergraduate career. As a History major and African American Studies minor, I was used to courses with heavy reading loads and a minimum of two papers and/or in class essays finals. The creation and development of this video in a collaborative effort with a black female partner, went through the spiral of knowledge that Resnick (2007) is writes about. Imagine, Create, Play, Share, Reflect, and back to Imagine. In hindsight, we were able to start his cycle because the professor for the course gave an open-ended assignment – allowing us take the final project where we wanted to with it.

   Throughout the process my partner and I certainly created, played and were able to reflect on the video that we were making. And as Sawyer (2006) advocates for schooling, both of us were engaged in ‘disciplined improvisation’ . Neither of us had any video production experience and with limited technology – we were put in a situation where adapting to unforeseen situations and thinking through problems were crucial to our project. In fact, I think that the content of the video itself was sub par – but the creative process of making the video made this one of the most enriching educational experiences in my life.

6. on 06 Feb 2008 at 10:17 am 6.katherine_ahern said …

   A couple of weeks ago I had an unusual band practice with my jazz trio. We generally perform songs written by others, but recently we’ve started composing and adding music to original poetry, and it was my first thought when asked what my most creative experience has been. We get pretty wild and emotional when we do our original pieces!

   It is a different experience, though, than Fischer’s descriptions of interaction and collaboration distributed through time and space. There’s no evolving artifact in jazz performance (the experience of recording tracks and building songs one track at a time would be a better example of an evolving artifact potentially involving many people). Fischer’s description of creative activity growing from interaction and collaboration (rather than being the product of a single creative mind) rings absolutely true with my jazz example, though - the qualitative experience for me was one of musical conversation rather than me providing a single musical “output.”

   The discussions of place in Florida’s book seems relevant to my jazz example - coincidentally, all three of us band mates are U.C. Santa Cruz alumnae (though we didn’t know each other in college). There is an unusually rich jazz/world music scene in Santa Cruz, we’ve been lucky to get exposure to a lot of great music from cultures around the world, which I was reminded of reading Florida’s ideas about how diversity supports creativity.

7. on 06 Feb 2008 at 12:32 pm 7.hsin_hsien_chiu said …

   In terms of the dimensions categorized in Gerhard’s article “Social Creativity: Turning Barriers into Opportunities for Collaborative Design”, from my perspective, “spatial, temporal, and technological” are related to format and interface of collaborative design, while “conceptual within/ between domains” involves more content and purpose of design collaboration.
   One of my experiences for collaborative design is participating in primary theme lantern design of Taipei Lantern Festival in 2001. From Gerhard’s viewpoint, the major CoIs (communities of interest) of entire project includes officers of Dept. of Cultural Affairs, architecture designer, art designer, structural engineers, manufacture companies, and construction companies. The main task is to design a 30-meter-high, 45 meter-length lantern. Being the architecture designer in the project, I discussed with another art designer mostly through telecommunication, e.g. e-mail and msn, during the first design stage. After sharing ideas and having common concurrence, we start to meet with officers and other experts in person several times. During physical communication, we decide the main topic for the primary lantern “The New Age of Digital and Technology” to match the main theme promoted by Taipei City Government in 2001. So I choose 3D software, Form Z, as a design tool and share the design files in AutoCAD platform with other experts.
   When facing to the manufacturing stage, we communicated with metal factories and construction companies back and force frequently based on the same platform with digital files. All CoPs and CoIs could negotiate and communicate one another accurately and efficiently. Taking advantage of digital technology, we are allowed to produce high-accuracy artifact in such a large scale in less than 6 months.

   http://photo.xuite.net/berkeleychiu/2297817/1.jpg

8. on 06 Feb 2008 at 8:22 pm 8.jon_breitbart said …

   When thinking of the most creative experiences I have been involved in, I can’t help but think back to the classroom of the my 8th grade science teacher, Mr. Hornick. Mr. Hornick was a new teacher who had left his job on Wall Street because he wanted a to contribute to society in a more creative and engaging way. Because of this, he was very enthusiastic and also was not afraid to break free of traditional structures, values, and roles - perhaps in response to the organizations he had worked in before!

   One particular activity that comes to mind when thinking about my most creative experiences was his assignment for us students to create our own ecosystems. We had been studying how animals and the environment interact with each other and the processes that occur that result in a balanced ecosystem. After studying some examples of food chains, water cycles, etc., Mr. Hornick broke us into small groups and told us that we were to work together to create our own ecosystem. He had us design an environmental setting and to create the animals that would populate that space. In a mixture of sketches, drawings, diagrams, and writing, we spent a couple weeks working together in our groups to create a coherent and functioning ecosystem. Mr. Hornick would check in with us periodically and ask us questions, prompting us to clarify things that might have been unclear. He had us share our designs with other groups in the class to get input and new ideas about how to solve problems or help us think about factors we may have overlooked.

   This project resonates especially well with Florida’s discussion of the danger of the “romantic myth of ‘creative genius.’” By allowing us students to be creative and attempt to design something as complicated as an ecosystem, he provided us with the belief that our ideas, no matter how amateur or uninformed we thought they might be, were valid and, as Florida put it, Mr. Hornick was instilling in us the belief that creativity was based on “the ordinary abilities we all share” and that it is something that everyone can aspire to. Sawyer’s discussion of productive argumentation and the externalization of ideas is also reflected in this activity, as Mr. Hornick did not throw us into the project blind, but provided some background, as well as scaffolding along the way. But in this scaffolding, he focused on asking us questions of us and encouraging us to come up with the answers to those questions on our own, by examining them amongst our groups and by collaborating and sharing with other groups. A persistent theme in the Florida and Sawyer readings is the balance between structure or organization and creativity and the tension that can exist between these two forces. I think that Mr. Hornick had an especially keen eye for creating this balance. By providing an environment where his students were encouraged to and not afraid to try new things and put their ideas out their, he also provided the guidance and context that made these activities purposeful and meaningful.

9. on 06 Feb 2008 at 10:43 pm 9.anirban_sen said …

   Hip hop music grew out of the remnants of the disco, funk and r&b movement, which in turn grew out of the roots of bebop, jazz, and gospel. In Florida’s book, he mentions that creativity tends to gravitate towards and grow around certain geographical locations. He theorizes that the “Creative Class” that the American workforce is evolving into tends to prefer areas that foster this type of open thinking and growth of ideas. I would further this hypothesis by saying in addition to this, it is often necessity that is the mother of invention.

   Hip hop music emerged as a direct result of necessity. It germinated in the streets and clubs of New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was birthed by creative individuals with little or no resources who wanted to have a good time, and also find an outlet for their expression. This is where the necessity caused hip hop culture to form in its basic elements. People started using their bodies and contorting them in different ways, often only on a piece of cardboard laid on concrete. People, often without the benefit of a sound system, started making music with their mouths and throats. This gave rise to beatboxing. Others spouted impromptu poetry at the spur of the moment to the rythm of the beat which became known as ‘freestyling’. At the same time, graphic artists produced masterpieces on the sides of walls, and trains, which initially was treated as vandalism, but to a true hip hop artist, it was a badge of honor! People also found creative ways to express themselves in the clothes they wore.

   Hip hop culture went from New York City to other urban areas around the US, and then grew in popularity around the world. The evolution of the culture was brought about by people of the new “Creative Class”, and individuals who were not afraid to be different. One of my close friends is a beatboxer and it was thanks to him that I witnessed one of the most creative expressions I have ever seen in my life. I went to my first beatboxer show about 3 years ago in Berkeley. My prior impression of beatboxing was that it was an undeveloped form of vocal percussion only to be used in the absence of electronic equipment. Instead, I was reminded of the reason why I fell in love with hip hop in the first place! Beatboxing has evolved into a fully fledged art form. The practitioners have learned new techniques of vocal percussion, and sound effects to eschew the need for any electronic equipment except for a microphone!

   Overall, I do agree that the evolution of the creative class occurs due to people gravitating towards certain locations that are fertile for innovation. However, in some cases, it also occurs because of necessity. People create communities to belong to in the absence of them. Hip hop grew primarily in disenfranchised and misunderstood youth often in rebellion to the establishment.

10. on 07 Feb 2008 at 1:40 am 10.pierre_tchetgen said …

    When I first thought about my best creative experience, my mind went directly to the Story and Media project at Nancy B Jefferson, a Chicago Public School housed within the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center where youth, ranging in age from ten to nineteen, are typically detained for around one month, while some stay only for a few days and others still remain for as long as two years. During the 2005-2006 school year, I worked as a teaching-artist in an elementary special ed class and later on as co-facilitator of the 2006 Summer Program, which involved several teachers from Social Science (Ms Massie-Peterson, Mr Quinn), English (Mrs Marion), Special Education (Mrs Arthur) and Science (Mr Hanchey) in a two-week arts-media workshop with their students using digital storytelling (presentations, slideshows, video storyboard, audio recordings, graphics etc)

    This project, developed in 2005-2006 with researcher Dr. Eleanor Binstock (National Louis University) in collaboration with teachers and students of the Nancy B Jefferson Alternative School, consisted of an Internet project, arts-technology workshops for teachers and their students, a reading series in the Chapel as well as a final media forum with boys and girls from the upper and elementary sections of the school to discuss students’ summer projects.

    During each in-class meeting, we aimed to :
    • Engage/encourage students to speak from their own experience/knowledge
    • Review/discuss works, ideas & concepts (folklore, media, ecology)
    • Plan/organize specific tasks, prompts, questions or resources
    • Write/produce original creative narrations individually or in groups
    • Archive stories on the web for peer review and teacher evaluation

    Although the conditions of the school made it difficult for the equipment to be put to optimal use, the response and enthusiasm
    from the youth kept the learning cycle turning. Our approach was very akin to the kindergaten process tips (Mitchel Resnik, in that students were encouraged to work on topics and roles that they naturally enjoyed. The classroom teacher would later reveal that this simple decisions helped avoid some of the usual tensions during activities.I will discuss this more in class.

    -pt

11. on 07 Feb 2008 at 2:20 am 11.aylin_selcukoglu said …

    I’m all about the “little c creativity” that Resnick brings up, “creativity within one’s personal life” as opposed to “big C” creativity which “transforms the boundaries of an entire discipline or domain.”

    One of the most creative experiences I’ve encountered is my time as a consistent member of a fandom. I was a sophomore in high school and just started watching this WB sci-fi drama, Roswell (somewhat embarrassing to admit now, but it had a good first season if you were, you know, into a bunch of high schoolers who happened to be aliens). I’ve always been a fangirl at heart, but this was the first and only show where I had the time to actually become part of the obsessive fan culture online (at this discussion board site - fanforum.com). I was part of the flourishing “participatory culture” that Henry Jenkins talks about (though this was pre-YouTube and Flickr) and Resnick cites in his paper.

    My parents thought I was wasting my time on the computer and they struggled with motivating me to do other things like practice the piano (which I was horrible at). They never really understood that this was my “little c.” This was a community of creativity focused on what I was interested in. A group of people writing fanfiction, developing websites and fanlistings, creating fanart (e.g. desktop wallpapers and icons), and creating music videos of remixed clips from episodes. Reflecting back, I realize that in this setting we were all learning through the “kindergarten approach” that Resnick illustrates: imagine -> create -> play -> share -> reflect…[cycle back].

    I was always more interested in the community aspect of the fandom, but I edited my friend’s fanfiction, critiqued my friend’s fanart, and once in a while created some art of my own (my first explorations into Photoshop). It’s funny looking back now, how much of that time really impacted me and my fellow fangirls. I only keep in touch with three of the people I met there, but two of them went on to pursue graphic design in college. They both attribute their participation in the fandom and their time creating fanart in this community as a catalyst for this decision. Now they’re a part of the “Creative Class” that Florida describes. All because of Roswell and FanForum.

12. on 08 Feb 2008 at 10:25 am 12.liz_goodman said …

    The most satisfying creative experiences I remember have emerged from or occurred within conversations within constraints — that is, when I’m working with others to solve a problem that has already been described. For example, when I worked as a costume designer I would talk with directors and actors about how to respond to the needs of the scene and the character. We’d both sketch out ideas, relying on the text and the actors’ movements to spur our imagination. Then I’d synthesize those rough ideas into more coherent pieces, which became sketches. So it was a cycle — first planning alone, then conversation, then reflecting on the conversation and producing more work on my own. Thinking about today’s readings, I found two points of response.

    First, all the actors saw creativity as social — though at different points in their models of creativity. Florida emphasizes the collaborative aspect of innovative thinking, as in Edison’s labs, Resnick calls for attention to how sharing one’s ideas after a “first draft,” and Sawyer looked at longterm work by informal teams. Certainly, I don’t think well when I’m alone; my most interesting thoughts happen in long conversations, when I can bounce ideas of others or use their ideas to move a lagging discussion along.

    Perhaps most important, for me, were discussions of the tension between freedom and constraints in creativity. I personally find constraints helpful in a few ways; unlimited freedom is too overwhelming. Though, as Florida writes, creativity can be subversive, there need to be structures and constrains in place already to even define what “subversion” could mean. As well, constraints seem to help in focusing effort. For example, Resnick’s Scratch project limits the way children can arrange their “blocks” in order to help them make working programs faster. Constraints, of course, can be rigidly limiting, or even dispiriting. But remembering Florida’s story of his father’s workplace, we can see how the variation between the relatively inflexible arrangements of mass production and the places were improvements could be made left openings for independent activity for the workers.

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