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SXSWEDU 2018: Things I Remember
Check out the following padlet for things I learned at the conference. Padlet URL: https://padlet.com/ywbkreher/6qk74qw8wvbb
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The Insanely Great Steve Jobs and His Overexcitabilities
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, is a pretty intense read of about 600 pages, like the subject himself. What motivated me to press on was the graphic novel by Jessie Hartland. The quirky short novel provided an entertaining summary of Jobs’ life and left me wanting to know more about Jobs’ design approach and thinking processes. I was determined to finish those 600 pages! Much ink, figuratively, has been spilled over Isaacson’s book. Jobs’ inner circle disdained it. Aaron Sorkins’ movie which was based largely on the book was panned but snared a Golden Globe – Jobs’ wife called…
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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…
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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…
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Poetry Practice Pieces 2.25.15
Five Not-So-Easy Pieces My head hurt in my effort to complete these assignments. Ils contestaient missions! And so, I’m still working on the Dickinson one. Enjoy! 1.Five Liner Stiff knotty hands misshapen by age Sculpts earthy tators with black steel blade Practicing the presence of God, he says Can I tempt you to rest your gnarled aching grip His neck stretches, recoils, bent on his sacred toil 2. Sound and Sense (A la Peyton Manning -“Nationwide is on Your Side”) I picked this line from one of Barry Manilow’s popular hit,…
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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…
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Bidart Lipsynch and Imagery
[This post is still under construction.]The last few weeks have been a blur of activities. Does your brain hurt from non-stop mentation? Mine does and did. As Countess Dowager [Dame Maggie Smith] spouts in Downton Abbey, “All this endless thinking, it’s very over-rated!” But poetic imagination is not. To the uninformed, I’m learning to use metaphors in poetry writing, hence this Bidart draft. To Randy and my poetry friends, here are my practice drafts: 1) Here’s my Bidart lipsynching draft 1. [Homonym: Lamp/Lamb] The Poem is a Lamp L A…
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Photowalks
The above two photos were taken on July 30, 2014, on my first photo safari with my colleagues. The next 4 were taken on January 16, 2015 with my new colleagues, Emma and Max, with Tom leading. All photos were taken using my Samsung Galaxy phone. I find this throne-like chair that is blocking the doorway curious. I have a penchant for snapping pictures of trees — blooming, withered, snarling. They are easily symbols of life and death. Architecture is another fave subject. “Don’t they all look the same after…
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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…
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Wonder, Irresistible Learning and Heroic Imagination
The name game is an intriguing one. Word pantomime or labels? A number of people I know, and in the fields I work closely in, dislike labels. Many believe labels have the potential to subtract value from who they truly are. (Have you heard of the “Label Jars Not People” organization established by Siobhan Brady to reduce mental health stigma?) Yet, human beings like to find pattern in chaos and ways to make sense of the world. So being aware of layers of perception about organizers as starting points (versus…
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Magically Imperfect Groupwork
Team Limitless Project Prototype. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeRIMO3Gwkg Group work in Tina Seelig’s MOOC was a rewarding high-impact learning experience for me. In this post, I describe why it was so. We faced quite a few odds. Communication was a significant problem along a few dimensions. Night is day to my team mates. I want to sleep and they want to discuss potential project solutions. We used Whatsapp for synchronous and asynchronous communications after our MOOC message boards failed dismally. [I noticed that Whatsapp is popular with my international friends, but not so…
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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…
