Blogging Around: Tina and Justine

Tina G

In Tina's "Get Organized" blog entry, she talked about the 'moral' dilemma she had with that assignment and how she hates doing projects or anything for that matter half way. However once she got organized with how she was going to approach cleaning her room, she felt calmer and by the end she was satisfies with the outcome. I felt exactly the same way, so I commented:

Tina this is crazy, that is exactly how I responded to this assignment! I seriously could not imagine just casually cleaning up my room in 45 minutes without cleaning my carpet, under my bed, in my desk drawers, and in my closet. It made me go crazy just thinking about all of the things I wouldn't 'have time' to clean in that amount of time.
You're awesome.
Love, Rachel.

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Justine G

In Justine's 'Best of Week: Starlings' blog post, she talked about how viewing this video about the starlings was important to understanding how people used to explain the world around them, and how myths shaped history. I also liked that video, so I commented:

That was an amazing video! I thought coming up with a myth to go along with that phenomenon was difficult in the beginning but after I thought about it for a few minutes I remembered a similar project we had to do in the 8th grade and then the ideas would not stop flowing. It was slightly more difficult to come up with a scientific theory and that might be because when someone is thinking about science, the idea of creativity isn't the first to come to mind.
Props girl.
Love, Rachel.

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Until next time,
Rachel.

Metacognition: Get Organized!

For my "Get Organized" project, I decided to organize my room.

At first I was fairly reluctant to organize my room because I do not spend more than 3 days out of the week in that bedroom so I did not see the point in spending my time cleaning a basically vacant room. However, I thought about it and realized that my room was a mess and I would feel better if it was clean.

Originally I hadn't planned on doing anymore than cleaning out my drawers and organizing my clothes but for some reason I had to start with my bed and make it orderly so that I could put the things that I needed to organize on the clean bed.

I started with taking all of the blankets and books and clothes off of my bed and stripping off the sheets and the comforters. Then I put new sheets on my beds and new pillow covers, and then put the blankets and pillows back on the bed. Next I cleaned the floor, organized my desks and then organized the inside of my clothes drawers.

After I had finished however the floors were a mess of books and papers, not to mention half of my clothes. I realized that I could not go on with the organizing of my clothes drawers without cleaning up the clutter on the floor.

BUT THEN, I realized that items on the floor needed to go on my desks which were basically invisible underneath the cups, papers, yogurt tins, lotions, and books. So I now had to clean off the top of the desks and throw out the trash and put the papers and books away in extra drawers.

Throughout this whole process I was completely aware of how long this whole project was turning out to be but I wasn't necessarily upset. Once I got started I wanted to keep going so that my whole room was no longer a chaotic mess.

I finally got to my clothes drawers and I decided that I wasn't only going to organize them, but I was going to go through the clothes and pick out the clothes that I never wear and give them away. I've done this before, but this time I did not want to convince my self that I would wear that blue top one day even though it's been in there for longer than a year AND it doesn't even fit. Talk about hoarders.

At the end I felt very accomplished that I had done all that, and now my room had this new calming feel to it that made me want to clean my other room at my moms. But then again I probably won't. That room is 10x more worse than this one was...

Anyway, what I found out was that I have a very specific way that I need to go about cleaning my room. My though process was very organized and it reasoned out what I needed to first in order to do the next step and so on. I hadn't realized it before this project that my mind functions a lot more calm(er?) when my room is clean.

Until next time,
Rachel.

iMedia: Silk

I chose a prompt that required that I pick either an image, a video, or a musical composition to write about. Silk just so happens to have all three of those aspects.

It's an image because you can create this wonderful picture of art that you create and you can share it around the web.

It's a video because you are creating this ongoing sequence of designs that you can move and create for however long you wish.

It's a musical composition because it has this beautiful sense that the patterns are being created to the sound of music, and it has this musical flow as it's being played back when you're done.

Silk is an experimental interactive generative art page created by Yuri Vishnevsky. It's available in the app store for iPad, but I happened to 'stumbleupon' it on the website StumbleUpon.com. When I got to this interactive webpage I was awed by how unique and intricate the designs were with just a click of the mouse. By clicking anywhere on the black screen and you will create a beautiful wispy pattern as you move the mouse.

It struck me how anyone could create beautiful art through technology on a website. It also struck me how a program so complex could be used so simply by everyday people.

This kind of advanced technology should matter in our culture because it gives us the chance to integrate art when into the world of computers. I believe that this simple website is so important to me and our culture because it gives anyone the opportunity to create a beautiful work of art while stimulating our creativity.

Try it. Experiment with your creativity.
 
http://new.weavesilk.com/

Until next time,
Rachel.

Best of Week: Sophie's World

This week in class we began reading the novel, Sophie's World.

So far, the book follows a 14-year-old girl, Sophie, who started mysteriously receiving letters from an unknown person. The letters have either been questions addressed to Sophie like, "Who are you?" or "Where does the world come from?" or have been written lessons teaching her about the History of Philosophy.

What made me stop and think were the lessons her 'teacher' sent her.

The lessons talked about all kinds of Philosophers and their theories about the world that completely fascinated me. They asked questions that I had never even considered to ask. The whole idea of this novel seems to be to get the reader to stop and really think about these questions as if they're the ones being asked.

I've sometimes wondered about these kinds of questions but they've never consumed me the way that they consumed Sophie's thoughts and actions. They've never gotten in the way of hanging out with my friends or not being able to focus at school like they did to Sophie. (But then again I'm not the one who received mysterious letters questioning who I am from a random person).

But the problem might be exactly that. We all know about these philosophical questions but for whatever reason, they don't interest us. They don't have that wow factor that seems to be affecting Sophie.

This book has already got me thinking philosophically about the questions Sophie is being asked and we're only on the first 50 or so pages of the book. I can't wait to read the rest.

Until next time,
Rachel. 

Metacognition: Quarter 1

Throughout this quarter I have learned many things about myself.

The Mindbook assignments taught me things about myself that I did not know. I learned that when I start a project I start off with one intention for the project. But as the assignment progresses I find myself adding details and coming up with new thought processes and ideas as I'm working. One thing I did not know about myself is that I am capable of thinking on a deeper level when it comes to a project that seems simple.

Through the essays I learned about "The Elusive Big Idea" and how social networks are not helping but rather suppressing the creative personalities we all possess. "The Creative Personality" helped me learn about what makes a person 'creative' and made me reflect on my own personality. I learned the reason of why our nation seems to be falling behind academically from reading "The Creativity Crisis". These essays all teach something specific and I learned that when I take the time to really read them, I'm overcome with the wisdom I hear in those sentences.

Finally, reflecting on all of these essays through my class blog. At first I was a little terrified at the idea of having to write my own blog and be graded on my posts, but as I was writing my first entry the words would not stop flowing! On every entry since, my posts have been significantly longer compared to those of other classmates and it's only because I had so many thoughts and ideas running through my head that I had to express them all in each post. This blog has taught me to open my mind to the ideas inside of it and put these thoughts to paper (or virtual paper).

If I can learn all of these things in the first quarter of the school year, I can only imagine what's waiting for me in the next three.

Until next time,
Rachel.

 

Blogging Around: Justine and Stacey

Justine G

In Justine's, "Connection: The Creativity Crisis and School" blog entry, she talked about how the crisis in our schools and nation is the lack of time that kids have to be creative anymore because we have adopted China's old education system. Because we have adopted this system, we are no longer focused on the creativity of our kids, and we are more concerned with how much information we can pound into every students head. Her post represented what I also believed to be the problem and I replied:

I loved this post because it was short but incredibly important! You were able to explain the problem, compare it to another nation, and get the reader (me) really thinking about what we could do to fix that problem.

I definitely agree with you on the fact that we, as teenagers, rarely have time for ourselves with all of our school work and jobs that we no longer have to time to create or be creative.

Nice Work!

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Stacey L

In Stacey's "Best of the Week: Born Into Brothels" blog post,  she talked about the movie Born Into Brothels that we watched in class that week, and about her conflicting emotions towards the children. She talks about how it was difficult to fight back the tears when watching the way these children were living but also the incredible joy she felt when she realized how smart and insightful these kids were. I was touched by her emotion so in response I wrote:

Stacey,
I loved this post. There was so much passion and emotion overflowing in your writing that it made me feel exactly what you felt while watching that movie.

I'm so glad that after you mentioned how insightful the children were, you ended the post with that quote because that was one of the top things that really stuck with me after the movie ended. It astounded me to hear that kind of wisdom come out of the mouth of a 10 year old boy.

Awesome Post!

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Until next time,
Rachel.

Best of Week: "The Elusive Big Idea"

This week the most important idea that I think our class talked over was the ideas that were presented in the article  "The Elusive Big Idea" by Neil Gabler. 

In his article he talked about how we live in a post-idea world and that all the ideas that have ever been useful or can ever be useful have already been thought up. How the only thing that is important in our generation anymore is the obtaining of information. As much information as possible and knowing more information than any other person rather than thinking about that information and using it to try and comprehend the world and people around us. 

His article made me think about how our generation is all about a obtaining as much information about our friends and our family and even random facts that we find when we are following someone on Twitter, and less on creating thought-provoking ideas. Of course he talks about how Steve Jobs is obviously someone who had brilliant ideas and was a great inventor, but the things that he invented were material objects not ideas or thoughts that give us insight into his inventions or even into comprehending the world. That is something that we are missing in this generation, ideas. Now you are undoubtedly thinking that Steve Jobs did exactly that, he had ideas and he used those ideas to create something revolutionary, but it's also apparent that his ideas were profit-making inventions, not ideas that challenge you to think intellectually. 

Because of the overload of information that we take in everyday, we don't have the time to really process that information and really think about how it connects with the world around us. "We are inundated with so much information that we wouldn't have time to process it even if we wanted to, and most of us don't want to" (Gabler "The Elusive Big Idea). 

He also talks about how we have all of these sites and blogs dedicated to the expression of ideas like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr etc., but they are basically just different ways to exchange information from one person to another as easily as possible, not necessarily ideas. I truly believe that these sites, although they were originally meant for ideas, have essentially become corrupted and they're one of the things that keeps my generation from creating ideas. I've noticed that we have this sort of obsession with Twitter and Facebook because of how it helps us attain more useless information about anything that happens at any given moment.

Of course there are the exceptions of people who do actually spread ideas, thought-provoking ideas, that get the Twitter and Facebook population to really think about their ideas, but I agree with Neal Gabler when he says, "To paraphrase the famous dictum, often attributed to Yogi Berra, that you can't think and hit at the same time, you can't think and tweet at the same time either, not because it is impossible to multitask but because tweeting, which is largely a burst of either brief, unsupported opinions or brief descriptions of your own prosaic activities, is a form of distraction or anti-thinking" (Gabler). 

For example, because you're only allowed 140 some characters on a Twitter post, you can't arguably produce an idea that makes people think. Makes them wonder about this idea and the possibilities it holds. Of course it is difficult for someone who has boarded the information train to get off easily, but I plan on not becoming a victim to information. Just by reading this article, I am able to understand what Neal Gabler is trying to get my generation to think about. This article is an idea. It is exactly what we are missing and he is presenting this idea that we have a shortage of ideas by expressing his ideas.

Did you get that?

Let me rephrase. Neal Gabler uses his article "The Elusive Big Idea" to express to us how thought-provoking ideas are almost non-existent in this generation. He is expressing this idea to us and is forcing us to think about that idea, and when we think about that idea it created thought-provoking ideas from the reader.

Now do you get it?

Think about it.

Until next time,
Rachel.

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Connection: "The Sea of Information" to Being a Good Student

This week we were assigned to read The Sea of Information by Andrea Barrett and, "Prepare for discussion three passages that express an insight about creativity." -Mr.Allen. When it came time for me to look over the homework assigned on the class website, I read the above explanation for the assignment incorrectly. I thought that it had meant write about three passages that explain how she expresses her creativity.

Boy was I wrong.

The next day there was a quiz on the essay, and for the quiz we had to write down almost the exact same thing we did for homework, and it wasn't until I was flipping through the essay looking for useable notes that I realized I had done the assignment completely wrong.

By sheer luck I had underlined the first of three ways that she, "express[es] an insight about creativity" and that ended up being the only thing I wrote down the entire quiz. 

The next day we went over the answers that Mr. Allen believed to be correct and I noticed that the answers were almost describing exactly what I didn't do to complete the assignment right.  The Sea of Information seems to be indirectly related to how someone can be a good student. Her first point was:

               #1. "Study the work of other creators and be a good student. 

                    The work of others in terms of structure and language can 

                    inspire you to create (10)." (Mr. Allen's 1st answer)

This first point informed me that to be a good student I have to take the time to study in depth the creations of other 'creators' essentially. If I had done exactly that, I would have been able to read the entire essay and point out exactly where she gives insight about creativity. Not only does this relate to my incomplete assignment, but also to my creative thinking process. In addition:

               #2. "Inhabit other worlds through reading. This allows the 

                    creative mind to think in other realities and live beyond its 

                    own, generating a richer pool of ideas for creative work 

                    (14)." (Mr. Allen's 2nd answer)

The second point in a way was informing me of the importance of expanding my creative mind by thoroughly reading the essay and other literature. By doing so, I won't miss it's main points and I'll be able to do the assignment correctly while also helping my creative mind to think beyond my own reality. Lastly:

             #3. "Finding the voice of your work is very important. You 

                  have to feel your way into it by constructing the basic frame-

                  work of the work, then add the details later. In other words, 

                  be willing to sketch (18)." (Mr. Allen's 3rd answer)

Finally, the third point is a way to bring all your thoughts together and figure out what your personal voice is in your work. By doing so, you'll be able to set the foundation of your creation and then have options as to what your next move will be based on that foundation. For me it means following the guidelines of the homework while adding my personal thoughts or voice to the work as well.

The Sea of Information informs students like me on how to be a good student by giving step by step instructions on how to accomplish that. They are related because, perhaps without knowing, she (and Mr. Allen!) created a guideline for students to follow when it comes to being a good student. The relationship between these two subjects matters to me because I am the kind of student who has a lot of trouble thoroughly reading the packets that my English teachers hand out. This essay gave me insight into the things that I am doing wrong when it comes to analyzing stories or essays and how I can change the way I approach the assignment (or my creative mind). 

The next time you encounter a homework assignment that seems difficult, remember the instructions that Andrea Barrett and my teacher Mr. Allen taught here today.

Until next time,

Rachel.

Carry It Forward: The Creative Personality

Can you remember your first grade teacher? How about second? Or third? What do you remember about these people? Perhaps they were crabby old women, or mean unfriendly men.

Or maybe there was one teacher who you will never forget. A teacher who taught you the alphabet or colors in creative ways that you can still remember today. Most likely that teacher is still teaching today and I'd be willing to bet they are one of the happiest people you'll ever meet.

Why? Because he or she values creativity. 

In the article, The Creative Personality, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about the idea that, "creativity is a central source in our lives", and that "when we're creative, we feel we are living more fully than during the rest of life" (Csikszentmihalyi). I value creativity because, like the article says, when we are creative it gives us a feeling of fulfillment that almost no other situation can.

But what about teaching creativity in our schools? Are our teachers teaching our children the values we want them to learn? If our teachers do not value and teach creativity in the classroom, our children's creativity may not survive past adolescence.

Creativity is a key value that all teachers should possess, especially those who teach young children. If children are instilled at an early age with the idea that creativity is a key to living a full life, they'll teach their children and their children will teach their children and the cycle will continue.

I view creativity as an important aspect in the development of our nations younger generations, and I plan on basing the structure of my future teaching career on creativity. By valuing creativity as a future teacher, I'll be able to encourage the creativity of our children step by step, while at the same time teaching them to value it as well.

For example, if children are taught at an early age to nurture and experiment with their creativity, they'll experience first hand what it feels like to have a sense of fulfillment. From then on, they'll realize that being creative is what makes them have this feeling of being fulfilled, and they will continue to explore their creativity as they grow older. With whole generations focusing on their creative sides, the current creativity crisis will start to decrease and more people will get to experience the feeling of fulfillment.

You may be wondering if there is any hope for those of you past childhood to explore your creative side and the answer is a big yes! I challenge you to incorporate creativity into your everyday lives and find something that gives your life a fuller feeling.

Until next time,
Rachel.