At school today (I'm a teacher) Daniel Pink came to give the keynote address. I watched his TED previous to watching him speak and I was a bit turned off because he seemed to spout the same thing a lot of people talk about regarding the right brain and creativity and the need to change schools. The first issue here - right brain - I find annoying because recent research that I have encountered says that the brain is dynamic, not just hemisphere and I feel this description is just simplifying the complex issue of teaching. However, his keynote address made up for what I expected to be a mediocre performance. What I appreciated most is the data he presented us with concerning what the science and technology industries are looking for in education and how the policy makers in education are defining the system. I will allow you to review what he said, since he said it and the information is readily available and my point here is to expand upon it from my point of view.
If you have been following this blog for the last six months you will see that I am working at creating exercises that can be employed in any situation to allow one to develop new ideas. This informal research started out to assist my art teaching, however, upon consideration I have determined that it is applicable in many situation and I just have not worked out the details. In fact, part of the reason for me writing this blog is so that others can try some of these concepts out and see what results can be obtained. In this respect I am a punk/communist/Buddhist e.g. no one owns a guitar chord or idea, this should be owned by all and try it for yourself to make the best out of it you can. Some of the exercises I have written about in the past are brainstorming plus, writing from a point of view, motion as a creative thinking skill (this one is weak but kudos to Will Percy for turning me onto an article about a motion classroom that helps students think) and story mapping.
Last night I put my money where my mouth is so to speak by employing one of my techniques (mind you I did not invent these, they came about over the course of my experiences, some synthesized, some dreamed up and some just from conclusions I've drawn). In an effort to make my own art work stronger I brainstormed two categories to make art about and ultimately would like to combine them. The first autobiography the second what I fantasize or dream my life to be. I forced myself to write non-stop for a given time period for each of these categories, even if I did get off topic, and then review the results. What I found was some thoughts that pop up once and again but I never focus on and some ideas I think about have finally been put to paper. From there I put titles at random on the top of sketch book pages and while I may have no visual vocabulary at present and am requiring of myself that I make two sketches of each title. What has piqued me most is that I have a problem to solve and generally speaking it is a fun problem for me to solve. Will it make my art stronger? I hope so. Something nice that did come of it was my affinity for art materials and then a collage from art supply flyers that will be a drawing or painting soon.
An implied charge in Daniel's address today was that it was up to us, the teachers, to figure out how to educate students to think creatively, holistically, recognize patterns and develop systems and things people need. Hopefully this is what I am doing, at the very least, it is what I am attempting to do. I am beginning to consider how this work can be made into a tangible and I am looking for people who would like to collaborate with me on this endeavor. My initial thought is to create tablet computer apps (I even have some hand-drawn interfaces for these) or to work with people in a variety of industries and have work sessions where we try out some of these exercises an see what results present themselves If you yourself are interested or know someone who might also be, by all means get in touch and let's see what can become of it. I am going to do something bold here, I will put both my phone number and email address. - 2167540879 - china.devin@gmail.com. This is because I am not sure if you can get the info from my blog, but I hope it shows how sincere I am in this endeavor and how much I trust humans' good nature. Waiting to hear from you
