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Posts Tagged ‘creative’

Thought Patterns

Posted 28 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category thought

I firmly believe that the way we think forms habitual channels in our minds. Neuroscience bears this out, with works such as ‘What the Bleep…‘ and, dare I say it, ‘The Secret‘ following the trend.

As such , I now find myself having to think creatively – making stuff for the ‘Mr Watson…‘ DVDs that I’m making. Trouble is, I’ve been doing do much analytical thinking, my brain is just stuck on that “analyse the inputs, process, produce an output” kind of stimulus-response behaviour, to the extent that my creative muscles are totally dead!

For anyone stuck in the same situation, take some heart from the fact that we can reprogram our brains, with just a little effort.

If you’ve ever had to think creatively (and I don’t just mean doing a piece of ‘art’), then the way of thinking you used will still be in there, somewhere. All you have to do is try to start thinking like that again, and it will surely follow.

For example – cast your mind back to the time that felt that you were coming up with creative solutions to stuff in your life. Where were you? Who was around you? What was the atmosphere/ambience?What did it feel like? What were you physically doing? What period of your life was this? What were the overiding themes of that time? Reminisce

Then do a few simple exercises. Creative thinking is ‘right brain‘, where most of the activities we do day-to-day tend to be ‘left-brain’. Make the shift by taking an object and asking yourself weird questions, like ‘what would it be if it were made of ice/could fly/was gigantic/ covered in grass/ made out of a gas/ you could drive it/ could live in it/ it was microscopic/ 2,000 years old/ furry/ made for people with no hands/ to be used by fish-people/ worked by magic/ was free/ could only be used once?

Okay, no actual, useful results come out of thoughts like this – but that is left-brain thinking! The result is that you can start to think more flexibly, more creatively. and that is the kind of result you are looking for (it’s not a ‘left-brain’ result because its ’soft’; not measurable or quantifiable). I’ll bet it feels pretty good, though!

There’s also an interesting exercise somewhere, about reading out the names of colours that are coloured in the wrong colour, e.g. black, red, blue, green, orange. Now go back and say aloud the colours of the text for each word. if that makes sense.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve got to find an image to match the word ‘product’, but al I can think of is ‘iPhone’. Appalling!

Cheers,

Philip

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Tags: bad spelling, creative, fun, thought

Time for a TeachMeet?

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Posted 19 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Ideas, Rant, diary, thought

Okay, I want to meet teachers and students and anyone who can help me understand why education isn;t working (IMHO) and what we can do about it!

So I went to Becta-X and that was fun and techy and information overload but I didn;t feel that it really hit the mark for, just identified that there was a mark that was being missed.

It may have been there that I picked up the habit of writing really long sentences with no punctuation but I guess hey thats just speculation.

So anyway, there seem to be these things called Teachmeets, they are a type of ‘unconference‘ that you organise yourself and then people come along and you all talk and there’s no agenda and thats it.

This sounds perfect I just want to meet other people who think differently to everyone else and can kind of see there’s a problem and want to DO something and not just wait around for someone esle to do it and then complain that that wasnt what should have been done.

Fast Tube by Casper

Does anyone out there want to join me? I have no idea what I’m doing, othere than the speaking to other people thing which i believe i already mentioned – i’m going to need a date a venue and a sponsor to start and somewhere along the way there’ l be people invited nad then it’ll happen and who knows what.

We also need a title – i was thinking of something like ‘SATs: Secret Agent Teachers’ as one that would bring together people who see that there is a deficiency in our current system but who also see that change will not come from that top, we have to be agents of change ourselves – hence secret ‘agents’.

This is for people who are in the system and want to change it from within.

So, are you with me? It would be really cool if you could join in, like I said, so just let me know or stay keen and then maybe I can eventually get to the end of this incredibly poorly-structured blog post.

You will hear more about this!!

Cheers,

Philip

PS: I’m looking at Friday 11th June as the date. We’ll do it in the evening, its after school, its the week after half term so teachers may have a chance of still being fairly fresh and we’ll keep it small and tidy and fun. Normal syntax will resume in the next post

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Tags: bad spelling, Becta-X, best laid plans, creative, cynicism, doing something, education, fun, future, good intentions, manifesto, play, question, teachmeet, unconference, video

Education: What do we DO?

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Posted 13 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Ideas, Rant, thought

Reading this book at the moment “What’s the Point of Schools?” by Guy Claxton.

Very interesting, so much so that I want to spend the whole day reading it, neglecting the renovation of my campervan that i was going to do.

My wife tells me that I always do this, it’s like OCD or something, but then I lose steam after exhausting my interest and go on to something else.

Something tells me I should listen to her. I think this is important enough for me to take it slowly and let the interest build, so I’ll just post my impressions so far.

What I’m feeling at the moment is that it is extremely annoying that education in this country is not better. There are so many quotes, anecdotes and solid statistics over the last century, that for us to be in basically the same position is a joke.

It is a joke that makes me very angry, to be honest.

What i want to know is, what are we actually going to DO?

The whole system feels like its in gridlock – schools, students, parents, governments – no one can do anything because they are all tied up together in a vicious-circle, self-fulfilling prophecy state of affairs.

So this is what I’m thinking of doing.

At Becta-x the other week, I was talking to Kate who basically challenged me to run an unconference about education.

Damn it, it looks like that’s what we’re going to have to do, because I just don’t see any action out there at the moment to suggest otherwise.

I have no idea how to do this, so if anyone feels like coming on board, please give me a shout. We’re going to need people to turn up, too, so get prepared to spread the word.

We’ll start off small in a central London location, of an evening, so that teachers can attend. This will happen by the end of the school year.

I want to know what other people, face to face, have to say about education – any part of education – and what we can actually do to improve it.

That is all for now. I’m off to read my book – no, work on my campervan!

Cheers,

Philip

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Tags: audience participation, best laid plans, change the world, creative, cynicism, education, fun, future, good intentions, manifesto, question, self-doubt, thought, unconference, wisdom

Good Breath (Typewriter Bubble)

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Posted 11 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Stories, Typewriter Bubble

Click for a closer view

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Tags: bad breath, creative, cynicism, education, fun, image, nicknames, play, self-doubt, typewriter, wisdom

BectaX: What Happened?

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Posted 01 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Rant, diary

Photo0321

Originally uploaded by Cheersphilip

So there we have it – an amazing event with some truly inspiring speakers.

But what actually happened?

I had no preconceptions about what was going to happen, and having talked to many people yesterday, many of them were in the same position.

We talked, discussed and tweeted about many different aspects of technology in education, but there was one thing that was noticeable by its absence.

There was a missed opportunity to talk ABOUT education, its purpose and current heading. The talk centred, in the main, around how to use technology.

As a teacher, I was so chuffed when the group I was with asked me what it is actually like to be a teacher. I was totally dumbfounded – no-one has ever seriously asked this question before.

The answer was, I am sure, as convoluted and contradictory as someone who enjoys what they do but doesn’t like the way it is done could possibly give.

There was no way I could give the technology and media people an accurate picture of how teachers think and feel, but hopefully I could get them thinking about it in a different way. Who knows. it was an amazing discussion.

Technology has its place in education, but its clear that technology cannot drive education – only people can do that.

As I heard so many times yesterday ‘the teachers just don’t use it’. There is little take-up of these new and startling technologies, because thats just not what most teachers are into.

No doubt I’ll come back to this time and again, but for now I just wanted to get my initial thoughts down.

Big cheer for the school kids who participated yesterday – can’;t have been easy hanging on to a webcam all day while Sony did their sales pitch!

Cheers,

Philip

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Tags: 21st century, becta, bectax, creative, diary, education, future, good intentions, question

I’m looking at Education

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Posted 19 Mar 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Ideas, diary, thought

Good news, people:

I’ve decided I’m going to concentrate on one thing – education!

More specifically I’ll start with design & technology education reform, then move swiftly on to changing perceptions about what education for young people can be.

This is going to be a lot of fun, but first I’m to meet someone for coffee

Actually, you might like them - studiomold is a UK designer couple who have some really intelligent use of form, coupled with a fresh take on materials use.

Damn, now I’m running late!

Cheers,

Philip