Creativity Post 2

      I was flipping through my iPod today before one of my IM games, and I re-discovered my love for Train's "50 Ways to Say Goodbye." Although I was disappointed when I learned there are not actually 50 ways that the girl dies, but there are a good bit and they are quite humorous. It isn't my creativity, but I would like to acknowledge the creative thought process and rhyme behind the creation of this song! (I love belting it out to "got run over by a crappy purple scion"!!!!)

Learning and Leading

      What I would first like to address is the sentence under "Originality" that addresses originality in the classroom: "Originality is often disruptive in a school setting, but disruptive ideas often generate beneficial changes in the wider world." This is my biggest gripe with the way education is handled today-- we are forcing our students into conformity and rejecting their natural creativity. We expect such specific things that we deny their outlet to truly expressing themselves and their thinking process. Arguably, the most important lessons in life are not learned from a textbook, and if we cannot let students explore their limits, how do we expect them to be successful in the "wider world?" I am not saying get rid of textbooks and structure. I am saying we should look to integrate more out-of-the-box assignments and authentic tasks in order to foster thinking that will be needed in this "wider world" in which we live.
      I'm really excited to look into all the different FFOE web 2.0 tools. The figure that listed all the different websites and which creativity ideal (flexibility, fluency, originality, and elaboration) will be super useful in my own teaching endeavors. I decided to look into Dabbleboard, only because its name caught my attention first. Dabbleboard is an online whiteboard that is mainly used as a flow-chart generator. I think this would be most categorized under "elaboration" because everyone who has access to a certain Dabbleboard page will be able to add their own input-- bouncing off of each other for ideas and new thought processes.

Something Creative

      In high school, I loved to write popular song lyrics in any way I could. Usually they were accompanied by cutesy little doodles in the margins of my notes, but sometimes I would make them more. For a sophomore year art project, I covered an entire back side of my portfolio with spiraling song lyrics.

      I hadn't made a lyrics page in a while, so I decided to let my creativity flow as I wrote out some of my favorite song lyrics. This is a very simple example, but it really let me relax and reflect on the meaning of some of my favorite songs and what they mean to me.

Horizon Report

      I'm not sure if these trends were written 1-6 on purpose, but I completely agree that the number one biggest trend in technology is that it is available "whenever and wherever." I know as students, we take advantage of this come the first week of class: "Oh, this class has a Power Point online... I don't need to go to class." I'd like to take a moment and realize what this means. 
 
      In conjunction with the arguments in this report, that one simple phrase means that your mindset is that "well, I'm getting the information, aren't I?" Well, yes you are getting the information off of the Power Point, but you are replacing the professor's ability to relay that information with raw knowledge. You can Google just about anything in today's society, so why bother even going to school? All you could ever want to know is on the internet? Why bother going to class when the Power Point is online?

      When we forgo the face to face professor/student interactions, we lose the mentorship that coincides with a teaching environment. The role of an educator is to find the best methods to convey their knowledge of a subject to the student. It is fantastic when that knowledge is supported and reinforced by technology, but to replace the teaching environment by a computer screen (I think) degrades the role of the educator.

Crafting

      I cannot express my love for crafting. I walk into a Hobby Lobby and I feel like a kid in a candy store on Christmas morning with fireworks going off in the background of Rocky's training montage. Legitimately.

      This page is just going to be the random projects I attempt throughout the semester and I hope I can complete some pretty neat things. More than half of these things will probably come from Pinterest and I really hope I can do them justice.

      Here are some projects I have crafted in the past... the first being a painted wine glass for my friend's birthday. 


 











Here, I just bought a wine glass from the dollar store and took some of my acrylic paints and went to town. The quote is from Kenny Chesney's song "You and Tequila Make Me Crazy" (good song, you should look it up!)

    

I also made shadow boxes for my dorm room:

This one was a little more time consuming. I bought scrapbook paper in black and white and then a sheet of red card stock. I folded the edges of the black and white paper to fit into the plastic casing and then over taped the corners so they wouldn't pop out.

I then researched for about two hours trying to find the perfect font and printed off each of the letters. I then had to trace them backward on tracing paper to then transfer them with a heavier pencil onto the card stock. From there, I took an expo knife and carved out my letters, stuck them in the front of the plastic frame... and Viola! 






What's my next project? A bucket that will serve as a gift basket of sorts. My roommate and I are tag-teaming in the brainstorming so we'll see how this turns out! Pictures to come soon!