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"My research focuses on the development of AI tools to augment user creativity, especially in casual or playful audiences. I specialize in designing and implementing systems that assist users in quickly moving through the possibility space of a creative problem, a genre I call Casual Creators. These systems which have included a design tool for 3D printable necklaces, music visualizations animations, laser-cut robots, and gameplay for a game to crowdsource network security."

My friend wrote these ebooks for K12 learners. If you are interested in reviewing them, let me know. The Stack Model Method-An Intuitive and Creative Approach to Solving Word Problems (Grades 3-4) is the first title of a two-book series in Singapore math publishing, which comprehensively reveals the beauty and power of the stack model method as an intuitive and creative problem-solving strategy in solving non-routine questions and challenging word problems. Like the Singapore's bar model method, the stack model method allows word problems that were traditionally read in higher grades to be set in lower grades. The stack model method empowers younger readers with the higher-order thinking skills needed to solve word problems much earlier than they would normally acquire in school.

"The new Public Domain Project will soon become an important resource for many such creators, offering as it does "thousands of historic media files for your creative projects, completely free and made available by Pond5," an entity that brands itself as "the world's most vibrant marketplace for creativity.""

"Nelson goes on to say that "Education ought to be clear, inviting and enjoyable, without booby-traps, humiliations, condescension or boredom. It ought to teach and reward initiative, curiosity, the habit of self-motivation, intellectual involvement." This reminded of this course. So far I can honestly say that I have thoroughly enjoyed this course. Many of my previous online courses were extremely repetitive and the assignments were very bland. We did the same thing over and over again every week. Read the article and write a post about it. We are taught to question things in this course. We are pushed to be creative and research topics that we cannot find easy answers to. We are not punished for our opinions, rather rewarded for getting our creative juices flowing. One of my favorite assignments was the one where we had to search a question that we already knew the answer to. I had no idea that my question about the S on superman's chest would lead to gender equality. It taught me to always take a deeper look. This course is the kind of course Nelson was talking about. It's unique, and definitely meets his criteria." h/t Jon

"There's no denying that syllabus bloat is a real phenomenon." Rather old article but a springboard to others

Flickr's creative commons search interface. Lots of photographs, some videos.

Embrace imperfection. Makers are more interested in learning and experimenting rather than perfection and that's OK. They try (and fail) often to perfect their projects and to make lots of small bets which eventually lead them to THE BIG IDEA. Makers do it for the fun first and iterate and refine as they go.

Love the process. A focus on trusting the process rather than outcome is essential to the Maker mentality. Creativity and making is an ongoing rhythm, a lifestyle which is more a way of being than a hobby or isolated event.

Other thoughts on this interesting link. Writing a grant focused on the iterative process of improving health care this is exactly what the funders are looking for. How to set up teams (with the 'right' mix of individuals) that are working in an environment where they can fail (without hurting anybody) and improve processes both for the team and the rest of the organization. The later is much harder - how to disseminate good processes that others can then improve upon in complex organizations. But yes the goal is to always work on the process improvement (the makers mentality as it is called in this piece).

Worth thinking about for our own space (digitally and otherwise). "It is important when you walk into any studio that you feel as much as see what is being built - the studio should crackle with creative energy. Specifically, I believe you can determine the health of any design studio simply by looking at its walls."

Interesting to see how journalists are sometimes leading in presenting serious information in original, creative, engaging ways.

"Harry: "I just can't say "Find an avenue" because he's gonna say "you're not teaching me anything!" Bill: "Well, maybe that's the way to teach though. Maybe if you say "you must find an avenue. Next week, I'll show you an avenue, but this week, find an avenue!""

"Many years ago I spoke of Bill Evans and his great appreciation of simplicity, and his capacity for tremendous amplification through honest simplification. Recently I stumbled upon a rare, 45-minute interview from the 1960s which Bill Evans did along with his brother-also a wonderful pianist-Harry Evans. If you can find time to sit down and watch the entire interview, it may be the best thing you see all week. But to give you a feel of the message, let me place the videos here and highlight the key points along with my comments."

A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills -- Jon Mueller "...Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field." -- Grant Wiggins -- (Wiggins, 1993, p. 229). "Performance assessments call upon the examinee to demonstrate specific skills and competencies, that is, to apply the skills and knowledge they have mastered." -- Richard J. Stiggins -- (Stiggins, 1987, p. 34).

The Web promised openness. Open access. Open knowledge. A wide open space for creativity. Collaboration. Distribution. Instead what we have today is a mass of information silos and content farms. What we have today, if we're honest with ourselves, are old hierarchies hard-coded onto new ones.

At the end of each day, I sit and I think about everything that I had learned from morning till night and I transform it into a "Daily Doodle." By combining studying and drawing, each doodle acts as a learning tool and a creative exercise. Please note that I am still in the learning process and that my doodles may not be accurate. If you find any errors, please send me an email so that I can learn from my mistakes! (michiko.maruyama@gmail.com)

"The site provides science students and educators, at levels from kindergarten to college, with a free online space to create, collaborate and share their own digital drawings, Wang says. It initially was inspired by Frankel's Picturing to Learn project, where MIT and Harvard undergraduates majoring in science created drawings to explain scientific phenomena to high school students, according to Wang. Excited about the potential for drawing as a tool for students and science enthusiasts in and out of the classroom, Wang saw an opportunity in that space to infuse new energy and greater creativity into science education, he said."

" In such times Dada objects amuse everybody, and since these objects are (mostly) made collectively, they are a strong community bond. Amusement (of oneself and others) and the making of art communities are the goals of Dada. Dada is a priori against everything, including goals and itself, but this creative negation is very amusing and is meant to be shared. For one whole century, Dada has delighted in uncovering and using contradictions, paradoxes, and negations, the most important of which are: 1. most people read signs, Dadas make signs, and 2. most people are scared of scary faces, Dada makes scary faces." "

"There's solid research behind the idea. Most famously, MIT professor Thomas Allen's work has emphasized how important face-to-face interaction is for creativity, and found that people rarely even speak to coworkers who sit as little as 60 feet away from them in a traditional office. "

Maxine Greene (1995) writes:

"The role of the imagination is not to resolve, not to point the way, not to improve.  It is to awaken, to disclose the ordinarily unseen, unheard, and unexpected" (p. 28)

In this age of constant information and busy lives, it's difficult to get teachers and parents to read large amounts of research, or to understand the importance of boycotts, resolutions or petitions. The information we wish to share regarding the ill purpose and effects of corporate ownership of education must be expressed using all of the senses, in our bodied actions-instantaneously and with the emotion it warrants. As Nick Sousanis considers, we have to remember that conception (i.e as what we believe, what we think of as "real") largely comes through our perception (i.e what we see with our eyes and how we construct meaning).

Greene writes that through the "art of knowing"-"The experience and knowledge gained  by this way of knowing opens new modalities for us in the lived world; it brings us in touch with our primordial landscapes, our original acts of perceiving" (p. 149).

We need to redesign the social landscape with new images, new stories, new ways of understanding what corporate reform "is" and how it works.  What we need is action-creative action collectively inspired in local communities and through national organizing-to UNFLATTEN our worlds.

The Kress Foundation funded research to help clarify perceptions on digital scholarship and art history! I can only imagine the creative community being equally aghast and confused about earth art, conceptual art and performance art (among others). Wild to think about. We keep marching forward. "The findings reveal disagreements in the art history community about the value of digital research, teaching, and scholarship. Those who believe in the potential of digital art history feel it will open up new avenues of inquiry and scholarship, allow greater access to art historical information, provide broader dissemination of scholarly research, and enhance undergraduate and graduate teaching. Those who are skeptical doubt that new forms of art historical scholarship will emerge from the digital environment. They remain unconvinced that digital art history will offer new research opportunities or that it will allow them to conduct their research in new and different ways."