Class 12

Today the class presented their You Teach us presentations, Adam was up first and was discussing "Creativity in Education"

• education can open the door, offers us opportunity to learn things we might not be otherwise be exposed to, but can be done in a much more creative way.
• drew a widget: (i digitally re-sketched it)

Gavin talked about UPC codes and the problems with them:

• ugly
• they are not international
• the are finite in their ability to track information

Yousif talked about the art of deception and did some pretty cool magic tricks.

• it is about directing the audiences attention elsewhere, controlling the flow of focus
• I went on youtube and found my favorite magic trick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tScm-eZInBE

Ali talked about the "Fun Theory"

• suggests that you can change peoples behavior by makin daily routines fun to do.
• heres an example video he showed us with a piano staircase:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

Class 10

Today we had an awesome activity where we met in the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts for a group discussion and activities. We started by doing an interesting activity where we pretended to stalk another classmate, all of mingling in a large group. We then had to guess who was stalking us if we could. Was kind of interesting because we asked your awareness heightens when focused. Our instructor was trying to get us to really shift our thinking later on by putting us all into groups and having us try and come up with a list of things that we all had common- and the main noun had to start with an 'S'. He discussed how we came up with ideas and how the different group dynamics came to emerge -- some groups threw out suggests at random, some went via school topics, some sat silent led by one person. It was interesting to see why and how these groups worked the way they did.

Class 9

Today we talked about dreams and dream incubation, our TA Octavio led the discussion. He talked a bit on the history of dream recording and the possibility of dream recording.

We have been recording our dreams to conduct a lucid dreaming activity later, I'll post my dreams once I have them all.

We also got our groups today, I got in the group for the guitar case! My teammates are the 2 matt's, Tim, Rose, and myself.

Class 8

Our class continued our WIE proposal again for class today. I made note again of some other ones:

Dafeng: "Twitter Says" for movie reviews, I'm sure there might e something out there like this already, but I like the idea of searching twitter and collecting data to give users real time answers based on tweets.

I presented the Rogue Gallery: an idea to gather a group of artist together to presented works of art based on the context of a gallery that is in a non-traditional setting, whether outdoors or some other building than a museum. Here's some idea's

• Virtual graffiti
• personal gallery (ironic)
• interaction art

Matt Rahn: All-in-One guitar case, a guitar case that has amp, pedals, and the guitar itself

I think I'm going to choose the guitar case! Ill keep you updated on how the project goes!

Class 7

Today the class presented their "what I envision" proposals. I made note of a couple of the one that I liked:

Matthew: MTD bus phone application. an application that informs users in real time where the bus are and are going to be, via an application for the smart phone.

Rose: bar line website, a website that gives updates in real time about how long bar lines are so you can check them before you go out.

Max: Sports Cinema, a cinema that provides food service and a HUGE screen to watch certain sporting events for large groups of people.

Class 6

We learned about Gelb's 7 principles to day from his book "How to Think like Leanardo Davinci"

Curiosita’ – curiosity

Dimostrazione – testing knowledge through experience

Sensazione – refining the senses

Sfumato – embracing ambiguity

Arte/Scienza – balancing art between art and science

Corporalita’ – developing fitness

Connessione – everything is connected

We then had to do a quick presentation in class, my group had sensazione:

sensazione -- refining the senses

"The ability to visualize a desired outcome is built into your brain, and your brain is designed to help you succeed in matching that picture with your performance. And the more thoroughly you involve all your senses, the more compelling your visualization becomes."

It about paying attention to what you pay attention to, especially what consistently catches your eye.

Application of sensazione:

My personal application of this principle was in art. In order to draw better and really accurately describe what it is you are drawing in front of you, you have to stop thinking, and begin to see- don't label the object draw the shape and line. It is not a person you are drawing but a curvy shape here and a curvy shape there.

If I could ask the author one question:

Why do you think creativity is taught as a subject in schools?

Class 5

It was a extremely interesting and a relief to hear and read the things we've been taught so far in class; i was always a supporter that creativity could be taught. I would always get the natural response from people: "Pfff, ya. Right. Not me." Creativity to me always got that bad rap because it simply isn't consistently taught as it's set of skills and techniques in school, so people therefore simply disregard it as a learned quality. The techniques though have given me some insight into practicing and developing my own methods for lateral thinking. To be honest, I was always interested in systems thinking. In other words, how can I develop a system to help me come up with a solution so that I can apply it later to other situations.

Other people mentioned in class:

• creativity is teachable!
• creativity can and is a way of life
• creativity exists when there is no critique, though you need limits sometimes for productivity
• do not critique an idea before you bring it up, anything can lead to anything!
• no idea is a bad idea, there are connections when you change the context