Fri Feb 04, 2005
How to Kill Creativity in the Clasroom
Marvin Bartel writes of the Nine Classroom Creativity Killers in an article that's been around a few years. I recognize myself and some of my past experiences in this one. The challenge, whether you're teaching art with traditional mediums--or technology-centered artwork as I've done--is to move past the tools and focus on the creative process. How do you get kids to experiment, to use the tools in creative ways, to think past what the "right" way to use a tool is and focus on the end result? It's a tough challenge at times, but when you get it right as a teacher the rewards for yourself and your students are astounding.
You Know Your Kid is Growing When...
Last night I got home late from teaching a course at the local community college to find my wife and daughter already comfy and snuggly in our bed. Hey, no problem. I still needed to eat some dinner, wind down a bit, and after that I'll sleep in the daughter's room for a change. Goodnight girls.
When my internal alarm clock went off this morning it was time to stumble out of bed, put on the t-shirt I'd left beside the bed last night, get some coffee going, and make my morning ablutions. After stumbling around the house for a bit and coming to a little more, I noticed that my t-shirt was feeling a little snug. Hmmm, what's this? Am I getting bigger or is this shirt getting smaller? Wander into the bathroom to check things out and lo' and behold I'm wearing a Winnie the Pooh t-shirt. Not a pretty sight, but certainly a funny one. I'd picked up one of my daughter's shirts by mistake and put it right on. The bizarre thing is that I was able to get it on at all, and it took me a good ten minutes to figure it out.
Good gravy! What am I going to do to get that girl to stop growing so fast?
Taking Out The Trash
Comment spam. Good God! What a royal pain it is to clean all of this dreck out of the old blog. But this morning it's been another round or cockroach removal here at Brainfrieze headquarters. Still more to go, but I've gotten most of these poker postings cleared out. I'm probably looking at another hour of repetitive clicking, confirming, and refreshing to go before I get all of it removed.
The good news is that I'll shortly be moving to a more robust blog service that allows greater control over my banned IP blacklist and the addition of some other controls to make sure that only humans are posting. But for someone who essentially does this as a hobby, it's onerous to give up my time to tend to this kind of maintenance. Oh well, if you're going to run with the big dogs you have to learn to pee on tall trees I suppose.
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