In a couple of previous posts I had talked about the idea of postdiction (see the posts here and here). The argument being that good teaching (among a long list of other good things) is postdictable, i.e. it walks the line between predictability and chaos, and most...
Posts related to: Art
Diwali 09 Photos
The Lansing temple recently organized a special Diwali program. My daughter Shreya participated in a dance and I, as always, took photographs of the event. Click here or the image below to see all 161 of the photographs I took. Enjoy. You can also read a poem written...
Postdictable, the commercials
I had written earlier about the idea of "postdictable" which was defined as something that is "surprising initially, but then understandable with a bit of thought." It lies at the spot between predictability and total chaos. The movie Sixth Sense is postdictable in...
Finding patterns (& creating them)
As readers of this blog know I love examples of seeing things in new ways. That to me if often the crux of creativity. Anyway here are two examples. The first curtesey of Leigh Wolf is a new advertisement from some credit card company. The ad is actually pretty...
Shreya’s blog, new Sci-Po’s
Shreya, my daughter has a blog, Uniquely Mine. An RSS feed from her blog can be found right here (just scroll down and see the right column). Anyway, over the past few weeks she has been doing something for extra credit for the science class. Her fifth-grade teacher...
New ambigram: Nihal
My friend, Hartosh (I had written previously about his mathematical novel here) and his wife Pam, recently had a baby boy. This ambigram is of his name: Nihal Enjoy.
Leigh Wolf @IgniteLansing
Leigh Wolf, my partner in crime as far as the MAET program goes, recently presented at Ignite Lansing. She talked about her two passions, teaching and food (not sure which order to place these). Specifically she talked about food photography and the connections she...
Seeing differently (veja du with video)
I am always looking for examples of looking at the world differently - of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. This is of course connected with the veja du assignments I give my students. I just came across a couple of very interesting video examples...
Lego based Sudoku & Rubik Cube solving robots
Two robots made entirely using Lego Mindstorms NXT Retail-kit that can solve Sudoku problems and the Rubik's Cube! How totally cool is that. LEGO Mindstorms is a line of Lego sets combining programmable bricks with electric motors, sensors, Lego bricks, and Lego...
Jugaad, educational toys from Junk (TPACK at work)
I had written earlier about the idea of Jugaad, the quintessential Indian idea of situational creativity. One of the masters at this is Arvind Gupta. Check out his website for tons of wonderful science toys and experiments that can be made from stuff we typically...
Technology & Literacy, bemoaning the youth of today 🙂
One often hears the criticism that students today don't know how to write... the part of the blame is placed on technology, on the limitations of texting and twittering! For instance, here are two quotes from a book review TXTNG: THE GR8 DB8 by Marcus Merkmann in the...
Color me Creative
I just ran across this blog (Color Me Katie) that just blew me away. Katie Sokoler is a freelance photographer and street artist living in Brooklyn - and her blog just throbs with life, and energy and the sheer pleasure of living. That's her down there blowing bubbles...
Bringing sensory richness to bleak scientific texts
A while ago I had written about how we use language to capture intangible ideas - and the risks associated with not paying attention to these intangibles. I had said (though you can read the complete post A different language): For instance wine connoisseurs have...
Obtuse can be right!
My daughter, whose creative exploits have been featured here before (for instance see her design for a math-music game), now has a blog, titled Uniquely Mine. It features original writing (poems, stories) by her. Do check it out. You can find regular updates on this...
Information is beautiful
Anybody who knows me (and/or reads this blog) will know of my love of issues related to representation (see all postings under that category). So I am always looking out for new and interesting representations. An lovely example sent to me by Patrick Dickson is...
Dewey meets Wong
David Wong is a colleague of mine at the College of Education and an avid John Dewey scholar. He also loves to fish. You can learn more about his work by going to his web site here. (I had earlier blogged about his work around visually representing ideas here and...
Visual proofs
I just came across these lovely visual mathematical proofs. For instance consider the following sequence: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ... = 1 and then see the following image on the blog!! How cool is that!!!! I had posted about something similar earlier (see visualizing...
Photo triplets
Christopher Bowhuis (a student in our summer on-campus MAET program) provided me a two minute tutorial on cloning myself, or anybody else for that matter. I had to go home and try it out with my kids (and a few of their friends who just happened to show up). Below are...
Creativity @ Plymouth, year 3
I spent some time last week with each of the MAET cohorts at Plymouth England. I have blogged about my time with Year 1 here and Year 2 here (as well as some other posts here and here). This is about what I did with the Year 3 cohort. As usual, I did my TPACK and...
Representing $$, two different ways
The power of serendipity... A few minutes ago I received a note via Facebook / Ken Dirkin providing a link to Where are your taxes going for 2010?. A few minutes later, via StumbleUpon, I came across this: The MasterCard Commercial I’d Like To See. Now each of these...
Pomes on Creativity II
Yesterday I had blogged about poems written by the year I students at the Plymouth MAET program. Today I spent time with the 2nd year cohort and this is what they came up with. Enjoy. There once was a hidden tiger in all, at times it will make you think you’ll fall....
Correlates of creativity
Just came across this on the Ph.D. design list (a listserv for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design) from a posting by Charles Burnette. He quotes Donald MacKinnon, author of a large study on creativity in the arts, sciences and professions: If I...
Pomes on creativity
I am in Plymouth, England, for a week, as a part of our off-campus MAET program. I spent time today with the first year cohort, talking with them about creativity in teaching (with our without technology). One of the short (5-10 minutes) activities they completed...
Announcing: Short film competition, cool prize for winner!!
Those of you who have been following this blog know, over the past few months I have made a few short videos with my kids. The ones I am most proud of are a set of three made around the words Explore, Create, Share (you can see them all here). There were great fun to...
Rethinking Little Red Riding Hood
Awesome retelling of the old tale... (h/t Steve Dembo @ teach42). SlagsmĂĄlsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo. As Steve says (you can read his full post here) such remixing can provide interesting opportunities for teachers, particularly given...
Making (non)sense of dots & lines
I love how these interconnected pipes called the Intertubes lead to serendipitous discoveries. Here are two videos, the first I went looking for, and the second, fell into my lap, so to speak, due to YouTubes related videos section. The video I went looking for was...
Explore, Create, Share… the videos
Note: This post was updated on March 21, 2024 since some of videos were not showing up for some reason. Over the past few months I have been working with my kids on creating short thematic videos. The themes we chose were the three words, Explore, Create & Share....
Like to learn, but hate school
In this TCRecord piece, Daniel T. WIllingham uses what we know about cognitive psychology to explain Why students don't like school. He suggests that although most people believe that humans are good at thinking, it is actually the weakest of our mental faculties......
Fact / Fiction, ambigram
Yesterday after I had posted my two latest ambigrams (see them here) I got a message on Facebook from my cousin Sonny (the one who composed the cool music for my Explore, Create videos) saying Big deal. I can make "fact" and "fiction" blur together till they are...
Computer Fiction: Two new ambigrams
For one reason or another I have not been bitten by the ambigram bug for a while - till suddenly a week or two ago, two new ambigrams popped into my head. A bit of work with Freehand later... here they are. Enjoy Computer Fiction