“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” -Albert Einstein

Adora Svitak: What Adults Can Learn From Kids

Watch this first:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/adora_svitak.html

My personal thoughts/summary:

Adora Svitak is only twelve years old and already speaking in front of a TED audience. That takes a whole lot of courage! She is a very smart cookie for her age. Svitak starts off her speech by talking about the different types of kids who have made a difference. “Kids can full of inspiring aspirations and hopeful thinking” says Miss Svitak. I agree with this statement. Children have some of the most amazing imaginations and ideas. She then talks about how the Museum of Glass in Washington has a program where kids draw ideas for glass. This helps them come up with more creative ideas for their class structures and makes them more unique. Svitak discusses that the Museum of Glass does this because children do not think about the glass limitations and just let their imagination run free. One boy created a glass structure called Bacon Boy who had meat vision! Yum! That’s really creative! 

Adora Svitak started writing at the age of four. When she was six years old Adora’s mother bought her a laptop. She wrote over 300 short stories. That is absolutely incredible! When I was six years old I was more interested in legos, ballet, swimming, skiing and an occasional Barbie. She then wanted to become a published author. She had a few struggles. It’s very hard to find a publisher that will actually publish a child’s book. Her parents were completely supportive of her! But Adora finally found a publisher that supported her! Action Publisher published her fist book Flying Fingers. I’m happy that she found a publisher. It’s amazing how much Adora Svitak has accomplished and she’s only twelve years old! She is going to go very far in life. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future.

I enjoy watching TED Talk videos. The majority of videos I find are very interesting. I really enjoy watching the piano improvisations videos. It blows my mind how people can just play musical instruments and make up the music as they go along off the top of their head. There are many talented people out there in the world! It is something that definitely takes a whole lot of practice. I’m currently trying to improve on my vocal jazz scatting improvisation. Ella Fitzgerald is an outstanding example of a jazz scatter. 

WOW! I made it to ten blogs already? One more to go!! I can’t believe I’ve almost completed my first year of college!! SUMMER HERE I COME!

KU Composition Confrence: Arts of Noise

On Wednesday April 13^th 2011, I attended the Kutztown University English Conference in the McFarland Student Union Building. I went to the “Writing Under the Ax” session at 1:00pm in The President’s Room (Room 250). The way the session was set up was there was a panel of teachers and professors and chairs for an audience. I sat a few rows back next to the lovely Miss Vanessa Long. It was funny because we both randomly showed up to the session and neither of us knew each other were attending. The panel ranged from high school teachers, university professors and community college professors. 

The first question asked to the panel was “How do you think the defunding of education will affect your classroom?” The panel then discussed the question and they all had a lot to say. I agreed with the majority of what was said. They discussed how if there was defunding there would also be less hiring of teachers. Fewer teachers equal a larger class size. This would be absolutely terrible. Students would not be able to get the individual attention needed. Teachers would have less time for grading and for desired office hours. There will also be less time for student/teacher conferencing time slots during classes because of the larger size. Students would also have less rough drafts of their papers. This is because the teacher will have to grade a whole lot more papers and needs more time to grade. With fewer rough drafts there will be less time to improve your paper or your grade. The panel also discussed that with the budget cuts more and more will start to become online learning. I agree with what one of the panel members stated “I don’t want to be a content delivery machine. I want person to person interaction.” I personally would rather go to a class then have an online class. I enjoy discussing my work with teachers and finding out ways that I can improve.

The panel also brought up the topic of the PSSA’s. PSSA’s are the worst testing ever. Alright…. I lied…. SAT’s and ACT’s are the worst testing ever. But PSSA’s are the worst IN school testing. My favorite part about them was that at my school we got a tiny snack and a small juice carton during breaks. The panel mentioned that there is a possibility of having PSSA’s at the college level. When that was stated Vanessa and I looked at each other with a look of horror. Luckily, we might graduate before that starts! Hopefully we do! Unfortunately, I had to leave the conference a little early. I had to get to University Choir. But overall I was happy that I attended this session. It helped me become more aware about what might happen if/when the defunding happens. Let’s all hope and pray that it doesn’t!

“To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.” -Pablo Picasso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4

WOW! So many different thoughts ran through my mind when I watched this for the first time! First of all the amount of thought, effort, and creativity that went into this video is OUTSTANDING and INCREDIBLE.  The artist is a genius and must have worked on this project for months. When the video first starts you do not realize that it is going to be a constant drawing. It starts out on a city street with passing cars. Actually, the drawings surprised me when they started! It is also amazing how the artist has a constant flow of movement throughout the video.  The music also really syncs up with the movement of the drawings and helps tell the story. One other thing I enjoyed was the amount of shadows that showed on the walls from trees or the passing cars. It meant you could tell time was actually passing by. It was really cool how the robot bug thing kicked over the actual log. It made the drawing seem so real! I thought it was a little gross how throughout the drawing there always seemed to be something eating another thing. I felt like there was a constant eating of heads. Don’t get me wrong… it is really creative! It’s just not really my thing. Another gross thing that happened was when the head threw up all those black ants. Yikes! The detail for when the spider-monkey-human was crawling around in the basement is amazing. It was pretty neat how it kept running into the metal piece and the metal piece would move plus make a noise. How did the artist make the man with the glasses and the briefcase eat the paper? The effects of this video are fantastic! Wait a second…. I think I figured out how the artist did that! Maybe the artist kept ripping the paper into smaller pieces and that’s how the artist got that effect. That is quite clever! I loved how the brain crawled from inside to outside. It was a nice transition to get back outside! Overall I enjoyed this video! The creativity in this artist is out of this world! 

Making A Difference!

I watched the YouTube video Practical nightmare: Reimaging KU Composition Class in a Post- Corbett world.  I loved how the YouTube title was scribbled out in white and then the handwritten word CUTS came across the video in red. The music was a really nice touch that added a bit of drama. Which of course, who doesn’t love a bit of drama? Next Dr. Morris welcomes you to the Kutztown University Composition Conference.  She explains that the panel is talking about the axing of the English Composition budget from Governor Corbett.  The YouTube video is in two parts.  Part one is what a current English Composition class looks like today and Part two is what is believed that a class will look like with post Governor Corbett’s budget cuts.  Part one showed a very organized English Composition class discussing montage writings and lyric essays.  The students were very interested in the class and paying attention.  Several student stand in front of the class and read their montage writings.  Part two shows a much larger class and no one is interested in what Dr. Morris is saying.  She is taking attendance by student number.  The students do not appear to be interested in the class and are talking.  Dr. Morris is trying to talk over the class.  None of the students seem to care about the class or what Professor Morris is teaching.  Students are laughing, walking out of the class (aka Katie Schreck) and listening to music (aka Vanessa Long and myself). Fun fact: we were jamming out to songs from Glee. Since the class is so large there is only ten seconds allowed for each montage presentation. At the end of class the students throw their portfolios on the desk where Dr. Morris is sitting.  The portfolios are falling on the floor in a big messy heap.  After Part two Dr. Morris has some closing comments. She said the video was to make you laugh, but the budget cuts are a serious situation.  If classes are larger than the current twenty to twenty-five students it will be a very difficult situation for professors and students.  I enjoyed at the end how the famous motto “United we stand divided we fall” with “United we stand, underfunded we fail!” It was quite clever! I hope that the budget cuts do not affect our composition classes at Kutztown University! That would be absolutely horrible!!

  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApGrqtPcRGA

LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!

We started filming our documentary for our Safe Sacks final project on Tuesday after class. Day one of filming turned out pretty well! We decided to film in the Bears Den in the McFarland Student Union building. I was the interviewer, Vanessa was the person being interviewed, Kira was the camera lady and Katie helped out with camera angles and improvisation of the lines. For the set we pulled two chairs pointing at each other by a window. I would ask Vanessa questions about what happened on that night her bag was stolen at South Dining Hall South Side Café. The Safe Sack group and I also discussed where we would add flashback scenes into our documentary. We still have to film all the flashback scenes and film/interview the public safety cops. These will take place at night at the South Dining Hall. Everyone in the group will be involved in this filming proportion. We really want to try our best to recreate that horrible night when Vanessa’s personal belongings were stolen at South Dining Hall. I am really looking forward to filming these flashback scenes! Everything is really starting to come together nicely!

On Thursday in the Academic Forum, Dr. Morris had an extra credit opportunity in room 102. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun! I sat with Vanessa and Katie in the second row. We were pretending to be jamming out to music videos on youtube. Dr. Morris was trying to take attendance and teach the students. The students we not suppose to pay attention and ignore Dr. Morris. At the end of the class all the students had to turn in their binder by throwing it on the table and not really caring. Overall I think filming turned out very well! I am very excited to see the finished product! Good Luck Dr. Morris!!

One last note: I LOVE EBSCOHOST! EBSCOHOST has been a lot of help in a bunch of my classes! For example, I had to find five academic journals for my Intro to Communications class on gender communications. I ended up finding all five plus more articles that I needed for my paper! It’s such a fantastic place to find great sources! Thank you for sharing EBSCOHOST with us Dr. Morris!! It is a HUGE help!!

"Action is the foundational key to all success." -Pablo Picasso

Lockers have officially arrived at the Upstairs of South Dining Hall at Kutztown University! My eyes could not believe it when I saw it! The Safe Sack group actually made a difference! We accomplished our goal and it feels fantastic! Now every time Katie Schreck and I go upstairs to eat at South Dining Hall we just have these huge goofy grins on our faces. The first time we actually saw the lockers people thought we were a little crazy because we were jumping up and down!

            We officially turned in project two last Thursday. This semester is just flying by so quickly! I cannot even believe it! Even though I was a little frustrated on Tuesday, I was still happy that we did the peer reviews. I ended up using two academic journal articles. You were only supposed to choose one…… 

Required sources: Locate one scholarly journal article, one book chapter, and one alternative source of your choosing (for instance, a TED talk video, etc.).

Whoops. You see I thought that the one alternative source meant that it could be anything. This is why I was so happy we had the peer review and that Vanessa caught that for me. But I ended up choosing a TED talk video as my third source. Then everything turned out to be fine with my source choices! I chose the video titled Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity. Elizabeth Gilbert argues that writers and creative people should not be afraid of their work and need to find ways to recalibrate. I really enjoyed this TED talk video. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the book Eat, Pray Love. She originally chose writing as a career because writing is her love, and her fascination of writing.  At the start of her career multiple people had a similar question, and asked if she was worried that she may never have a bestseller book. Being only forty this mind set is a concern to her because she feels she has at least four more decades of writing, and is not ready to stop writing books as a profession.  She said that she was afraid and had this advice to offer “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted.  Do your job.”. I love that quote of Elizabeth Gilbert! Don't be afraid to follow your dreams! If you work hard, some day it will all pay off!!

"Creativity is magical, but it's not magic." -Charles Limb

3/16/11

Yesterday in class we did a creative group activity to get our brains pumping. I was partnered with the lovely safe sack group! The activity was that we had to create a story and each member would add the next sentence until the page was filled. It was quite amazing how our story went from George Harrison to then to Charlie Sheen and then to Miss Kathleen Schreck. Plus it was about George Harrison trying to find the magic ketchup bottle and currently Kathleen Schreck was the owner. Wow! Do we have some come creative brains in the Safe Sack group!

3/17/11

http://blog.ted.com/2011/01/05/your-brain-on-improv-charles-limb-on-ted-com/

Today in class we watched this Ted Blog. Charles Limb is testing creativity in a very unique way. He is testing it through an fMRI scanner and through jazz improvisation. He has a jazz artist come in and memorize a short jazz piece of music for piano. Then he would make them play it in the fMRI scanner to measure their brain activity. Limb would then have them improvise on the jazz combo and measure the differences on their brain activity. The brain shows a lot more activity on the improvised piece of music compared to the memorized piece. Charles Limb also did a similar test but with rap. Once again he would have a rapper come in and memorize a piece of music. Into the scanner they went and the brain activity was measured. The rapper would then free style the rap. Brain activity was more active on the improvisation.  I found it very experiment interesting because am very passionate about music! I also really enjoy jazz music. It’s amazing how people improvise music off the top of their head. That’s something that takes a whole lot of training and hard work. The only negative thing about this experiment was he has only tested two styles of music. Plus he has only tested one type of instrument for jazz. I shared this with a few of my music major friends and they enjoyed it as well!

On Creativity – “You need to have a weird association with the frontal lobe of your brain.” –Charles Limb