Creativity and Education

"If  you're not prepared to be wrong, you can never be creative."
                                                        -- Ken Robinson

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

I feel like I should know this guy, but I don't. This video is a bit longer than what I usually will post, but it was very interesting and I didn't notice the time.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving break - when I spend 5 days ignoring the big pile of work that leads up to finals.

Representation

Of the 250 top grossing films 83.6% had a straight white male protagonist.

This is not a long read and it's an interesting look at the numbers.

Some ideas apply in lots of different ways

"If you want your prose to sound like poetry, treat it like poetry. There should be a rhythm to it…it can’t all be grand arabesques. In information architecture you can only have about 10% of the text deviate from the norm with bolding or italics without losing the effect of the highlighting. The showstoppers should underline the big thoughts, not hide them. You need the plainer prose to throw the pretty stuff into relief."

Found on a writing blog.

So I read this as part of a longer piece about how even when you have a "smart" character don't just throw in every big word you know. And it was all good, but what I was struck by was how much what she said sounds exactly like what I said to some students recently about why they have to have headroom in their sound design. If everything is just loud then when you need to have something be louder than the rest you have no room left to make it different enough to sound loud.

Lessons Learned

With my client last week we interviewed kids who had done oral histories as part of a class in the local community college. This is what one of them said he learned:

Enid research photos

Has anyone got time to proof read for me in the next 48 hours? Send me an email.

Don't know why I feel good

Last night and this morning I was completely freaking out. Tired, stressed, overwhelmed. And right now I feel great. And it's not like I was terribly productive today. 

All my lights work

And now you're thinking, what is she talking about? It's not a metaphor, I am actually talking about all my lights working. I dragged them out from their dusty haven under my bed, plugged them in and tested each one. The process made me oddly happy. I've been shooting with school gear for over a year now. And while it's all quality stuff, it's all well used by students, and, more importantly, last used by students. My gear is never touched by anyone other than me, or someone who has had me as a production teacher. It felt really nice to pull out all my kit and have everything rolled and packed properly and certain to work unless a bulb had popped.

Interesting and somewhat random things I've read

I'm reading a lot today. I have my exam for Line Producing on Tuesday so I'm trying to catch up on all the handouts for that class. At least I've got all the textbook stuff read. I also have a pile of reading for Adaptations: two sets of stories for workshops, plus a film that Debbie is going to talk about. Some interesting stuff is floating to the surface though, so here are a few quotes and ideas.

Glorious Failures

"You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished."
- Neil Gaiman
As found here.

What wonderful advice that is.

Slow and steady wins the race

This is remarkably relevant to my last post, come to think of it.

For my Adaptations class someone is doing The Tortoise and the Hare. We're workshopping it on Tuesday so we have to read the original, read the treatment, and in theory read the pages of the script she's got done (in this case, because she is going first and has less time than later people, she doesn't have to have script pages done yet). Then we write up a 1/2 to 1 page feedback for her. I really like what she's doing with it, but that's not my point at the moment.

Before you click the link above and remind yourself of the story, what do you remember?

It's only the first

How is it only the first and yet I look at November and think I'm in trouble?