#UCSIA15 Reflections from week 3: Convergence zones, purpose and development
This week I needed to be more proactive in constructing my reflections for two reasons: a family birthday weekend away, thus losing my Sunday morning flow; and also wanting to compile something, but fearing the writers block phenomena… as “ “when you’re trying so hard to come up with ideas you can’t do it, you can’t force it,” said Charles Limb”. Feedback from Keith on last weeks blogs eluded to a “riffing” in the writing, but we weren’t sure what it meant. This feed since may assist our understanding:
“Limb’s research has shown that when musicians are improvising, there’s a switch away from the lateral prefrontal lobes responsible for monitoring and self-censoring, allowing the musician to generate ideas more freely. Limb’s research has led him to agree with Binder that freedom to explore and practice without a specific goal in mind is a key element of developing creative competence.” (Schwartz, 2014)
This tweet from Dr. Ashley Casey led to exploring the concept of a SLOG (which may further support the riffing analogy). This article around “authenticity, constructed meaning, and facilitating cultural (individual and organisational) change” was also discovered, where I thought this proposal of ‘Think, Act, Change’ was useful for personal/public #UCSIA15 reflection, if anything is activated or resonates in this story.
“Think about findings of the paper — do they resonate with you? Use the comment box below to ask a question, seek clarification, maybe challenge the findings.
Act on what you’ve read. What do you believe? Is it your responsibility to make changes or is this just something else that I’ve put on your plate? Is there action to take? If so, what might it be?
Change what you do in response to your thoughts and actions? Is this a personal undertaking? If you want to do something or are looking for help then please let the community know about it.”
Another direction I was drawn in was that of “a writing tool, or heuristic, called The Chain of Dependencies (CoD)”, which I look forward to delving into… In brief:
“One of the problems students face even in advanced writing courses in college is knowing how much context to give. Instead of presenting the full context for their argument, they jump straight to the point they want to make. However, once they begin to explore the context, the background for their argument, they often discover nuances of their argument itself.”
CoD “is a kind of bubble map that doesn’t merely fizz in all directions like the one students use for brainstorming (which often leaves them in the bubbles). Instead, it’s a meditation on what readers “need to know” as Jessica puts it, before they can understand a point you want to make.”
So as the week builds, so too do the feeds and personal episodes, with ‘no specific goal in mind’, it enabled the story to emerge, and in doing so merged themes and shaped them into a juxtaposed trilogy (or maybe not?!). As initially emphasised early in The Value of Numbers iBook, this series of blogs continues to “form a (messy) personal ePortfolio, which is linked to the assessment procedures in #UCSIA15 outlined here.”; because as I am learning “writing is such messy business.” (Zhuo, 2015)
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” Vince Lombardi
CORE THEMES:
Curriculum design. Social Purpose. Chaos and order. Bees and Products
Along with reinforcing some concurrency from the previous reflections:
Work based learning (WBL) and Teamwork. Diversity and Trust.
Part I: Curriculum Design
Some core elements in our local environment this week have centred on [in the modified words of Merrit (2013)],
Delegating tasks. Developing others. Building consensus.
Being decisive. Thinking strategically.
As a new group of peers, we had healthy discussion on the macro, meso and micro levels of order of curriculum design (including p values), which offered glimpses of the harmony in hierarchy within the positions and activities, likened to those in a hive.
Some extracts from this weeks feeds that catalysed further thinking on WBL were:
“So, can educators help their students become more creative? Some teachers are moving in that direction, loosening the rules, giving students choice, celebrating ideas and behaviors that challenge the status quo, but without a drastic reimagining of the structures within which educators work, true creativity could be hard to find in school.” (Schwartz, 2014)
“Once a crew of trusted employees is assembled, effective managers don’t just delegate, they also foster teamwork. “ (Merritt, 2013), in turn this trust and delegation leads to empowerment and ownership of task as:
”Individual bees make decisions based on local cues and information, making the beehive perhaps the original empowered organization. In contrast to stodgy centralized systems, bees are able to make high-quality, relatively quick choices through distributed authority because the colony has mechanisms in place that reinforce sound judgments and execution.” (O’Malley, 2012)
But, Part I is potentially best summed up in this Slideshare by Harold Jarche, on finding perpetual beta.
Part II: Social Purpose
Whilst preparing a new lead lecture for a group of second year students, I engaged with two students to chat through #UCSIA15, and how we could use it as a platform for flipped learning. The chat was initiated through their interpretation of a proposed Analysis/Analytics Order model (coming soon). Part of this became a healthy debate, full of passion, with a touch of frustration.
We spoke about Twitter and other forms of social media as a valuable resource at multiple levels, such as an awareness of relevant activity in niche areas. The #papp story was used to illustrate the power of aggregation through a hashtag. A quick search of @DMCPAP #SSP5045 revealed a useful collection of articles that could have been applied in their coursework, demonstrating how the repository could be filtered. The social media feed also provides a living commentary of our activity at the CPA/Cardiff Met to encourage students to select us on their UCAS form etc. Then, the subject turned to personal branding, and that only one of the students currently had one; but had not fully considered what it represented. My final argument was of a digital trail leading to employability and job opportunities, and how this VPA blog collection of articles was a convincer for my continued commitment to leaving the breadcrumbs behind. So others, and I, could retrace the steps. A major talking point was how can you take the opportunity to sell yourself at an interview, if you don’t get your foot through the door… Does you digital trail help reveal your values, behaviours and capacities needed for the job?
Performance synergy becomes the first convergence zone of the blog…
Post-event, I considered the purpose of using social media, questioning who are the resources for. There is not a large PA audience, and if the students, your primary targets, are not aware of it, not using it, or even unfollowing it, why would the practice continue; this is developing on last weeks reflections on why would you continue to share your thoughts. There was some encouragement from this article, as you are actually transferring information, not knowledge; along with a topical example of how someone has created this open resource on Excel in sport. This Youtube repository must have taken a long time to generate, but I was only made aware of it through the introductions within #UCSIA15; evidencing my community of practice has therefore grown… These elements help raise the bar, and provide a great example of what it means to be on transmit. Reassuringly, following our chat, both students also tweeted (here and here), which was confirmation that I had made a comprehensive stance.
This trail links the storyline into the subject of employability, allowing talent and purpose to develop on the convergence zone theme. Where “talent is a convergence of your personal interests, passions and capabilities.” (Wubbe, 2015), and for purpose the convergence point is passion, mission, profession and vocation. So ask yourself, “Are you deeply rooted in your cause, mission, or leadership role?”; which zone would you put yourself in today? Are you in the convergence zone?
Part III: Chaos and order
In turn, employability leads us back to the ordered chaos in the hive of activity in the WBL environment at Cardiff Met, where these 3 recent feeds helped to bring context, direction and action to this space…
On the Edge of Chaos: Where Creativity Flourishes
Some of the key extracts from an interview with Dr. Robert Bilder that I could relate to the environment were:
“It was that freedom to explore that led them to be increasingly engaged and allowed them to forge connections that allowed them to be more creative.”
“Freedom offers students space to generate ideas.”
“One definition that scientists have agreed upon for creativity is the ability to create something that’s both novel as compared to what came before, and has value.“
Key extracts here were:
“Extreme Learners are self-directed, wide-ranging in their interests, comfortable with technology, and adept at building communities around their interests.”
“It’s the hunger for learning rather than raw intellect that distinguishes Extreme Learners from the gifted.”
“The most extreme thing is not being afraid to learn new things,”
“What’s the lesson here for schools? In short, standardization, repetition, and rigidity are deadly for the curious. “Nothing bores me more than seeing a list of redundant facts I have to memorize,”
“If you put the pieces together, you see a movement,” Chen said. Along with MakerLabs, Maker Faires, and TechShops, all of which foster independent learning and creativity, Extreme Learners have indulged their intellectual passions in their own time and on their own terms. Formal educational institutions have little to do with it.”
“The main takeaway for teachers is, give students more flexibility and choice over what they’re working on,” Milton Chen said. “Give kids the tools to identify their interests and gather information. And help them find like-minded people to work with.”
Some key elements summarised:
An anti-fragile, student learning community with choice and autonomy of tools and resources, without dictating the content of the learning, to explore, share and add new value to a culture co-created with guides and peers, through the turbulence of the trial-and-error processes of independent learning, allowing true life-long learning strategies to form.
This article also took me back to thinking globally and acting locally: “the global goals must remain big and ambitious and the local goals feasible”; most importantly to “build something larger than themselves”.
Part of these flexibility elements were reinforced by Ross (2015) with his views on the publishing market where “the students and teachers — rarely get to choose what they’re buying. They typically just receive a syllabus and purchase as told.” He stated “text books are becoming anachronistic”. This article supports the change to the non-linear, individualised learning route proposed in #UCSIA15, to acquire information through digital learning materials which help reshape education. There was particular criticism where “ ‘new’ editions typically include little more than glorified cosmetic updates — a new picture, for example, or a heading adjustment”, where instead “advocates have called for more open-source textbooks as alternative — resources available online at little to no cost.”
These articles also served as affirmation of the value and credibility of social media as communication skills students need for 21st Century Learning, linking back to this CoD extract,
“Students should know how to make a persuasive argument, leverage networks and communities, and carefully craft a message. They should understand how to write with clarity and impact, but also how to use the power of different mediums, in ways appropriate to context and intended audience, to achieve specific goals.”
and supported through the sentiments in this article on academic blogging:
“So, blogs are dead. Long live the blog! Well, long live the science blog, written for free by an academic with a lot to say to a niche audience!”
Returning to Ross (2015), the future steps of blended-learning sound exciting, yet challenging, emphasising the need to be nimble:
“These new materials do come with pedagogical advances. With traditional textbooks, each student is presented with the material in the same way regardless of his or her proficiency in that particular subject. Now, artificial intelligence means that the material itself can actually study a student’s learning habits and adjust in real time.” He also raises concerns how these interventions will impact the human elements where, expert John Rice, reassured that “It’s called blending for a reason. It’s the best of what teachers can do that will never be replaced by technology. And the best of what technology can do that is just way more efficient and advanced that what a teacher can.”
Returning to the bee analogy, it is critical to be alert and responsive to change to have a productive and current WBL environment:
“The competence of the individuals, for example, is assured by a disciplined career development program. By the time bees are sent into the field, they are prepared — and, even then, novice foragers are frequently accompanied by veterans who show them how to efficiently and productively move among, and work, the flowers. Knowledge management is also essential. Bees have a great communication system by which the good incoming information is always overwhelming the bad and is on constant display for the bees to see. Thus, individual workers have access to an accurate, up-to-date depiction of the real world.” (O’Malley, 2012)
Moving on, earlier I referred to an Analysis/Analytics Order Model to prompt discussion in #UCSIA15. Here is the model. How would you interpret it? How would you modify/transform it? What do you think this convergence zone represents?
A core design principle behind storytelling in data visualisation is ‘depth’. This article has great coverage of this in relation to text annotation. It was relevant to reinforce the messages delivered within this weeks practical session challenging students to exactly replicate a graph, where there was an attempt at creating something ‘aesthetically functional’ through a game of spot the difference; but importantly it leads back to the diversity of opinion covered in week 1 reflections.
“Don’t assume that two different people looking at the same data visualization will walk away with the same conclusion.” (Nussbaumer, 2015)
Seeing ideas and concepts being developed into reality has been a key driver for us at the CPA, where we act as a connector between people and companies (such as, the AP capture journey, creating a local solution with local associates). Just as “more diverse hives are better at everything and more productive than less diverse ones” (O’Malley, 2012), “the best product managers are able to gather the right people to make decisions” (Choi, 2015). This gets even more exciting and powerful when “…individual hives work together, agreeing on what land to cover, never competing.” (Merritt, 2013). Ultimately, there has been synergetic collaboration of expertise to ideate, create and mature concepts to sustainable products, through divergent and convergent thinking.
On this occasion, development is the convergence zone:
Referring back to riffing, the key is within the balance of experiential tacit knowledge (referred to in this announcement), and the time and environment to allow creativity to flourish… highlighted here:
“The ability to inhibit the first thing that comes to mind in order to get to the higher hanging fruit in the cognitive tree is one of the cornerstones of creative achievement,” said Bilder. The first idea is not usually the most novel one; pushing past the easy answer and reaching for a better one is a mark of creativity.
“To reach that perfect state of brain balance it helps if the creator is feeling what Bilder refers to as “flow,” and what an athlete might call “playing in the zone.” It’s an automatic, effortless, but highly concentrated state when all the practice and knowledge leading up to that moment comes pouring out in perfect harmony.” (Schwartz, 2014)
“Many people in a creative field, myself included, have succumbed to the fantasy of the Idea Person.” (Zhuo, 2015). However, ideas are the easy part…the process of innovation and execution is much more difficult. This is where the diversity of skills in your community of practice is invaluable, especially “someone who honors the craft of getting shit done well”.
A current example of follow-through people have been Rex Proctor and Tom Dalling. Thank you for ’making a super jump’ and seeing a value in the profile idea/concept to enter into the product development phase. In the spirit of #UCSIA15 I look forward to joint global learning adventures…
In closing, the connector between all this, is the potential for #UCSIA15 to emerge as a convergence zone, as summarised here:
“This reminded me of Margaret Wheatley’s writings about how “disorder can be a source of new order, and that growth appears from disequilibrium, not balance. The things we fear in organizations — disruptions, confusion, chaos — need not be interpreted as signs we are about to be destroyed. Instead these conditions are necessary to awaken creativity and new growth” (Wheatley, Margaret J., Leadership and the New Science, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2006). This idea of growth through disruption and even chaos is true not only in organizations but for us as individuals. While un-welcomed and feared, when we have identified and strive to live with a clear purpose or mission, the swarms and storms of life can deliver us to a higher level of existence.” (Vansaghi, 2014)
“The truly creative changes and the big shifts occur right at the edge of chaos,” Bilder said
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” — Henry Ford
THAT REALLY WAS A SLOG!
Housekeeping: In response to reflections week 2, I decided to create a discussion board with threads to, akin to in #OAPS101, with the added dynamic of having closed comments until participants participate. This remains true to my perspective on being on transmit and receive at the same time. Due to requests for people without access to iOS devices, I also made a pdf version and a screen recording available (as the flattened pdf lost a lot of the interactive content). It also led to questioning the openness of the iBook Author outputs moving forward, querying its application when it is exclusively constrained to Mac OS.
Continue to #UCSIA15 Reflections for final week: From audio to cricket
Riley, D. (2007). Educational Technology and Practice: Types and Timescales of Change. Educational Technology and Society, 10(1), 85–93.
Wang, Q. and Woo, H.L. (2007). Systematic Planning for ICT Integration in Topic Learning. Educational Technology and Society, 10(1), 148–156.
