Imagination at camp

I have just returned from an ESL/science camp where I taught middle school students how to do research in biology. The way we teach it is pretty cool so let me discuss it a moment before getting to my intended subjects:
The camp is on a school campus with a large forested area in a rural part of a rural province. on the grounds can be found deer, boar, hares, badgers and more.  The camp director has worked to collect many English and Korean language guidebooks for a wide variety of plants and wildlife in the area. The books are mostly descriptive and are used for IDing the flora and fauna here and took/ are taking a long time and a lot of money to complete the library.  The students are taken on a few hikes so they can see what is around, then choose a subject to study. At this point, classes are divided and groups are taken to areas that they suggest. As camp progresses, the classes become more and more student run as they drive the research and we teachers become advisors and safety personnel. This year an injured deer was observed and photographed on campus and several game cameras (strapped to trees and recording whatever disturbs the motion detectors) caught other deer.
Research projects heavily featured the deer and hares, which we also had great photographic evidence, but also fungi, tree species comparisons, and scat (animal poop). The students finished the camp by giving a presentation on their findings and I learned a lot from the students.
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Alright, back to the coverage of creativity at camp. The subjects and how they were studied did show creativity and perhaps I will write about that but for now, while I am tired, here are things students drew on my whiteboard:

Next up, one evening while I was busy with writing evaluations, my son called me over to join in his nonsense. Well that is how I first felt as I was tired and had a lot to do.  Then I decided I had time for a break so I joined him and I am glad I did.

In the teacher's dorm, he had a mattress next to my bed and I joined him on it. He told me he was going to take me to a different, secret world. I gestured at the wardrobes and asked if we would use one of them. He said no and told me to lie down and close my eyes.

I did so, curious. And then he took me to a very different place. Here we were in our world:

When I closed my eyes, and re-opened them, I was in bright cool place

The sense of novelty and relocation was wonderful. This new world had such a different character. While I had been in a room with satisfactory fluorescent lighting, this new place was bright with natural light and the shape made it seem higher.  The room was well-heated but in the new place, it was much cooler, but still comfortable.

I want my son to take me to many other new, secret worlds like this.

Stories with my son

Two nights ago, we slept at the in-laws after a wedding.  My son asked for some stories to help him sleep.
For the first story, I asked for a country, an animal and a fruit. My son offered: Canada, squid and pineapple.  I used a Korean pun to suggest that this squid - I think nameless in the story - was a 'San' ojingeo.  "San" probably means fresh or alive in this context but normally means 'mountain' (ah, 'ojingeo' means squid.)  So this squid was swinging from the trees on its tentacles in the mountains of BC.  It would drop on squirrels and eat them.  My son was horrified about this so the squid started trying fruit and broke into a greenhouse to eat pineapples.
Not a great story, but it had its fun moments.
For the second story, I asked for an insect, a school supply and a farm tool.    The story revolved around Jimmie Mosquito and his farming hoe and an eraser.
The final story was about a computer, the game Minecraft and an apple.

Again, none of the stories stand out as thrilling or had twist endings but my son was entertained and the stories held some surprises.  Good stuff.

A free semester and Children's (parent's) dreams

One way to understand what the phrase "a different culture" really means is to look at the variety of ways the people of that culture think of health and fitness.  Coming from Canada, I am conversant with a dozen different sports games and had some mastery of one. At the same time, I am 85 kg (happily down from 95 a year or so ago and still descending) and carrying at least five extra kg and cannot sit comfortably on the floor for any duration.

Few of my students here in Korea can swim and while most can ride a bike, few own one or have actually ridden one in the past year.  Hiking is for old people (like me, so I fit in that way).  Many of my male students are as tall or taller than I and the vast majority are slimmer. Heck, the vast majority of Koreans my age are slimmer. And they are all flexible enough to sit or sleep on the floor habitually or by choice, even with a sofa next to them.

Few of my students do any exercise -or so they claim in a challenging foreign language - except for occasionally walking 100 vertical meters up the mountain our university is built on to reach their classes.

At the same time, Koreans are famous as sports stars.  Korean women are the world's best at archery and both genders typically medal in the fighting events at the Olympics (boxing, TKD, wrestling, archery, um, etc?).

What I've seen is that young Koreans and their parents make a very clear and long-term decision around the time they finish elementary school whether to bother with sports or not.  And if not, badminton, walking, jumping rope and hula hooping are the boring-but-grimly-practical ways they pretend to stay in shape.  Go hard in sports or stay home and jump rope.

The previous five paragraphs were all to introduce my thoughts on a new government initiative called the Free Semester.

Let me backtrack a little.  From the Joongang Daily.

The “free semester” program is aimed at giving middle school students an opportunity to explore their career options without heavy burdens from tests for a semester, one of the core pledges of the new administration’s education policy.
No one would object to the idea of fostering young students’ creativity and talent by freeing them from tough competitions to enter top schools, as the program prioritizes active debate and field trips over written tests for rote learning.

From GELPonline (PDF):

The objectives of Free Semester Program (FSP) are to provide opportunities for students to explore their dream and talent, and also to develop 21st century competencies including creativity, character building, social skills and self-directive learning skills by reducing burden of written examination (18th PTC, 2013; MOE, 2013). In order to achieve such objectives, every middle school in Korea is supposed to implement the free semester program' by 2016. During the free semester, students will be exempted from regular mid-term and end of the term examination and instead, the school curriculum will operate flexibly where students can enjoy various activities including career exploration.
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First, the program aims to expand opportunities for students to nurture their talents and to experience ‘flow’ by engaging in their own interest. Second, the program also aims to introduce innovative teaching and assessment method in schools by allowing more teacher autonomy and encourage further development on students' creative thinking skills and cooperative learning culture. Third, the program encourages schools to play proactive roles in educational reform by forming flexible learning community. Fourth, voluntary participation from the parents as well as local community will be encouraged in order to build strong infrastructures for career exploration activities.

 Also from the GELP link:

Okay, so why did I start with a discussion of health and fitness?  Well, aside from writing this in a stream-of-consciousness format and not planning the essay before blogging, because the first link discusses athletes and how they fit in. Here is that link again (to the Hani) and an excerpt:

“We need education that teaches skating to Kim Yu-na and swimming to Park Tae-hwan.”

This was the message from Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Hwang Woo-yea during a May 7 visit to his alma mater. Hwang mentioned the two sports stars repeatedly while advertising the “free semester” system as a way of harnessing the “dreams and gifts” of middle school students young enough to be his grandchildren. His heart seems to have been in the right place, and his words weren’t exactly wrong. But the reaction from students’ parent was sharp to say the least.

“He wants me to ‘teach skating to Kim Yu-na’ without offering to buy a single pair of skates.”

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Parents today are now channeling too much of their resources and efforts into finding “dreams and gifts” for their children. The problem, in a nutshell, is an acute shortage of education facilities and programs with public school support. And in a society where even dreams and gifts become stratified, there is little chance of developing the competitive talent of a Kim Yu-na or Park Tae-hwan. In a society where 80-to-20 odds are less a concern than 1-to-99, families that chase impossible dreams of skill end up without food on the table. This also explains why so many children, when asked for their “dream,” give a stable job like civil servant.

I have considered writing a Gladwellian book with the  title,"Slack: how life is tightening its bound and reducing wiggle-room and flexibility".  The title and conceit are satirical but the concept is not.  In Canada, children can have free time or go to camps that teach everything or nothing.  In Korea, children are sent to academic camps where they can study a few of the same subjects as their regular classes but in more detail and for longer hours.  I must admit I profit thereby as I often work at such camps and earn more at them than at my regular work.  There isn't a lot of slack time here for self reflection.

Anyway, the government appears to want to give students time to investigate their options and learn what they individually enjoy but for a child to study less than usually during that four month period means they could be at a disadvantage during the university entrance exam and. well, in Korea, nothing more needs to be said.  For those outside of Korea, the university entrance exam results controls what university you will go to and a job seeker with "Seoul National University" on his or her resume will be chosen first, regardless of what comes next on the resume.

In Korea, study and focus on education peaks in the months before the university entrance exam.  No Korean expects to study as single-mindedly even while at university.  Students have a chance to relax and be creative and inquisitive while at university but I feel like it is too late then.  They have already chosen a major and cut off some options by this time.  Further, a middle school student who explores options would think about dating, sports, games, the world and education while a university student in the same position looks at dating, soju, nervousness over military service, soju, and dating, then sports, games, academia...

I hope the Free Semester program takes effect and actually promotes the goals it is intended to and soon.  My son will be a middle school student two years and I want him to have these opportunities.
affg

November 3 morning's productivity report

Movember continues.  I wonder how long it will be before I don't need closeups to show off my mustache.  The light brown and white (I no longer gasp in horror) whiskers make it hard to see even when it is reasonably long.

The cheetah is looking good, if I do say so myself.  I am learning that one difference between a novice and an experienced carver is in the bravery in taking the first strokes.  I am shy about digging too deep into the wood.  I know the head should be much narrower than the shoulder muscles - sharing the widest point with the thighs - but I tend to scrape down a few millimetres on each side at a time in fear of going too far.

 One more gash, this time no picture, on my right hand baby finger.

About 1700 words on my InNoWriMo novel.  I'm not emphasizing it here because it has been stuff I'd been thinking about for months, even years, as I tried to write this story in InNoWriMo 2011.  I have only recently written it down but it is not creative production from this year.

My son's jack-o-lantern.  Yes, it was done in time for Hallowe'en, but I was late in shooting it.

Not my work, but remarkable enough for me to offer a link: What is the most philosophical thing that you have heard a child under 5 say?

My itch to write is like my ...

...Athlete's foot.  If I scratch it right, it stops bothering me for weeks.

I'm not saying this is a good thing but it is a pretty honest description of my muse.  Perhaps I need to work more in Haiku.

In other new creative endeavors, I have started carving a cheetah out of wood for my son's Christmas present.  While walking around my workplace -The Wye Marsh - I found a bit of discarded wood so have also begun working on a giraffe. so, after months of basically no carving, I now have two projects going.  Well, the giraffe is from a piece of scrap small enough to fit in a pocket while the cheetah is perhaps 40cm long.  A project and a time waster, I guess.

With NaNoWriMo coming soon, should I scratch my writing itch to, uh, infect the wound and and make it more annoying or ignore it so I can really dig my fingers into the dead scabby tissue and tear it satisfyingly and painfully from between my inflamed toes?  And did I just over extend that metaphor?

Lego Ceationary

My son and occasionally play Creationary, a Lego Game.  The game can be fun and I like making things with the little guy but there are some problems.  Before I get into them, here are some things we made.  I have included two pictures of each item with the card and die in the image.  I have posted each picture twice; in the first picture I have obscured the card image so you could guess if that interests you.

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Alright, I hope that was fun.  So my two problems with the game, and they are minor, are age-appropriateness and culture specificity.

I don't know how much my Mars Rover looks like the image, but either way, my son didn't know what a Mars Rover was.  Similarly, there was a Concorde image and my completed product looked either like it or a Space Shuttle.  My son has never seen the Concorde and doesn't remember if he had seen a Space Shuttle.  The Concorde last flew in 2003, two years before my son was born.  I just can't imagine the target audience for this game being born in the '90s and so able to remember such a craft.

My in-laws live on a farm and are farmers.  There is no red-walled barn with silo in the country, I think.  This is a minor complaint because I do think Lego's target audiences are North America and Europe.  Besides, my son made a good elevator, having ridden in one about once or more a day all his life, while his American cousin has probably been in fewer than a hundred.

A more common complaint is the small number of parts.  There is wonderful variety in the blocks but unless you want to go very minimalist and  abstract, you will probably not complete your structure in the intended color.  I am willing to import parts from other Lego sets - notably the older, only-squares-and-rectangles sets, but I worry about migration of the the game's parts away.

We had fun, we didn't keep score and we built some things together and some simultaneously. 

Planning and creating through the activity.

So Christmas is over and man, was it boring.

I have a problem with planning.  I can be wonderfully organized but typically only up to the start of the event.  For my parent's 25th wedding anniversary, my sister and I put a lot of work into secretly finding their friend's addresses and mailing party information to them.  We found and rented a great hall that also supplied food and drink.  The guests arrived, I invited my parents into the car for brunch and we drove to the event. Everyone yelled…something.  Probably Surprises or Congratulations or the like.  Then… nothing.  My father ended up emceeing the party planned in his own honour.

This year -we're back to talking about Christmas now - I decorated the house with the little guy's help.  While he was asleep, I laid out the presents and got everything ready for the morning.  Morning came, he was duly thrilled, and repeatedly told us how much he loved Christmas.  Then…nothing.  We stayed indoors and struggled to find something to do in the long, long afternoon.  Out of boredom, he was ready to go to bed early.

I am not always like this.  When I lead canoe trips for a sports camp, I repeatedly cautioned the campers to understand the end of the trip would be official only when we were enjoying dessert at the camp's main hall that evening.  And it worked.  The campers all pitched in to load the canoes and gear into the waiting vans and even unload it when we returned to the camp.  It was a point of pride for me that we returned clean pots and pans to the camp kitchen.

Recently, I also wrote about my son's new Lego sets, with their attention to detail, like the bookshelf in the bedroom.  This is where I need to focus - not on the bedroom - this is a PG-rated blog.  But rather, I need to plan through the event.  I need a "The-activity-is-not-done-until-the-next-breakfast" mindset.

Old V New Lego

When I was my son's age, we built rectilinear houses and rectilinear  cars with square blocks and we liked it!  Now, my son wants specialty sets based on marketable themes and with unusually shaped pieces that build preplanned shapes: castles, helicopters, dinosaurs, dune buggies and steam-punk vehicles.
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This seems life a good place for an addition two weeks later:  The Ethical Adman misses the old Lego sets too.  He shows some 1970's Lego ads, including one of an interesting ambulance, then says,

 This was around the time when I started playing with the iconic blocks, almost 40 years ago. Note that the craptacular ambulance built by 5-year-old "Maria" could have just as easily been built by "Mario".

And then it hit me what the real problem is.

Lego stopped being a "blank slate" imagination toy sometime in the '80s. While you can still buy plain blocks if you look hard enough, Lego is now much more about getting kids to act out branded and scripted narratives than asking them to start from scratch.

End updated section
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I haven't decided if this is an improvement.  Maybe the creative aspect has simply moved one step.  Where I built an owl, carefully choosing the right pieces to form a large diamond -shaped body and a  smaller diamond-shaped head with protruding beak, then admired it as it sat on my dresser, the little guy builds castles, populates them with good and bad guys, then spends hours acting out a story with them.  My creative output was in making; His is in using.

I have two concerns with the specialty shapes in the Monster Fighter themed sets, though.  First, it will be hard or impossible to use some of them in new ways later.  The spooky, gothic castle roof piece looks like it would only be appropriate as a spooky gothic roof piece - maybe the castle part is the variable.  The castle is made from perhaps twenty tall blocks that now have the included atmospheric stickers on them.  It is difficult imagining them as being repurposed as aircraft wings, for example.

All that said, I do love the flourishes and details in the vampire's castle.  There is a library, a cauldron with magical ingredients stewing and a piano in the attic of a high tower.  The little guy has already put the vampire in there to work the keyboard.

A related point is that the castle perfectly fits my conception of a vampire's castle but I am old.  I would be upset with a Twilight-style castle (they don't have castles? That woman is ruining the genre!) but I also don't want my son to be pushed into playing out traditional vampire stories.

My second concern with the Monster Fighter's themed sets is the number of guns.  Now, I played with guns a lot as a child and have turned out mostly fine.  In the set, it is not merely a few characters who have guns, but the cars have guns as exhaust pipes or hood ornaments.  They look bad-ass but not in a way I want to son to experience.  Am I old and cranky?

links roundup

At my university, students need to take a TOIEC test and we professors don't see the results until after the semester is done.  Objectively, their taking -or not- the test doesn't affect me but it does affect their grades and I do what I can to remind them.  Here is one example:



My son plays the teacher.
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For more professional movie making, look to Gord Sellar.  He needs some extras for a movie he's making and has issued a cattle-call.

We need extras of both sexes — male and female — for Sunday, December 2, in Bucheon City. We need as many people as we can get: if we don’t get enough people, we’re going to have to hire more, which will use up the money we had earmarked for post-production.

We put out a call last week, and got an okay response: about twenty people are coming. But we need more people. If you participate, you’ll be welcome at a party we’re hosting at my place after the shooting is done, with beer. Free beer, until the kegs run dry. We’ll order pizzas, too. And extras will eventually receive a copy of the film on DVD, as well!

We especially need Koreans — or anyone who can pass for Korean — as extras, but don’t get me wrong: we will find a use for you no matter what you look like! 

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When I engage in FLOW, I lose track of my surroundings.  I remember working on something with my MP3 player going and coming up for air a few times and finally realizing that I had been listening to one song on repeat for over an hour.

I enjoy the background sounds Omm Writer provides.  When I was a student, I used to listen to Doug and the Slugs all the time.  I would be working and focused and take a break, singing along for a moment, then focussing again. D&the S wasn't for listening to, so much as it was for being a familiar background noise.

Neuro Tribes reports on what some top writers listen to as they work. The authors are pretty science-heavy but their music is remarkably varied.  Via Boingboing.
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TED now has a playlist for creativity.  I don't see Ken Robinson on the list, so perhaps it is new stuff.  I have some new material to watch now.
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Rappers in an fMRI:

No matter what they were rapping about, their brains "activated differently during the improvised flow versus the memorized lyrics," says Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience. When subjects were freestyling, the medial prefrontal cortex — an area associated with organizing and integrating information — showed an increase an activity. Meanwhile the dorsolateral region, which helps with "self-control, self-monitoring, and self-censoring," showed a decrease in activity, adds Pappas. (This area became more active when the rappers were reciting memorized lyrics.) 

Elsewhere in the article, the brain is described as "turning off it's own censors".  This is a valuable reminder that one needs to spew ideas and smooth them out later.

PZ Myers thinks the science of the fMRI work on rappers is trivial.

You know, there’s nothing really wrong with this work: it’s not bad science. It’s just pointless science. It’s settled that we have this technology that can monitor variation in blood flow in the functioning human brain, and that’s nice, but what are people going to do with it? So far, it seems to be simply crudely phenomenological, with investigators stuffing people’s heads in cylinders and asking them to do X, Y, and Z, while we all coo over the pretty colors the computer paints on the screen.
The results of this study, for instance, are completely unsurprising…and they also don’t tell me what should be done next, other than bringing in artists in other genres and seeing what their brains do. Which wouldn’t tell me anything other than more correlations between brain blotches and behavior. I’m not seeing any new questions arising from this work, which to me is the real hallmark of interesting science.

He's probably right, but I see the takeaway a little differently.  I often need the same fact repeated a number of ways before it really sinks in.  I know that one needs to brainstorm and, well, vomit out ideas, and later tidy them up. But I still find myself editing as I write and paralyzing myself when the written work isn't profound or pretty enough.

Who knew you could change existing games?

I learned the game, Rock, Paper, Scissors years ago, probably back in elementary school.  Last year, I learned the extension, "..., Lizard, Spock"to the game (1, 2).  This is pretty cool, so I taught some of my students as a new way to play (Koreans, of all ages, love Rock, Paper, Scissors).

It wasn't until I taught my son the game that I learned something.  There is no reason to stop at 5 elements to the game.  He quickly suggested adding Cider and Balloon to the game although we were both hazy on how and why they beat or were beaten by the other elements.

As an ESL teacher, I am now very interested in the game and ways to add to it.  It seems clear that you need an odd number of elements so that each element can beat and be beaten by half of the others:

New element beats (n-1)/2

New element is beaten by (n-1)/2

And it helps, I think, to draw a polygon with five, seven, nine or more sides to diagram how each element affect the others.

Diagram from the above Wikipedia link and here, another Wikipedia description I just found which describes the same information as I independently came up with.
As an ESL teacher, it is the last bit that is useful.  We all know:
Rock smashes scissors but is covered by paper.
Paper covers rock but is cut by scissors,
Scissors cut paper but are smashed by rock.
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In the Lizard, Spock alternative:
Spock uses a laser on scissors and rock, but is disproven by paper and poisoned by lizard.
Lizard eats paper but is crushed by rock and decapitated by scissors.

My students will be making their own additions to the game next semester... and I need to thank my son for reminding me to consider changing established activities.

Time to play CalvinBall (1, 2)

Good compliments

One piece of advice I had heard for parenting was to compliment children correctly.  "You're very smart." or "That was smart." are bad compliments -and the former scans strangely to me; I don't think anyone would say that.

so, how should we be compliment people, young or young at heart?  Media Bistro has five suggestions and here are two of them:

1. Acknowledging incorrect facts. Whether a person’s name is acknowledged incorrectly or an achievement is miscommunicated, this one definitely lacks effectiveness. Fact check, please!
3. Being vague. Giving someone at pat on the back for a “good job” is simply too generic. The best way to boost morale? Point to specific behaviors so people know what they did right.

For children, my understanding is to offer compliments that are as specific as possible and also to praise a work ethic more than smarts.

A 7 year-old's view

Two images involving my son today.  First is a wall mural we are working on together.

This mural will eventually reach across to the right about four more B5 pages worth.  Click to enlarge, if you wish.  You will find a variety of animals and objects and some are obviously poorly-drawn by me and others may be well-depicted elements from my son's imagination.  The whole mural is a fun project but also a contest of wills for whose creative vision will predominate.

Next, my son drew a picture of the living room in our apartment:

The thing is, this picture is a 270 degree view.  Leftmost, is the entrance to the bathroom and moving right: our fridge, sink, rice cooker, kitchen table, bookshelf and sofa.  If you can see into the bathroom, the kitchen table would be directly behind you and the sofa behind and to your left.  I don't know what this means in my son's artistic or cognitive growth, but it is interesting enough that I want to keep a record of it here.