Why should I know anything? I’ve got Google for that.

There is a popular belief in the field of education these days that facts are unimportant and unnecessary to learning, as students can find all the information they need courtesy of Google. It is a reasonable sounding argument. After all, we are awash in an ever increasing sea of data. Why would any sensible teacher expect their students to know anything, when Google can supply any fact at the push of a button? Esteemed educator E.D. Hirsch has a different outlook on the importance of factual knowledge to learning.

(Book except from E.D. Hirsch, Commentary below by Peter Harvie)

“The argument used by educators to disparage ‘merely’ factual knowledge and to elevate abstract, formal principles of thought consists in the claim that knowledge is so rapidly changing that specific information is outmoded almost as soon as it is learned.  This claim goes back at least as far as Kirkpatrick’s Foundations of Method (1925).  It gains apparent plausibility from the observation that science and technology have advanced at a great rate in this century, making scientific and technological obsolescence a common feature of modern life.  The argument assumes that there is an analogy between technological and intellectual obsolescence.  Educators in this tradition shore up that analogy with the further claim that factual knowledge has become a futility because of the ever-growing quantity of new facts.  The great cascade of information now flowing over the information highway makes it pointless to accumulate odd bits of data.  How, after all, do you know which bits are going to endure?  It is much more efficient for students to spend time acquiring techniques for organizing, analyzing, and accessing this perpetual Niagara of information.

Like the tool metaphor for education, the model of acquiring processing techniques that would be permanently useful – as contrasted with acquiring mere facts that are soon obsolete – would be highly attractive if it happened to be workable and true.  But the picture of higher thinking skills as consisting of all-purpose processing and accessing techniques is not just a partly inadequate metaphor – it is a totally misleading model of the way higher-order thinking actually works.  Higher thought does not apply formal techniques to looked-up data; rather, it deploys diverse relevant cues, estimates, and analyses from pre-existing knowledge.  The method of applying formal techniques to looked-up data is precisely the inept and unreliable problem-solving device used by novices.” (Hirsch supports this and other claims with lots of evidence, examples, and references to studies.)

Reference: E.D. Hirsch, The schools we need and why we don’t have them. (1996, 1999), pp. 152-3.

We should not feel alone in this, however.  A distinctly anti-intellectual, anti-content-based curriculum perspective has dominated most of North American education for almost a century.   This “progressive” perspective has great appeal in that it superficially mirrors the progressive/liberal social and political beliefs of many educators.  It appeals to our desires for equality and fairness.  Besides, it just makes sense to us.  It’s how we think the world of learning works – or at least how we think it should work.  Unfortunately, this model of how we learn does not reflect reality and educational programs based on it do not work.  It is firmly established in research and practical experience that students learn more and learn better with content-based curricula.  It may not be the way we wish things were, but in the real world, possessing a broad base of factual knowledge is essential for critical thinking, reading, economic success, and pretty much every other measure of how well an education system is serving its students.  Looking it up on the internet just doesn’t cut it. (Commentary by Peter Harvie, 2009)

Public and Private Art

Have you tried Googling yourself? If not, do it right now. Go to Google and enter your name in quotes like this “Joe Smith” or “Jenn Bly”. Even if you are a complete beginner when it comes to computers and the internet, you might be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised by what comes up when you Google your name.

This is only one of the reasons why you need to have your very own web presence. If anybody Googles your name for whatever reason, what page do you want them to see? Some random page with a person who shares the same name as you or your very own page featuring your own artwork.

Artists today cannot afford to not have a presence on the web. Any serious artist who for whatever reason rejects or avoids the web will find their work, their influence, their clients and their reputation either disappearing, or much worse, appropriated by fans and admirers.

For me, this is not a question of “should I or should I not put my work on the web?”, it is a question of “How exactly should I market and promote my artwork on the web in a way that is safe, effective, easy and priced within my budget?

There is an impressive range of options out there, from free blogs to personal portfolio web sites, and everything in between. If you are on a tight budget, you can start up a blog for nothing.  All the work of coding and page design is done, you just add the content.

Reclaiming teaching

In the world of education it has become an accepted practice to avoid the word “teacher” and “teaching”.

We who walk into a classroom every day to face a group of students are called upon to play many roles. We are facilitators, we are entertainers, we are curriculum developers, we are counselors, we are friends, we are decision makers, we are helpers, we are guides, we are mentors, we are editors, we are evaluators, we are planners, we are communicators, we are learners ourselves.

I may be all of those things, but most of all I am a teacher.

Learning with Disabilities

Many adults return to school only to encounter the same learning challenges they dealt with in earlier years. As a teacher I have worked with adults with undiagnosed learning disabilities who simply didn’t do well in school when they were young. These individuals often develop coping skills that allow them to get by in life, but not thrive. Fast forward to today, when the student has returned to school and the learning disability is still there.

My ADHD was diagnosed when I was an adult. When I was growing up I was not one of those “bouncing off the wall” kids who get a lot of attention at school because they are so hyper and out of control. I was extremely quiet. I never rocked the boat. I never once got into trouble at school. My marks were extremely high in subjects that I was interested in or if I liked the teacher, and mediocre in subjects I found boring. I just tuned out most of the time. When I found out I had ADHD, it explained so much. It put a lot of things into context for me.

I don’t dwell on ADHD but I do disclose it to my students. If there is a student in my class who has ADHD or any other learning disability I want them to know I understand what they are going through and I want them to know you can achieve anything you set your mind to, with persistence and hard work.

This is an easy online “self test” you can take to give you an idea whether or not you might have an “attention deficit”.

http://psychcentral.com/addquiz.htm

Fake or real?

I am fascinated by issues of visual plagiarism. I came across this nugget in my travels and I thought it was a great way to authenticate original art. With all the new technologies making it so easy for artwork to be ripped off, this one provides protection to the artist.

Australian painter Pro Hart has become the first artist to mark his work with his DNA. Other artists are expected to follow his lead, to authenticate their works beyond doubt…

Owners of up to 50 of Hart’s works attended a three-day ‘DNA clinic’ at the gallery last week. For £50 each, their paintings were authenticated and DNA-encrypted. This involves pulling apart DNA strands and finding segments unique to the donor. These are blended with paint and applied in an invisible film at a point on the canvas known only to the person applying it. The painting looks no different but is indelibly marked…

If a painting needs to be authenticated in court, the person who applied the DNA mark can do so in a matter of seconds using electronic lasers. Hart has encrypted about 1,500 of his works so far.
By Guardian Unlimited © Copyright Guardian Newspapers 2006
Published: 5/11/2002

reference:
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-11-2002-18240.asp

Rules, and breaking them

Artists have always been known to play fast and loose with rules and regulations and restrictions. This tendency to veer off in one’s own direction is common among creative people. I wonder what Michelangelo would have created if he had been restricted by a focus group, guided by market research and directed by a committee of managers. Instead, he was allowed to exercise the full scope of his intellect and his creativity was given free reign by his patrons.

In the world of graphic design you must learn and understand and be able to apply the rules. When you know the rules, your designs will look good. When you have mastered the rules, you will be able to break them to create fresh, appealing, unexpected designs. Good designers know and use the rules. Great designers break the rules intelligently.

The spaces in between

It’s common to think of learning as activity, movement, growth, and change. The word “learn” is a verb, after all. But I have come to believe that down time is necessary to allow learning to sink in and become part of us.

This summer I took classes in djembe drumming, for fun and relaxation. Learning the rhythms was hard, and it didn’t come easy to me. Near the end of the course, after about ten lessons, we were practicing a complex rhythm that I was having a lot of trouble with. Something shifted in my brain and suddenly I knew I had it! It was an amazing feeling – one minute I was struggling and the next minute I was playing the rhythm.

It felt like pure joy to have learned it and to be able to play it properly. But it didn’t come easy, and it didn’t come right away. I had to plug away at it over a period of weeks. I had to give my brain a rest between lessons and practices.

The Brain is a Muscle

I really believe the brain is a muscle, and it you don’t challenge your brain regularly, it gets flabby and less fit.

One of the thrilling things about my job is that I am forced to learn constantly. I know that I am a much more efficient learner now than when I was in my twenties, because I have to be in order to do my job properly. After I graduated with my first university degree, I spent five years working in a picture framing store. I loved the hands on nature of the work and helping people choose frames to enhance their artwork. I also enjoyed being surrounded by the beautiful pictures, posters and photos on the walls. However, in terms of learning, I was in a warm and pleasant comfort zone and I was never challenged to learn much of anything new the entire time.

I have learned that the more I learn, the more confidence I gain, which makes new learning easier and more pleasant. However I have also learned that sometimes this process can be a bit uncomfortable, as the brain makes room for new information, new understandings, and new feelings.

Saving Private Data

I have been backing up years of digital data the past few weeks. It led me to reflect on the documents I generate, which ones are the most important to me, and how they can be saved safely and accessed efficiently. Lately I have become especially concerned about my photo and design files, as they are crucial to me as an artist, and they also take up a huge amount of storage space.

I thought about how I name, organize, and save my files. I did some research on different types of data backup, including paying for online mass storage. For example, I tried to sign up with “Xdrive” that was offering 5GB of storage space but after filling out a signup screen 6 times and getting repeated error messages, I gave up. And then I came across something called “idrive” which seemed perfect, offering 2 GB of free storage. The signup process was really easy but they required that I download and install a piece of software. I declined because I was concerned it might contain spyware. It seemed like too big a chance to take. Then I came across a site called “mediamax”. It looked too good to be true – 25GB free storage, no strings attached. The signup was easy and I quickly uploaded a large (20GB file) I wanted to share with someone, because I know that it is not advisable to send files that big through e-mail. Before sending the URL to my friend, I went to my file manager page and tried to download the file and I was informed that because the file was larger than 10MB, I would have to upgrade to a paying account to download it. It felt like a cheap scam to me. That information should have been supplied before I wasted a lot of time and giving out my email address.

I settled on DVD backups, as this seemed the least expensive and easiest way of saving my data. I was surprised that ten years of data could be saved on a small stack of DVDs. Finally, I began thinking about how digitization will inevitably affect the art world. As images are increasingly digitized, and as they find their way onto the internet, this has wide ranging implications for all visual artists and designers.

What exactly is learning?

This is my reflective learning journal, in which I reflect on what learning means to me, my thoughts, feelings and experiences around learning, and how I might help others learn.

For now, I’d like to begin with a quote about learning, from one of my favorite artists.

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” Pablo Picasso

There are many ways to learn, but one method that has always worked well for me is “jumping right in and trying stuff and making a lot of mistakes and figuring it out as I go along“. I have completed more than eight years of post-secondary education, and one thing I have learned about learning is that it is often messy. The human mind and heart is not a machine, and learning is not a scientific process. Often, the deepest and most profound learning that happens is not what you expected, or even what the teacher intended.