Society Crushes Budding Scientists

The video is only 1:39 minutes but it's worth a quick watch.  Science doesn't have to be a rote memorization experience - and it shouldn't be!

Dr. Michio Kaku reminds us that we have to PROTECT our children's creativity and curiosity and wonder about the science that is around us all the time!

Motivation

I'm fascinated by what motivates people... in the workplace, in the home, everywhere! This video talks about the human desire for self-motivation, and how creativity and innovation really only comes with autonomy.  This video can be applied in lots of different areas.

Check it out!

I'm adding a label Sue's Video Collection, so I (and you, if you're interested) can easily find these great videos that I run across out on the internet, Facebook, etc. They seem to vanish on me, and then I'm left wondering where it was, who shared it, or the specifics of the video. So, hopefully this will help!

Stick With It!

I found this a while back and shared it on Facebook. But, as people probably already realize and I'm just a little late to figuring this out, Facebook stuff scrolls away and then it's much harder to find again.  So I'm going to share it here. That way, I can find it again when I want to share it with someone.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

 I like this little 2-minute video from Ira Glass, who many will know from This American Life.  This video really applies to any skill that needs to be honed, or creative endeavor that needs time to grow - not just storytelling or writing. 

And here's the longer version of this, more of just an interview with him:

The Carnival - Behind the Scenes!

I'm really excited that we could revive the Unschooling Blog Carnival. If you haven't gotten a chance to look at it, please do! It's so funny because I had no idea what a Blog Carnival was just 6 months ago. I remember seeing someone host it - maybe Linda Dobson with her Parent at the Helm?  She had all these links to other people's blogs but I was going there to read more of what Linda writes! I couldn't figure out why I was being redirected to all kinds of other places!

Then I stumbled across the Homeschool Carnival - which has been running for 6 years, WEEKLY!  That is so impressive to me. They were kind enough to let me participate a couple of weeks in a row, I read more from the links at their site, and soon I was up to speed.

For those who don't know, the Blog Carnival is simply a collection of blog posts under a particular theme.   In our case, the general theme is Unschooling. But we've decided that that's too general. We are selecting a theme each month and requesting blog posts to correlate (albeit loosely) with that theme.

For the Unschooling Blog Carnival, we opened with the theme of LOVE.  It was interesting to see how different people interpreted the theme. I really liked how we took a Beatles song - All You Need Is Love - and after pulling the lyrics out, placed the different blog posts near the lyric that fit best. It didn't always work, but it was fun to try to do this with a little creativity. This particular rendition of the song is so great! We just stumbled over it. It has a very Wizard of Oz feeling to me. It starts in black and white and then when John Lennon begins to sing, it moves into a colorized version. And it's not a big staged rendition. There are people sitting on the floor around them - including a very young Mick Jagger! - and they're sitting on stool singing away. In the end, protestors with signs come walking through the song. It's very "60's" feeling; so I just love it!

We were a little worried at first when we didn't have a lot of submissions. I had put the word out on a few Facebook Group Pages, but the submissions weren't coming in very fast. I was visualizing the Homeschool Blog Carnival which has TONS of blog post submissions. I had 3. I thought it would be much easier to contact bloggers, but it turns out that many bloggers don't include their email address at their blog. Was I supposed to just leave a request on one of their posts? I wasn't really sure what to do. Frank had sent a WONDERFUL blog post, but he opened with a comment about his penis. Was I really supposed to lead the Grand Opening of the Carnival with the Penis Piece? lol I asked a few more friends, some came through, others postponed to next time. Nevertheless, just when I was getting seriously worried, the blog posts started coming in. Hopefully, the word about the Unschooling Blog Carnival will spread, and we'll just keep growing it!

And for those who are asking, "OK, but why?" Here's my best answer. I am in this transition time as a mom. My kids are grown and leaving the nest. Yet, I've spent all this time studying, talking, immersing myself in learning. And the most joyful way to approach learning seems to me to be unschooling. So I did the National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) last November - 30 posts in 30 days, I learned a few things about the blogging community as well as about myself. Mostly I learned how shared projects like this can connect people. So that's one of my goals with the Carnival, to increase the connection among Unschooling Bloggers.

I'm working hard to add more creativity into my life. It's my word for the year. Christine Kane writes about "choosing a word" in Resolution Revolution: A Better Way to Start Your Year. Last year, my word was Focus. I had so many things that had to be completed, if I just allowed myself to drift in my typical fashion, I would never have gotten anything done. OR I would have regretted missing things when I pulled my head out of the clouds.  But this year, the word is Creativity.  When I'm working on creative projects, it just makes me more joyful in my life in general. So, January's Creative Project was the Unschooling Blog Carnival.


But one of the true blessings about stepping toward my creativity is that I was able to rope in invite my friend Cydney Romano to help me with the Carnival. She does a little blogging at Recording the Atoms. She is SO creative and I just knew some of that could rub off on me. Plus, after the NaBloPoMo in November, I made a discovery! In addition to being a wonderful artist, Cydney is also an incredible writer.  I'm so happy to have another connection with her! And everyone will be so happy that she's agreed to work on the Unschooling Blog Carnival too!

Protect Your Creativity

We start out with an abundance of creativity, but over time, it seems to fade.  Many of us recognize now that there are actually forces at work against creativity: peer pressure, schools, competitive society, marketing.  And then the more children are exposed to these destructive mediocre-creating ways, the more our creativity is squashed. Without protection, little by little it would be gone.  One of our jobs, as mothers, is to hold the space for our children's creativity to grow and blossom into whatever it needs to be.

Preserving our creativity is vital - it's the basis of all innovation, progress, and growth. That's why, as unschoolers, we found developing creativity to be more important than learning the times tables. Calculators can do that. But inventing or creatively problem-solving? That can only come if your creativity has been nurtured.



I want to share a few really good articles on the subject that I found out on the web:

Why People Secretly Fear Creative Ideas by Jeremy Dean
Jeremy writes the PsyBlog and contends that there are some very human traits that also work against our creative selves. He doesn't say this, but I think it's easy for us to simply blame school for squashing kids' creativity. And, while I think that it does, Jeremy's piece helps us understand that while we might say we want to promote creativity, our actions often show otherwise. Understanding that we have to overcome our bias against that uncomfortable-ness that comes with doing something new. You might see yourself or  others in some of the descriptions he gives. This will help you with conveying the right message to your children, to others, and even to yourself.

How to Become a Creative Genius by Kim Roach
Kim gives six tips for expanding creativity. Keeping a journal on hand to capture those fleeting ideas, imagining conversations, increasing your reading, mind-mapping, to name a few.

How to Instantly Boost Your Creativity and Happiness by Sandra Martini
Sandra encourages us to take 15 minutes to examine what's blocking our personal joy these days. You might be surprised how that can affect your creativity. I found this article on the Creativity for Life, which has a lot of articles to poke around and read.

AHA! Great Moments in Creativity by Mitchell Ditkoff
 Mitchell shares stories of Rene Descartes, founder of the Scientific Method; Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine; Richard Wagner and Wolfgang Mozart, exceptional composers; Rudyard Kipling, famous writer;  Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker composer; Kekule, a Flemish molecular scientist. He gives brief little snippets of each of their lives, and how "great creative breakthroughs usually happen only after intense periods of struggle - even madness."

I think we should spend as much time pondering how to protect our children's creativity as we do thinking about educational experiences we would like to see them have. We have no idea what our children will face in their adult futures. Rote memorization won't really be much of an advantage for them. But creativity and the ability to problem-solve, that is what will be REAL tools we shouldn't be overlooking.

 "The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity." - Alfred North Whitehead

 "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pierce

 "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." - Maya Angelou

I'd love to start a collection of articles about creativity. If you have any you run across, would you consider putting them in the comment box here? I'd really appreciate it!