Spark?

You may, or may not, be wondering about the logo that appears on our latest posts.

Spark relates to an e-zine started last year by the EdTech (Educational Technology) and CDU (Capability Development Unit) teams at WelTec (Wellington Institute of Technology). It featured ruminations, reflections, a variety of articles from staff and celebration of staff successes as well as a quiz or two and some e-learning tips.

Its purpose was, and still is, to demonstrate change leadership, explain the need for developments, showcase innovation and leadership, celebrate staff and encourage a community of practice.

Our analytics showed a variety of staff responses to a variety of stories.

Our main problem, however, was that Spark remained internal to our community.

So we adapted.

We set up EdTech.Ako last year and began tweeting more frequently this year. We have our Twitter account linked to our For Staff Moodle section and another called Rauemi.Ideas.Resources.Pedagogy. We have a YouTube account WelTec Online and a new Soundcloud account, also under WelTec Online. Some of our inspiration came from attending the NDF2014 Conference.

The world gets to see our ruminations, WelTec staff can follow the blog but also find stories in our internal repository and find resources on our Moodle sites.

Items on our blog with the logo indicate items following our current Spark theme, which in this issue is collecting evidence of student work.

In time we’ll set up a Facebook account but you can give us feedback here too.

Signed

The EdTech and CDU teams.

relaxing to create

clipart.com2015

Our team holds  (irregularly)  a ‘what I’ve been thinking ‘ session. It’s a way to share ideas  apart from the daily ‘things to do’ lists. Colleague Christine’s post (see previous) arises out of that share and some recent Twitter posts prompted me to consider the topic of relaxation, creativity and purposeful play once more.

 Christine shared  that Salvador Dali used to relax with a spoon in his hand and near a tin plate. When he relaxed and began to dream of course he’d drop the spoon onto the plate. If you know Dali’s work you can see the results…..

In this website – brain pickings, Maria Popova explores the idea of daydreaming.  Clearly several acknowledged geniuses daydream/ed: Freud, Bell, Nin. The post talks about a book by Jerome Singer called The Inner World of Daydreaming.  Singer describes 3 types of daydreaming: positive constructive daydreaming, guilty-dysphoric daydreaming, and obsessive reliving of trauma. The book is dated 1975 but two recent authors have reviewed the idea in Ode to Positive Constructive Daydreaming, to provide views on how daydreaming improves our lives.

On the same site Popova proposes that creative thought is combinatorial – that our brains gather a host of disasssociated  ideas that they (our clever brains) form into a new idea. Einstein called it ‘combinatory play’.How Einstein Thought: Why “Combinatory Play” Is the Secret of Genius

Popova describes in another post  how Lord Byron’s daughter (Ada Lovelace) and Charles Babbage constructed the idea of a computer. The astonishing and heart warming aspect of the post is that Lovelace’s mother tried desperately to train her daughter to avoid fantastical and nonsensical ideas so as to avoid being like her father.

His daughter’s ability with maths and creative thinking, is a triumph of spirit and imaginative day dreaming.

I’m off to relax my mind, although for me driving is the ultimate time to mull thoughts. What works for you?