Back to the Drawing Board: It's so Based!
A case of a medium-size-fits-all being used for active learning
🔊 “You got to spread joy up to the maximum, bring gloom down to the minimum”
Drawings by Unity Wu (@wuyou_pf) & Toro Russell (@fltr_ii) / 2024
How about a mirthful story?
Here’s a voice note I sent to a notable teacher of perception training.
I thought it worthwhile to share this AHA! audio signal, spontaneously recorded on 11 Jan, while I was waiting for friends from the monthly
meetup, at some old 17th-century coaching inn & pub with oak beams.Let’s go back to the beginning shall we?
First, a reminder that each edition of these written missives have a subtle soundtrack you can listen to if you spot the [speaker high volume emoji] ↑.
It’s good to be reacquainted with classic tunes from the past. This flashback starts with these lyrics:
Gather 'round me, everybody
Gather 'round me, while I preach some
Feel a sermon coming on here
The topic will be sin
And that's what I'm agin'
If you wanna hear my story
Then settle back and just sit tight
While I start reviewing
The attitude of doing right…
Entering Corona Classrooms
In December 2019 - visual arts practitioners Russell Miller + Xavi Sole, recruited me to teach with them at Kingston School of Art. The course we deliver collectively is the BA in Creative & Cultural Industries, and here’s an old 40-second ‘trailer’ that explains how it’s meant to be a commercially focused degree.
I inherited a foundational module taught to the first years, called: History & Context of the Creative Industries: Content, Critique & Competition. — Quite a mouthful right!?
I suspected the possibility that freshers were probably not as thrilled as I, by the H word. Adding more C words to that, the consonant compound was bound to confound the young adults. It’s now been simplified to Thinking About Ideas, though the same mission continues, enabling students to:
Create a critical, historical, ethical and theoretical framework within which to investigate and understand practices of creativity in relation to art, design and culture.
Straightforward enough?
Except becoming a teacher for the first time, took place right-smack-bang in the thick density of “The Strangest Times” that is 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Perhaps you’re still figuring out how to classify those years, or maybe some prefer to forget. I’ve chosen to look at it through the lens of Yogic Numerology — a method that frames the digits into thematic numbers of ten energies:
2020 = 4 — The Neutral Mind: Beyond Duality
2021 = 5 — The Physical Body: Teacher of Balance
2022 = 6 — The Arc Line: Power to Project through Prayer
2023 = 7 — The Aura: Raising Your Vibration
If you’re somewhat scratching your head at the foreign mathemagics, perhaps you might welcome the reassurance that 2024 = 8, and this represents The Pranic Body: Resurrection. This can be understood simply as Life Force (prana), so Good Vibes ahead! The lemniscate 8 is also the number of my ‘gift position’, which indicates I am meant to have an innate ability (regularly refined with a yoga + meditation practice) to connect to unlimited reserves of energy, which then allows me to share it and dynamize others. I’ll explain more about my personal lore another time. For now, the intended narrative is to share the excitement of discovering a teaching device that successfully engaged students.
Young people are oversaturated with stimuli, and they’re already preloaded with digital content before they arrive on campus. So it’s such a treat and a gratifying occasion, when you manage to do something that makes them animated!
Notice what’s hidden in plain sight?
Even though the university studios have installed whiteboard panels, that I regularly used myself, it seems what the students were perhaps unconsciously desiring, was to have a go at writing on the walls themselves? If you are a parent, I suspect this is a no brainer, and you’re fondly remembering your children decorating the interiors of your home with their crayons and rainbow markers.
I have been including all sorts of playful objects into my classrooms, and yet I was comically slow to realise that Keeping. It. Simple — meant providing the paduwans with the solid prescription of an apprentice’s tablet and wand. Symbolically, there’s magic in the humble package of A4 Dry Erase Double Sided Whiteboards x Black Markers, even if they were ordered online and handled by Bezoz Prime.
The tactic dawned on me, thanks to conversations with two additional multidisciplinary maestras:
Boram Choi, an expert of musical notation — emphasised that students really get rather intimidated by the authority and confidence of their teachers. My brain is contained in a petite height that measures as 1.42m yet I underestimated the voluminous velocity of my tendencies. Conversations about #EdTech, Synkii and piano, made me rethink the physical seating of the audience, and adjust the tempo of the beginner’s practice.
The changes: opening up the space and slowing down the activity pace.
Ali Northcott, expert choreographer, creative investigator, and facilitator, advised on the probability that my arts bachelors might have blind spots as to the textured definitions of #Culture, even if they opted to read it.
The changes: colour code the whiteboards with sticker dots to designate a slice from the sections of The Culture Wheel
In summary, I brought back the merry game of Pictionary, customising the mechanics to include nine approachable categories of: Greater Community, Knowledge & Stories, Language, Traditions & Rituals, Techniques & Skills, Tools & Objects, The Arts, Food & Drink, and Values
My calibrations allowed for a chorus of stories, and what hilarity, that the best way to draw out meaningful creative anecdotes, was to literally get the kids to draw out their unique experiences, guided by elementary prompts.
While this result, of equipping delightful people with a flexible means to express themselves more fluidly, is cause for celebration, I do maintain, that I work more for the cause, than the need for applause. Blessed are those who plant trees knowing that they shall never sit in the shade of their foliage?
Why yes! of course appreciative clapping hands are pleasant to the ears!
🙌 Yet the ambient tunes that honestly gave me such glee?
Cellphone scrollings ceased, and the symphony of scribes seriously yet solemnly sketching out their ruminations in studious silence, was a sight to behold.
And I, also a student continuously un/learning, rejoiced at unblocking the resistance to focused engagement. Eureka!!
[PS: The term "based" on the Internet typically means agreement; social media and forum users commonly use it to express approval or admiration.]
Herein The Media Effects Formula
To those familiar with Game of Thrones references, since the Year of the Dragon is upon us, then it’s appropriate to sing a song of ice and fire… Feel the soulful truth in gauging the temperatures of the many mediums we consume, and the message manias churning non-stop that blow Hot + Cold.
But I’m being cryptic again, and what I’m playing at, is the humming of a responsible anthem. The ear worm line, of these Acoustic Times we’re enduring, is still Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going on?”
This crowded and noisy world of simultaneous information is challenging us all to deeply LISTEN. In spite of the troubles ahead, we can face the music and dance to calibrated rhythms:
1. Meditate > Medicate, in order to better Mediate?
💡“Turn on” is to go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers engaging them.
2. Make Peace with the Pieces of your Environment?
🕊️“Tune in” means interacting harmoniously with the world around you — externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives, adjusting one’s states.
3. Meticulously Map out The Media Tensions?
🍃“Drop out” suggests an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. It could mean self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change.
4. Forewarned is FOUR-ARMED?
🧭 Before you fall into the traps of worshipping the latest messianic technological salvation, review the Laws of Media; memorise the template of The Tetrad by asking these questions about X thing/tool:
a. What does the medium reverse or FLIP into when pushed to extremes?
b. What does the medium make OBSOLETE?
c. What does the medium RETRIEVE that had been made obsolete earlier?
d. What does the medium ENHANCE?
Here’s an example of how I analysed the consequences of introducing The Whiteboard in my arts workshops:
Instead of pandering to ‘interactive presentation softwares’ like Googledocs, Mentimeter, Miro and Padlet, I encouraged the students to be even more hands-on and learn by haptics. And at the end of each lesson, I found myself being rather hesitant to erase their efforts. I only hope the memories of their convivial compositions will have a longer shelf life than the transience of the process. At least they’ve all been taught how to play Cranium now, and laughs were had.
Beyond attention and intention, manifestation requires manual exercises. Creative skills are honed by having tangible physical practices, and not just about staring at corporate-owned applications.
“To read, to view, to envision a work is to know how to divert it.”
- The Practice of Everyday Life, by Michel de Certeau (1980)
Howdy, I’m Rina, Cultural Ecologist & Divinator of the Joy Division at Rogue Futures Initiatives. I am also friends with Elephants In The Room, especially when they’re defiant with majestic infrasonic fizz. I therefore converted some professional angst into a maverick call sign, and threw around some potent seeds on LinkedIn. 🐘
Please get in touch if you’re looking to hire a private cultural tutor, in need of a games sommelier to liven up a lovely venue, or are divinely in the mood for an oracle chat with a generous side-serving of backgammon. 🐝