Scheduling Creativity

I was thinking today about being creative.

Creativity, I hope you will agree, is a Good Thing. It provides us with most of the worthwhile aspects of human experience - arts, design, humour, sport, and even science.

Some large companies (Google et al) set aside a portion of the working week for employees to be independently creative.  Others have corporate days for employees to hack, tinker and be generally creative on the company shilling.

At my school, creativity is seen as the highest level of thinking, and teachers are expected to plan sessions of cerativity into most lessons.

Therein lies the problem, though.

I consider myself to be a creative person, but I can rarely be creative on demand - I find it very hard to sit down and come up with an idea for a project fron nowhere on demand.  I have 160 projects published on Instructables,  and maybe 200 more in the form of scribbled notes and unpublished one-line projects,  but they come to me unpredictably. I even call one the 4am Robot, because that's when I woke up with the idea.

How can I, then, expect my students to be successfully creative within a prescribed section of a timetabled lesson? How can managers expect anything more than a workforce spending 20% of their day worrying that they haven't had a cool idea?

Instead, a brave step needs to be taken.

Stop scheduling creativity, just accept and welcome it when it happens.

Let employees suddenly down keyboards or headsets, and wander off to an open-access creative space to pursue an idea that occurs to them. As long as they keep a log or diary of their ideas, a company's more creative staff should even be allowed to phone in absent because they've woken up with a cool idea and need to spend the day in the shed.

An even braver step could be taken by schools, allowing pupils to walk away from the timetable to do the same. Now, I'm not a fool, I know that there are a lot of students who would use a "creativity out" to avoid certain lessons, or to get time off school, so maybe a voucher system could be used. Each pupil gets an actual voucher to give to a teacher to get out of the lesson and go to one of a selection of designated creative spaces (depending on the pupil's inspiration). If the time spent away from the lesson results in something positive,  then the pupil gets another voucher issued for next time inspiration strikes. If not, if the time is wasted, then the pupil does not get a replacement voucher, and must remain constrained by the traditional timetable until they can demonstrate the results of a creativd act they undertake on their own time, unrelated to the curriculum.

Recognising and rewarding creativity in this way would need schools (and employers) to demonstrate an unusual level of resilience and flexibility in their approach. In fact, it might require a school to step completely away from the traditional curriculum and timetable.

I know of only one school working in the way I envision - Brightworks in San Francisco (see http://sfbrightworks.org/ ).

I wonder if they're hiring?

Obligatory

I would like to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Carry on.

I'm a generous sort at heart, so I thought I'd give you all the chance to share in a wonderful business opportunity that has just come my way;

Dear Sir/Madam
 
 Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus christ. 
 
 
I apologize if the contents in this mail are contrary to your moral ethics,

which I feel may be of great disturbance to your personal life, But please treat

with absolute secrecy and personal. I pray that this email reaches you in the best

of health.
 
I am Samuel Kofi Atta Mills 24years of age, i'm the son of the late President of 

Ghana Professor John Evans Atta as i will like to discussed a mutual business 

transaction that would benefit the both of us as this is 100% risk free.
 
This is of ulmost important and need urgent attention and if interested do contact

me on my private e-mail ( attamillssamuelkoffi@yahoo.com.hk   )
 
 
Thanks and God bless as i look forward to hear from you Asap.
 
 Yours Sincerely,
 
 Samuel Kofi Atta Mills.

(I've got to wonder - is there anybody left on the planet that would take up an offer like this?) 

It's a park, Jim, but not as we know it.

We spent an afternoon in Golden Gate Park.  It's a cracking place, but not what we expected...

OK, folk were playing games, strolling around, but things were so much more organised.

It wasn't a few kids kicking a ball, it was a load of kickball teams, cheerleaders and everything.  The few kids throwing a frisbee were actually teams of Ultimate players.

There are groups of friends who gathered in a corner of the park with folding chairs to sit and chat.  There was a wedding party of over fifty guests, cycling around behind a bike laden with a sound system and bubble-blowers.  Ten minute's walk away, a Shinto wedding ceremony was packing up.

Extended families with tables, table-cloths and barbeques, at least three kids birthday parties, complete with bouncy castles.

It's like a whole chunk of San Francisco moved their lives into the park for the day.

It was odd, but in a really good way.

We didn't penetrate far into the park, just as far as the Bison Paddock (about half way, I think), but it's such a nice place to be.  There's a hothouse, a design museum, a science centre, an open-air concert hall, areas set aside to practice your cycling, a shuttle-bus for the tired, and, as I mentioned, the bison.

And that's only half way through the park!

Later in the month, we spent time in several parks - Duboce, Force Mason Green - and they're all the same.

I suppose it's obvious, since so many homes here have neither yard nor garden, but I never expected this.

I like it.

Day One

Right, I've done my first full-ish day at the Lab.

It was AWESOME!

What happened...?

• I met lots of seriously cool people.  I missed most of their names, but that's me - I'll probably get everybody straight by the time I leave.
• I got my "base" - I'm between the Editorial Team and the Big Silver Table of Working, Meeting and Eating, Often Simultaneously.
• We had a mass meal of "Super Duper" burgers, salad, fruit, and chocolate cheesecake to say goodbye to Matt D, who's going back to "school".
• I spent a chunk of time reading and judging the finalists in a contest.
• I found out something of how the site works behind the scenes - I didn't really grok how much work goes on in this happy family to make the site trundle on.  Certain folk complain that the staff don't listen to feedback, but I can tell you from the HQ side side of the monitor that most of what gets talked about is what the members are doing and saying.
• Matt gave me a tour of the office, Jessy gave me a tour of the other sites and workshops linked to Instructables (ohhh, toys!), and we spent some time drooling over the very high-end 3D products on display at the AutoDesk building (they're open to public view on Wednesday afternoons - I recommend it).
• I did two other useful things (apart from the judging).  One, I robotified my new mobile cell phone (Kitewife bought two identical cheap handsets so we can stay in touch, just in case), the other is remaining secret - I want to see if the rest of the guys notice that it happened...
• With the family, I went to look at the Bay, saw a flock of parakeets overhead (unfortunately in silhouette, so I don't know what kind they were), didn't see the Golden Gate Bridge through the fog.

There was some paperwork stuff as well, but that was boring...

Oh, I also decided what to do as my first proper project tomorrow...

First Impressons of San Francisco

Well, we're here, and we're moved in to our apartment.

In no particular order, these are some of our first impressions of San Francisco:

Voices

I love the voices here - everything has a robot voice asking you to hold tight or remind you hold on to your bags, and the BART sounds like you're inside a giant Speak-and-Spell. 

Hills

I'm pretty sure that everywhere is uphill.  I was born in a mountainous area, but this city beats that into a cocked hat - a paved residential road round the corner from our apartment is over 1:1, I'm sure.

Fog

It was odd, as we slogged up the afore-mentioned hills to our apartment, sweat streaming down our sun-heated bodies, to look around over the bay and see the Golden Gate Bridge standing in a thick bank of fog.

Homelessness

Every city has its dispossessed, but either SF has more, or it wears them on its civic sleeve.  Either way, they were a lot more visible than in any UK city I've visited. 

Birds

Where are they?  British cities are stuffed with pigeons and sparrows at least, flocks all over most high-pedestrian-traffic streets.  Here, hardly any.  I've seen a few pigeons and crows, and added to my list (Chipping Sparrow and Northern Mockingbird, plus a small finchy thing with a red bib that was singing in the rafters of the BART station), but I've not seen the quantity of birds I see in other cities.

Beer

You may know I'm a beer fan, bordering on the snob.  We found a rather nice grocery store, and it stocks beer.  Now, the rest of the shop was quite posh (several kinds of root ginger, heritage tomatoes, that kind of thing), but they can't look after beer - ales, IPAs and bitters kept in the fridge!  That is bad - they even had imported British beers [including St Peter's (one of my local brews)], known for being "warm" by Americans, stored at close to freezing - that's borderline blasphemy!

TV

We switched the TV on in the apartment, and the first programme that came on was Doctor Who, and the first advert break included an advert for Newcastle Brown Ale.  0_o

Anyhoo, I'll keep things updated on an as-and-when kind of way, but that's it for now.

TTFN.

Creationists and the, er, "truth"

Oh, dear, it seems that Creationists don't like it when their bluff is called...

David Klinghoffer, a creationist blogger complained about being "hounded" by scientist Carl Zimmer on FaceBook.  This "hounding" amounted to a repeated request for evidence to support a claim made in a book.

Instead of providing the references requested, Klinghoffer offered a "debate" with Zimmer, but, bizzarely, limiting the debate to two, one-thousand word posts, and ensuring that the creationist side got the last word.

Who ever heard of a debate being limited to two short statements??

Klinghoffer is also complaining that "almost everyone on the evolutionary apologetics side has refused to read [the book]", and yet are still attacking it.  Klinghoffer claims to have been a book reviewer, so he must realise that even the most dedicated reviewer does not buy the books they review.  The publisher sends them a copy, secure in the knowledge that the book will receive a fair coverage.

I made a personal offer to Mr Klinghoffer;

I am a Science teacher, rationalist and atheist, and I would be more than happy to take up your challenge, but I am afraid I do not have a copy of the book to be able to properly address any of the points therein.

If you would be so kind as to send me a copy of the book, I will gladly read it and then enjoin in debate.

Unfortunately, I am leaving the country in a few days, and will be out of the country until the end of August.  If you would like to enter into the debate more quickly, you may prefer to send me an Amazon voucher by return of email, so that I can download the book onto my Kindle, and work on it as I travel (I will be online every day).

I look forward to the opportunity of establishing some truths with you.
I am quite happy for you to publish the content of this email on your website, on the clear condition that you keep my email address and postal address strictly confidential.
Regards,

Klinghoffer has not had the manners to reply to me personally, but has instead blogged about my offer:

I've just received an email ... offering to stand up as champion for the Darwin side in a debate if we'll provide him an Amazon voucher so he can download the book onto his Kindle.

I was hoping for a substantive exchange with one of our familiar antagonists who have ample time to monitor a Facebook thread but no time or inclination to read the book under discussion and tell us what they think of it. Like PZ Myers, it seems I'm bound to be forever disappointed.

I offered him exactly what he wanted, and he responded with scorn and lies.

I do not monitor FaceBook, and I have a strong inclination to read the book, and to tell anybody who will listen what I think of it.

I believe, though, that Mr Klinghoffer is, at heart, scared of what people will say about the book.  Why else does he go out of his way to obstruct the normal book review process (never mind the peer review process!), and expect reviewers to buy the book before he reveals even one reference contained therein?  Why else does he not reply to emails?  Why else are replies disabled on his blog, forcing me to post here in the vague hope that he will see it?

Why else, when he receives an offer of exactly what he asked for, does he attempt to spin it into some sort of con?

Mr Klinghoffer, I call you coward, but it is very easy for you to prove me wrong: just send out review copies of the book, and accept what comments you get, just like any honest publisher does..