#BYOD4L: Thoughts on creating

What a week! As my head cold finally withdraws I am returning to the last of 5 hectic but rewarding days working with the #BYOD4L team and turning my thoughts to our last topic, Creating. It was my first time moderating/facilitating on this digital ideas fest and the fact that it coincided with a heavy cold (not unusual given the time of year) just revealed how online practice can have a major advantage over the face to face - no one else was put at risk of contagion thanks to my sniffs and sneezes and I was able to participate fully despite everything, assisted by regular medicated hot lemon drinks and the encouragement of others!

I'm no artist (I may well have mentioned that before) but I do enjoy the visual, particularly when it communicates ideas which may be difficult to express. We are surrounded by visual communication, as indeed was predicted some years ago. I remember when the "new" GCSE for languages was introduced some 20 years ago we were told to expect greater use of signs and visual media. I was asked to provide practitioner feedback on a French course book in development at the time based around minitel which had taken off in France. A precursor to what was to become the game changer in communication technology, the internet. 

I knew that Friday night's chat would be a challenge for me, juggling practical tasks with tissues and feeling pretty tired after a busy week but it was great fun and has left me reviewing all I do through the lens of creativity. I couldn't manage to edit and share images in the time frame allowed (see the rather bland pic above for evidence!), it was all rather frantic but I was inspired by those who did - at least one of whom did so on a mobile phone whilst on the touchline of a child's football match! When I accepted my limitations I just settled in to enjoying the creativity of others including the #creativeHE gang who shared the chat too, whilst listening to a playlist shared by @BYOD4L. 

All this activity has left me pondering more deeply about creativity and I am taking those thoughts on to my other blog Espace Sisyphe. Thanks to Neil, Sheila, Deb, Chris, Alex, Rebecca, Ellie, Emma, Chrissi and Sue for the great company and inspiration, a fabulous CoP for digital skill enhancement.  

Weaving for peace

Image: Lucky charm 1 paper weaving

by Shannon Sinclair CC BY ND 2.0

I am not talented in an artistic sense. My secondary school art teacher took a dim view of my attempts to create a homework that scored anything above 7/10 and I quickly abandoned any attempt to improve after a brief struggle to convince her that my "gift" needed to be nurtured. However, I have a love of art and I derive great pleasure from the appreciation of the talent of others and the natural beauty I see around me in the world. I do maintain a passion for creativity which, in younger days took the form of poetry writing and singing (I thank a great English teacher for his encouragement). 

Once I was working as a teacher myself, I started to derive pleasure from creating activities and designing learning materials for my students. This interest has grown and mutated since the advent of digital media. I started in the late 1980's to devise web tours and treasure hunts, use databases as a resource for realistic oral role plays and I enjoyed how the use of new media disrupted the usual classroom dynamic and helped different students shine. Of course, much has changed since then - CD-ROMs, MP3 players, YouTube, WYSIWYGs and HTML5 have revolutionised how we create. Most recently of course digital communication tools such as smart phones have helped us to connect and interact online more easily, for better or worse. 

This has been the background for me finding a new creative space. Over the past 10 years I have gradually increased my online presence as part of my professional life. Having taught myself a little HTML many years ago, I realised that websites are rather like tapestries. The beautiful appearance of a page is the result of lots of knots and threads behind the scenes, a good deal of imagination and craft goes in to the finished product - if indeed it is ever finished. When you make online you enjoy a medium that offers lots of possibilities as long as you understand your purpose. Rather like the beautiful piece of weaving above, the various aspects of my digital presence: personal websites; twitter/instagram accounts; open resources shared through various repositories such as slideshare, XTlearn; video accounts and more have to be woven together in order to reveal all the facets of my work. I seem to have arrived at a place where my "next steps" are increasingly about weaving together the various threads of my digital creation. I worry about the web needing to remain this open canvas, a democratic space where all can participate, not one "owned" by states or multinationals who seek only to exploit or control the voice of users. My digital threads are multi-coloured but when they come together they form a coherent self portrait of an educator who will always value the spirit of the artist, who nurtures talent, openness and creativity whatever the circumstances. We can use our creativity for good or evil, I choose to support a positive vision of global human endeavour. I weave for peace. 

My thanks go to Martin Weller who commented on my weaving skills after this blog post which in turn inspired me to practice more!