3: Experiential v.s Connectivism

Although there seems to be a great difference between Kolb’s social constructivist view and and Siemens technology oriented, networked learning process, there is a common link that interrelates between them. Siemens suggests learning what is needed for tomorrow; yet we do not know what is going to happen tomorrow, we cannot control nor predict. So learning always happen in the present tense – the now. However, we can acquire the ability to connect with sources and access through new tools in the digital era. The acquisition process thus requires a sense of being in the present. Siemens indicates four implications: The awareness of the diversity of opinions, design of learning environments, real-time informational flow, and personal knowledge management (2005, p. 6) that are all important aspects of learning, and allows learners to keep updated with our time.

Experiential learning, originated from Dewey, Lewin, and Piaget, is a mode of learning that emphasizes on the experience and the process of learning. Kolb’s (1984) article suggests a learning that merges experience, perception, cognition, and behavior. It is suggested that humans can share an experience fully, concretely, and abstractly (p.21). I agree that learning is conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes.

An informal discussion with a Zen Buddhist monk, Master Guoxing a couple days ago subverted partially my understanding of Dewey’s proposal that knowledge is a result of transaction between objective and subjective experiences. I asked him, “All of my experiences and memories made me who I am now and how I act today, is that right?” He answered, “You’re aware of your past memories and experiences, which don’t exist anymore now.” Although I do believe in learning through actions such as feeling and touching, I had some conflicting ideas when reading the article in sections that describes how “learning transforms the impulses, feelings, and desires of concrete experience into higher-order purposeful action,” when knowing that impulses, feelings, and desires are elements that our consciousness are aware of, but in fact they do not exist. Human beings try to hold onto feelings and memories, because we think they exist and form who we are.

My understanding of the here-and-now experience is that once a word is said or an action is made, it does not exist anymore, so there is no continuity. I also had trouble understanding the concept of “postponement of immediate action” (Dewey, p. 22), since the instant immediate action is being activated, is not there anymore. My idea is that observation itself requires immediacy, and does not have nor require a postponement of action. Seemingly or perceptually, these actions are “symbiotically related process”, but in fact, they are not related: Just as when each thought is generated and another new thought comes up, the old one also die in an instant; they are like one of the thirty frames in a second that appears in a movie - each frame is its own individual, only when we put them together, it seems like its connected, and we think that they are connected.

Like Kolb, I am also doubtful to whether it is true that the concept of continuity of experience grounds human existence, when there occasionally appears to have elements of uncertainty. I agree with Pepper’s (1942) proposition of partial skepticism that provides a guide for inquiry and learning. However, Freire’s idea that the dialectic nature of learning and adaptation is the “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it”, again makes me doubt when knowing that, since the world is the world itself, we are only adding names to the world to give meaning, but my pursue is to find the truth, or the true mind: What is the true world before being added names? Both false and true words are neither true nor false, as they all exist within the world named by human beings.

I’d like to add a note onto Kolb’s learning in terms of knowing how we think and feel, and the fact that we must know when behavior is governed by thought and when by feeling – from Zen's perspective, our behavior is governed by our common intrinsic nature that is conscious of our thoughts and feelings that we think as ourselves, but in fact they are not - Thoughts are thoughts, and feelings are feelings, they are not us. Thus, the best way to learn is to continuously create, think, recreate, transform, and connect - at the present moment.


Kolb, D.A. (1984): Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development

Siemens, G. (2005) Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

Master Guoxing. (2017), Personal Communication

2: Spark Adobe

MASS MOCA Building 6 Grand Opening

Check this out -> Summer Art Weekend

1: Online Teaching & Learning

2017 SUMMER A

Online Teaching & Learning

My first online learning experience was since high school, when I started to search for information about artists to write papers. I began to search for information more as I get to art colleges after high school, though at that time, I still go to the library to look for information most of the time. I have been studying abroad since college. The process of applying for a visa, checking out schools' websites, looking for places to live, looking for work opportunities, has gradually shifted from going to the place directly to online processes. I also watch movies and TV online. As I get more and more acquainted with searching for things online, I recently begin to buy groceries and daily essentials online. A large percentage of my life is online. I think I have learned to save a lot of traveling time by doing things online, which has made me, someone who does not like outdoor activities already, even more a home-situated person. 

When I was a teenager, I used to search for Zodiac reading tips and online face reading. Later, when I don't know how to use an app, a program, or food medicine, I would learn everything online. On top of daily emailing and blog keeping (10 years ago it was msn blog and hotmail), Wikipedia, Youtube, and Google search are the most engines I use. When I first moved to New York eight years ago from Yale in New Haven, I knew nobody, so I started with Craigslist to look for apartments and jobs. I also search for images on Google search to get inspiration. Recently I use a lot of Instagram by simply skimming through images, filtering out images to look for what I am interested in, what is popular, which artist/ interesting person is doing what, getting ideas, brainstorming through hashtags with simple swipes under my fingers. 

A lot of times, I learn by exploring the mobile app myself, and looking through play store. Sometimes it is through friend recommendation on what apps to get, and what search engines to use. I use google chrome most of the time. I also use google drive, drop box to store, upload, and download photos and files. I tested out about eight video apps and chose Splice to teach my Pre-K 12 art students. When an app is difficult to learn, it is immediately eliminated and not considered. So looking for the right program/app to use and teach takes some research and testing.

I am recently invited to lecture art classes online for distance learning, so this course looks very interesting and useful. 

Furry Chair

LED testing in process - Rest Inside Me (Shelter), 2016

FINAL: Rest Inside Me (Shelter)

Rest Inside Me (Shelter), 2016
Arduino, breadboard, faux fur, metal chain, plastic chair, LED light, speakers
Dimensions variable 


Rest Inside Me (Shelter), a hanging sculptural installation of a concave egg shaped chair designed for audience interaction to touch, sit, meditate and rest inside. The furry chair intends to awaken the audiences’ feelings of visual, haptic and tactile senses through the projection of saturated colors, RGBW moving lights are activated once the audience walk close and remixed music is played once they sit inside. Inspired by the Kitsch, popular culture, and seduction of the materialistic world in the urban life, and inspired by the idea of protection, warmth and shape of a womb, a remix of recorded voices of the artist instructing in a whispering, soft voice, a baby crying, and piano playing, followed by light, therapeutic music is played. The sculpture initiates interaction with the viewers that induces them to fuse with it. The inviting, furry material invites them to go back into the womb, a symbol of rebirth and becoming a baby again. The chair, if installed outdoors, can be served as a shelter for the homeless or anybody passing by who simply needs to take a break from what’s happening in this chaotic world. 

12/2 3D Print ii

1/12 3D Print i

11/1 Laser Cut Box

Laser Cut Acrylic Pencil Box

10/2 Soft Circuitry Lesson Plan

Soft Circuitry Lesson Plan

Goal: (knowledge and understanding)

Students will know:
 - Conductive thread can be used to create a mapping of our neighborhood through basic circuitry sewing  to light up one or more LED(s).

- Practice of abstract thinking by imagining from a bird’s eye view.
 - Problem solving

Objective (task and skill)
 Students will be able to:

 - Make a map of your neighborhood or imagined place with soft circuitry which lights up with a switch.

Component	Description / Guiding Questions	Minutes
Warm-up  Breaks ice and is related to the study	Walk around the classroom and remember your route.	2min
Brainstorming      Accesses prior knowledge, introduces vocabulary and key concepts	What would be the shapes and lines of your neighborhood if you were to look form a bird’s eye view?	3 min
Demo     When appropriate, TA models experimentation in a particular medium, or shares exemplars and related contextual info; Avoid lengthy demos that invite copying or discourage  “research curiosities”	1/ Teaching artist draw a route she just walked on the white board, from one point to another 2/ Teaching artist show how to light up a circuit on white board 3/ TA explains how circuitry works to light up a LED.	7 min
Art Activity Students work individually or collaboratively.  TA provides  individual assistance while encouraging students to take creative risks, revise, refine; identify and solve problems	1/ Students saw conductive thread onto a piece of felt or fabric to show their route.  2/ Try to think of a way to make a switch  3/ Add various shapes and lines around it to make a map by drawing with colored threads or sewing other fabric pieces	25 min
Journal Writing   Encourages individual reflection in words, phrases, sketches, etc.	Write two sentences about your partner’s work, try to guess where is his/her neighborhood	5 min
Turn and Talk Two students share their experiences, developing talking and listening skills	Students talk about each other’s art works.	5-7 min
Group Share     Guided by TA and focuses on wor completed- focuses on choices evident in student artworks. TA evokes description, analysis and interpretation with follow up questions, such as “What makes you say that?	Group discussion and critique	5-7 min
Research, Interests,  Questions and Closure Simple tasks completed at home, motivated by students’ developing interests.	Vocabularies: interlace, interlock, layers, layering, swirl, composition
Wrap-up/Clean-Up Everyone cleans up, rearranges the room, etc.
Materials and Equipment	Conductive thread, scissors, needles, fabric, pencil, paper
Documentation   Photos, recordings, sample written work.	Photos

10/1 Final Project Proposal

Furry swing chair sculpture  s e w i n g   i n   p r o g r e s s

A water drop shaped (approx. 6 feet) sculpture made with sewed fabric and faux fur fabric. The shape has a concave to provide a possibility for people to climb/sit inside it. Once inside, sensors would be triggered, the surrounding LED would light up and sounds would begin to play:

1. “ Relax. Take a deep breath. Feel the texture. Take a rest. Touch me. Do nothing. Just sit. Just look as it is.” approx. 10 seconds.
2. Sounds of baby crying (3-6 seconds). Recorded sounds from everyday life, such as neighbors chatting, piano from next-door, guitar from downstairs, trees from outside the window, wind blowing, sirens, airplane flying, trains passing from far away, rains dropping etc. Approx. 2 minutes.
3. Composed electrical music manipulated from everyday sounds (2 minutes) that is calm and therapeutic. Approx. 1.5-2.5 minutes. 

Total of approx. 3-4 minutes of remix music.

Possible (extended) version of the soft sculpture:

Version 1/ Threads are connected and expanded from the sculpture surrounding it that leads each thread to an object, each object would light up or play sound when a specific sensor is touched inside the sculpture.

Version 2/ Threads are connected from the sculpture to a furry object tied with conductive fabric to provide a possibility for people to touch it, once touched, the sculpture would light up with a different color.

9/1 Invent

Fabric Bacteria Detector

Other possible ideas for invention:

A 'Doraemon' Magic Door where we can go anywhere we wish when we open it.

7/1 Soft Circuitry

Relationship between Awareness, Perception & Eyeball

- Small model for sculptural project

Working Process:

Sketch ideas

              

Saw

           

Flip     

      

Connect conductive thread to buttons (switch)

 Test

 Test 2

Saw eye liner

Done!

Reflection:
More stuffing can be inserted and more sawing could be done on the lashes to give a more polished effect.

7/1 Lovecard

Paper Engineering - pop up love card

I looked for various pop-up cards on Instagram, and found a very interesting bear pop up one, but it did not show how it was made, so I took some time to figure it out myself, changing it to a love theme pop up card. After a couple hours of researching and figuring out, it finally worked! 

Working process:

4/1 Turtle Art

Colorful Gradient Circles

Procedure: 
1/ Drag "arc" button from "Turtle" tab to the canvas, insert "180" for the angle and a random number for the radius.
2/ Repeat and enlarge or diminish the radius
3/ Repeat 1/ and 2/, then drag the turtle elsewhere on the canvas to form another gradient circle.

4/ Drag "set color" button from "Pen" tab to canvas, repeat 1/, 2/ and 3/
5/ Change color by changing the "set color" number each time a radius is adjusted.

                  1st draft

                        Inspirational image: Bridget Riley's Geometric Art 

3/1 Scratch Makey

Drawing Sounds Makey Makey

Scratch username: qiaoru
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/124020841/

2/1 Makey Makey

Potential Makey Makey Lesson Plan

1/ Connect Makey Makey into soft fabric so when people touches it various sounds are activated.

2/ Plug into or onto parts of human body, such as skin, hair, vein, or even organ such as the heart, so whenever there is body movements different sounds are activated.

3/ If there's the technology in the future, plug into a connector that connects to the brain so that each perception or thought can be projected as different kind of sounds.

Readings:

1/ Jay Silver “Invention Literacy

2/ 20 things to do with the computer

1/2 Glass&LED

                                   Electro Bud, 2016
                                         Glass, LED, faux fur (or feathers)

1/1 Create, Play, Share and Reflect

Digital Foundations: Creative Technology


What does this approach to learning have to do with art and art education? What role do digital tools play in this process?

By learning to think creatively, kindergarten students are trained to come up with innovative solutions to problems from an early age. This is an important foundation training that make the kids become inventors, which corresponds with the way artists think. Anything that is learned through "create, play, share and reflect" (Figure 1) would be an ideal learning situation for any learners, including older learners. Through this "spiraling" process, students develop and polish their abilities as creative thinkers, and develop the experimental spirit and learn collaboratively from each other. 
CREATE - Froebel's idea of "designing for designers" is especially relevant to today's art and art education when art is becoming more and more inter-disciplined and hybrid. 
PLAY - can be linked or become parallel to learning for kids (Piaget). It involves the process of "experimentation, exploration and testing for boundaries." Thus, focusing on "play" and "leaning" tis far more valuable and effective than putting emphasis on  "education" and "entertainment" which is more passive way of learning. An example is to provide children to design games using Scratch to develop their sense of "tinkerability."
SHARE - Children become more engaged through the sharing process. Artists have the natural responsibility to perceive and show a concept or problem through art, sharing their expressions with the world becomes vital. Even more so for art educators, who motivate students' drives to make art.  
REFLECT - Group discussion make learners and artists reflect about their thinking process. It is important to analyze a diversity of works by making visual (or touch, audio etc.) inferences based on them. Critical reflection make artists think about the ideas that generate the artifact, strategies for improvement, scientific concept and linked real-world phenomena.
IMAGINE - The repeating cycle of Imagine, Create, Play, Share and Create leads to new ideas.


Resnick, Mitchel, "All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Study How Children Learn) in Kindergarden.

4/6 SELFIE

SELFIE!

Self taught fun

Ever changing technology 

Learned new forms

Found a place in this realm

I love it!

Eliminated ego

4/5 Place of Techno

Place of Technology in the Curriculum

Having taught Pre K-12 students in NYC public school settings, private schools and lectured in colleges, my experiences is that it really depends on the spirit of the school, the principle/ program coordinator, availability of facility to activate a technology-infused class. While some are very welcoming or eager to incorporate technology-based art, others, especially those schools that receive poor art education, are reluctant or have no facilities. A lot of times, educators have to spend money to bring in extra materials for the students. Though technology is not an unfamiliar tool/ material to use anymore, the place of technology in public schools are still not prevalent. There are many things we can teach with a phone, such as sound, video and photos, but not all students have a phone. The question here would be what kind of materials can educators bring in that are simple yet fun and inexpensive?

Maybe because of my background as a classical musician and previous research on experimental music, the most interesting tools that can easily bring in human emotions in this class, are sound and video. I have never taken an in-depth digital photography class before, but I think there’re a lot of creative potentials that may produce touching, strong and influential works. Talking about creative potentials of photography, a couple of new ideas just come to mind: 1/ Tear out colored copies of old photographs and make an interesting collage. 2/ Take a picture of people or places that look like it’s ancient times. Maybe because of its nature that a camera is always capturing a moment in the past, my ideas always has to do with old photographs. I feel that the scenography project was fun and I was happy with my results that came out in a short time, but I do not see it stretch out into something more. Perhaps I did not have enough time to play with more ideas surrounding it or maybe it’s the limit of the scale. Other potentials that just come to mind are: 1/ Install it in a mist of wooden construction where viewers may enter and scan themselves or their belongings. 2/ If available, use a huge scan and scan the whole human body or large areas of poured paint – some of these ideas are more suitable for collaborative work for the whole class.