the nuance of life
This being my final blog of my 2017-2018 Fellowship, I would like to try and tie together a couple of things that I have been working and others that I will continue to work on through the summer months.
Many of these things happen through convergence. Convergence is a word that is always on my mind and it is one thing in life that really makes me stop and take notice. Seeing things connect or overlap in my life is pretty amazing. I know that this happens to everyone. These are unexplainable and the best way I like to describe them is "providential."
These are my reasons to explain the unexplainable, or at the very least my mind trying to attempt to make connections. The first occurred during the setup of the Maker Shift event on Saturday, May 5th. I happened to be getting ready listening to NPR and overheard a repeat broadcast of The Pulse about the acquisition of scientific knowledge and the connections to our human understanding via myth making. The title of the NPR broadcast was "How do we know?" (180504) and it was focus of the broadcast was moving from "believing in something to knowing it with more certainty." It started with a great story about Barry Marshall (100408, Discovery Magazine article) and the understanding of ulcers. At the larger level the podcast looks at the messy mix of Scientific Knowledge and Indigenous Knowledge. (Persons in the broadcast (1) Michael Weisberg (Philosopher of Science) "Not a binary thing = a continuum between justified & false", "Gather evidence and subject this evidence to scrutiny moving towards justified", "Belief + Justification = Science", (2) Bartram's Garden - Chris Bolden-Newsome - Indigenous Farming Practices)
The second occurred with the Leonard Shlain's book Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light, as I met on 180509 for a STEAM Camp meeting. The topic was the intersection of Art & Science, which highlighted the 2011 TED Talk Science + Art = Wonder. I had read this book years ago during the summer of 1996, in preparation for my undergraduate thesis. We definitely need more wonder in this world. The easiest place to see it is in the curiosity of children.
The third occurred the Saturday over Memorial Day weekend. I had been reading through Shlain's book (pages 179-186) and stumbling upon his writing about the color spectrum. This connected to another NPR broadcast, that I heard on 180514 from Here & Now, "Discovery of 1st New Blue Pigment in 200 Years Leads to Quest for Elusive Red".
And lastly the Fourth and most recent, occurred as I have been following the Harrisburg School District budget discussion through April and May. I happened to catch in passing, another broadcast on NPR from To the Best of Our Knowledge titled, "What is School For?" (great discussions with Mark Slouka who wrote the essay Dehumanized and Daniel Mendelsohn who wrote a memoir about a trip with his father) This 170930 rebroadcast looked at the purpose of school (knowledge, work skills, etc) and the person being interviewed mentioned the word "identity block" to describe the concept that true education should challenge our assumptions and push beyond our own identity. This got me thinking about the topic of diversity in Central PA. As I've approached my end of the month birthday (I will officially be half a right angle), I have been reflecting on Knowledge, Skills and Abilities as a ways to balance specificity with showing grace to others. More on all of these things at the bottom section of this blog post.
I recommend these broadcasts for summer driving and family discussion.
My desire for your summer is that you take time to pause, to reflect and to look for the convergence of things.
Lastly, go make!
STEAM Making @ John Harris Campus High School
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MATHEMATICS:
STEM Lab (Mr. Gigac)
The big day to showcase student work at John Harris occurred during the High School Prom Weekend, STEAM Fest. On Friday, May 18 and Saturday, May 19, the work of students in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics was on public display from the John Harris Main lobby, down the East Hall, through the East Cafeteria and into the Gymnasium. Mr. Gigac's students had their tri-fold boards on display that showed their projects from the STEM Lab. There were 5 displays, one for the Zometool engineering kit, Dremel 3D40 Printer, LEGO EV3 Robotics, SnapCircuits, Bridge Design Simulator 2016, and the Inventables Carvey (arranged by David Gigac and Rob Shoaff).
Seeing all of these projects together was exciting because it was a milestone of effort. Gigac was working with the students since the beginning of March to keep them moving towards this goal. They pulled things together the last few weeks. The benefit is that for next year's open houses or events, Gigac has some good materials to help showcase what students can do in the STEM Lab.
This is important because the four groups of students (two groups of two during the first and second half of the year) did not have any physical reference point. They had the Learning Launcher to direct the step by step building via slide shows and videos, but I believe it is strong to see what a fellow classmate created. This is the point of the STEAM Fest, to showcase student effort. It has the potential to become even stronger next year.
The students took the time to setup QR Codes to link to Youtube videos or product websites. This was a huge move because it was something that Gigac and I demonstrated in class and students were able to complete.
DIGITAL ARTS & MEDIA:
AV Studio (Mr. Cooper)
The students in Mr. Cooper's A/V Classes worked to pull together a tri-fold presentation board for STEAM Fest. Even the week before the event, it was unclear who might be doing the work. The students managed to pull things together two days before and provided a good overview for public viewing. Cooper's students also put together QR Codes to help inform anyone viewing the tri-fold boards.
STEAM:
STEAM Fest 180518F & 180519S
The work of the AV Studio and STEM Lab were presented at both the Maker Shift 180505 event, and the first annual STEAM Fest. The goal of the event was to show all the student work in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. Gigac and Cooper really did a great job setting up the displays, including setting up computers and the Inventible's Carvey for demonstration.
The Saturday event went well, given the cold wet weather. There was some public visitation, but not the same amount of the March 24th Celebration of the Arts showcase. This didn't bother the teachers, because as Chad Frey and I observed, the teachers were given some space to breath. They were able to wander and mingle to the tables of other teachers in K-12, and also connect with sponsor and non profit tables.
This was a huge move, because Chad and I enjoyed talking with teachers and helping them make additional vertical connections within the District. We found out that teachers were sometimes isolated within their school or grade levels and didn't always have the ability to brainstorm beyond their classroom. It was a "eureka" moment when I was able to connect my daughter's 4th grade teacher, Ms. Taylor to a middle school Science teacher, and Mr. Gigac at the high school level. Helping them see connectivity between the levels was a huge capacity building move. I learned from teachers who were involved in the STEM Challenge Grant, that the ability to intermix between teachers had the most impact on their work. In the maker world, this is probably not surprising because of the nature of our collaborative networking.
This was echoed by the SciTech teachers the following week at the retirement party for Robert Steps (see below). Teachers talked about the need for more networking and mixer events. I mentioned it would be great to have something every marking period quarter or each half of the year. It might even be better to have something every month, connecting with a Teacher TED Talk Series during the year. We had this idea for students & teachers as ways to use the SciTech Cafe in the lower level of the building. It helps if teachers are given some type of compensation for this event, which could be sponsored by local companies.
STEAM Making @ SciTech Campus High School
Throughout the month of May, my interaction with teachers slowed down students took the Keystones, and all of the Foundry Fellows shifted towards Assessments and End of Year documentation. The effort at SciTech focused on the Keystones in May. All of the projects had wrapped up.
It is necessary to take some time to thank Mr. Robert Steps for his teaching / mentoring / robotics leadership at SciTech high school. The Robotics Club started back in 2004 through BEST Robotics and then transitioned to FIRST Tech Challenge.
On June 5th, the last day of classes, Bob retired.
It has been a great pleasure to work with Bob the past two years. We've had great discussions about making, building, education and the process of student learning.
On Friday, May 25th from 3-6P, all the administrators and teachers met at the Downtown Deli to wish him and two others a happy retirement.
I wish him the best and I hope that our paths will cross again.
Bob, happy golfing.
STEAM Making @ Midtown
MakerShift:
Saturday, May 5th was and active day for the Maker Fellows, Volunteers, Exhibitors and Harrisburg School District Students & Teachers. The second annual Maker Shift event brought together makers, residents and visitors to celebrate making.
I enjoyed talking with people about 3D Printing, 3D Scanning, Programming, and Virtual Reality. I also enjoyed sharing stories about my Fellowship at the Harrisburg School District High School campuses of John Harris and SciTech. The work of both high schools was represented at the History Harrisburg Association building. John Harris students had put together 5 presentation boards to describe their projects. This allowed Maker Shift visitors a look at the student work in the STEM Lab. From SciTech there were students and their teachers present to showcase works from the AV Studio and the SciBots Robotics Club. The AV Studio provided demos of the green screen and a member from the Robotics Club showed the two bots that competed in this year's 2017-2018 Season of the FIRST Tech Challenge Competition.
The large takeaway that was discussed is the need to bring together makers from all over the Central PA Region. We know that people are connected, just not very well. I know this not an abnormal phenomenon because in discussions with Boston Makers (Jamaca Plain, MA) and the Catalyst Makerspace (Altoona, PA) they have had difficulty in helping people understand "what is a maker."
This has been a yearlong discussion from last year's event, and Chad Frey pulled together a MakerShift Manifesto to help codify a Maker Ecosystem. This is still in the works, and we encourage people to read through the document and sign it if it resonates with you.
If there is one thing in life that really makes me stop and take notice it is when the convergence of things occur in my life. These are unexplainable and the best way I describe them is providential. These are my reasons to explain the unexplainable, or at the very least my mind trying to attempt to make connections. The first occurred during the setup of the Maker Shift event on Saturday, May 5th. I happened to be getting ready listening to NPR and overheard a repeat broadcast about the acquisition of scientific knowledge and how it transforms from myth. Unfortunately the podcast doesn’t have a transcript.
This was an interesting discussion because for me it parallels the gap that continues to exist between art and science. There is a tendency for one to slip into a mindset that reinforces these gaps. This mindset exists from the data we collect in our experiences, conversations and relationships with other human beings. We love to live in bubbles. This was talked about through the 2016 Election - bubbles or echo chambers (Nick Lum writes on Medium in the 170127 article The Surprising Differences Between 'Filter Bubble" and "Echo Chamber" as the former being positive in discussing our blindspots, and the later being negative in talking about others). Here is a great article about bubbles by Derek Thompson of The Atlantic, Everybody's in a Bubble, and That's a Problem.
"Living in bubbles is the
natural state of affairs for
human beings. People seek out
similarities in their marriages,
workplaces, neighborhoods,
and peer groups.
The preferred sociological term is
'homophily'—similarity breeds affection
—and the implications are not all positive.
In a 171204 Guardian article by David Robert Grimes titled Echo chambers are dangerous - we must try to break free of our online bubbles there is a call to continue to analyze our internal biases and our sources of information. It is important that this is seen as an interpersonal thing because it happens in our brain. We have a choice to let it out of our mouths. This takes enormous will power and character building. It does not happen overnight.
"A smart person knows what to say.
A wise person knows whether or not to say it."
- unknown
What I find fascinating is that way back in 1992, Grimes highlighted the work of MIT researchers Marshall Van lstyne & Erik Brynjolfsson (Race Agains the Machine & Machine Platform Crowd - two of my favorite books) in the paper Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyberbalkans? Their quote a extremely frightening from over 20 years ago...
"Individuals empowered to screen out material
that does not conform to their existing preferences
may form virtual cliques, insulate themselves from
opposing points of view, and reinforce their biases.
Internet users can seek out interactions with
like-minded individuals who have similar values,
and thus become less likely to trust
important decisions to people whose
values differ from their own. This voluntary
balkanization and the loss of
shared experiences and values
may be harmful to the structure of
democratic societies as well as
decentralized organizations."
- Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson
One of my favorite stories about pushing past personal bubbles is about Google Engineer, Max Hawkins, who wrote an app to randomly choose a Facebook Public Event and integrated with Uber. This allowed Max to expand his bubble into places he would not normally attend. Jessica Stillman had a great article about him in Inc.com on 170614. Another great discussion was with Alix Spiegel and Micaela Rodriguez on the 170608 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition.
I find Max’s story intriguing. It takes a great effort to push beyond one’s these limitations. I think this is true for art or science. We look at the notion of right brain (science) and left brain (art), which was proven as incorrect in this research (see Dr. Robert H. Shmerling, MD of the Harvard Medical School and Christian Jarrett, Ph.D of Psychology Today). The two halves of our brains work in tandem to process information in the 2013 Youtube video by Jeremy Bennet International titled The Amazing Power of Your Mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLqjK3ddSy0 - especially in neuroplasticity as described in the famous 2015 TEDx Talk by Dr. Lara Boyd titled, After watching this, your brain will not be the same. These are great videos because it gives me hope that life is not static and more importantly all of us CAN CHANGE. I loved my psychology and sociology classes in college because it attempted to get into some ethereal, mystical realm of humans. This is part of the reason I’ve developed a love of science fiction because of the mix of art and technology.
This is why I think that all of the convergence items, which I spoke of at the beginning of this blog, are important to me. As someone involved in STEAM, I love mixing things and also drawing connections to two or three seemingly vastly different things. Even for the Maker Shift event I tried to push into the question of "maker types" as I found a great reference form Barnes & Nobles own quiz for their Mini Maker Faires. While I understand that my mind and sometimes my mouth desire to categorize things, the important thing is to allow for ambiguity, knowing that we human beings are messy.
We are nuanced. We are gradients. We are malleable.
So how does this intersect with a Maker Culture? I think that even with that designation, it is a large group of people, way beyond the technology, engineering or computer industries. It encompasses all types of creation. That is the goal of the Maker Manifesto. It isn't to separate who's in and who's out. That is happening way too often in our group of human beings. Worse, this takes a dubious turn in our educational system perpetuated in our desire to "fit in" or to "be content."
I can't wait to dig into the To the Best of Our Knowledge broadcast, What is School For? I enjoyed the discussion about the blend of the humanities and science. During the broadcast Mark Slouka considers the impact of the Arts and the Humanities in our society and the frame of the Sciences. I've only teased out some of the quotes that I remember hearing that related back to my ongoing internal dialog of bringing STEAM together. In light of Slouka's discussion about politics, I think the very push towards justice is in itself an act of creation / making. To me that is extemely fascinating, and at a cognitive level, I believe no different than a Scientist researching a cure for cancer or an Artist putting oil on canvas to capture a deeper understanding of humanity. In each case the effort fills in a gap of understanding in the human condition, and returns us back to the very first broadcast I mentioned from NPR's The Pulse, How Do We Know?
"It is the vocational thrust of education. That is that education is meant to get us a job. Education is about this 22 year old coming out of college and being job worthy and ready. When everything becomes about creating workers, which is vital, but only part of the educational picture, I would argue, then it seems to me that someone like Donald Trump stands at the end of that row. Someone who's single criterion for value is monetary. It either makes money or it doesn't. So I think the vocational over stress is what I am talking about."
- Mark Slouka (34 minute mark)
"I want my kids to be educated in the broader civic sense of the word. I think that education should ideally accomplish both [civics and vocation] and it shouldn't be that difficult to do."
- Mark Sloka (36 minute mark)
"If education has a political component, its a deep component, a buried component. I think that reading is inherently political, in that it forces you to create provisional truths, beliefs, that you then have to defend, alter and change. The ability to sort of say, 'you know I think was wrong, I think I was wrong on that, because I have this new information, I have to adjust my point of view.' A good education gives you that capacity. A hollowed out education, may succeed on one level, and an important level, you know, 'Johnny, Sally, here's your job, here's your salary' good? But that's possible in Singapore as well. I mean you'll possibly have a very good job, but the society you're living in is a very tightly controlled, anti-democratic one."
- Mark Slouka (38 minute mark)
"This is how hate works. I mean hate works on moral certainty. One of the ways you accomplish that, it seems to me, is that you create gigantic identity blocks, which can be as big as nationalities, as religion, and then they break down further into smaller blocks like democrat, republican, red state, blue state, gun owner. All of those categories, the reason the are kind of a lie, and a sophisticated one, is that they mask the fact that, a you know, I don't know, that Wayne LaPierre & I are both presumably straight, white, american men. Okay so that says what? To my mind that says absolutely nothing. Yeah okay, so we're straight, white, American men. But I would probably have more in common with 100,000 gay, Ugandan women that I do with Wayne LaPierre"
"So I guess this brings us back to education. I think one of the things that education does is that it confuses those 'identity blocks.' That it asks you to be someone else for a time."
- Mark Slouka (40 minute mark)
I think there is something to consider with what Slouka is pointing out. From a 2009 University of Chicago News, Josh Schonwald describes Slouka's position that is amazing to see in writing 10 years ago. Sitting in school board meetings and PTA meetings, the pressure of "jobs ready" is enormous, and I see just as enormous on those who have the task to deliver such goods, i.e. the teachers. Regardless of the argument between Science and the Arts, these statements are powerful to consider.
"The 'Crisis in American Education' is rarely framed as a question of civic identity - though it should be, Slouka argues. 'From the local PTA meeting to the latest Presidential Commission on Education, the only subject under discussion, the only real criterion for investment…is jobs.' "
I didn't start this blog thinking that it would be a final word on bringing these two areas together - science and art. There are some great discussions on the Internet that provide a rebuttal to Slouka's initial premise (see The South Asian Idea Weblog, The Indian Express, Boston.com's Brainiac and the JREF Swift Blog).
"A good education is one that demonstrates
how the world of Hubble's constant
is also the world of Huckleberry Finn.
Only a radical desegregation of subjects
can teach us the truth:
that we are a species
not long out of the caves,
haltingly attempting to create
a better and less transient existence
for ourselves than the one brute
nature intended."
And finally some excellent quotes from the radio program, To the Best of Our Knowledge, where Daniel Mendelsohn (which was rebroadcast recently on NPR TTBOOK, What is School for?) discusses the need for Art & Literature in what he learned with a father / son trip in the real locations of Homer's "The Odyssey."
"As a writer, and a humanist, and a professor of Literature, I would put it this way. When your parent dies, which is going to happen to everybody, your law degree, or your accounting degree or your STEM degree, whatever it is, is not going to help with that. But if you read the Odyssey, if you read great Literature, you have some help in dealing with these great life experiences, because that's what Literature is about. It gives you models for thinking about the things that happen in human life, to everybody."
"This whole debate is infected
by a kind of false thinking.
These are not either or decisions.
You need these things.
You need Art, you need Literature
to tell you how to be a human being,
which is more than
just bringing home a paycheck.
Cause then what do you do?"
- Daniel Mendelsohn, 54 minute mark)
Epilogue:
I close this blog with two drifting threads:
1. All of these things wandering around in my head lead me to the Scott Hartley's book (published on 180605, but I loved finding it on Kindle early for $2.99), The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World. I might report back an update as I meander through this over the next month. I hope that the fuzzy's and the techie's can just get along peacefully and find that they both need each other in a win-win manner, instead of win-lose, as the subtitle suggests. Maybe Wonder will appear. I'll see how this topic develops during the Marshall Math and Science Academy's STEAM Camp.
2. In May, I went on a search for my personal copy of Shlain's Art & Physics, which contained some of my margin notes from my first read in 1996. Sadly, I was not able to locate it , but I was overjoyed in finding my old copy of William Irwin Thompson's 1971 book, At the Edge of History. This original copy had my notes in it and I don't know why I attempted to give it away at HACC. It has some amazing concepts that I am still trying to understand mid-life. I recently found Matt Ridley's 2010 book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, and I believe there might be some connections to make to Thompson's work.
Here are some of the diagrams that I remembered fromWilliam Irwin Thompson's At the Edge of History: Speculations on the Transformation of Culture. Now that we are in the digital age, I found some great analysis of Thompson's writings, from a 2012 Youtube video series by Glen Stegner, from page 104 Chapter 4: Values and Conflict through History. I haven't watched all of them, but they are very insightful if you are working through the book.
Have a happy summer!
Go make!
