Tag Archives: Weekly Create

Kate's Weekly Create

This week I wanted to continue with a post relating to community.  At first, I was going to create a website for the class I teach to provide a space to enhance a sense of “community” among the students. I started it but it is still a work in progress. I was inspired after seeing what others were doing to follow up on an idea I had had some time ago. I share many of my sketches and detail sections of some of my paintings that I use in animations on one of my Instagram accounts. I developed a strong sense of community with some of those I follow and those who follow me. We share tips, advice, and support. One asked me about my technique and if I had ever done a time-lapse of the process. At the time I had not, but I thought this might be the perfect opportunity to make one since in a way I feel like it is adding to the “community” I have built. I used both the iPad Air and my iPad mini, one to look at reference images and the other to record(really need a tripod or something for this otherwise just stacked things up and put the mini on top). The process was fairly easy and enjoyable, though there was some issues that came up when moving the file between apps. It was also to large to upload and required using my laptop. I recorded in the Hyperlapse app and easily transferred my video from one iPad to the other using Airdrop. I edited with iMovie app, though I wish it had more ways to edit contrast and light. Here it is part of it uploaded to YouTube, ( the initial drawing, masking, and painting) a watercolor time lapse based on an MRA image of the brain.

Watercolor Time-Lapse

Here is a still detail

image

 

Prescient Dreams of [not] Wenger's '95 Theses'

My post this week actually comes from a creative post from a music classroom management course at my previous institution. It is the first three chapters of a book that I may write one day. There will definitely need to be editing before that day happens, but the story focuses on a young boy named Margeth. He envisions a nightmarish future land from which he must eventually save his entire kingdom. The catch is, this land is a reality based on the mundane world of an insurance company employee. After reading this week’s two selections, along with the Wenger material, I thought it funny that I had the prescient sense to write something three years ago that seems to almost perfectly line up with it all.

Hope you enjoy!

Dreams of a Future [it’s a working title]

1.

My name is Tom.

2.

My name is Tom. It is 5:47 a.m. on Tuesday, March 18th–breakfast time: two eggs, one biscuit with grape jelly, and 3 pieces of bacon. Crispy. 6:19 a.m.–time for work. I work for Parker and James Financial located at 4389 London Boulevard. I handle all incoming calls: complaints, grievances, and thanks. None ever call for that reason.

7:38 a.m., I arrive at 4389 London Boulevard and argue with the gear shift in my ’82 Ford Fiesta–Yellow. I must convince it that “P” means “Park.” After approximately 57 seconds I become the victor. 7:45 a.m., I arrive at my pale blue 3/4 cubicle. The phone rings. “Parker and Ja–”

“Don’t give me that! Parker and James this, Parker and James that. You should have been Parker and James Financial like you promised me. Talk about assets, what happened to protecting me and mine!? My stupid ex–”

“Sir or Madam, let me assure you that we here at Parker and James Financial are here for you. It is our vow to you that whatever money you have is ours for the protecting. Now, how may I help you?”

Click. Well that makes number one for the day. I add another scratch to my board.

3.

“Margeth? Margeth! Wake up!”
The blinding light hits me as I roll over and open my eyes. I’m pouring in sweat; it happened again. I have been having horrific dreams for the past few months. This time it was worse. A crippling pain is all that my conscious body is left with. Usually they are only full of dark labyrinths that carry deadly secrets or fierce enemies that the knights fight. Well, at least what the villagers say the knights fight. How should I know? I’m the son of a farmer. “Maarrgeeeth!?”

“I’m up, I’m up, Mother, calm down!”

“Hurry up or you will not make it in time!” Today is my 16th birthday. I finally get to appear before all the court. Once a boy is of age, he is allowed to appear before the entire people and court of the inner kingdom. There, he competes for a position in the community. From weaving to hunting and marksmanship, every position must be approved by the inner kingdom officials.

Dust shoots through the air as mother slams my door open with a flourish. Why is she wearing her dress laces? “Let me introduce to you the newest royal attendant in all of Calaindra. Margeth son of Nishmer!” exclaimed Lorebel as she loudly whispered ‘aahs’ to feign an exstatic crowd. “Up now my dear Margeth; no son of mine will be a dirty fishmonger. You are destined for greatness and should be housed in the royal palace.”

“Mother, there are hundreds of other of-age men that are all vying for a chance into the palace.” The searing pain hits me again. The dream has only been hiding in the recesses of my waking mind. The fear buckles me over quickly. Luckily, Mother only thought I was trying to go back to bed. I fear what it would do to her if she found out it was happening again.

“You must get up I tell you! Move it!” Lorebel yelled, as she began to search through Margeth’s clothes. “Here, put this on.” Margeth slowly obeyed her orders, all the while he managed to grunt and glower showing as much disdain as a sixteen-year-old can when woken up at dawn.

 

 

 

Technically Yours,

R.

Jay Loomis – Trad Community

I  intensely “feel community” when I play music at a pub in Greenport, NY – it’s called The Whiskey Wind. Every Thursday around 8 pm locals gather to jam out and play traditional music including American Songbook folk tunes, blues standards, sea shanties, original songs, and traditional Irish music. We sit in a circle and play, and each person gets a chance to lead a tune or sing a song. It’s a positive atmosphere full of laughter, music, and the sound of friends and acquaintances shootin’ the breeze. As a community, our joy for that evening is to share with each other and hopefully entertain the patrons at the pub.

This week I was especially disturbed by the constant news of violence and killings in NY, USA, and all over the World – I’m not sure why THIS week… maybe because our recent focus on community has made me more attuned to how violence destroys communities in so many ways.

So I put together the sonic expression, “Pub Glass,” which tries to capture the joy of participating in community, along with some of the other feelings that I just described. (Make sure to listen all the way through to get the full effect.)

 

Weekly Create – Katherine

For this week’s weekly create I used a timelapse I took with the iPad of me getting ready and edited and added music using an app called “Video Editor for vine, Instagram – free edition.” I love all the different photo and video editing apps that the App Store offers. I was surprised by how many different effects and filters could be added without even using a laptop.

Weekly Create – Week 3

Pocket Theatre is in the middle of rehearsals for Next to Normal! This semester, we wish to document the process, with photos, videos, and text notes. All of the data/media should be pushed up to drive, but unfortunately, our rehearsal space in the union basement does not have quality wifi. My iPad can’t even find our network; it just refreshes and searches. Every network has some dead spots, but it just so happens that our other two rehearsal spaces in Staller are also dead zones. The cabaret, Staller 0003, like the union, doesn’t have a signal strong enough for the iPad to detect it. The connection in theater three, Staller 1020, is better, but not reliable. All of the projects currently have ten or more files stored in Google drive for ease of access and collaboration. How can we consider using iPads in the academic environment if the wireless network coverage is spotty in high usage areas? Such circumstances prevent students from trying to implement the widely used technology.

Pocket Theatre - Next to Normal Rehearsal

Pocket Theatre – Next to Normal Rehearsal

I wish that I could have posted this from the rehearsal space...

Weekly Create – Week 2

Wenger qualifies a “community of practice” as a balance of mutual engagement, a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire. While the interactions of the humans discussed in his chapter on community are specific to claims processors, I read it in the context of a theatre company; theatre companies, groups, or organizations are all communities of practice. Providing that individuals decide to be part of some sort of collective, relationships form between the individuals, the individuals have their own unique qualifications that supplement their peers’ qualifications, and a model of power, influence, and change is acknowledged, the community in question is one of practice.

This psychologically insightful analysis of community objectifies the scary, and sometimes unpredictable, nature and happenings in collaborative communities. Wenger mentions that collaboration is not implied, but the communities that he describes can only thrive if there is participation, in/with groups, which is collaboration.

The section about  joint enterprise really spoke to me. For three years I have served as the President and Artistic Director of Pocket Theatre. One of my jobs is to assemble teams of individuals with the intent to collaborate, so examining shared repertoire is a crucial part of determining who gets to mutually engage. I recently worked on a production; tensions were high, arguments were not uncommon occurrences, and productivity was often slowed by those two things. The lack of mutual accountability caused every issue. Because Pocket Theatre is a student organization, all individuals involved with our projects are students; holding students accountable for anything extra-curricular is a nightmare.

So, here is my “original question”:  How can we hold students accountable for the responsibilities that they take on in the extra-curricular setting? (Note: it is sometimes more effective to keep an inefficient person on a team, and correct work, than firing that inefficient person and replacing them.)

 

This is the basic layout of jobs / responsibilities in the theatre. In smaller companies, these jobs get condensed.

In the diagram above, communities of practice are contained within larger communities of practice. Crews are their own communities, but they report to supervisors / designers who exist in a larger community. (The communities nest further, going all the way up to the board of directors.)

Jay Loomis – Ants, Wenger, & Communities of Practice

In the writings on communities of practice by Etienne Wenger, there were several specific characteristics that the author described that caught my attention. To start, he made a point of defining his terms: community and practice. He specified that for his purposes these ideas need to be considered has a whole: communities of practice. One of the most important defining characteristics is that these groups of people are bound together, not only by having a common goal, but also through the collaborative actions that individuals in the group undertake to achieve that goal.

The author explains three elements of a community of practice: mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and common repertoire. An important aspect of “mutual engagement” is that members are not required to have similar skill sets or backgrounds; in fact, diversity is valuable and can help a community of practice to achieve their objectives. “Joint enterprise” refers to the collaboration that takes place and the accountability that is a necessary part of this system. The “shared repertoire” refers to shared expectations and experiences that accumulate from the group; after spending time acting together as a team, they know what to expect and have common references related to their objectives that help them to act effectively.

A community of practice can be described as a purposeful, intentional group of people who act together to achieve common objectives, with a variety of individual perspectives on how to approach problem solving situations.

As I read these articles by Wenger, I was thinking about some examples of this type of effective community action in nature: ants. There are many examples of the extraordinary feats that ant communities can achieve, from creating huge underground colonies, to creating the paths through perilous jungle terrain, to their singular focus on providing for and caring for their queen. For this reading on communities of practice, I found the following YouTube video of ants creating a bridge to be especially informative while thinking about effective collaboration as a community of practice.

My questions relate to the section where Wenger talks about the need to cultivate communities of practice. What are some specific ways that administrations or managers in hierarchical institutions can encourage this semi-informal yet effective style of team work? What is it about this type of collaboration that sometimes makes managers uncomfortable? What changes in perspective need to take place in hierarchical systems to help managers embrace this style of collaboration?

Fast forward to about 2:20 to see the moment when the gap is bridged.

Wegner's Community of Practice – Katherine

Wegner defines a Community of Practice (COP) as a group of people who share a similar passion or interest for something and interact on a regular basis in order to learn how to perform their skill better. There are 3 different dimensions to a Community of Practice which include:

  1. mutual engagement
  2. a joint enterprise
  3. a shared repertoire

Mutual engagement is the amount and pattern of which the members of the community interact with each other. Membership within a community of practice doesn’t only rely on allegiance to a club or organization or being born into a specific social category but on the interaction between members. While geographic proximity between members is not necessarily, it is helpful to interaction between members. Three key aspects:

  1. enabling elements
  2. diversity
  3. multiplexity – joined by a variety of ties, including conflict

A joint enterprise refers to the common purpose that binds the people together and provides a unifying goal and coherence for their actions. Three key aspects:

  • negotiated goals
  • Indigenous purpose
  • mutual accountability

Shared repertoire refers to the continual development and maintenance of a shared repertoire of procedures, techniques, shortcuts, jargon, tools, forms, symbols, mental categories, actions, concepts, etc. Three key aspects:

  • shared history
  • richness
  • ambiguity

“The repertoire of a community of practice includes routines, words,
tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres,9 actions,
or concepts that the community has produced or adopted in the course
of its existence, and which have become part of its practice.”

I had a bit of difficulty with this reading but complemented it with some examples and summaries found online. One of my biggest takeaways from the reading was that a community of practice differs from just a community based on a few different key aspects but mostly the interaction between members. At first I had trouble understanding how Wenger was using the term “practice” until I read some other sources online.

Based on a chart I found on google images, I made a comparison between Communities of Practice and other types of work environments/groups.

 

Questions:

  1.  Is our classroom considered a Community of Practice?
  2. Could a community meeting on a Google Doc or Google Hangout be considered a Community of Practice?
  3. What elements of a Community of Practice does our CDT 450 class have? Which elements does it not?

If Wenger Were a K-Cup

This week’s reading, Wenger, “Community” from Communities of Practice, is, as many of my colleagues have already pointed out, a fairly hefty article. It took a bit longer for me to read which I believe is partially due to the fact that I attempted to only read on the iPad, and I do not currently know how to highlight or whatnot like during my usual note taking.

This is the second chapter of his book, and Wenger often references chapter one. It might have been helpful to have that knowledge, but wasn’t entirely essential. To my own understanding,

Wenger describes a community of practice on a few different levels. I best equate each of these levels (or at times it could be better understood as a concept or other similar thought-model/pattern) with my job.

I work in Academic and Transfer Advising Services at Stony Brook University. We handle academic advising for all transfer students and continuing students after their freshman year. Take for instance, this picture:

IMG_0070

 

At my work, our practice is helping students academically through transfer articulation and advising. We have decided to come together to develop this practice. We have formed a “process” which is reflected in the Red-Covered binder. It has all of the policies and regulations. “Jackie’s Posting Guide” represents each employee’s own contribution to these practices: We all have a specialty. We come from different backgrounds with different experience.

This “contribution” is not only expressed via policies, but also through simple “water cooler conversation.” In our case, it is the office Keurig! Employees talk relationships, the weather, general gossip; they laugh and cry together; parties are celebrated together. Each of these contribute to the overall atmosphere of the community.

Wenger was also adamant to point out that communities of practice are not limited to a particular office, building, or even country. To represent this, I opened Google Hangouts on my iPad Air. Although you cannot see the name, it is actually a colleague that I have done much work with via Hangouts.

If you have read Wenger’s chapter, you may notice that I chose to not use much of his terminology. Frankly, I found it to be a bit excessive. Of course, I plan on delving into this matter further, but I believe that these things can be said much more simply than his terms: Mutual Engagement, Joint Enterprise, and Shared Repertoire.

 

I am curious to know other “simple” examples of this idea. I’m sure that it can be used in education, and I think that MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are possibly heading toward this idea of a “shared” repertory of knowledge. However, I wonder how classrooms can more immediately begin to transition to this style of learning. I personally enjoy Wenger’s thoughts and believe that it is indeed part of what can help the education system.

Question is…is there a middle ground between MOOCs and the classroom? CDT 450 seems to be on the right track, but are there other possible ways? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. What are your ideas?

Technically Yours,

R.