keepitsafe

You know you are missing school when all ‘purpose’ is directed to cleaning ones living space, labelling the linen cupboard, and uploading documents and photographs on to a Cloud in the fear of an apocalypse! So, when I heard of the Kaospilot Masterclass all I was seeking was some interaction and conversation around education, and a break from incessant cleaning.  The Kaospilot based in Sweden define themselves as a hybrid business and design school,  focusing  on a multi-sided education in leadership and entrepreneurship. Their website said that The Art and Craft of Designing & Facilitating Learning Spaces Masterclass will introduce, explore and train participants in experiential learning and teaching and the art of facilitation & curating the pursuit of knowledge through learning processes, strategies, increased engagement & safe learning spaces. This sounded worthy of my time so why not I thought and enrolled. 3 days spent at the Masterclass took me by pleas...

WHY THIS … I have been asked to run a course with a leading city college for its Literature and Journalism students starting June. The department wants the students to experience visualizing, making and creating as an enriching academic resource. At the moment, I see PLA tools being valuable to the students in understanding and representing their own work. I am unsure of what my curriculum would be at this stage, but if I do choose the PLA method, I would opt for the tools I have listed below.  As these are students of Humanities, they rely heavily on text and written word for all their work, it will hence be interesting to work on visual tools with them. I believe that a process guided by visuality and participation rather than text will train them to Reexamine, Analyse and Reconstruct their views and beliefs with a more discerning eye, the skill of reflective observation is crucial to all students, more so for those of the Humanities.  My choice of tools is guided by the ide...

It feels strange to call this piece -outlining the end, I had immense fun working on this project and meeting all the people I did. Being true to my approach this far, I worked on Synthesis 2 using 'making with technology'. Through the course of this paper, I have engaged in varied forms of making to present my ideas. I feel sad to let this process end, but I am super excited that I have arrived at a new question/ problem to start thinking about! To outline the end of  Problems as Projects I followed three steps -  Step 1 I used the findings from Synthesis Version-1 and analyzed it through the lens of ' Understanding'.  I read Understanding by Design  -  Grant Wiggins & Jay Tighe to lead me through this process. Each time I located ideas in the readings which corroborated with Synthesis 1, I made note, annotated the ideas, and supported the reading with examples from my findings.  Step 2  I applied the 6 Facets of Understanding to the s...

It has been an exciting time putting my thoughts into visual formats, something I hesitated doing for the longest time. There were battles with the sense of perfection and what art should look like, which I have overcome finally! With Visual Leadership, I have immersed myself in making drawings that make me happy! Version 1 of my Manifesto looked like this. Manifesto Version 1 When I began working on Version 1 my ideas were merely disparate thoughts that outlined what my education/ leadership plan ought to be. I believed in many ideas that were largely participatory and inclusive, but it was missing crucial pieces. As the course unfolded new ideas emerged and strengthened my core beliefs. I used to think , Leadership was a far away space hidden in corporate boardrooms or in power corridors. Now I think , leadership is in the everyday actions of individuals. True leadership is when the agency and wisdom of a group are given voice. Leadership need not merely be a top-down ...

Keeping in mind my initial tussle with documentation, I decided to make my process "Alive". I documented a session of play in my building. I was curious to observe how decisions are made, how homogeneity emerges within a group during play, and how leadership effects or creates conflict in play.   I used notes & photographs (of important moments / mind shifts) to document my experience.  As a part of taking documentation back, I created narrative charts which were displayed on the corridor for the children to view and contribute their own views.  My co-documenter also helped add new frames, perspectives to what we had witnessed, making it evident that varied viewpoints actually add to the process. At the end of this experience I concluded that documenting need not be conclusive (as I had feared), if anything the process demands deep immersion and analysis, and creates dialogue to understand an environment better.  My Documentation Plan  Taking documentation b...

Documentation as an idea at the start made me extremly uncomfortable, I found it tedious. I questioned the need for more data in our already data overloaded world. But then I read The Logic of Care by Anniemarie Mol  and The Role of a Teacher  by Loris Malaguzzi, and my initial doubts began to slowly wither. I began to see documentation as a process of honest witnessing, my only doubts were around developing a process that was not cheoregraphed. It was also vital for me that my documentation was alive, just like the events that I was witnessing.  Below are my initial forays around the idea of documenatation, doubts, knots and all !  Is Listening a form of care?  Seeing documenation as Listening or Care. Making my own documentation plan. 

As I started to synthesize my data, I decided to do make it by hand. Through handmaking, I attempted to add one more layer of immersion to the problem I was studying, and the emotions surrounding handmaking.  In studying my problem (both collecting and documenting) I had decided to handmake in many ways - 1) At the pottery studio to understand the maker mindset 2) make using technology, turn my interviews into little films 3) handmake phase 1 of synthesis.  Handmaking a synthesis report  What has emerged from this immersive exercise in handmaking are more questions about the universality of making and also an intensified belief in the power of handmaking. This sort of contradiction makes it a conflicting space to be in. The questions that have resurfaced will be drawn out and reexamined in Part 2 of the Synthesis.  In Part 1 of synthesizing I saw myself making all my thoughts visual (also drawing from the Visual Leadership course). Through making thoug...