Visuals – Forms and Functions
beautiful book, reproduced for us. from the heller article in the NYT “This work,” Byrne continues, “has a greater aim than mere illustration; we do not introduce colors for the purpose of entertainment, or to amuse by certain combinations of tint and form, but to assist the mind in its researches after truth, to increase the facilities of instruction and to diffuse permanent knowledge.”
stefan wewerka chair in Tribu-Design
in grad school i was first exposed to wewerka’s work. i was impressed by his re-use and re-fine methodology, whereby he took symmetrical chairs, cut, and recombined to create a new seating space that worked with the way people sat. beautiful and smart.
How Not to Save the Arts – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education
In the recent issue of Education Next, I have a reminiscence of months spent at the National Endowment for the Arts working on arts education policy matters. It lays out a basic point about how arts offerings are to survive in a time of tightened budgets, STEM shortages, and NCLB focus on math, reading, and science.
Many advocates believe that the best way to maintain music, theater, visual arts, and dance in the school day is to align the arts with social benefits. When students take arts courses, they argue, they undergo behavioral changes that improve their prospects and make for a better society. The arts teach tolerance, they say, sensitivity to others and ambitions for the Good. They also reach those youngsters on the edge of disaster, the tough or depressed or victimized or delinquent ones who find high-school classes boring or hostile or restrictive. As NEA chairman Rocco Landesman put it in the Wall Street Journal a while back, “We’re going to try to move forward all the kids who were left behind by ‘No Child Left Behind’—the kids who have talent or a passion or an idiosyncratic perspective. Those kids are important too and they should have a place in society. It’s very often the arts that catches them.”
As I paraphrased it in the essay, “the purpose is salvation. Some students don’t fit the NCLB regime and other subjects don’t inspire them. Talented but offbeat, they sulk through algebra, act up in the cafeteria, and drop out of school. The arts ‘catch’ them and pull them back, turning a sinking ego on the margins into a creative citizen with ‘a place in society.’”
This is, I believe, a mistake. It ties arts learning too much to social benefits and downplays the arts as an academic subject. It doesn’t insist upon the arts as a discipline, but rather sentimentalizes the arts as a salvation. (See the rendition of the hood “Carlos” in the event described in the essay.) It doesn’t make other teachers in math, science, English, and social studies respect the arts as an integral part of liberal education. It makes them regard the arts as a vacation from standards and rigor.
The arts classes I visited and observed while at the agency weren’t like that at all. They were darn rigorous and exacting. I recall sitting in on one band practice in Virginia that involved one exhausting repetition after another, the leader picking and pulling the renditions apart to identify the errors and correct them for what seemed like two intense hours. (As with varsity sports teams, the poor performance of any one musician or dancer or actor stands out immediately.)
If we wish to bolster the arts, let’s emphasize the challenging, difficult course of mastery, the need to practice practice practice, and the crucial element of artistic tradition in the discipline. If social benefits follow, that’s great, but social impact doesn’t work as a curricular argument.
Haiku U.: Short Takes on the New Semester – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Haiku U.: Short Takes on the New Semester
I asked a number of friends to help me with this 17-syllable exercise, and since more people responded than I imagined might, I’m happy to throw everybody into one batch. I hope you’ll consider adding your own.
Wake with teeth grinding
Broken printers in my dreams
Is it fall term yet?
…
Wonderfully does
The cheating kid sit beside
The foreign student.
…
Capture my fresh thought
Embrace the joy of learning
Oops! There is no place to park.
…
Why teach before dawn?
The schedule I have now
Might kill me outright.
…
Happy instructor!
Brilliant students come to learn!
Brooklyn Bridge for Sale!
…
Cynical teachers
Make empty nests of classrooms
No one fills the blanks.
…
See the patient desk
Where no writer sits today.
Teaching interferes.
…
My boyfriend is back
But my new colleague is cute.
Fulbright time again?
…
Yesterday’s lessons
Drawn from your grad school notebooks
Will not work today.
…
How can we have lunch?
I teach five classes a day.
Remember? Adjunct!
…
Anybody here?
A fly buzzes in reply.
Wrong room once again.
…
Professor X smells
Of Axe spray and baby poop.
Contradictory.
…
Canadian schools
Give faculty more support.
Count your blessings, eh?
…
No, you can’t get in.
The class is already full.
Yeah, well, tell it to the Dean.
…
Library closes
When you most need to go in.
You buy a Kindle.
…
Fine colleague retires.
Her absence makes you wonder:
Have you allies left?
…
See the pretty girl!
She is way too young for you.
Better believe it.
…
Twenty years teaching
And still no health insurance.
Too late for law school?
…
Submit the novel
Wait for the agent’s reply.
Is this a way out?
…
Turn your laptop off
And watch the sun cross the sky
Time has no cursor.
…………..
How to Run an Effective Meeting | BNET
Define Goals and Distribute an Agenda
Goal: Create a structure for your meeting.
Productivity expert David Allen recommends starting every meeting with a “statement of wild success,” a clear definition of the best possible outcome for the meeting. Just stating the ideal result often inspires participants and makes meetings more productive. At the very least, it underscores a feature that every meeting needs: a goal.
Before the meeting even begins, make sure everyone understands the objectives by writing an agenda. If you’re a procrastinator, write the agenda before you call the meeting. (This exercise should also help you confirm whether a meeting is necessary and who should attend.) Include everything your group will need to discuss or decide on but keep it brief, using bullet-pointed items instead of full paragraphs. Be clear about who will lead each agenda item and whether it’s an update, a discussion, or an action item that requires group decision-making.
Email the agenda to your colleagues a day in advance, so that potential naysayers will have the opportunity to make their objections known privately — rather than during the meeting. (If necessary, you’ll then have time to include their suggestions in a revised agenda.) Always paste the agenda into the body of the email; if it’s an attachment, no one will bother to open it. Phrase your agenda in a way that will increase the sense of urgency and importance. An item called “sales challenge for this quarter” is much more captivating than “sales quarter update.”
“You want to interest people,” says Bert Decker, a communications consultant who has worked with Siemens, Charles Schwab, and Representative Nancy Pelosi. “It gives them a guide to where you’re going. It has a point of view and an action step. You’re influencing them towards something, not just informing them.”
In bigger meetings that require more bodies and more time, give the conversation a clear structure by assigning topics an allotted amount of time. Decker recommends picking odd numbers — 25 minutes instead of 30, for example — to show that you’re serious about sticking to a precise schedule.
To increase involvement, consider giving everyone a role or assignment. Team heads or those with specialized knowledge should handle the agenda items that apply to their areas. For longer meetings, if the material covered is not relevant to some people, arrange to have them excused from that portion of the meeting, so they can get back to work rather than waiting through issues that don’t concern them.
