Chapter 1: Into the Matrix

Hello!  The enthusiasm of the new semester brings with it all sorts of lofty, optimistic goals.  One of them is to use Google to store a record of my thoughts in this class, rather than a cardboard box in my storage shed, or worse, lose them entirely after the end of the semester.

Please "enjoy" my brief intro video.  I've sped it up as much as I dared, and spiced it up with all the hottest free tracks from Garage Band for your viewing pleasure.

You might be thinking to yourself, "what is this guy trying to do?  Show off his 'creativity' to the instructor?"  Well, if you viewed the video, you probably also thought, "and if he is, he failed miserably."  I say that with a smile on my face, because even though the video didn't turn out remotely as good as I originally conceived it, it was still an applicable learning event for me.  Here's how:

I started on it before I read chapter 1 of "Creativity in the Classroom."  I'd watched the Sir Robinson presentation, and decided I wanted to try something like that, for a couple of reasons.

• I love film and video; when I graduated from high school in 1992 my grandest plan (I had a lot) was to become a filmmaker a la Steven Spielberg or George Lucas.  In those dark, internet-less times, the only information I could come up with on how to do it was to go to the USC film school, which is what Lucas had done.  The cost was rather prohibitive, so I switched to less grand plans and tabled my filmmaking aspirations.  I later found out that the way Spielberg had done it was to just show up at a movie set, talk his way into an entry-level job, and then work his butt off.  In hindsight, that method might have been more fitting with my personality, but it is hard to imagine that naive farm kid from Tatooiene, er, Hazelton, Idaho striking out for Hollywood at age 18.  Nonetheless, I still enjoy making films, and in the ensuing twenty years, technology has thankfully caught up with my ambitions--I can now do in a day, using my phone and laptop, what it would have taken a semester to produce at USC.  The big takeaway for me, and it was reflected in Starko's book on page 10 as a bolded subheading, is that "We Need Creativity For Joy."  I honestly started the project because I thought it would be an enjoyable endeavor.  A page before that, Starko says we need "Creativity for Motivation" as well; in this case motivation and joy were synonymous.

• I also did the project because I wanted the practice.  This is partly why I am going to attempt to write about this class on a blog.  Starko brought this up in the chapter as well--"the world of technology is a marvel of creativity."   All too often in life and especially school, I learn something new and then tell myself I'll remember how to do that again when the time comes.  But technology changes fast.  In the case of video, I finally got to pursue that dream a little bit back when I finished my first undergraduate degree (English, Creative Writing) in 2005.  I took a Video Production class as an elective.  I learned a lot about underlying aesthetic theory of film/video that still applies, but even in ten years the technology has changed vastly, and when I started making videos with my phone and iMovie App, I realized I needed to relearn the technical aspects.  Starko talks about that in the chapter as well--to be creative, you still need to be technically proficient.  Trust me, there is no aesthetic intention behind the lousiness of my video, it just plain stinks technically to the point any creative message I was attempting to get across is mostly lost.

• I'm not a technology geek my any means; I love the feel of a book in my hands, and I hang onto old letters now not because of who they are from or what they say, but because they are relics.  Still, I have to grudgingly admit that a lot of technological improvements are pretty neat, and like them or not, having some fluency with technology has gone from being a little perk on your resume to an near absolute requirement.  Having 7 and 5 year-old boys reminds me of this every day.  My grandparents witnessed the dawn of the airplane, telephone, and television.  But in a sense, the world has changed as much in the last twenty years as it did in the last century.  And as Sir Robinson points out, the needs, if not the methods, of education have changed as well.  I want to be able to relate to my students on their level, and watching videos on YouTube is something kids do now.  I can lament the fact that back in the early Eighties I had to wait until a specific time on Saturday afternoon to watch a grainy, poorly received half-hour of "Wild Kingdom" to get my animal fix, but the fact is kids have access to a nearly limitless amount of high quality video on almost any subject instantly, at their fingertips.  As a teacher, I might not be able to compete with YouTube and Netflix, but I at least want to understand it.

I started the project purely out of a desire to feel the joy of creation, but it morphed into something else.  It became a tangible anchor for me as I read the chapter.  When Starko talks about the definitions of creativity, I had my very own example to assess.  For starters, whether or not it turned out, I thought and felt like I was being creative.  Was I?  Was my project "innovative" and "appropriate?"

It was only innovative in the sense that making a video was neither expected nor suggested, or even, perhaps, allowable.  The video itself is nothing new, in fact, I was obviously mimicking the video we watched.  Was the message itself innovative?  Maybe, a little--I'll touch on that a little below.

Was it appropriate?  Well, for the purpose of introducing myself, the idea was probably appropriate enough.  If you watch carefully, it gives you quite a bit of information, both in what I intentionally showed and in what you can see and hear in the background.  If you were to slow it down and analyze it like the Zapruder film, you might see that one of the books in the stack was a well-worn copy of "Game of Thrones."  If you listened to it at normal speed, the chipmunk squeaks would become the words, and burps, of my five-year old son.  But all in all, does it respond to the assignment appropriately?  I'm not sure.

But also, as observers, you are meant to infer an awful lot about "how" I might have responded to the prompt questions.  Yes, the video inspired me enough to attempt to flatter it.  Yes, my students might be in for a wild ride.  Hopefully that won't include the thought, "Oh no.  Not another one of Mr. Huettig's weird videos."  The fact that I am now backing the video up with a bunch of writing would seem to indicate that ultimately the medium wasn't appropriate for the task.  It certainly could not stand alone and convey all that I wanted it to.  Or could it?  Could it, a hundred years from now, be a work of art that is studied in universities, analyzed with a fine-tooth comb, and debated about like Mona Lisa's smile?  Ok, probably not.

But, you know, funny things do happen when you set out to create something.  Of all the different things I conceived the video showing before I made it, the thing I found the most interesting occurred during the process.  The timeline, if you caught that, was the idea.  I would follow this timeline and then sketch out (much more artistically than what actually happened) pictures of various highlights of my life.  I realized when I was done that the "highlights" only account for a small fraction of the totality of my life.  The exclamation point of my life.  Filling in the rest of life with a winding road then made sense, and my big aha! came when I realized how perfectly a question mark would overlay the exclamation point. 

To anybody else, that might, at best, seem kind of neat.  For me, it is a little bit more, simply because I sort of "created" that meaning for myself.  I'm sure I'm not the only person who's ever thought of the graphonic implications of the shapes of punctuation.  And my personal "meaning" may not have any historical basis in fact.  Nonetheless, for myself, I created new meaning, something that will stick with me on a much deeper level than if I'd typed out another version of my life story.  The exciting highlights are the exclamation point of life, but the winding road is full of questions.  For me, every time I set out to write a brief bio, I end up with the first three chapters of my memoirs. This intentionally short video is an attempt to think about my own life in a new way, and I accomplished that.

Now, how to inspire students to do that for themselves, and not just be a "creative teacher?"  That is the problem.  I think part of the solution lies in being able to first do it for myself.  I was inspired by not just what Sir Robinson was saying, but how it was presented.  I hope to do the same with my students.