Curiously enlightened

It has been a good 8 weeks or so of teaching for me... so far, as I go back to the basics of design with my younger charges. I guess it is sometimes more fun to teach about the rudiments of design to the younger students, compared to the old. It has its limitations though, but all in all, it has been a rather enjoyable, enlightening, and more importantly, enriching experence for me. Nearing towards the end of the term, i do at times recollect and reflect about the things that I have taught, the things that I have learnt, (yesh you definitely can learn a thing or two from these kids), and the things that I think I could do, or could have taught better. 'It is all about the students'...is the mantra that I still stick by whenever I plan for any of my lessons, because no matter how interesting the lessons could be, from your own opinion, if the very people that you target your lessons to find it uninspiring, then I guess IT IS unsinspiring. And what I like about teaching these bunch is their honesty...I mean seriously what kind of profession gives you that dose of realism and honesty every single day, every single waking hour, of every single lesson that you conduct besides teaching. And as I sit back over the weekend, with books and journals to mark and grade, I would definitely like to sit back, and reflect upon my practices, and perhaps, just perhaps, think of ways to become an even better teacher in my next place of work!

This thing about resilience

It had been a rather frustrating past week for me, with all the requests by some of the students, and their parents, regarding their requests for the dropping of their O level subjects. What frustrates me is not so much about the request per se, but more so on the mental model that these 'droppers' seems to have regarding their subject selection. It seems pretty obvious that what these kids really need are a huge dose of mental resilience. Seriously I don't remember having to give up, or at least trying to give up the subjects that I was assigned to, no matter how I hated the subject matter, or the teacher, or both, when I was their age. I think for most of those in my age group, what we did was just to suck it up, go through the paces, and just 'bash through the wall'!

But this time round, things are happening differently! At the sight or at the mere hint of difficulty with the subject area, or even at the very thought of just even disliking the teacher that teaches the subject, guess what our students will do? Yeah, they would drop the subject! Lame reasons like: not interested in the subject, too much time to concentrate on the subject, and similar excuses, really seems to irk me at times, but no matter what, as far as possible we would try to accede to their requests! It is just that, at times to me, some of them are:

- really abusing the system of dropping the subjects, taking it as the easiest and fastest way out of doing work, or worst still, of really avoiding being put through their paces of really stretching their potential...they just do not seem to want their potentials stretched!
- asking their parents to talk to the teachers! I mean seriously, at the age of 16 and 17, don't you have the mental courage or necessary wherewithal to even put forth an articulate, logical and convincing argument about your 'case'. Do you really need to 'hide' behind your parents? I remember making my own decisions about which school to go to at the age of 12, and having the mental courage to want to choose what subjects I wanted to study at the age of 14-15. Seriously, I shudder to think, that when these students go on forth to their post-secondary institution, would they consider THAT easy way out too?

It can get frustrating at times to handles such cases or to be entertaining such issues, but I guess this is just part of parcel of how things would be, as we get to be a more inclusive profession. But what worries me even more is that if the society that we are currently moulding, the ones that are under our care right now, are not even ready to face a little bit of hardship, and lacking in what I call mental tenacity and resilience, and if things were to turn up just as bad like what we are experiencing right now with the economy, and if the 'Flatness' that I have been blogging about hits them, will they be able to survive? Maybe they really need a slight dose of realism in their lessons too!

Design Inundation

One of the key challenges that I have when talking or engaging my younger charges in the areas of design are their lack of exposure to what design is all about. It seems quite a challenge at times to make them 'see' deeper into what design is all about, 'listen' to what design has to offer from my exchanges with them, and to get them really into the groove of things and see to it that when they go away after the lessons, they will be 'enlightened' about how design is affecting or will affect them. But hey, I am relishing every moment of it...bearing in mind that sometimes it will take somewhat of a drastic measure at times to really make sure that some things just stays with them for a little while longer. Taking a leaf off how children learn their multiplication table, perhaps some form of a 'drilling' routine of sorts will actually be good for these charges of mine, but not of the rote learning that perhaps all of us, in our much younger days, are exposed to when we are required to learn our mathematical tables, but perhaps of a similar nature.

I was merely thinking that perhaps the design equivalent of such an endeavour will be good. Something that perhaps I would like to 'nickname' a Design Inundation of all things design, this could be a single session, or a series of sessions, in which my young charges are constantly being 'bombarded' by designerly stuffs, about how things are designed, about what design is all about, and more importantly about how design does affect them in more ways than they can think of. More importantly, such an exposure should be made to engage and 'touch' them on a visceral level, the level of which I think it will be more successful for any knowledge nugget to be retained inside their grey matter. And I think it should go beyond just the theoretical practices and coverage of what design is about, but also includes the multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted nature of design, about how design can be the unifying factor of what the other subject disciplines have to offer, and about how design can make and break a culture (think iPod), an economy (think what Chocolate and watches have done for the Swiss) or even a civilisation (think of what paper has done to the Chinese)...and I think you know what I am trying to arrive at!

Do Schools Kill Creativity

This is a wonderful video from TED.com that was recommended by one of my readers/commenters. Thanks to him, I have a better appreciation of what education is all about, and about what creativity and intelligence really mean. It will take time to revolutionise the mankind's mental models on what education is all about, but unless we try and do something about it, we will never ever get to celebrate fully the hope that our children bring into our lives, from their education. Clip taken from here. Enjoy...

Uninstalling applications in Mac

Although the Mac OS platform is known for its simplicity in removing applications, by just the mere 'thrashing' of its single application file, nonetheless there are application files of some applications that will still 'linger' around way after the main application file has been deleted, ala the Windows platorm.



And this is where the freeware application called AppZapper is a godsend. Installing it is a breeze, and it doesn't take a huge amount of real estate space in your hard disks. Just activate it, move the required application that needs to be removed into the windows (see picture), click ok to remove all of the removed application's files, and walla, all is done. Try it!