Creativity Projects

This week, we had the chance to present our creative projects to the class. I greatly enjoyed these classes, even if I wasn't as confident in my project after seeing some of the amazing products created by my classmates. I liked that we had projects from a wide range of mediums, since I think a number of us have said in the past that we didn't think we were very creative. I particularly liked the use of comedy in several presentations. I thought it was an outside-the-box way of thinking about a topic, and it made the presentations entertaining and memorable.

Although I didn't think my presentation was anything special, I was proud of my creative project. I had fun making my collage. I can't draw or paint or anything like that, but I consider myself a visual person and I like making things aesthetically pleasing. This was a good project for me to work on, not only for the creative expression, but because I had to teach myself various Photoshop techniques that will no doubt be useful in the future. I really enjoyed this creativity project, and I am proud of the product that I created.

Should creativity be considered in admissions decisions?

This debate brought up a number of good points from both sides of the argument. Even after all of the evidence was presented, I still found it impossible to make a decision one way or another. I can see the advantages and disadvantages of both sides.

In favor of creativity being considered, I think it would be good to further diversify admissions criteria to encourage a wider spectrum of applicants. Creativity tests could help us move away from the "teach to the test" mindset that we face in today's school system and trickle down to more creativity in the classroom. It would also place less pressure on students to do well on the SATs and give them more freedom to prepare for the admissions area that they felt they could perform best in.

In opposition, many schools already implement tests of creativity for the majors that would require the most creativity. For example, the music department at Etown requires a separate audition process from the regular college admission process. Introducing creativity tests would add another element of stress for applying students. Even if creativity was only used as a component of the overall picture of a student, it would still be looked at as a possible means of failure to exceed by those students. Performing poorly in one area could make or break a student's acceptance and many may think it would be an unnecessary and unfair means of measuring a student's possible success.

At the end of this debate, I was still unsure about my position because I could see the advantages and disadvantages of both sides. I think the debaters did an excellent job of concluding our class's debates.

SCAD 2015

This year, SCAD had a number of interesting presentations. One particular presentation focused on the perceptions of strangers by people with color-aura synesthesia (meaning that they "see" a type of aura when looking at other people). The researcher used two synesthetes and compared the reported auras to see if there were any similarities, which would indicate that there could possibly be a similarity in brain structure or processing between cases. The results showed that there was a fair amount of similarity between the synesthetes when they were given 12 colors from a wheel to choose as descriptors. The responses themselves ranged from basic to very intricate, and I began thinking about if creativity may have an influence on the responses. For example, would a more creative synesthete report more intricate auras? The intricate responses made me think of artwork, as they detailed textures and shapes, rather than just colors (pink spikes, jagged edges). When I am taking Research in Perception next semester, I would like to look into this topic, even though it would be difficult to find enough synesthetes to conduct research on the topic.

Is creativity related to mental illness?

This debate brought up many interesting points about the topic of mental illness and creativity. I went into the debate thinking that yes, there is a connection between the two. However, as the negative side presented the research and its low-correlation results, I began to think about our culture and how we tend to view mental illness, especially when the team asked if it was mental illness that caused great creative outcomes or if we remember the creators more for their mental illness.
       I thought back to elementary school in art class, when we learned about great artists from history. When we learned about Van Gogh, one of the first and most prominent things we learned was that he removed his own ear. This seemed a bit macabre to be a topic of discussion in an elementary school, especially since we went into great detail about how his self-portraits after that were painted from the other side of his face to hide the injury. This episode still remains an iconic memory of Van Gogh and his legacy; sure enough, when you type "Van Gogh" into Google Search, the first result is "Van Gogh ear," followed by "Van Gogh starry night" which is one of the most famous paintings in the world. Instead, his mental illness is a more popular topic. Why do we remember Van Gogh for being "tormented artist", rather than solely his work?
      As the debaters talked about the media's portrayal of mental illness, I immediately thought of the recently released movie, The Imitation Game, which chronicles Alan Turing's invention of Turing machine that was used to break Nazi codes during World War II. Although accounts detail that Turing had certain eccentricities, the movie portrays Turing as possessing characteristics of Asperger's and other autism spectrum disorders. Acquaintances report that Turing was sociable and humorous, a direct contrast to Cumberbatch's portrayal in the film. Asperger's may not be the type of mental illness that was debated, but it still reflects our society's preoccupation with the stereotypical "tormented artist" or troubled genius. Maybe we remember certain creative geniuses because we find it easy to sympathize with them, or perhaps our culture just loves a good tragic story. No matter what the reason, this debate brought up a lot of thought-provoking points about our society and culture.

MacArthur Genius Grant - Deborah Bial

Deborah Bial, who received the grant in 2007, created the Posse Foundation, which aims to make college more accessible for underrepresented and less privileged students who wish to pursue higher education. She focuses primarily on youths from urban environments. The program emphasizes skills that are traditionally considered less important in our school system. Students are chosen for the program based on their personal qualities, such as leadership, communication skills, and ability to work in a team. The chosen students become part of a school-year-long "college training" program that further refines these skills and acts as a support system. Bial's program has a high school graduate rate of nearly 90%, which is far higher than the national average of around 80%. Bial also communicates with the admissions offices of numerous colleges and universities across the nation and emphasizes the importance of alternative admission qualifications and diversity within schools.

I greatly admire Bial's work because she herself has created a program that works directly with youths to help them pursue higher education. For someone in her position as an education strategist, it would be easy to simply advocate for these issues, rather than actually taking action and working with the youths themselves. Her program also aims to send these small groups of youths that have gone through the 8-month program together to the same college in hopes that they will have an already-consolidated support network and will encourage them to stay in school together. This is a unique approach that I have not seen before and I think it is a brilliant solution to the problems that may arise in one's social environment. I think it is simple enough to take an underprivileged youth and help them get into college, but ensuring that they feel comfortable enough to make such a drastic change in their environment is more difficult and I think that is a problem that similar programs may run into.

Introduction to Creativity Research - Week 8

This week, we began our discussion on creativity. We started in a rather strange way, by competing in our own version of a Craft Corner Deathmatch. I particularly enjoyed this activity because it was a fun experience and it allowed us to examine our own creative processes after the activity was over. Our group created a bulletin board of sorts that included a collage of pictures related to psychology. During the activity, I felt that our idea was very creative, but after seeing the other groups' creations, I started thinking that we could have done so much more . The idea was mine and it was the first thing that I thought of when the challenge was presented. I wish that we had spent more time brainstorming.

My favorite creations from the class were the brain sculpture and the art piece that used the textbook cover as a background. I thought that the brain sculpture was especially unique because it used the textbook pages for their physical structure and ability to be shaped, rather than using the images printed on them. I thought that this was a great way of thinking about the materials and really encompassed what the challenge was about: going beyond the expected typical use of the materials.

Overall, I thought that this class was a great way to shake things up and put our own creativity to the test before we began discussing it.

Intelligence Tests in Admissions - Week 7

I enjoyed this week's debate on whether or not intelligence tests should be used in college admissions. I have heard people raise the idea of this issue before, but I have never really listened to the arguments before. In my opinion, I think they should continue to be used but not because they are a "complete picture" of an applicant. I think that colleges should continue to use SAT/ACT scores as a part of the admissions process, but only a part. In our current system, other factors such as class ranking, GPA, extracurriculars, and application essays are considered, but our society seems to put more weight on SAT scores.

In order to make the admissions process fair to all applicants, we need to remember that those scores are only part of the picture. Getting a lower score should not make teenagers feel inadequate, which unfortunately it tends to do. We put so much stress on the importance of improving our test scores and buying practice test books and paying for prep courses, rather than accepting that some people may not test as well as others and moving on from that to focus on other aspects that can reflect their intelligence and abilities.

Culture and Neuroscience - Week 6

This week, we had several discussions on special topics, culture and neuroscience and their effects on intelligence. I found the first discussion on culture and intelligence to be particularly interesting, mainly because I have already taken Intro to Neuroscience. Going into the conversation, I had thought that Sternberg's fourth model was the best (intelligence is different across cultures and must be measured differently).

As the class discussion progressed, I found myself beginning to side more and more with his third model, that intelligence is the same across cultures but must be measured in different ways. I think that different cultures value different skills, but there still must be one overall human intelligence that can be measured across cultures. Using the fourth model makes it nearly impossible to come up with this "score". I was surprised to find that my opinion changed after just one class discussion. I do still believe in multiple intelligences, but I think there are problems with Sternberg's fourth model because it seems to focus more on specialized skills instead of overall human intelligence.

Malleable vs. Fixed Intelligence - Week 5

This week, my partner and I participated in a debate on whether intelligence is fixed or malleable. We argued the side that intelligence is malleable. Overall, I was pleased with how the debate went. I thought both sides were well-prepared and able to make convincing arguments. However, I do wish that we had met with the opposing side prior to the debate so we could go over the stances we were taking.

I think there was some confusion, since the fixed side argued that intelligence was malleable only to a certain extent because of preconceived limits. This caused the debate to become a bit confusing, as it seemed at times that we were arguing the same point. We used this confusion as a counterargument, and looking back, I think it was a little unfair for us to do so, because we had not met up beforehand to discuss our sides. However, I think overall our debate was successful and brought up a lot of interesting points and questions. I was nervous going into the debate because I dread public speaking, but I was surprised that I was able to keep it together under pressure and present our arguments relatively clearly (even though I had the prepared notes in front of me!). Even though the debate was confusing at times, I thought that it was successful overall.

Multiple Intelligences - Week 4

This week, we began our debates about intelligence. For the first debate, we discussed whether or not there are multiple intelligences. I thought that both sides presented compelling arguments, although I do still believe there are multiple intelligences. However, I think that the presence of multiple intelligences does not mean that there cannot be one general measure of intelligence, and vice versa. I think it is nearly impossible to establish a "scoring system" of sorts to determine how much of one skill is equivalent to another.

For example, is a renowned author considered more intelligent than an individual who is an expert mechanic? Is the reverse true? If we considered the two of them equal in intelligence, would we consider the mechanic to be more intelligent if we discovered he was also highly skilled in the art of flower arranging? The problem with measuring intelligence based on skills is that this is not a video game. We cannot level ourselves up, get bonus points for skills, and choose the best character on the start-up screen based on the total number of skill points they have, no matter the distribution. We are so unique as individuals, and our skills and talents reflect that. I think it is extremely difficult to "measure" intelligence, especially when we consider multiple intelligences.

Theory Meets Practice - Week 3

As we continue to explore different definitions of intelligence and various ways of testing, I wonder if and how certain disabilities are factored into the score. For example, in our book, there are ten different skills listed that fall under the category of crystallized intelligence. Many of these skills rely the test administrator to read aloud a word or short passage. How do these tests accommodate for test takers that have hearing impairments? Writing down these passages or instructions counteracts what the test creators wanted for their test, which was to have an intelligence test that did not rely directly on the participant's reading abilities.

I think intelligence tests are inherently problematic and we will not find a way to "measure" intelligence without alienating some group or ignoring external factors. In my opinion, there is no one way of defining intelligence because there are so many ways it can be expressed or influenced. There are some people who may be proficient in multiple areas of what we may call intelligence, and this may be the definition of intelligence that we are looking for, but again, there are too many factors that may have influenced this person's upbringing.

Even in schools, we can see multiple sources of what we could call intelligence. Children in the "gifted and talented" programs would be easy to label as more intelligent, but perhaps they just learn at a faster pace than others and are thus placed into theses accelerated programs. The children in grade-level courses are by no means unintelligent; perhaps they have certain learning disabilities that limit the speed at which they can learn content, or maybe their home environment is not conducive to the extra work and projects that the accelerated programs require. The point being, there is really no one concrete way of measuring intelligence. My cousin, for example, performed poorly in school because he has severe dyslexia and it made all schoolwork extremely difficult and time-consuming. Today, he is a master plumber and extremely good at what he does. He outperformed other employees years older than him, even without the years of experience that they had. He was called a prodigy by his employer. My cousin almost didn't graduate from high school, and he certainly did not attend college. The only reason that he doesn't start his own plumbing company, he says, is because he wouldn't be able to do the paperwork. I certainly wouldn't call him less intelligent than others because he struggles with reading and writing, as some intelligence tests would. I find intelligence tests to be less than helpful because it can only truly measure "intelligence" in a select few, as long as external and personal factors are ignored.

IQ Tests - Week 2

This week, we split into groups and had the opportunity to explore and examine one of four popular IQ tests. My group examined the Stanford-Binet test. I found it to be very interesting, although confusing at times. As I examined the test, I noticed several striking similarities between some of the components and my experiences in other classes.

I spent my first two years at Etown as an early childhood/special education major, and with it, I completed numerous field placements. One such placement, in the spring of my sophomore year, was in an autism support classroom at a local middle school. Several of the students spent class time working one on one with a teacher who used materials very similar to those found in the Stanford-Binet test. The teacher had a stack of cards containing various tasks. Some would prompt the student to answer a question about everyday objects and locations (ex. "What do you do at a restaurant?"). Some of the items on the Binet test strongly reminded me of these prompting activities. I wondered if this teaching style was based on Binet's test, or at least partially drew inspiration from it. Although the presentation of the items were far different, it was still great to be able to see the connection between these two fields.

Teach-In - Week 1

When the question was posed if IQ is equal between races, my first thought was that yes it is and there are no natural reasons for it to be unequal. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these differences were most likely caused by circumstances that each family must face. Families in poverty have less access to healthy foods that would give their children the substantial nutrition their brains need to develop. When we think of cities, we think of densely packed and poorly funded schools, which will be less conducive to a high quality education. The factors that account for these differences are problems that our society faces as a whole, and cannot be blamed on individual families.

I work at a daycare center during the summers, and the center prides itself on being a high quality educational experience for children of all ages. The company runs a scholarship contest each year to find a high school senior who previously attended their centers, and this student must submit an essay about how the daycare impacted their future. I have seen firsthand how stressful it is to teach at this daycare, simply from the pressure of corporate for them to do nothing but superior work. The infant room, which contains children under the age of six months, requires weekly lesson plans covering a range of topics (art, science, social activity, reading). Obviously, this company places huge emphasis on education, and the price tag certainly reflects that. Monthly tuition is in the thousands, even more so for infants. Daycare services like this are simply not an option for low income families, which I think further contributes to the divide in IQ scores. Even as I think about it now, I cannot think of a single African American student that attended while I worked there, and I am ashamed that I can't come up with even one name. There are children of other races, but even those numbers are low, at only around 2-3 per classroom of 15-20. The staff is diverse and accurately reflects the diversity of our population, but the student body certainly does not. Even in my county, which is listed as one of the five wealthiest counties in the entire United States, there is a clear divide between race and access to high-quality early childhood education, which may be a factor in IQ scores later in life. It is grossly unfair that all children do not have the same opportunities to grow and learn, and it is even worse that these opportunities are often limited by the child's race.