February 2015 - Page 3 of 6

Purposeful Napping – How Sleep Can Make You More Creative

Tom28 Days of Writing, CreativityFebruary 18, 2015September 12, 20201 Comment

Zzzz Zzzz Zzzz … Zzzz Zzzz … Zzzz … mmm wah, mmm – aha! {Scribble}

When do you generate some of your most interesting ideas? Sometimes our ideas occur during the night and then we wake up to discover the thought had slipped away. The role of sleep in the creative process has been something I have always been fascinated about.

Thomas Edison Loved To Nap

It was the story of Thomas Edison that first piqued my interest in the role of napping and the effect on creativity. Even though he did once say that sleep was a “heritage from our caveman days” apparently he could sleep anywhere and was once discovered taking a nap inside a cupboard.

This great series of posts about Thomas Edison outlined how he was not just sleeping to catch up on rest, but as part of his creative process, purposefully napping as he cogitated a thorny challenge:

During his day, Edison would take time out by himself and relax in a chair or on a sofa. Invariably he would be working on a new invention and seeking creative solutions to the problem he was dealing with. He knew that if her could get into that “twilight state” between being awake and being asleep, he could access the pure creative genius of his subconscious mind.

To prevent himself from crossing all the way over the “genius gap” into deep sleep, he would nap with his hand propped up on his elbow while he clutched a handful of ball-bearings. Then he would just drift off to sleep, knowing that his subconscious mind would take up the challenge of his problem and provide a solution. As soon as he went into too deep a sleep, his hand would drop and the ball-bearings would spill noisily on the floor, waking him up again. He’d then write down whatever was in his mind.

What was Edison looking for and why was he putting his brain into that state?

As I have outlined previously creative learning is a relational process, creativity is no different as Bruce Nussbaum states:

Creativity is relational. Its practice is mostly about casting widely and connecting disparate dots of existing knowledge in new, meaningful ways. To be creative, you’ve got to mine your knowledge. You have to know your dots. – Bruce Nussbaum

When we sleep and nap our dream state consumes us with a strange amalgam of what we have been processing or thinking about.

Yet these bizarre monologues do highlight an interesting aspect of the dream world: the creation of connections between things that didn’t seem connected before. When you think about it, this isn’t too unlike a description of what creative people do in their work – connecting ideas and concepts that nobody thought to connect before in a way that appears to make sense.

This last paragraph is taken from this article from BBC Future. It refers to that moment when we have just woken up as sleep inertia or a hypnopompic state. (Brilliant. I just love learning new words – I think hypnopompic has become an immediate favourite.) It is this state that Edison was deliberately putting himself into and the BBC article outlines that according to some research it helps with inferential thinking and our ability for remote associations.

Making the links between pieces of information that our daytime rational minds see as separate seems to be easiest when we’re offline, drifting through the dreamworld.

So when you are next facing a tricky problem at school or a big challenge that just seems too much, or even hitting a blank for your next blog post, trust in the power of your subconscious brain to figure it out. Remember to keep something nearby, as Edison did, to jot down your ideas, but perhaps find somewhere better than a cupboard for your kip!

#purposefulnapping

Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels

Replying to Comments for Day 17

Tom28 Days of Writing, BloggingFebruary 17, 2015Leave a Comment

The more I think about what is next for #28daysofwriting the more I think it will be about commenting on blogs. Tonight I enjoyed the rare pleasure of replying to some on my own blog post from yesterday, “Micro Engagement is Killing our Edublogging Community“. Here are the few I managed in my 28 minutes tonight, take a look at the comment thread on the post for the full discussion:

In reply to johnjohnston

I would take 20 comments instead of 100 RTs anyday. I know which one I gain most value from in terms of adding to the conversation and building on ideas.

I do hope we see the return of the long form – we need to invest in it and tend to it, we need this part of our edu culture to grow back. Whether commenting will do the same, who knows. The more I think about it the more I want to run a 28 days of writing alongside one supporting commenting. I want to see people doing that old thing of “I just commented on…” type social share.

John you pinged me on Twitter with that tool – Known http://known.johnj.info/2015/t…

Looks really interesting and I hope I can discover better ways to draw the conversations together from across the web. Any other ideas would be welcomed.

In reply to Phillip Cowell

I have similar posts @disqus_2IzmJDVjOB around this blog over the years. The content is just consumed. I suppose for me I am not surprised when it is posts that are not needing discussion – when you genuinely invite ideas and see nothing you realise it is fading from our digital space.

In reply to Stephanie

I hope we can do that Stephanie, I think it would be a good follow up too – commenting for a month. Whilst a new bunch go through the writing month too – what do you think of that? So you have a crew doing the March writing days and a crew signed up to a month of commenting everyday.

In reply to Monika

Thanks Monika I think a focus on discussion and commenting is a good next step – in many ways it is much harder than just writing your own content. Engaging in meaningful ways though comments takes a different skill, we have to assimilate the original content and share our challenges and questions.

In reply to Christine McIntosh

I think there is lots of room for better commenting tools to be developed. Just had a search through some blog plugins for WordPress and there is not that much. Disqus is in fact a pretty solid tool compared to what else is there. Sorry you lost a comment, always painful, I have made it a habit now whenever I am commenting to copy anything I have written before hitting submit. Saved me many times.

In reply to Andrew Giddings

Thanks Andrew – yeah that thing about RSS readers has been something I have long been dissatisfied about. The experience of reading is nice, say in Feedly, but having to move out of that to comment always feels clunky. I would love to see that solved in some way.

I appreciate that conversations about the things we publish may occur elsewhere, but unless that dialogue or the ideas developed is fed back to the blog author in some way it goes unnoticed. For example if a long discussion occurs on Twitter or in a Fb group without the author they cannot learn as well. Always good to loop people back into discussion so that they can continue to learn too.

(Thanks to Dave for commenting just as I was posting – I will get to your comment too!)

Micro Engagement is Killing Our Edublogging Community

Tom28 Days of Writing, Blogging, DiscussionFebruary 16, 201548 Comments

One of the elements I have noticed that has changed in out edublogging community is the number of comments that are added to blog posts. The lack of discussion and further conversation is something I have missed from the blogging experience. Writing and reflecting upon my own practice is great in itself, but the ensuing discussions that occurred as a result of sharing often helped deepen my understanding or challenge how I was thinking. This depth of engagement seems to be a fading part of our writing community.

Since starting #28daysofwriting I have been able to re-ignite my reading and consumption of other people’s thinking through the blog posts that have been shared. I have been grateful for the few comments that have been added to my own blog posts so far this month, but am relatively surprised by the lack commenting and engagement I see around the education blogging community.

As my colleague and friend Ewan puts it in his latest post:

given the number of comments left on the first 14 days of this 2015 writing adventure compared to the flowing discussions one might have seen 10 years ago, I’m not sure anyone cares about many blog posts any more.

The engagement from over 110 educational bloggers for #28daysofwriting would suggest that it is still a viable format for reflection. But whether we care enough about other blogs is another thing.

Perhaps this is to do with the growing number of blogs that are active and the quality and breadth of blogging tools we have at our disposal. It would stand that an increase in the amount of posts that are shared and the number of educational blogs, would challenge the number of discussions that can be started. Maybe it is not that people do not care about blog posts but they are much more likely to be using that energy on their own blog.

I made the following diagram to help me think this through.

There is nothing wrong with the amber lit retweeting and sharing, but for many people we are sharing in an attempt to have the most impact on others. The micro engagement that occurs as people share without reading and, reposting content without engaging any further, is much more prevalent than the more in depth discussions of 10 years ago.

Aaron mentioned in a comment on a post the other day that the rise of the mobile browsing experience is also another reason why people do not comment as much anymore.

At the macro level, the full realisation of a blog post’s impact, teachers think differently after reading something and act differently as a result (with their colleagues or with their class). I have been fortunate enough to be able to share ideas that have had such an impact. The usual way I have learned about such an effect is by reading other blog posts, as teachers reflect on their version of things and how they have adapted my original idea.

Of course we need content to inspire and challenge us, so we need educators writing about their experiences in the classroom. I want more and more people using blogging as a reflective tool and practice. Perhaps what we need is a focus on discussion, on building on each other’s ideas and then reflecting ourselves. And maybe it is this closing of the loop that is the most powerful.

What do you think? Is this micro engagement something that is eroding the discussions present in the community or are they simply happening elsewhere? What’s your take on it?

On a post lamenting the lack of commenting it is of course now mandatory to leave a comment 😉

The Redundancy of a Knowledge Deficit Model

Tom28 Days of Writing, LearningFebruary 15, 20153 Comments

I have been thinking about the presence of a knowledge deficit disposition or approach to learning for many years now. I often talk about the experience I had on a project a few years back supporting some heritage sites in their design of learning. During some immersion into the experience of learning we stepped into a guided tour around the castle we were in. The painful experience I had was more to do with the learning process than any ancient torture device or prison chamber.

There had a been a specific blindness to any knowledge that was present within the group to begin with. There was an assumption that we had none and that we were there to laud over the expertise shared by our guide. So transfixed by the woven tales of scripted knowledge we would drift along enlightened by every stopping point. Hopefully our brains would not spill this knowledge into the moat as we crossed the drawbridge on the way home. To ensure this expert knowledge was secured for the younglings there might be some paper rubbings with some crayons or charcoal.

We got a puppy before Christmas and have just started to go to some dog training classes. The instructor soon lapsed into the same type of disposition, assuming we knew nothing. Sure we have less experience, but knowledge is freely accessible nowadays and the time of the expert is shrinking. Endless research and reading has put us in a stronger position as we have knowledge, well at least access to it. In fact when it comes to looking after a dog there is all sorts of conflicting knowledge. Being able to use that knowledge expertly is a different matter.

Deeply understanding how the knowledge set is connected requires something very different, a level of expertise in the knowledge that doesn’t work to a script or to a guided tour.

Back at the castle. If students, visitors, families and the general public coming to experience those ancient stones were seen as bringing different ideas and relevant knowledge it becomes a completely different starting point. A start that might lead in lots of learning directions.

Thinking about writing about Thinking

Tom28 Days of Writing, Blogging, ThinkingFebruary 14, 2015February 14, 20152 Comments

As we hit the midway point of this journey of a full month of blogging everyday, (#28daysofwriting) I am just looking back on where I started and some of the challenges that I faced establishing a steady habit and what I have learned.

So the 28 minute time constraint seems to have been pretty handy in setting a limit that still allows ideas to flow and some time to think whilst writing. I have had a few days in the last 2 weeks when I have wanted a little longer, but I am happy with how I have been able to carve out the half an hour or so everyday to sit and write. So I have learned I can find the time when I need to – even just half an hour. Time was cited as the biggest challenge by those involved. I am hopeful that for everyone taking part they will form a better understanding of how we create and protect this precious time – or simply why it is still such a challenge.

The image above is a word cloud of the biggest challenges to getting into a regular blogging habit shared by the 100+ people who are involved this month.

I have learned that writing in the evening has been my go-to time for the activity. I might switch over and do some morning writing and see how that goes for me during the remainder of the month. Learning when we write best or when we have a preference to do so is hopefully a better understanding those involved in #28daysofwriting will have.

One of the most important positive outcomes for me was a shift in the way I have been reflecting and thinking during the day. I actually felt this very early on and it has been something that has continued. I am thinking about my writing more and identifying aspects of my work, or concepts I want to explore in more detail. Previously this was something I felt only when I was sat staring at the blinking cursor, ready to go. I have learned that thinking about writing more regularly throughout the day has helped clarify my thinking. I have opened up the positive aspects of the thinking process that goes on with writing to be woven into the fabric of my day.

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Month: February 2015