The final day is devoted to creating which I take to mean bringing something that is new to me into existence ie this blog and all the 'ing's' that make up the BOYD4L are potentially aspects of creativity and creating. I'm currently interested in the idea of creativity in development and with Chrissi have designed a process to enable people to share their perspectives on how it emerges from development. The narrative illustrates the process of having a novel idea, developing the idea and then making it a reality. It connects and integrates the ideas of creativity in imagining, developing, making, inventing, adapting and innovating. 

The focus for BYOD4L is on the way in which devices and tools enable the creative process. As far as my own experience and practice  Web 2.0 tools have profoundly affected my ability to be creative/ inventive in my work in education and I'm grateful to all the people who have introduced tools and helped me use them over the years. Simply being able to create websites through drag and drop technology has enabled me to disseminate my ideas and create the infrastructure to support LWE.

Sue's collection of tools is really useful and there are many with which I'm not familiar. I will over the next few weeks try to work through them to discover which ones I can use.  I spend a lot of time creating visual aids like the narrative above to explain ideas and I'm conscious of mixing
conventional tools like powerpoint, paint, photoshop, drawing on collections of images and working with illustrators as well as harnessing some of the tools below.

A good example of this is my use of the explee animation tool described in my blog of 27/01.. to produce these animations I worked with two different illustrators some time ago - at that time I helped them shape their illustrations. These were then filed ready for retrieving at some point in the future.  That moment came when I discovered explee (thanks to Chrissi). I retrieved the drawings and did some editing using paint, photoshop and powerpoint before uploading to explee and then embedding the result in this website. They were entirely new representations that have meaning and value to me. Creativity in the digital world is often a combination of many things but it emerges through the purposes and circumstances of our life.

Over the next few weeks I intend to try out some of these tools.

I spent a couple of hours this morning exploring some of the tools under the 'creativity' theme. It felt very uncreative as I fumbled around without seeming to make much progress. Still I found I could embed the neat AnswerGarden tool in my blog. I tag my blogs but I can't turn these into word pictures so I think this will be useful. Also I am now aware of some tools I didn't know before and I can now hold a conversation with my kids about instagram.

In this blog I want to share a recent experience I had using explee.

On a wet Sunday two weeks ago I was sent a link by Chrissi Nerantzi to the explee animation tool and my son took the trouble to follow the link and gave me a glimpse of what it could do. It's a powerful, intuitive drag and drop tool for creating short animations which can be uploaded to youtube. I love animations and over the years I had financed and participated in a number of animation projects and I know how expensive and time consuming they are to produce so I was really excited about the possibility of being able to produce one for myself.

The next day I had a go at making my own animation through a process of trial and error. Over an hour I managed to create a 30 sec clip introducing our conference which I embedded in the conference website. In doing it I knew I was trying to achieve something specific. Looking back I can see that I had engaged in a piece of personal development through which I learnt how to make an animation using the tool.  It was very satisfying to make something so quickly and so easily. I also felt that I was being creative and the clip I produced, being entirely new to the world - was I guess a product of my creativity. More importantly it did a nice job of bringing our static web page to life.

I am in a band and we are going to do a charity gig to raise money for a little boy called Ollie who has a medical condition that needs treating in America. We were just about to promote the gig when I discovered explee so I did a short promotional animation for our website.

I wanted to get better at using the tool so  a few days later I tried it on a story I had created for my grandson. It's the story of how I came to call my company Chalk Mountain and I had commissioned an illustrator to some drawings for me to bring the story alive. I'd had the idea that I could create a business out of this but at the time I couldn't see how I would animate the stories without a great deal of expense.  My six year old grandson happened to be around yesterday and he watched it four times and loved it. The insight I gained from this use of explee was about how new technological tools can help bring an idea that had been dormant into practical existence. Also when personalised in the way it had helped me communicate the meaning of something that was important to me in my life to my grandson in an entertaining and very special way. 

It also illustrates that a creative product can be brought together through activities at different times with different people. The story was written and recorded and the illustrations done over a year ago but they were only connected through the animation a few days ago.

Two days ago I had an email from a talented illustrator I had worked with in the past. It was a speculative email enquiring about possible work opportunities. I emailed back to open up conversation about a possible role as an artist in residence - over 3 or 4 emails I tried to draw him in and he eventually agreed. I was delighted and immediately created a new web page to host information about our two artists. I then spent the best part of two hours creating a new explee animation to show off his work and posted the video clip on the web page and emailed the illustrator to let him know. He loved it and I felt I had in a small way added value to  the work he had originally created by giving it a whole new context and meaning and turning it from the static image into a lively animation.

Staff at Explee are noticing what people are doing and they picked up my work and invited feedback. So I am now entering a conversation about how I found it to use and commenting on my experiences and what else I would like ffrrom the tool. It's a great example of an organisation gaining feedback from its users to enable them to understand how to make their tool more useful.

I found explee easy to use, the process of using it was enjoyable in spite of the mishaps that inevitably happen when you try something new. My use of it was not planned it was all in response to situations that emerged through the circumstances of my life and there was no way that I could have anticipated these activities in advance of them happening. There were just needs, interests and opportunities for products that the tool could help with. The tool and me were in the right place at the right time.

Reflecting on the topics underlying BYOD4L... the explee tool enabled me to 'connect' - existing resources developed for other purposes, 'communicate' in a range of contexts with a  range of audiences in interesting and memorable ways. It enabled me to honour previous  collaborations' and nurture new collaborations by giving the products of those collaborations a new lease of life. It enabled me to  'create' - bring entirely new things into existence from the circumstances of my life perhaps this is another form of connectivity within an individual's ecology for learning.


Guilia Forsythe Wisdom is an outcome of learning

Its early Sunday morning the day before BYOD4L starts and I thought I'd better make a start and find out what the course was all about. I visited the website and read through the first few pages. I tried to get my head around it, it felt a lot but I could see that the central message was just get involved and trust that you will learn something useful. It looked to me as if the design was all about fostering emergence.

I saw that I was expected to set up a blog to share thoughts and reflections so being a task oriented sort of person this is what I'm doing. Then I had to decide what to put in it so here are my initial thoughts.

I forced myself to ask the question why was I doing it? As always I can come up with  a multitude of reasons which is good because that means its worth doing.

First and foremost I can see it is an opportunity to be exposed to stuff that I didn't know about and to learn with people who are more knowledgeable than me or who are like me interested to find out more. In the world of technology I love discovering new tools that enable me to do things that I couldn't do before and this website is testament to the liberating power of web 2.0 tools.

I had a good example of this two weeks ago when I was introduced to explee by Chrissi and it has made a big difference to the way I present things. It fulfils a need that I have had for a long time and opens up new possibilities.  So I am hoping that this will happen again during the BOYD process. Just once is enough.

I also want to see how this type of on-line community-based learning is facilitated as this is something I might try doing in future..

There is also an element of duty, of wanting to support Chrissi who has given me so much help and support in the things I am doing. More than that it's hard not to become infected with her enthusiasm and ideas.

What comes out of this may also be connected to another open learning project - creativity in development - I'm involved in..

And finally my son is also planning to get involved in the BOYD project so we can add a family dimension to our experience. I guess these are the reasons why I want to do it.

Goals? I want to discover some new tools and develop a sense of how they might be used so that I can use to better support the work of lifewide education and to have some enjoyment in the process. Beyond that I wait with anticipation to see what emerges along the way. Emergent stuff is usually far better than what is planned.

Anxieties? The message I picked up was that it's a process that can be adapted to any life so the challenge is to do this around other obligations. I am seeing it as a way of developing my own learning ecology. I suppose my main concerns are what people will think of me if I come across a bit naive and feeling overwhelmed by the volume and speed of stuff that emerges through the process.


Decisions?  I guess I will just pick a topic and see what happens.