This week we (the editorial team) have been working on the next issue of  Lifewide Magazine which is formed around the theme of personal and social technologies. We have been assembling and editing contributions for a few weeks but its now reached the interesting stage where we can begin to see how it all fits together. I call it the 80% stage where there is still a lot to do but for the first time we can see how our initial abstract vision is becoming a concrete reality.  Looking back I can now appreciate the process as an ecology driven by the shared goal of producing and distributing a collection of related articles that are more than the sum of the individual contributions because of the way they are organised, connected, illustrated and commentated.


In the jargon of wikimedia the process is akin to crowdsourcing 'the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community.....combin[ing] the efforts of numerous self-identified volunteers...., where each contributor of their own initiative adds a small portion to the greater result'. Our Magazine is dependent on this happening every three months!

The enterprise is one of co-creation and co-production and involves a lot of learning on the part of the production team. Firstly, the editorial team created a vision and identified possible content and these formation documents were deposited in google docs so that the four members of the team could access them and comment on them. Then the guest editors used their professional and social networks to engage possible contributors able to provide personal narratives and perspectives on their use of social technologies. For this issue most of the contributions were placed in drop box so that they could be viewed and edited. We also made good use of blog posts several articles were sourced in this way and social interactions with bloggers resulted in new collaborations. Our content also made use of content on YouTube and other social media sites.

We publish our Magazine under a Creative Commons license and once produced we post it on our Magazine website and distribute the link to our community via email and through mail lists, twitter, facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms and we hope that our readers will do the same. To make the most of the content we will use twitter to distribute selected articles and try to promote discussion about key ideas in some on-line forums. By tagging our own illustrations we know that in future people will be drawn to the Magazine and overtime thanks to the analytics embedded in our website we can see who is visiting and downloading our Magazine and where they are coming from.

In this way the life of an issue of Lifewide Magazine is greatly enriched and its value and reach extended by utilising the social media that is now part of the everyday world of community publishing. I find the process of co-creating and co-producing the Magazine a stimulating and rich learning process. 

The goal of producing the Magazine which is a thing of beauty is all I need to motivate myself and sustain my interest over many weeks. I put a lot of thought into the content and spend a lot of time searching for materials and adapting them if necessary. The editing process is one of trying to shape and add value to someone's contribution by helping them make a better fit with the whole. This process requires new relationships developed with people I have never encountered before (like Julian Stodd in this issue). It also involves conversations with Kiboko our community artist as ideas are considered, tried and sometimes rejected and eventually the best ideas (or the ones I think will fit best) are surfaced and developed. And sometimes it involves designing and participating in our own research studies. All these things require, time, energy and intellectual effort and all result in ownership and love for the relational product that is produced.  

The evolving ecology which produces the Magazine is an act of co-creation which can be visualised through Rogers (1961) contextualised concept of creativity ie the editors' self-determined and self-expressed process for achieving tangible goals, within which we create our novel relational products [our Magazine and our own learning and development] grown out of our individual uniqueness and the materials, events, people and circumstances of our lives.  There is something quite magical about starting with an idea and ending with a Magazine.

Sometimes the development of an idea falters because it is just too expensive to turn the idea into a practical reality. But good ideas are never lost they just get put on the back burner. About 18 months ago I started a business project called storyshare. The basic idea was to help people create stories that were personally meaningful and help them bring their story to life through illustration, sound and animation. I made a business plan and attempted to find some illustrators - one of these became our LWE community illustrator so this part of the process was a success. But at the time I failed to see how I could make it a commercial success as I could not animate the illustrations without a great deal of expense and I knew that the potential market would not buy the service at a price that would cover the costs and make a small profit. So the idea was put on hold - until this week when I discovered the explee animation tool. I can now see how it will be possible to animate the illustrations in an inexpensive way so the cost of the service would be limited to the illustrations themselves. I thought it was a great example of how advances in technology can suddenly liberate and idea.  I offer my story as an illustration of what explee can do.  The illustrator is Kiboko Hachiyon. Thanks again to Chrissi Nerantzi who drew my attention to explee.

If creativity is a novel relational 'product' growing out of the circumstances of our life (Carl Rogers 1960) then development - the ability to be able to do something new,  is an example of such a product.

Sunday was mostly a wet and windy day so I spent quite a bit of time on my computer. I began exchanging emails with Chrissi Nerantzi about the possibility of creating an on-line course and over the space of a few hours she sent me and my son, who is also working with us, a whole pile of links to various web tools and examples of what the tool was capable of doing.  Here's an example
From: Chrissi Nerantzi
Sent: 05 January 2014 22:23
Subject: You have received a YouTube video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dksXr4GQMfk&sns=em
Something like this might also work for the conference? 
Chrissi

My son followed 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 collaborated 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.

This morning I had a go at making my own animation through a process of trial and error. Over an hour I managed to create a 40 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 this software. 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 creative.

So my development and creativity emerged and merged from and through the circumstances of my life. Thanks to Chrissi who drew my attention to the tool and my son for showing me how easy it was to use, and having the time, interest and a potential use for the product - I engaged in and completed a piece of impromptu personal development and was able to be and feel creative in the process!

A contribution to the Creativity in Development Narrative Inquiry
http://www.creativityindevelopment.co.uk/

Over the last few weeks I have been working on my background paper for the SEDA conference in mid November. Last week I realised (insight) that I had enough material to move from a single paper to a mini-e-book of six or seven chapters. This would allow me to explore the idea of creativity in development so much more than I could through a single article. 

This week I reached 20 respondents to my email survey of creativity in educational development. This was the target I had originally set myself so I was of course delighted. The results will form one of the chapters in the e-book. I felt it was time to try to engage the wider community so with JW's help we put our creativity questionnaire on-line and invited SEDA members to participate in the survey. We needed an image for the survey so I adapted a picture by Julian Burton to suit the purpose (above). I also used this image to encourage Kiboko to develop his version of the narrative that is conveyed in this picture as its an important one.


REFLECTIONS ON MY ECOLOGY FOR CREATIVITY
One of my tactics to grow my own understanding of what creativity means to me is to create a narrative of what I have done to develop the knowledge for the talks I am giving in the next few weeks - what I now see as an ecological process for knowledge development and self-development. I can use this narrative to examine my own creativity. One of the ways I am doing this is to use a number of tools I have found to help me think and reflect on my own developmental narrative. In the next few weeks I will share my reflections through my blog.

In my internet wanderings I came across a blog by Darlene Chrissley on the theme of The Ecology of a Creative Life. In it she says,  'It has taken me fifty years to understand my own personal ecology; the conditions that best support me as a creative being. My ideal ecology balances four distinct quadrants: Introspection, Expedition, Integration and Exhibition. Over time I have adopted a set of creative practices that support me in each quadrant. When I make space for each one and move between them in an easy flow I am happy and productive and my work is original and meaningful.' Darlene Chrissley (2012).

I liked the implication in this ecological view of creativity that the four elements work together rather than sequentially as in so many other models of creative processes. .  I have mapped below her four quadrants and my reflections on my own process in respect of each of these four dimensions of her creative ecology.Broadly speaking the model seems to work for my creative ecology although I do not see exhibition as an entirely final stage process and my introspection is far more contextualised than hers.

I am continually thinking about my learning ecology these days. Earlier this week I made a breakthrough in understanding how I can use twitter to promote our work - basically you start following people, you notice what they are doing  and you tweet the people who have a lot of followers. If they like your tweet they re-tweet to their followers. It's taken me a while to work it out for myself but better late than never. But once I started to follow people twitter started putting in front of me the names of other people I might be interested in following. So I checked out a few of these and this morning I began following Alison Link. The first two tweets I clicked on turned out to be fabulous resources for Lifewide Ed - an organisation called Connected Learning which I will talk about in another blog, and a website True Stories of Openness http://stories.cogdogblog.com/ produced by Alan Levine. One of the stories by Shawn White was about  the serendipitous nature of Twitter describing his own story http://stories.cogdogblog.com/twitterdipity/ and coining the term twitterdipity. Well here I was experiencing the same phenomenon. 

I have just spent four days 'doing up' my flat in Plymouth. It hasn't been lived in for several months and was in quite a sorry state. But working on it with my son brought home once again how we need the right tools for the job. Whether its painting, filling in holes, laying floor tiles,  unblocking drains or clearing a path and patio of weeds its hard to complete the job without the right tools. The same is true when we try to think about and analyse our learning. We need the right tools to help us understand. The idea of learning ecologies is one example of a tool to aid thinking.  

I'm ashamed to say that I have never laid a tiled floor but when I saw the state of the linoleum floor in the kitchen I decided to have a go. After watching a 'how to do it' video on youtube and reading a Wickes leaflet I felt I had enough knowledge to try. I bought the tiles, adhesive, grout and spacers, and the tools for the job - tile cutter, trowel, pliers, level and sponge. Sadly, there were no instructions with the tile cutter and trial and error didn't work for me so I had to look up how to use a tile cutter on youtube.. armed with this knowledge I could begin... It was slow but I made good progress until I had to cut out an angle piece. My tile cutter didnt work and the hand saw I bought was too laborious. But then a kindly neighbour who had taken an interest in our renovation work popped in and said he would lend me his electric diamond tile cutter.. which he brought and showed me how to use.. Not only that he then proceeded to demonstrate his skill in laying tiles. A good lesson in the need to have the right tools for the job.. tools that were both general and specific ie that addressed a very specific need like cutting and angle or a curve. I also reflected on my learning ecology which included a context, the resources I needed, new knowledge which was gathered mainly through youtube and a kind neighbour. Sadly, I can no longer feign ignorance and incompetence and my wife has tasked me to tackle the bathroom floor next.

I was also pleased with the design of the Magazine cover which I had worked on with Kiboko... Although he had come up with the basic design I was able to influence the content which was formed around the idea of building knowledge to make a cake! 

But the most significant thing I did was begin building a new learning ecology to develop knowledge for  a talk I'm giving in November... Its still about 3 months off but I know how slow these processes can be. I want to find about the ways in which educational developers view their creativity in relation to their development work.  I decided to keep a record of my process to help me recognise and define my learning ecology. 

MY LOG
09/08
1    Wrote an abstract for the conference cannibalising an abstract I had         written but committing myself to a new theme that I new I had to  research
2  Already in email conversation with JC invited him to be my first subject
3  Created a rough plan for gaining knowledge and interacting with people




4   Spent some time searching using google scholar for obvious resources - eg 'relationship between creativity and development' 'creativity and educational development' - found nothing
5   Began compiling a list of educational developers I knew who I would  approach
6    Went on SEDA website and began searching through the journals for names of  educational developers who had written articles for Educational Developments.
7   Began thinking of social networks that I might engage and designed a simple  enquiry which I posted in two Linked-In networks.  'If, as Enrico Coen claims, 'creativity is a developmental process and development is a creative process,' then the two concepts are inextricably linked. What aspects of your development work cause you to use your creativity and how do you develop through this process? I  will happily produce a summary of any contributions.'
8   In email conversation with an e-portfolio developer KC invited her to contribute an interview. - she agreed

The actions with JC and KC showed that I was trying to engage people who I was already engaged with. The invitations I sent to talk to me about the role of their creativity in development caused me to think about the questions I would ask them. 

In my google search I discovered a review of Enrico Coen's which included an idea that was central to what I wanted to explore 'creativity is a developmental process and development is a creative process'. I formed my central research question around this.

In the context of your work as a developer in the field of education - What is the relationship between your creativity,  your development work and your own development?

15/08  
1) A chance email on the SEDA maillist mentioning an educational developer by name led to me contacting her by email to invite her to share her views. This required me to formulate an email enquiry.. Once this had been done I was more confident in contacting people.
2) I decided to cast my net more widely (internationally) and designed an email questionnaire. I googled educational developer blogs and found a number of contacts in the USA, Australia and Canada and contacted them speculatively..
3) Returning to Linked-in I spent several hours searching for 'educational developers'. I ended up with a list of twenty many of whom I knew and wrote a personalised email to each inviting them to share their perspectives through my simple questionnaire.

16/08 
This morning I had one reply to my enquiry with a set of responses and then another really interesting email from someone I had not seen for over 13 years indicating that they were very interested in a conversation. I replied at leangth.

TO BE CONTINUED

Reflections on my learning ecology:  With reference to my tool for visualising the components of a learning ecology. I had a context (a problem or challenge in my working life), I had the will and my decision to act was driven by a concern for the amount of time I had left to do the work. I used my imagination to create a rough plan of how I would proceed. I used my capability and knowledge of unstructured enquiry processes to make a start and trusted that what I sought would emerge. I made good use of google and Linked-in (especially) and used my existing knowledge resources derived from my work on creativity and how people bring about change in universities, I also used my knowledge of people I knew of who were involved in educational development. I used my existing relationships - making it a more personal and more natural engagement and more likely that the people I was interacting with would respond. I tried to personalise all my email communications. Results are limited so far but because I trust my process and believe that people will see the value and be interested in the outcomes - I believe that the information and insights I need will flow.

On Monday I contributed to another workshop on the ecological theme at Southampton Solent University. My co-presenters had the idea of using a shoebox containing various items that might be used to stimulate the imaginations of participants to think about their own ecological stories of learning. I decided to create my own shoebox of artefacts.. I knew I had a shoebox in the bottom of my wardrobe and as I retrieved it I thought about Jay Lemkes words about investing meaning in the artefacts in our lives. I thought that here I was in a space that I occupied most days (nights) of the year and it must contain objects that I have invested with special symbolic significance or I could create particular meanings because of the memories they evoked. It was an enjoyable and enlightening exercise.. My bedside table and drawers are quite messy so I found a number of objects that held particular meaning and most I could see were associated with considerable learning and complex relationships and events within my world of family, work and travel. I photographed the images in my shoebox and made a slide for my presentation ... I thought it a good exercise to bring home the ways in which the objects in our life hold significant symbolic, relational or experiential meaning. 

The shoebox ecology workshop ran by Christine Fountain and Susan Patrick worked from another direction. They filled two shoeboxes with objects and invited people to choose objects that they could associate with experiences and learning in their own lives.. two themes emerged ... gardening and occupying garden like spaces eg parks... and holidays..  and experiences people had had while travelling...or the effects of travel.... It was a wonderful example of the creative process of creating meaning from objects....

The sun is shining and spring is in the air and I just completed my bimonthly report in which I reflect on the progress we have made in the lifewide education enterprise. I circulated my report to the team to let them have my overview and invited them to add items that I don't know about. In this way we can all keep up to date. I also hope that the information will help convey a sense of achievement and pride. I suppose I am using it as both a tool for monitoring progress and a means of trying to keep people involved.  All in all I feel we have made good progress in most of the areas we identified in our 2013 work plan. 

I gave myself a break to wander around the garden looking for signs of spring which I captured in some lovely photos. I noiiced that the pathway I had made in September now looked as if it had always been a part of the woods which looked as if they were j

https://www.50things.org.uk/

I went for a walk with my daughter and grandson on Box Hill.. It was wet and very windy and quite bracing.. my grandson ran around quite wild as the wind took his breath away... Afterwards we went to the cafe for a hot drink and I picked up the National Trust leaflet called  '50 things to do before you are 11 & 3/4'. It's a brilliant approach to encouraging lifewide activity, through which children (and their parents) can learn and develop, and a  great way to encourage kids to explore the world and to talk about their adventures. Perhaps there is something in the approach that we could adapt for our lifewide development award. Could we perhaps use it as a design tool to encourage people to create a  list of 10 new things to do during 2013 as a personal goal?


Postscript: I signed up as a learner and periodically I receive email prompts with suggestions of things I might do reflecting the time of year we are in..