What many people mistakenly call “brainstorming” is in fact just “a bunch of people sitting around firing off and shooting down ideas.” Let’s call that “skeet-shooting.” And on that we can agree: working individually will work better than skeet-shooting in a group.
How interactivity will make your meetings and your ideas even better.
Synopsis
According to Dave Gray in his new book, Gamestorming, playing with office supplies is not a waste of time. Whipping out a stack of post-its in a meeting and jotting down notes or sketching ideas is actually helpful; otherwise all those ideas have to stay inside your head, getting lost and confused. Writing out ideas, moving them around like pieces in a game, and collaborating with others makes for faster meetings and more creativity. Every company needs those creative ideas to reach the top even just stay there.
The first few columns of this series on drawing that I’m initiating this week will offer a primer on the basic elements of line-making, perspective, structure and proportion, which I hope will begin to rekindle the love of drawing for those readers who left it behind in the 4th grade. Achieving some confidence in drawing objects will get you started in the pleasure of this activity, and give you the basis for moving on to drawing figures.
When you ignore some of the UI elements, the sometimes prolonged waiting time, and the occasional crashes, Bing Destination Maps [bing.com] seems quite interesting as a new way of rendering geographical maps in a more visually simplified, understandable and accessible way. In other words, imagine one can now create a sort of information-optimized summary maps, similar to those you would quickly draw yourself on the back of napkin.
8.26.10 / Like Haiku, Only Much Longer
420 Characters is a book of stories (limited to 420 characters each, including spaces and punctuation) by illustrator Lou Beach. “I started out filling in the ‘status update’ box on Facebook with short fiction musings rather than the usual b.s. last year,” Beach told me. “Turned out people liked them and I liked the challenge of creating a new story each day.”
Join Bank of America and Creative Tampa Bay as they host an afternoon with three International and National thought leaders in the area of technology, economics and community as they take the stage at Jaeb Theater to challenge us to rethink and plan for the future.
Book 2.0 is a new, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal which aims to publish articles and reviews on developments in book creation and design, (including the latest progressions in technology and software affecting illustration, design and book production). It will also explore innovations in distribution, marketing and sales, and book consumption, and in the research, analysis and conservation of book-related professional practices. Book 2.0 aims to provide a forum for promoting and sharing the most original and progressive practice in the teaching of writing, illustration, book design and production, and publishing across all educational sectors.
The idea that helpers and educators are facilitators of learning and change has been around at least since the 1960s. It was the work of Carl Rogers in the United States and Josephine Klein (1961) in Britain that brought the idea to the fore. However, the significance of facilitation and facilitators had already been recognized by some commentators on organizational life. Groups were becoming understood as the basic work unit of organizations – being used to plan and implement change, and to organize work. It followed that interventions facilitating effectiveness – and reducing conflict – were fundamental to the interests of organizations.
‘Facilitation’ and ‘facilitating’ gained ground in adult education, community education, youth work and informal education in part because educators and animateurs are ‘usually at pains to contrast the emotionally congenial aspect of their practice with what they regard as the rigid and conformist nature of schooling’ (Brookfield 1986: 123). However, with a greater emphasis on learning as against teaching within formal education, the use of the terms ‘facilitator’, ‘facilitating’ and ‘facilitation’ appears to have grown.
In this piece we will look at the nature of group facilitation, the values involved and the role of facilitators. We will also examine some of the practical tasks and experiences of facilitating group sessions. In particular we explore beginning a session; getting into the subject; responding to the moment; summing up and ending; and how facilitators deal with difficult behaviour.
