Creative Transformation: Learning for the Conceptual Age

When Blind Faith Beats Logic

rking — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:07:06 -0800

Creativity is a very risky business. When you believe it essential to break boundaries and create something completely original or even just novel, there are always those who will fight change with traditional excuses and negativity. The enormous potential of holistic strategies is often lost on formal, organizations that can’t act on transformative thinking and the kind of open-minded risk and experimentation that is essential for 21st Century initiatives. It just can’t happen with yesterday’s thinking, yesterday’s attitudes and yesterday’s rules.

The Luxury of Reflection

rking — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:19:39 -0700

Five or six overlapping career paths and 49 years later, the reason I am so committed to new and non-traditional ways of learning is that, for the most part, it’s the path I chose and for me the rewards of alternate forms of broad and primarily informal learning have outweighed the benefits of formal education. I realize it’s not for everyone.

Practical Transformation

rking — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 07:32:36 -0700

We are in for a revolution and it can’t come too soon - otherwise the young will continue to be inadequately prepared for the rapid changes we are experiencing and which accelerate every year. Who can predict what the world will look like in five years, let alone through multiple career paths unknown territories?

Moving Towards Transformation

rking — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 17:21:31 -0700

If we are to build learning activities and skills that can sustain us (and our students) during coming decades, they must model professional practice as well sustain life long learning. They need to be creative, flexible and enduring. This post provides a preliminary list of transformational elements of authentic learning environments.

The Impending Death of Traditional Education

rking — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:27:32 -0800

Formal education is past it's "best before" date. It's time is over- it's an anachronism. So let's acknowledge the problems of past practice so that we can move forward and reinvent the learning process to reflect 21st Century realities.

Autodesk Instructional Standards

rking — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:41:11 -0800

This post describes and link to a new set of Autodesk’s Media and Entertainment Instructional Standards (MEIS) for three software products; Maya, 3dsMax and Softimage. These standards cover thirteen topic areas and toolsets and provide a ruich resource of theory, applications and exercises for teachers and trainers in animation and vfx.

Creating Better Animation Reference

rking — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:56:12 -0800

While there are some great sources for reference on the web, it’s seldom exactly what’s needed and often fails to correspond to the specific needs of a shot or sequence. It’s better to create one’s own reference if at all possible. We want to teach students to be keen observers, to see accurately and be able to analyze of weight, force, acceleration, etc.. In this post I demonstrate the use of low cost, high-speed video for creating better animation reference.

Creativity and the Mashup Culture

rking — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:14:53 -0800

This article argues that we need to seriously examine the relationship between genuine creative activity and the mashup culture. The pressure to produce competitive show reels and creative work can easily result in derivative results that try to short circuit the effort needed to master the core skills and personal style that distinguishes the best artistic work.

Creative Problem Solving Pt 1

rking — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:09:04 -0700

Creativity is at the core of our personal and collective evolution – whether as individuals or as teams and creative ability is well understood, can be clearly explained. Everyone is capable of creative effort given well-designed training, experiential exercises and reflective practice.

Four Keys to Creative Transformation

rking — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:16:47 -0700

Creative transformation means doing it differently! This post describes a two year experiment in designing and implementing a training school based on four key principles that enhance the learning process. Based on core competencies, it used a range of novel methods to motivate and develop professionally related skills in an accelerated system of feedback loops and rapid iteration.