iTunes U

Sorry if this generates even more information overload for planners, but I think it's worthwhile.

iTunes have just launched, iTunes U, 'the campus that never sleeps'. You may have noticed it on your iTunes interface already? It's basically 100s of free lectures from some top Universities in the US. I haven't had the chance to have a good rummage, but there are a couple in there I've spotted that look interesting. Particuarly lectures from MIT's comparative media studies course. Which features the fantastic Henry Jenkins.

You can read The Guardian's article here.

AAAA - The culture of creativity

This is one of the best vids I've seen for a long time. Sir Ken Robinson, at the AAAA Conference, gives one of the most entertaining and inspiring speeches on creativity I've ever heard. I can't claim to have found it, Mark posted it last month. I'm surprised I've only just come across it. It's so good I had to post it on here.

Not only is it good, it made me really think about my time at school and in particular one important moment. At the time it didn't seem like such a life changing decision but looking back now I reckon it's the reason why I now work on a PC rather than a Mac. When I took my options at high school I had to choose between Art or P.E. In fact there was a group of 'creative' or 'enjoyable' subjects that you were only allowed to pick one of. My school simply wouldn't allow you to do more than one. I've know idea if this is the norm? I loved both and I reckon I was pretty good at them as well but I decided to take P.E, mostly due to the influence of my careers advisor and my Dad.

I ended up taking English, Psychology and Sport Science at A-levels, before going on to do a Marketing communications degree at Uni. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sad about it, I'm more than happy doing what I do. It just proves a few of Sir Ken's points:

1 - Creativity should have the same status as literacy
2 - We shouldn't be so afraid of making mistakes. If we're not prepared to be wrong we won't come up with anything original
3 - People don't grow into creativity we grow out of it, or get educated out of it

Isle of Wight Festival - Let the children play

I haven't blogged for a few days as 1) I was at the Isle of Wight Festival and 2) I needed time to recover and catch up with work. I had an awesome time. Highlights for me were obviously the Stones, but Kasabian rocked. Snow Patrol, Keane, Groove Armada and The Thirst also put in great performances. The Isle of Wight Festival has such a different atmosphere to the likes of Reading and Glastonbury. It's definitely more family orientated and generally more laid back. However there were still plenty of people passed out around me through out the entire Stones set. You could smell weed pretty much everywhere you went and there is absolutely no chance of getting more than a couple of hours sleep and a clean toilet, so it certainly isn't a picnic in the park.

On top of being jealous of the children who probably don't realise how lucky they are yet, after all these are about as far as I got for a weekend during term time. It was great to see families doing something different together. Something that many parents probably consider to be unsafe or unacceptable to take young children to.

In The Telegraph last week, David Willetts the Conservative Shadow Education Secretary suggested that the reason Children in the UK have such poor basic skills in Mathematics and English isn't necessarily due to an inadequate education system, but because our culture is too protective of our children. Willets stated that: "Children are so cocooned by their parents that they rarely venture far from home and have little concept of space, volume and how the world actually works". Coining the term 'nature deficit disorder' the article cites research that alarmingly says the area in which children are allowed to play in by their parents is a ninth of what it was a generation ago.

Willets continued: "It is very hard to make sense of geometry if you haven't thrown a ball around or make sense of volume if you haven't messed about with water and sand or do arithmetic if you haven't collected things and arranged them." I don't often agree with much of what the Conservatives have to say, but on this I do. You can read the full article here.

Ethnography

I’ve probably just made another educational mistake. After all my marketing communications degree from Bournemouth University obviously wasn’t that appealing when I was looking for my first job in planning. Marketing communications is so cliché apparently. Perhaps Universities should start adding ‘interesting’ units to their courses with the aim of proving how interesting a student is. Things like Zoology, French History and Biochemistry being my favourites.

Anywhooo. The controversial words are; Open University and Ethnography. I start my course next month and I’ve been racking my brains trying to come up with an idea for my practical work. So far I have only come up with a couple of ideas.

The creative development process. I’m interested in how the dynamics of groups solve problems.

Something on fandom. My work is full of Southampton fans and they must be the most pessimistic bunch in the world. I’d like to know why.

Over at the Plannersphere I’ve also been given a couple more ideas. One from John Grant relating to how the planning community manage social and professional identities and another from Michael Johnston on moving research in web 2.0.