Las Enigmas: fish swimming together make a school

John Cage in "Some Rules for Students & Teachers" underlined the fundamental requirement to show up and keep showing up for learning to happen. Who shows up on a Friday afternoon puppet workshop at the Demonstration Gardens  determines what we make and how.



This fall we are exploring Pablo Neruda's "Las Enigmas / The Ocean Knows".

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his patas de oro?

I reply, the ocean knows this. You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in it's transparent bell?

What is it waiting for? I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.

We don't know what we think until we see what we do...

Environmental Literacy Bibliography

Environmental Literacy Bibliography Across the dimensions of sense of place, time, community and personal identity, culture and agriculture a way of reading the environment develops which influences the ways we think and respond and then write upon it or through it. What traces do we leave? What strategies for survival? What do we choose to survive and how as a community do we equably decide?

Working through adaptations of Service Architecture [Resmini&Rosati,2012] for Learning Experience Design [wikipedia] these milestones appear:

• validity of evaluation is relative to degree of its integration within the learning experience [what tools can we use for this?]
• constructive learning is promoted through learners' view of evaluation "where do I stand wrt my goals and the learning objectives of community, organization (as its defines discipline, skill set or knowledge base).
• a responsive or "smart" environment allows self-assessment, balances challenges to skill [ ] and affords customization of the "way in" [Gardner,2011] to a discipline, skill set or knowledge base.

Environmental learning through touchpoints & themes

Physical activity in the Demonstration Gardens supports language acquisition that situates Environmental Learning as a fundamental cognitive discipline. I see it at all ages and stages of life, among people who are neuro-typical or autistic and among those acquiring fluency in a second language. Similarly shadow puppets in representing interior realities gives a glimmer of where grammar, that is structure, comes from. I'd like to be able to demonstrate this. Its not enough to share what I see but must be connected with others' experiences as evidence. What frameworks can I use? Linguistics, environmental studies, neurology, architecture? My friend Carmela reminds me that people deserve concrete experience, require it for that Aha moment. Maybe this is more important than analysis. D'uh, certainly until its built, functional and can be tested and iterated. So for now I focus upon structuring and situating experience. Who are the learners, the facilitators, the community for the Demonstration Gardens? To integrate virtual experiences and physical channels there need to be 'touchpoints' that are structured and managed so information flows easily. Focus upon the interaction sequence of: - entranement - contribution - exchange governs how to organize touchpoints. Spreadsheet of Touchpoints: http://tinyurl.com/bptdxpf Themes are vehicles for ideas that can be threaded through the whole system so that participants can grok it from their own viewpoint. 2009-10 Meditteranean Biome 2010- 11 Permaculture 2011-12 Abundance

Shadow puppets help with second language acquisition

Language acquisition: intermediate Arabic students tell stories with shadow puppets. Steps 1: brainstorm characters and plots with available vocabulary 2: write individual treatments 3: meld into common story, refine expressions 4: construct specific puppets 5: run draft story, select music, sounds, settings 6: refine story, finalize & memorize script, choreograph puppet play 7: perform These steps were executed over 6 days of a workshop at San Francisco State University May 2012. Small group work helped to consolidate language learning around Thousand & One Nights text. Participants seemed delighted to construct their own meaning and see evidence of hard-won communication proficiency. Play was called "Booba Gets a Bride".

Learning at the vertices/around the edges

For the past month I've been struggling to pare down my instructional menu.
Its time to write my thesis and I shouldn't overcommit is the thinking.

What to leave out?
chorus - singing is elevating and brings joyful connectivity, provided practice is kept up
arabic - i've invested 3 years to learning it, its one of the main reasons I came back to school & have access to a superb teacher; once I leave school can I become fluent?
land use - this is a basic techniques course for community planning
work - well thats silly everyone has to work: ASC is shadowpuppets & autism @the Y
Demo Gardens - this is my lab project

As ever - it is the interconnections between disciplines that make learning meaningful.
So if everything that has come to my hand to do is essential how to get it all done?
Simplify and only the neccessary and right on time.

Thankful for ThunderPuppets

The troupe performed live yesterday and it was a victory.
The bookstore setting was warm and meaningful for all of us.

All:
Logistics - Diana (DiDi), Pecolia, Robert, Joseph
Fabrication - Maria, Tita, Niani, Stu, kasey
Animators - Tita, Niani, Diana, Stu, kasey
Engineering - kasey, Stu
Soundtrack - kasey
Video - Didi

Notes so far:
Maria - people need scripts & she volunteers Didi to do more since she has a degree in theatre.

kasey - soundtrack was largely non-functional, clipping, too short cables, hard to hear the poem, needed scripts, better movies, more preparation for animators, sandbags, 'holsters', bear hat.

Next steps
- calendar for the year w practices, rehearsals & gigs
- follow-up get together from 11/20/11 performance
- script preparation
- tree fabrication
- improve website, update
- cut video, share
- improve sound track delivery & components