“It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night”  – David Ogilvy I’ve been thinking a lot about learning lately, and how best to make what we choose to teach in schools poignant: meaningful, relevant, and memorable. Reflecting on the quote above, I think educators can learn a lot from the marketing sector. from Disney’s 1959 “Sleeping Beauty” – the e

Just a quick post to prep for my new March Women’s History Month project. I’ve done a few in the past, including Greek black figure-style portraits of famous women (this is a selection but I did about 100…just haven’t organized them) and of course curating my Historyteachers relevant videos…. This year (March 2018) I’ve decided to practice my special hand-crafted font I call “1962”, which I create on my iPhone 6 with my finger in Paper by 53. I love 50’s-60-s girl groups – th

from my #digitalDADA #mushroommomments collection For a while now I’ve been at extreme unease regarding the possibility of nuclear conflict with North Korea. I live in Hawaii, and grew up in San Diego – both extremely attractive targets due to their military bases, and in the case of the 50th state, its vulnerability. My mom used to recount tales of duck and cover drills during the Cold War, and she said she always asked her teachers and parents if San Diego (due to the Navy)

Forgive me, but I was a bit tricksy in the title of this post. I’ve been thinking about this for years, probably, but as I see society seemingly crumbling before us in recent months it’s become more of a nagging preoccupation. I’m a big fan of simplification…abstraction…distillation – of getting to the “ness” of something. What if our curriculum  – any curriculum in any school – was based on just two domains…lenses through which one can peer and prod at everything? PHILOSOPHY

This morning I woke to a post on my Twitter feed sharing an article from Prospect Magazine – “How the Human Got His Paintbrush”. It’s basically a well composed critique by Philip Ball of scientist E.O. Wilson’s new book, The Origins of Creativity. The topic is something I’m obviously quite interested in, and I’m a sucker for genetics (I blame the mesmerizing Mendel’s Peas film we watched in 8th grade Biology). I encourage everyone to at least skim this review, for it brings u

One of my favourite workshops I’ve developed is “Image is Everything”. It’s a visual thinking experience that can be anywhere from 1-6 hours (or all day, or over a two day conference). The point is NOT to “learn to sketchnote” as so many related workshops are. In fact, although I do drawings to represent my or others’ thinking, I would not identify as a “sketchnoter”. A lot of my friends are, and they are fab, but I need to distill…I need to simplify into one icon only…that’s

my minimalist self portrait It’s my ten year anniversary of being diagnosed (ironically in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month), with a Stage 3 breast cancer. Since then I’ve had more than 20 related surgeries and have lost my mom to a double whammy of colon and breast cancer. I don’t have many photos of myself from that time period, though there’s a scarf-clad me popping up in a slide during my TEDx talk, in which I discuss the healing effect of collaborative creativity.

What seemed like ages ago I did my first TEDx talk – TEDxHonolulu 2011 – with my creative partner from “History for Music Lovers”, Herb Mahelona. It was really tricksy because we didn’t live on the same island and therefore couldn’t practice together until the day before the event, each having memorized our respective parts of the script and practicing with voice recordings of the other punctuated by pauses. To be honest I thought I’d never do another one until several months

‘It’s not Dada that is nonsense–but the essence of our age that is nonsense.’ One of my favourite creative movements (really more anti-art so I’m hesitant to call it ‘art”) is that of the Dadaists. You’ve heard of them – Duchamp, Man Ray, Tzara… Here’s a list of the major players (taken at the fab Dada exhibit at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art this past summer) As a girl who loves her remix, I’ve always adored the Dada approach. I’m even contemplating starting a workshop or onlin

image taken from a vintage book on my shelf The other day I came across this shocking (or sadly, perhaps not so shocking, but rather, appalling) photograph on Pinterest: Let it sink in for a moment. To be frank, it brought back all sorts of horrible memories of my years as a student. I have always tottered on the brink of wanting to please others and do well and at the same time pay heed to my innate “rebel” qualities, nurtured by an artistic, devil-may-care mother and an ext

Just a quick tip with an appsmash (credit that word to @gregkulowiec). I recently chanced upon a series of Christmas / Winter / Holiday -inspired sketches I did in 2015 for a series I called #novembrrrr. In fact, I even spliced them together at the end and made a quick film: I ended up losing several when my phone crashed but managed to salvage the bulk of them via my Instagram Lately I’ve been tinkering with a few apps, mixing them together to create new media. My favourite

Prince died today. He was one of the people from my heyday, though I was more in the Cyndi Lauper camp at the time (note that he did write her When You Were Mine). As I grew older I could appreciate how clearly talented and innovative he was – a true Renaissance Man in purple brocade. In the rainbow of posts documenting his career, I chanced upon this video of Dick Clark interviewing a very self-assured yet casual-cool 19 year old Prince. In this screen shot he’s explaining t

Last week I really enjoyed a little collaborative creativity exercise proposed by Nick Sousanis, author of Unflattening, and taken up by the #ds106 crowd as a Daily Create. I talked a bit about it in my previous post, where I admit to my difficulty in confining myself to grids. Here are all my doodles for the #gridsgestures project, and what I really liked was the fact that I didn’t have to explain them. Some people did…either in words affixed to their image or in the corresp

Today I had the pleasure of watching (and reading) Howard Rheingold’s interview with Unflattening author Nick Sousanis. Like Howard, I am a big fan of Nick’s work- not only for the content (which is phenomenal), but for the essence of it- the “ness” I mentioned in an earlier post. I love the way Nick maintained a process journal of sorts on his “Spin Weave Cut” site and always points people there to be a part of his “living” work. That is what the #showyourwork movement (via

my version: bull with wifi A few weeks ago I was in one of my favourite Twitter chats – #EDENchat – with Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) as host. The topic was “Which Personal Technologies?” (check out the Storify), and overall was lively, helpful, and civil.  But something about the conversation struck me about halfway through – it occurred to be suddenly that a preoccupation with devices, hardware, and software persists. Don’t get me wrong – I think most people have moved int

This weekend I had the supreme privilege of doing a #53takeover of the Instagram account of my favourite app – Paper, by Fifty-Three (@fiftythree). The folks at Fifty-Three have been nothing but lovely in all respects and the app has veritably changed my life and how I work – both professionally and creatively – so needless to say I was tickled. I approached the takeover from a teaching perspective – to me it wasn’t about showcasing my art but rather a few thematic “lessons”,

Today is Vincent Van Gogh‘s birthday…and there are so many thoughts going through my head. Perhaps the most spot on thing I’ve ever learned from him is the concept of “active melancholy” – yes, that is what he called it and it’s just perfect to describe the sort of creative frenzy one can go into while one is in a very dark place. My most creative moments have been in these times and I’m sure I’ll have many more. It’s a mixed blessing, of course. Given that Vincent wrote so m

In honor of the day Warhol passed away, I created this little film. It’s an extension of my #getsmART: Lessons from the Artists keynote I presented at Alan November’s Building Learning Communities. I’ve added more images and points, and this of course is only about Warhol. I’ll be doing more, but if you haven’t seen the Pablo Picasso one, please check it out. (I really need a better mic) #art #creativity #teaching #lessons #life #andywarhol #getsmart #pedagogy #picasso #amybu

typographic art by Sean Ziebarth (@MrZiebarth) I few blog posts back I took inventory of my various “series” on the Web – and even challenged others to think in “series” when they create. It’s been a few months and it seems I have thought of a few more, so here is the full annotated list. Most of the titles are hyperlinked to the Pinterest board where I’ve tried to organize and collect, but I have undoubtedly missed a few. You can also search my Instagram  (all are posted the

This week I discovered the new Motion Portrait app. Basically, it takes a 2D image (ideally a face) and renders it so it looks 3D and the eyes blink and mouth moves slightly. There have been some amazing posts by some of my favourite Instagram artists like @blairz and @unskilledworker. I still don’t think I have it down perfectly but wanted to take it to another level and make a mini music video with the clips. I tried out two – the first was using my minimalist sketch of Nic