Raw Thoughts Blog | amyburvall.com

Jun 27, 2019
4 min

#rawthought: What’s the Big Idea? A Thematic, Inter-disciplinary Approach

“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

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Crushing It With Creativity: The Virtual Summit Keynote

Amy Burvall

Nov 18, 2018
2 min

Crushing It With Creativity: The Virtual Summit Keynote

This past Friday I stayed up till midnight as I had the privilege to offer the opening keynote for EdTechTeam’s “The Virtual Summit”, EU edition. EdTechTeam Press published my book with Dan Ryder, Intention: Critical Creativity in the Classroom, and this event seemed perfect since its theme was “Creativity”. A few days prior, Ed Tech Team published a blog post I wrote describing some of the things I planned to share. I decided to pen some verse for this: Being creative can me

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Amy Burvall

Dec 12, 2017
11 min

Amy Burvall: Keynotes and Workshops

I’ve decided to update my list of talks and workshops and compile all into a pdf menu. I’m able to customize most of them to fit certain time frames or address specific needs. I really love the “deep dives” or 3-4 hour workshops with groups of 20-50. The variety of offerings related to my book with Dan Ryder, Intention: Critical Creativity in the Classroom can also be given with Dan if he is available. I’ve done two TEDx talks (TEDxHonolulu 2011 and TEDxWestVancouverED 2017),

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#rawthought: The Only Two Things We Should Teach

Amy Burvall

Nov 15, 2017
5 min

#rawthought: The Only Two Things We Should Teach

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

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Amy Burvall

Oct 6, 2017
3 min

That Time I Dreamt About Lesson Plans

In my presentations on creativity, I always suggest to folks to have a dream diary…some sort of notebook by the bed to record thoughts upon waking or archive actual dreams, if vivid enough. The artist Salvador Dali notoriously fancied pinning down the meanderings of his subconscious, even devising methods to force himself awake in the midst of a dream. The most well-known anecdote involves him falling asleep holding a spoon over a tin plate, and when it would invariably drop

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Critical Creativity for Grownups: Teachers Try INTENTIONtheBook

Amy Burvall

Oct 3, 2017
3 min

Critical Creativity for Grownups: Teachers Try INTENTIONtheBook

When Dan Ryder and I wrote Intention: Critical Creativity in the Classroom we knew in the back of our minds that the first three “framing” chapters of the book – about creativity and how it works – are really for everyone. You don’t have to work in the education sphere to get some takeaways or (hopefully) be inspired. We also knew that the activities we describe in the catalogue could indeed, as we claim be relevant in any curriculum with any age group. As we assert Creativi

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Thinking Like an Artist: Be Porous, Push Past, and Play

Amy Burvall

Sep 29, 2017
4 min

Thinking Like an Artist: Be Porous, Push Past, and Play

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

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#rawthought: On Ditching the (Dangerous) Dichotomy Between Content Knowledge and Creativity

Amy Burvall

Aug 6, 2017
6 min

#rawthought: On Ditching the (Dangerous) Dichotomy Between Content Knowledge and Creativity

“Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life…” – Pablo Picasso I’ve taken this completely out of context (Picasso was alluding to work/life balance and loving your day job), but I think it’s applicable nonetheless. I love playing with dichotomy as a concept – particularly a visual one…in fact I’ve got a few exercises such as going on a metaphor hunt and photographing juxtapositions like “old and new”. I snapped this in Oxford, England…old Tudor building and a guy on a smartpho

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#rawthought: In Defense of Black Stars and Blue Hearts

Amy Burvall

Apr 7, 2017
5 min

#rawthought: In Defense of Black Stars and Blue Hearts

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

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Amy Burvall

Feb 23, 2017
4 min

5 Ws: Trajectory of EdTech Love

Lately I’ve been chatting about edtech with a friend and in discussing how to get teachers (or anyone in any organization for that matter) not only interested in but embracing technology integration it occurred to me there might be a trajectory of sorts. What must you start with to get the “buy-in”? How do you progress from there? How might one show the possibilities so that folks can start thinking in this language rather than merely translating? I generally simplify things

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#rawthought: The Beauty of Backwards Learning

Amy Burvall

Feb 22, 2017
4 min

#rawthought: The Beauty of Backwards Learning

Have you ever thought yourself to be a fraud in some respect? Have you questioned your so-called “expertise” in your field or even wondered, as so poetically expressed by eighties new waver-in-existentialist-disguise David Byrne, How did I get here? Whilst I am relatively confident in my own skills, experience, and talent, I’m certainly not immune to self-doubt. It occurred to me this morning that, while I love learning for learning’s sake, and continually seek out opportunit

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Unlearning and Other Jedi Mind Tricks – Finding the (Creative) Force

Amy Burvall

May 5, 2016
13 min

Unlearning and Other Jedi Mind Tricks – Finding the (Creative) Force

I believe the greatest calling of an educator is to inspire one’s students to want to wonder and learn about things on their own, and to point them in the direction of tools (hardware, software, and mindware) they can use to facilitate their respective (life-long) learning pursuits. One perception of our responsibility is to prepare the youth under our influence for “the future“. I’ve always considered “the future” to be esoteric at best and completely uncertain and unpredic

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#rawthought: Learning Curve: Mondrian or Gaudi?

Amy Burvall

Apr 12, 2016
3 min

#rawthought: Learning Curve: Mondrian or Gaudi?

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

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Getting Picasso on Learning Technologies

Amy Burvall

Apr 7, 2016
5 min

Getting Picasso on Learning Technologies

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

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Amy Burvall

Mar 18, 2016
3 min

Seuss the Sage

all images made with Paper 53 for iPhone A couple of weeks ago (March 2 to be exact) was the birthday of beloved whimsical author and illustrator Dr. Suess (Theodor Geisel). In honour of what has come to be known as #DrSeussDay on social media, I whipped up a few sketchquotes I found particularly poignant. I purposefully did not what to take them directly from his books, but rather from the man himself, as I am more interested in the creative process and the backstory and bac

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Lessons from a Starman: Commander Hadfield at #fisa2016

Amy Burvall

Feb 7, 2016
6 min

Lessons from a Starman: Commander Hadfield at #fisa2016

I recently had the privilege of presenting at the 50th anniversary conference of the Federation of Independent Schools of British Columbia, Canada (#fisa2016). My session went well and I met a lot of incredible educators (see my Storify of tweets here) My highlight, however (aside from the student marimba players), was of course the closing keynote by Colonel Chris Hadfield, Commander of the International Space Station and the first Canadian to walk in space! He was humble an

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Amy Burvall

Nov 28, 2015
1 min

Learning in 20 – Part II

A few weeks ago I took up the challenge from the Learning and Performance Institute in the UK to make a video articulating the greatest changes in learning in the pst 20 years. You can read about my process (an animated poem) in my previous blogpost. I was thrilled and honoured to win the contest, but still had a few things left dangling from my notes. So by the light of the newly erected Christmas tree I hashed out the remaining verses and got to illustrating each concept in

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Thinkerings Episode 1: Knowledge as Connection

Amy Burvall

Nov 13, 2015
5 min

Thinkerings Episode 1: Knowledge as Connection

I’ve been wanting to produce a little animated vlog series called “Thinkerings” – where I discuss my “what ifs” in eduction, new literacies and media, art, and technology. The first few will most likely be remixes to some extent of some blog posts. For the first episode, I wanted to do something about networked knowledge – and knowledge as connection. the big question is: What if we valued connections as dearly as we do “knowledge”? This came about because of a few things I

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Amy Burvall

Nov 8, 2015
1 min

#getsmART spotlight: Pablo Picasso

I’ve been waiting to make these “breakout videos” spotlighting the artists from my “#getsmART: Lessons from the Artists” keynote for a while, but just haven’t had the time. However, October 25 marked Picasso’s birthday, so I felt utterly compelled to whip this out. The process was: use my keynote slides to create the Quicktime, self-playing video import into iMovie and record a voiceover I plan to these for the other artists I discussed in the keynote, which you can view HERE

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#twisted pairs: pedagogy from the unlikely

Amy Burvall

Nov 8, 2015
2 min

#twisted pairs: pedagogy from the unlikely

A while back the ever engaging Mr. Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) proposed yet another whimsical blogging challenge. As you recall, we started doing #blimage a while back with a volley of images (mine were sketches). This time, it’s called #twistedpairs and you can read about it and view others ON STEVE’S BLOG I’ve been thinking a lot about blogs lately. I certainly think they are wonderful, and a great testament to how participatory culture has democratized media / publishing

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Amy Burvall

Dec 28, 2020
6 min

Also....Advent (an Alternative Advent Calendar, 2020)

This year I decided to once again use the digital Advent calendar creation site https://tuerchen.com/ However, I noticed that they don't...

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Amy Burvall

Nov 29, 2020
1 min

The #globalthankswondercut project

If you were to write a love letter to the world what would it be? A Crowdsourced Creativity Project In the midst of this global pandemic...

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