Thursday Feb 7th, AM AE362
9:00am Putting the “Active” in Active Learning (Carolyn Ives)
While most faculty members are aware of the benefits of active learning for students, some have noticed student resistance to these activities, as while they often mean deeper learning for students, they involve more work for them as well. The benefits of physical activity for learning have also been studied extensively: for example, brain plasticity and the formation of neural connections positively correlate with regular exercise (Ratey & Hagerman, 2008). This workshop explores how we can combine physical movement with active learning to compound the positive effects of each in a way that is appealing to students and also helps them learn. We’ll try out several active learning strategies for curriculum delivery that you can use in your classrooms to get students moving and actively working AND improve students’ intrinsic motivation, thus shifting their focus from grades to learning. These strategies involve engaging students in active learning that simply couldn’t happen for students who are listening only. Please come prepared to participate!
10:00am Crafting a Pedagogy of Small (Tanya Dorey-Elias)
A participatory session in which we explore issues of scale and its impacts within education. What can educators learn from crafting communities?
11:00am Exquisite Corpse Drawing Game (Clement Yeh)
Created by the Surrealists in 1925, the Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative drawing game that has found immense popularity all over the world. Typically played in groups of three, participants draw a head, torso, and legs, keeping their section secret from each other. When the big 'reveal' is done, the result is always hilarious. Don't let the word "drawing" scare you off; talent is NOT a requirement, just a sense of fun and experimentation. You may be surprised by your own untapped creativity!
11:45am Play stations and finger food: "Drawing Toast", learning technology demos, and a maker table.
Thursday PM Clocktower Alumni Theatre CT200
1:00pm Bucket Drumming (John Churchley)
Bucket drumming (or street drumming) is a grassroots performance medium which uses plastic buckets and other found objects as drumming surfaces. The pedagogical value of this musical genre lies in the non-threatening nature of the instruments - they're non-traditional, easy to play, and more importantly, indestructible! Similar to community drum circles, a non-experienced group can quickly learn to perform enjoyable yet simple rhythmic patterns, and can experiment creatively as the skill level is very basic. In this exploratory session, participants will share in rhythmic music making and creative expression.
1:30pm Faking It: Improvising with Art and Poetry (Ashok Mathur)
Many of us are familiar with the presentation format called PechaKucha, a Japanese term roughly translated as ‘chit-chat,' a format whereby 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each (6 minutes and 40 seconds in total) to keep presentations concise and on track. Ashok will present an improvised form of the PechaKucha as an artist talk and will follow this with an exercise of short-short storytelling. This is a playful and pragmatic way of opening our minds and hearts to alternative modes of narration. “Faking It” refers back to poet Fred Wah’s collected critical writings of the same name (NeWest Press, 2000) and also to the current obsession in social and mainstream media with the idea of fakery.
Note: in advance, all participants are asked to send one jpeg image (of any size or quality) to the organizers.
Ashok Mathur is a poet, artist, writers, thinker, activist, and dreamer, who currently works at the Ontario College of Art and Design University as Dean of Graduate Studies.
3:30pm End of Day
Friday Feb 8th AM AE366
8:30am Virtual Reality Demo (Andrew Fergus)
10:15am Creative Reflection (Marie Bartlett & Naomi Cloutier)
Join us to experience music as a catalyst for creative expression through words, images, movement and more.
This workshop will feature structured and improvised live harp music, which will invite the participants to take a personal journey of reflection through whatever landscape the music evokes.
Materials will be provided.
11:15 - 11:30 Wrap-up (adjourn to optional lunch at Culinary Arts)