Mormon Tabernacle Choir

A very thoughtful colleague who plays in the orchestra for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir gave me two tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas Concert last Saturday night. While the whole experience was an adventure (from taking Trax, to the Christmas lights on Temple Square, to dinner at the Lion House afterwards), what I most appreciated about it were the aesthetics of the experience. The design of the building is beautiful (I especially appreciated the textured walls and the captivating design of the ceiling). The scenery for the performance was nice, and they did a lovely job of using lighting, costuming, dancers, and scenery to contribute to the intimate and festive feel of the evening. My friend, Lucia, added the sparkle of her own personality to the event. The evening was a nice respite from the cares of my everyday world!

Stanford Silliness

I've been captivated by the concept of layers lately, particularly as it intersects with principles of design. I just returned from a trip to Stanford, where I gave two presentations to foreign language teachers from the San Francisco Bay area centered on these ideas. One was called The Learning is in the Layers, and another extended ideas from that presentation to address issues of leadership and advocacy.

I stayed at the Stanford Guest House, which is located on the grounds of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The people watching was quite interesting because a number of visiting scientists were staying there. I chatted with a German PhD student who was visiting the U.S. for the first time. He had just come from Berkeley and was waiting for time in the labs at Stanford to see if he could calibrate the measurements he took at Berkeley. Rather than send him back to Germany and then fly him back to Stanford, they told him to hang out at Stanford for 10 days. Trusting (or desperate) soul that he was, he asked for help with the ATM (that multiples of 20 thing confused me at first too), and when I didn't rob him of the $200 he extracted, I expect he figured it was safe to continue chatting. ;-)

It was interesting to hear his perspectives on the U.S.--everything is so big, there is so much space, and we have so many choices everywhere we go. From my own travels abroad, I thought I knew exactly what he meant with respect to grocery stores, size, and space. However, I quickly discovered that I hadn't thought carefully enough about it. Consider this abbreviated version of his description of a typical restaurant experience in the U.S.:

Meal - "Which meal do you want?" (From a very thick menu of choices)
Appetizers - "Do you want an appetizer with that?"
Soup or Salad - "Do you want soup or salad?"
Salad - "Do you want a caesar salad or the house salad?"
Dressing - "Bleu Cheese, French, Ranch, Thousand Island, or Vinagrette?"
Timing - "Do you want that brought out right away or with the meal?"
Sides - "Beans, rice, or potato?"
Potato - "Baked potato, fries, or mashed potatoes?"
Steak - "Rare, medium, medium well, or well done?"
Drink - "Coffee, juice, milk, pop, tea, or water?"
Pop #1- "Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Sprite, etc."
Pop #2 - "Caffeine free, diet, or regular?"

He explained that he was exhausted and overwhelmed before he ever even picked up his fork!
It reminded me of a fabulous book I've been reading called The Paradox of Choice. The author explains how too many choices just make us ambivalent and grumpy. I only got about half-way through it before my work drew me into other things, but I'm looking forward to dipping back into it.

Meanwhile, I came to question how Mr. German Guy ever formed his perspectives on the American restaurant experience because I quickly discovered that Stanford doesn't believe in feeding its visiting scientists! ;-) There is no restaurant in the guest house, and the nearby cafeteria is closed on weekends (and has pretty limited hours during on the weekdays). While my hosts provided meals, my tummy wasn't on CA time, so I ended up walking about 2 miles to a nearby strip mall with a little grocery store and stocking up on midnight snacks.

While I was there, a colleague of mine who was in a doctoral program at MSU and has since transferred to Stanford picked me up and took me to campus town for an exquisite dinner of lamb in yogurt sauce with pomegranate. (I haven't been able to duplicate it yet, although I found that I still make a mean lambchop!)



When he found out I hadn't yet toured the campus and would not have the opportunity to do so before leaving town, he kindly drove me into campus and we walked a good chunk of it at 10:30 at night! It was . . . imposing. It is one place where the photos don't even begin to do it justice (and, unfortunately, I didn't take my camera with me that evening).

Legend has it that the Stanford Family tried to donate money to Harvard, were snubbed, and decided to start their own university. The university's website offers a much longer, and much more sanitized version. It was great fun to be hearing such tales as we walked under the giant columns and admired the grandeur of the buildings that had so many features of Spanish architecture. What struck me most about it is that although every building is large and majestic, the entrances to the buildings are very close to one another--just a short walk across small plazas, and every plaza and every building seemed connected to every other by the stone plazas and covered walkways. So, unlike a large university like MSU where all the buildings seem to proclaim the importance of individual schools within the university, at Stanford, no matter where you are, you feel like you are a part of something larger than any individual college--you are a part of something that has been around for a long time, something important. You feel like you are a part of Stanford. It was a very cool feeling, and interesting to feel how much architecture could play such a strong role in making one feel connected to an existing community.

It is not without its quirks, though. The funniest thing ever were Jim's stories about the new bicycle roundabouts that have been recently installed on campus. Evidently, bicyclists were crashing into each other and pedestrians at various high density areas on campus so regularly that roundabouts have now been installed in an attempt to address the problem. I'll post photos as soon as he sends me some.

An Aesthetic Feast

What do multiple literacies look like, feel like, and sound like? What happens when you layer aesthetic, conceptual, discursive, emotional, intellectual, rhetorical, and visual elements using mixed media? Take a look at Dave Werner's Portfolio to find out.

The design of the site and the thinking that it reveals are intriguing to me—especially as you explore pages like the reflect/respect page (be sure to watch the video and click on the process images). Note the multiple paths to navigation, the mix of non-linearity and linearity on every page, and the convergence of inquiry with social activism, community engagement, and arts-based education. I also liked the way the site invites you to interact with it, and in the process, helps you to establish a relationship with its author, its content, and its form. You can see and hear Dave's mind at work (and come to understand more about HOW and WHY it works as it does) as you explore it.

The portfolio is a good example of many of the values of the iGeneration—inter-tainment, identity, individuality, information, innovation, interactivity. It engaged me in considering how our representation of content gets tangled up with our values, and how that influences the ways we choose to represent ourselves personally and professionally. I also couldn’t help but think of the research on cognitive flexibility, complexity, design, engagement, perception, multiple representations, and visual thinking as I was exploring this.

It would be interesting to show this to educators and teacher candidates and ask questions such as:

• What do these ‘products’ reveal about what the person who created them understands? What do they reveal about what he may not have considered? What do they reveal about him professionally? What do they reveal about him personally?

• What kind of experiences could prepare someone to create such products? What kinds of experiences would preclude the development of the skills required to create such products?

• What kind of technological pedagogical content knowledge would be required in order for a teacher to facilitate the development of such products or skills?

• What implications might this have for the kinds of things we do in our classrooms and for the kinds of assignments we give to students (PreK-12, undergraduate, graduate, doctoral)?

• What might this mean for the future of education, as well as for cultural, economic, political, and social contexts?

• What questions should we, as educators, be asking that we currently are not?

Of course, there are many counterarguments. (Incidentally, it would be interesting to see a visual representation of some of them.) There will be many who will find the site overwhelming and who will argue vociferously that it has nothing to do with education, literacy, the future, or the challenges inherent in those endeavors . . . .

For me, however, it is the happiest site I've encountered in a very long while--an aesthetically, conceptually, emotionally, and intellectually pleasurable experience.

Of Design & Dragons

I have always been a cartoon-lover. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because of the possibility inherent in cartoons--the chance to bend the rules of reality in worlds that combines dreams and fantasies, happiness and humor, the best of the imagination . . . .

The other day, I stumbled across a cartoon that has absolutely captivated me: Jane and the Dragon. There is something romantic about castles and dragons and princesses, and the content of this show is fun and uplifting, but more than anything, I'm entranced by the aesthetics of it. The breathtaking, artistic rendering of the characters and the way that the static expectations created by the colored pencils are broken by the animation are intriguing.