I could not resist posting this contest, since I have some lovely some delicious memories of those sweet smells or cinnamon flavor waifing through the air as I patiently waited for my grandmother and mother to dish me out huge slice of apple pie.
Pie Contest in a BoxTo celebrate the publication ofOne Big Table: The Book(which looks terrific) and launch an ongoing effort to collect and preserve American recipes and food stories, Molly O’Neill is throwing an online apple pie bake-off. Entry deadline: Nov. 31.
by Michele Y. Washington Click to hear Ron Eglash’s presentation.
Our final keynote speaker brilliantly closed out GLIDE10 on his continuous investigation on Culture and Science in the sphere of indigenous and vernacular cultures existing within the United States ethnic communities such as Asian, Latin American and African American. Ron gives an in-depth explanation of global indigenous cultures to dispel numerous myths that exist of such groups as being backwards, primitive and illiterate. This raises several fundamental issues of cultural sensitivity, and he provides specific examples from one project featured on his website on the process of mapping out Native American asymmetrical and symmetrical beading systems. For another project you can sample an example of African Architectural typology replicated through the application of African Fractals, an organic branching structure referencing nature.
This African Fractals project offers clear cut examples of his teaching methods applied in the cultural significance of the ancestral origins of cornrows for Black American students in high schools. His goal was to challenge the students to investigate the issues that surrounded the Black Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas and Caribbean, students were able to identify hygiene, resistance, retaining ones culture identity linking their own cornrow hairstyles to its origins. Other examples of paring the musicality of Hip-hop provide a broader sensibility of the connection as to why they wear this hairstyle. He’s developed a computation where he feeds in various iterations of how many plaits are in one braid. According to Ron, such concepts can be applied to other ethnic groups to gain a better understanding of the ancestral heritage. The Cultural expression opens the door to engage students to consider the various modalities of the design patterns replicated by cornrow hairstyles, which blurs the line between indigenous and vernacular design. He also looks at graffiti as a form of vernacular stereotyping. Ends his talk on Puerto Rican youth rooted to challenge the students through mathematical computation of Spanish music through rhythms and beats of the music. Summary of what limits racial intelligence, he states, while no one wants to talk about it, the thoughts loom in the back of many educators and peoples mind.
What part of collective memory fuels some of this iconic bead work, rug design, totems that are also evident in other global cultures such as Africans, Aboriginal, India, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries?
Defeating myths of cultural determinism
Using mathematics to bridge cultural gaps
Making cultural capital more available to its owners (individuals) Educational capital
Looking at new forms of hybridity for learning Peace and social justice efforts Environmental sustainability
Making contributions to mathematics, and inspirations Challenges:
Not all modeling of culture involves translation of indigenous or vernacular knowledge. Ethnomath: provide more evidences of application of knowledge Interesting concept over cultural ownership of whose holds on to authentic cultural heritage for example, Shawnee Native Americans. Alternative methods for kids to go from consumers to producers, makers by apply the discovery as a learning method.
GLIDE10: Fabiola Berdiel + Cynthia Lawson Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design presenters brings us up-to-date on Parsons School of Design ongoing mission of incorporating social responsibility in to learning processes as applied to several design disciplines such as product, architecture and more.
One great aspect of Parsons School of Design program is there hybridity of bringing students together from various disciplines to share information to build stronger coherent knowledge bases. The challenge is instructors function as facilitators, this mode of teaching forces the students to take a more interactive role to immerse themselves fully in there projects, and learn new platforms of studying beyond formal and informal methods of learning. Students also have the opportunity to acquire primary research through traveling to developing/emerging countries and explore various modes of practices while interacting with local people, investigating new materials and methods to enhance new ways of design thinking. This provides the student with practical and hands-on experiences to build a diverse dialog rooted in social and cultural constructs not available by just sitting in a classroom or surfing the internet.
Questions: I’m curious how the outcomes are measured by the students each semester? When the students interact with other cultures through travels, how does this figure into the collaborative process? How do these other ethnic cultures respond to the presences of your students?
I love the concept of students taking on the role of facilitators as a shared experience with this projects. How does this method evolve from semester to semester? Do the students view themselves as real agents of change? If so what are some of the outcomes?
What are the draws backs of the participatory process in this model of learning?
Justine presents signboard communication in Asia. Objective is to improve technology design in the future, through better design and visual typography by integrating green design concepts.
What is phenomenology and phenomenography?
How will Justine apply theories of postmodernism to her research? Last year while visiting Macao, and Hong Kong, Beijing I was able to experience the density of signboards on many streets.
How are signboards in Asian countries different than the busy exterior signage in NYCs Time Square?
Below images from my travels last January to Beijing, Hong Kong and Macao the streets are brilliantly lite-up with signboards. One thing to consider is the amount of energy generated to keep these signs glowing day and night. Brilliant concept Justine’s offers alternative materials such as legos parts, old computer boards, and small car toys to develop more efficient signboards.
She offers interesting keyword: bricolage as main methodology.
In my classroom I challenge my students to think beyond there own cultural beliefs and to expand the dialog of what globalization and culture means as applied to their ideation and design thinking. Here are a few examples of mindmapping/billboarding techniques used to jump start there projects. Below are several examples of students finished projects, billboarding presentations and team interactions.
Isabeal Maryland Crab presentation
Roni, Sarah and Sparky deep in thought
Dominka Polish Food expo, she incorporated poetic verses.
Audra Buck-Coleman, is our first keynote speaker of the day, Coleman’s topic Identifying Potential Pitfalls + Windfalls in Collaborative Projects will definitely set the tone for what follows. She will address some major issues surrounding collaboration, and it consistent use as a buzz word in higher education. Finally she proposes design educators develop more projects that foster critical thinking skills to make students better prepared for today’s creative working environments. Audra explores some of the pitfalls that exist with her projects, and investigates the advantages and disadvantages of working collectively across boarders with other cultures where English is not there first language.
How can design educators adept some of Audra’s rich skills and knowledge for collaborative projects?
What happens when language is a barrier to enhance collaborative critical learning outcomes?
Audra’s presents one project between Blacks students in southern community and Mormons who came to realized they shared more similarities then differences.
She proposes the following question to consider: When working on collaborative projects do your students know how to navigate through stereotyping issues with other ethnic, religious, gender based groups?
Audra proposes the following suggestions based on her collaborative experience of working with Students in China:
Chinese students prefer organized structured learning over US students flexible learning.
What is your Classroom Culture?
Are you well versed in the nuances of the culture?
How prepared are you for flexibility and improvisation in the classroom?
What are the benefits of the professors experience from collaboration?
Sorry I took a little time-out, however I’m back with this week’s buzz. Eric Benson from the University of Illinois, in Urbana and I will be the quest blogger for GLIDE10, a virtual symposium taking place on 27 October, 2010, starting early at 8:30AM. Eric maintains renourish blog that focuses on sustainable design. We’ll be posting questions on our blogs, and twitting simultaneously during each presenters talk from all over the globe. This years theme focuses on indigenous design with line-up featuring a host of design intellectuals from around the world, such as Audra Buck-Coleman from China, Adream Blair-Early from USA, Dr. Li-Hsun Peng and Chia-Hsin, from Taiwan are among some of the distinguished presenters this year. Great you don’t need to travel anywhere far. It’s easy to register then throw back while you relax at home in front of your computer, TV in your jammies, or office or classroom space and just listen.
Keep in mind none of my commentary postings directly reflect the opinions of the conference planning committee Audrey Bennett, Adream Blair-Early and Gloria Gomez. As a designer and educator I was asked to share my opinions and that’s exactly what I have done.
Featured above is Cornel West, Professor at Princeton University with talk show host Tavis Smiley.
The fusion of this dynamic duo Smiley & West is slotted to hit the airwaves this coming October with the launch of Tavis Smiley’s Public Radio International (PRI) an energetic radio program covering thought provoking, intelligent and stimulating dialogue on every subject from news and politics to entertainment and culture. Tune-in one-hour for this weekly show that promises to bring listeners a broad spectrum of compelling guests and I’m sure some juicy debates will jump off between Tavis Smiley and Cornel West.
I could not resist this opportunity to share one of my favorite places Brooklyn. If you’re not busy this weekend stop by The Brooklyn Book Festival, this free public event presenting an array of literary stars and emerging authors who represent the exciting world of literature today. One of America’s premier literary and literacy events, this hip, smart, diverse gathering attracts thousands of book lovers of all ages. I’m working this Sunday with Ramin Ganeshram, chef/food writer, make sure to stop by her table and say hello. For more information check out: http://www.brooklynbookfestival.org/
Renee Kemp-Rotan co-founder of the blog, BlackDesignNews.com and the director of Capital Projects for the City of Birmingham, Alabama has authored a project to revitalize the devastated country of Haiti. She’s seeking all those creative visionaries interested in helping to rebuild Haiti to answer the international call for papers.
The following as reported on BDN:
TOWARDS A POST-EARTHQUAKE DEVELOPMENT MANUAL
by Renee Kemp-Rotan, author of the code
A Culture Code for Haiti: The Rebuilding of National Identity through Architecture (NIA) assumes that culturally informed architecture can help to fulfill new national ideals, through rebuilding Haiti as a utopian civilization with NIA/purpose.
First, The Culture Code will outline a comprehensive framework of 100 cultural considerations advanced across the socio-economic geography of pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial and post-earthquake Haiti, in a way that informs all future design and development.
Second, The Culture Code is an international call for papers to address 100 topics on Haitian culture, politics and space for:
• cultural anthropologists
• geographers
• policy planners
• urban designers
• architects
• developers
• economists
• historians
• disaster experts
Third, The Culture Code will meld ‘form and content’ data collected above to propose a series of design principles structured to influence all future and permanent master plan efforts in the rebuilding of post-earthquake Haiti. Thus both quantitative and qualitative design decisions can be made.
Fourth, The Culture Code will develop specific ‘pilot prototypes’ that lead to a system of development contracts that follow best practices for town planning/settlement building/housing designs (macro and micro) that are culturally significant, replicable, yet influenced by population capacity, location, geography, transportation, communication and resources.
