The Creative Teaching Space 6

As always take the ideas with a grain of (NaCl) Sodium Chloride, better known as salt. (Now you could explore the history of the word ‘salt’ and its connection to ‘salary’). Don’t let me dictate the space, the pace or the place with what you do in the classroom or training room. Rather experiment and see what happens. The ideas and strategies are pointers or ways of opening up learning. I am a big believer in an open approach to education. We live in very ‘reductive’ days where much is numbered, labeled or categorized. As a highly structured approach looks great on paper and in a financial domain it is also highly lacking in the practical and flexible space of the everyday classroom or training room. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Teaching and learning are still full of mystery. I’ve been listening to a live radio recording of the Irish singer/songwriter Paul Brady lately and I think he sums it up very well when he sings:

Nobody Knows (Paul Brady)

(Chorus)

Nobody knows why Elvis threw it all away
Nobody knows what Ruby had to hide
Nobody knows why some of us get broken hearts
And some of us find a world that's clear and bright
You could be packed up and ready
Knowing exactly where to go
How come you miss the connection?
No use in asking...the answer is nobody knows
No use in asking...the answer is nobody knows

Good luck with what you are teaching. Hope that these ideas spark new ideas and approaches.

Spicks and Specks (Bee Gees)

(Chorus)

All of my life
I call yesterday
The spicks and the specks
of my life 've gone away
All of my life
I call yesterday
The spicks and the specks
of my life 've gone away

Line By Line

Recently at a conference in Burnie, Tasmania, I came across this tried and true educational strategy. A student writes a sentence on lined paper. The following student writes a response to the previous line and folds the paper to hide the previous sentence. The next student responds to the line that has just been written. This continues until all lines are filled. The last student writes on a thin folded strip of paper. Finally the paper can be unfolded to reveal the combined sentences. This can look and sound surprisingly like poetry. Here is a response from the session I was in – one where we were only able to read the previous line.

Something happened this morning that
was extremely frightening
It was when I looked in the mirror
aware of my age. The wrinkles were deep crevasses
and my arms are weak and my hands are cracked
my legs are gnarled and bent
like the limbs of an old tree
twisting and turning, reaching for the sky
with hands that knew the colour of touch.

Alternatively students could write a comment on a line and cover it so that it is not seen by the next person. This will generate quite random responses where connections can be later explored. Students can also be divided into groups. Groups collaborate to build a sentence. They may like to write a question and the next group has to answer the question as well as ask one for the following group. Experiment with the many ways that you can generate ideas, random comments or questions via this system. Create random or secret responses that can be discussed at the end.

Comparisons

Take any object or concept that you are studying. Compare it to something else. The more abstract the comparison the greater and more imaginative the thinking: Shakespeare and an atom, geometry and art, pollination and business. In this activity students have to recognize characteristics of each object, person or concept and find links that can be emphasized or exaggerated for serious, comic or satiric effect. Below is a lovely example I received via email. General Motors responded very creatively to a comparison between Microsoft and their cars.

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on:

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon".

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all the windows, shut off the car, restart it and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason, you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask 'Are you sure?' before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn off the engine.

See what comparisons you and your students can come up with. Experiment with ideas across curricula.

Blindfolds

A blindfold is always useful when working with students. I like using those that one gets on an aeroplane.

There are many ways of using a blindfold with students. Play Greetings Your Majesty in which a blindfolded student has to guess the person who is shaking his or her hand and saying ‘Greetings Your Majesty.’ Place objects gathered from within the room or outside, into the palm of a blindfolded student. He or she has to guess the object. Use objects within your curriculum area e.g. science instruments.

Ask students to partner. The partner puts on a blindfold and the other partner, having moved elsewhere within the room, gently calls his or her name. This is a great exercise involving careful navigation as one moves between others and selective hearing – the blindfolded student has to identify the partner and navigate in that direction.

A blindfolded student can also be asked to gently feel another person’s face to identify who they are – a good introduction to the sensitivity of the fingers and the skill in reading Braille. A person can also direct their partner to an area in the room through careful directions or a coded language (word or phrase) previously arranged – e.g. each caller assigned a German word, scientific element or animal sound.

A student can also tap in code on the back of his or her blindfolded partner to indicate direction and move him or her to a particular spot: tap on left shoulder means move left, tap on right shoulder means move right, one tap in middle means stop, rate of taps alters speed. Students can work out their own tapping system. What does this tell us about language?

A student can play the role of the hunter and the other the hunted. Everyone plays. The hunter calls a sound and the hunted must reply with his or her particular sound. Students have only five calls and replies to find their prey.

A student, or those standing nearest, can also direct a blindfolded student through a maze of chairs or people. I like it when the nearest person has to direct – "take two steps left." Why not blindfold a student and he or she has to throw a soft ball at the students? Whoever is hit is out. Continue until the last person standing.

Students can also direct their partners around the building – a great introduction to how it must feel to be blind. Another fascinating experiential technique involving the senses is to put boxing gloves on students, or other impediments, e.g. rulers down the sleeve. The student must then e.g. pour a glass of water. This can show how hard it must be to carry out ordinary tasks when one has a disability due to inheritance, age, or an accident.

Let all the students be blindfolded. They have to all make their way back to a line or put on their own shoes from somewhere within a pile.

Blindfolded students can also stand within the room. A person is assigned as the monster. When he or she taps a student the student has to place his or her hands on the monster’s shoulder. This should build into an eventual line of everyone winding through the space.

Have two teams facing each other. A blindfolded person comes forward and must shake hands with a student stepping from the other side. An optional greeting can be made. A point is given to the advancing team when their person guesses whose hand has been shaken. See how you can vary these rules.

Blindfolds allow for lots of fun in learning. Above all see how the activity can tie in with the curriculum. You can explore shape in mathematics or the feelings associated with being blind.

Descriptions

How good are we at describing things? Police often comment on the different perceptions in witness statements.

Let your students observe everyone within the room. Then ask a student to leave. By getting into groups, or individually, ask your students to describe to the best of their ability the student who has left the room. This must of course be done with sensitivity. Compare results once the student has returned.

Take apples, lemons or similar objects and get your students to describe the object clearly and precisely. Put all the objects back in a box. By reading out the description let each student's partner find the described object.

Let students bring an object, a painting, a picture or a photo into class. It then has to be described in precise verbal detail. The rest of the group has to follow the instructions and draw this object. How accurate was the description? How accurate are the drawings? What problems were encountered in this activity? This can lead into a good discussion on how we instruct. Students may even like to describe in detail what their house is like.

Find a biological or detailed description of a plant or animal. Read it out to the students. Let them draw and name it.

Students can even rewrite a set of instructions using humour to convey technical information. Here is an example on the operations of a photocopier:

Warning!

This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need.

A special circuit in the machine called a 'critical detector' senses the operator’s emotional state in terms of how desperate he or she is to use the machine. The ‘critical detector’ then creates a malfunction proportional to the desperation of the operator. Threatening the machine with violence only aggravates the situation. Likewise, attempts to use another machine any also cause it to malfunction. They belong to the same union. Keep cool and say nice things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work.

Take a sport and describe it in a funny way. Here is an unusual description of cricket:

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

Mathematics in Stone and Bronze

Consider the relationship between mathematics and art. Explore mathematics from an artistic perspective. Where is the beauty in maths? Here is an excerpt from an ABC radio National interview with a sculptor.

Mathematics in Stone and Bronze

We live in a golden age of science, a golden age of art. I celebrate the beauty and power of mathematics with sculpture. Mathematics is one of the most beautiful creations of the human soul, yet few people, even mathematicians, ever see much of it.

Mathematics tends to be invisible, unseen, yet we build our lives and our technology upon it. Radio and TV are founded upon Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetic propagation -- Maxwell wrote down his equations a generation before Marconi framed the first wireless. Airplanes and ships are designed from simulations of Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow, yet Navier and Stokes were a generation before the Wright brothers. Mathematics provides the insight to do something wonderful.

My part seems to be to let mathematics out of the closet and make it accessible to the public, to bring the discovery, the joy, the clarity, the richness of the mathematical enterprise to anyone.

I’ll answer some frequently asked questions.

What is a research mathematician doing in an art studio? We live in an age of specialization; we find mathematics and sculpture in separate compartments of knowledge. As a young person, I was taught that one could be either a scientist or an artist (and you’d better be a scientist because artists were expected to starve); a false dichotomy. My natural father was a visual artist who met my mother in a Los Angeles art school. Her people were engineers and scientists. When I was three my mother was killed by lightning, my father drafted into the Pacific theater of World War II. At six years old, I was adopted by a childless immigrant couple living in upstate New York, a Irish stone mason-carpenter and his wife. So it happened that beginning at age six I was apprenticed to an old world craftsman. I was fortunate to win scholarships to universities, but science and art wrestled within me until I developed both well enough to integrate the two.

So, research mathematician in a sculpture studio. I carve stone with every tool I can grasp, from hammers and chisels, pneumatic tools, diamond grinders and cutters, even diamond chain saws. I interface all these in various ways with new technologies including computer graphics and computer control. I carve stone because it is unimaginably old and mathematics of any age is timeless. Making something out of an ordinary rock goes back to my childhood. Usually my bronze work is taken from stone which I have carved.

Mathematics is a wonderful language to create sculpture. Frequently I discover new mathematics as part of my desire to do certain sculpture. I use computer graphics, stereo pairs, and carve with computer assistance along with human models. As a result, my sculptures are not mathematical models, but sensuous sculptures which are friendly and approachable.

Mathematics is a rich wellspring of human creativity, ancient and modern at the same time. Our mathematical roots go back dozens of millennia, our geological materials go back billions of years. The granite and diorite celebrations project some of the mathematical crown jewels of our civilization into an even uncertain future. Each of my sculptures is a kind of three dimensional Rosetta stone of mathematical and sculptural, scientific and cultural languages. I encode theorems in a way which can be deciphered many generations from now as well as inform and uplift current generations. You only have to extend your hand to join the celebration.

The Science of Toys

How can you use toys to stimulate students? Imagine getting a set of farm animals with fences. Your students could construct a simulated landscape from which you could develop stories and discussions. You could take dolls and convert them, as I saw recently in a primary school, into astronauts in the study of space – creating accessories in line with the needs of space.

Get students bringing in their favorite toy. Even adults, by digging in the cupboard, should be able to bring interesting examples. When was the toy received? What memories do you associate with it?

Look at the physics of toys. Look at silly putty, gyroscopes and other novelty toys. Discuss how they work. What does this tell us about the physics of movement? Explore how many toys that ended up in toyshops may have once been a result of experiments in science labs: The Physics of Toys. This could lead into discussions on how everyday objects operate. What principles are at work? Here is a really interesting website on How Things Work.

Place a toy on a table. It has been left behind. Whose toy was it? Why do they no longer have it? Use the evocative nature of toys to stimulate stories.

Interview a toy. If a toy could talk what would it tell us about its life or that of the household in which it lives? Look at toys such as Barbie and GI Joe and discuss the ideologies and meanings underlying such toys. Design, create and market a toy. Look at the history of toys through the ages. What would children have played with in ancient Greece?

One of my favorite photographers Jacques Henri Lartigue has a delightful photograph in which he places his racing cars on the ground and having photographed them from a low angle makes them look strangely surreal. Lartigue was a photographer since being given a box camera as a child. With an offbeat edge he photographed into his nineties. His photographs capture a generation and have a beautiful charm that can easily be explored with children and adults. He seemed to retain a child-like view for most of his life – he grew into photography and was not educated or trained in the medium.

How are the sexes represented in toy culture? How do manufacturers view childhood? Explore a toy catalogue. Imagine a world where toys are different.

Read about the time that a Ken Doll arrived in a dress – Cross Dressing Ken.

Utilitarian

View your subject from a utilitarian perspective.

Utilitarian: "The ethical theory proposed by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people."

This means that you are always asking the questions about how this will benefit mankind. This looks at the area of study from a much larger perspective, sometimes beyond the framework of the specialized area so that it can be seen for its broader human impact. These questions will make students even more sensitive to the questions being asked in genetics and other forms of technical development. What benefits does the computer give the human race? Does it help to feed the starving millions or is it part of an apparatus that can shift wealth and contribute to the suffering of millions?

Utilitarianism proposes the making of the world into a better place where good intentions are authenticated by good practice. Of the writers most famous for exploring the concept of utilitarianism – at least presenting the discussion of it in a written form to the western world – are Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Mary Wollstonecroft (1759-1797). As a testimony to the number of philosophical works available on the web you might like to check out Classic Texts in Ethics. The Project Gutenberg site is also an excellent gateway to the many texts available on the Internet as date of publication means that they are out of publication. You can, for example, use examples of these texts in learning whether it is a section from a novel or the writings of a philosopher.

How much of our world is utilitarian or is it "U - Til - I - make a loss?"

Mathematical

I can recall characters in a play who measured everything. They walked around the space and measured, entered results onto clipboards and came to conclusions. This struck me as an interesting premise. While satirical I wondered what would happen if we gave students tape measures and asked them to measure the room. What interesting relationships could they find in the data?

As in the book Counting on Frank by Rod Clement, students may like to look at quantity and mathematical relationships within the room. What is the average size of a desk? How many can fit into the room? What is the most common number we are discovering in our measuring? What are the ratios? Is the smaller table a similar ratio to the larger table? What angles can we find in the room?

Measure the heights of students. Record the findings on the wall. Take Olympic statistics and let students see how the figures look in the room – the actual distance of the world record high or long jump. Let students measure with a variety of objects. How many hands high is the door? Is this a stable unit of measurement? What is a stable unit of measurement?

Walk around the buildings. Where do we find numbers written? What do they refer to? Where do we encounter numbers in daily life? Is there a pattern to the birthdays or student street addresses in the room?

Let your students explore mathematical perspectives. Apply this to the analysis of a text. How many major and minor characters? List events and count them. How does this compare with another text? How many lines does your average character speak? How many words per page? What is the average length of a short story, a novel, or a newspaper article? How many lines are there in poems? Is there a mathematical formula that can be identified? This is a great opportunity for students to discover the rhyming patterns and systems in poetry.

Maths Poems

Explore poetry that looks at aspects of maths: Mathematical Poems, Maths and Poetry Competition.

Arithmetic (Carl Sandburg)

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven - or five six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply - and you carry the multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

A Maths Poem (Andrew N.)

Is it a decimal or is it a fraction,
Should I divide or use subtraction?
Can anyone tell me what is this shape,
Do we use a ruler or maybe a tape?
One hundred centimetres make one metre,
How many millilitres to a litre?
Push the buttons on a calculator,
Teacher shouts 'Use your brains!' - you'll need them later.
Three times six, find the factor,
(But not using a protractor)

Science Poems

Explore poetry that looks at aspects of science.

The Atom (Thomas Thornely)

Wake not the imprisoned power that sleeps
Unknown, or dimly guessed, in thee!
Thine awful secret Nature keeps,
And pales, when stealthy science creeps
Towards that beleaguered mystery.

Well may she start and desperate strain,
To thrust the bold besiegers back;
If they that citadel should gain,
What grisly shapes of death and pain
May rise and follow in their track!

The power that warring atoms yield,
Man has to guiltiest purpose turned.
Too soon the wonder was revealed,
Earth flames in one red battle-field;
Could but that lesson be unlearned!

Thy last dread secret, Nature! keep;
Add not to man's tumultuous woes;
Till war and hate are laid to sleep,
Keep those grim forces buried deep,
That in thine atoms still repose.

E = MC² (Morris Bishop)

What was our trust, we trust not,
   What was our faith, we doubt;
Whether we must or not
   We may debate about.
The soul, perhaps, is a gust of gas
   And wrong is a form of right-
But we know that Energy equals Mass
   By the Square of the Speed of Light.

What we have known, we know not,
   What we have proved, abjure.
Life is a tangled bowknot,
   But one thing still is sure.
Come, little lad; come, little lass,
   Your docile creed recite:
"We know that Energy equals Mass
   By the Square of the Speed of Light."

You may like to take a mathematical perspective on the use of words. What are the most common words used in texts? Students could enter their own data into a computer. Guess (competition) and look at the results below. The most common words used in texts, according to the area of study called Stylometry, are:

*Spoken

The
And
I
To
Of
A
You
That
In
It

*Written

The
Of
To
In
And
A
For
Was
Is
That

DK Factastic Book of 1001 Lists , Russell Ash, Dorling Kindersley, 1998.

*These vary according to texts.

TCNJ PROFESSORS USE MATHEMATICS TO UNCOVER WORKS BY AUTHOR AND POET, STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900)

What does math have to do with literature? Plenty, according to the collaborative research of TCNJ professors, Dr. David Holmes and Dr. Michael Robertson and TCNJ graduate, Roxanna Paez.

Recently, the team used stylometry to unearth seventeen previously unknown articles believed to be written by US novelist and poet, Steven Crane. Stylometry is the statistical analysis of literary style.

Using math and computer software, stylometry tracks non-contextual function words to characterize an author’s stylometric "signature." These non-contextual words - prepositions, conjunctions, articles and certain verbs and adverbs, are words that are used unconsciously by a writer. Multivariate analyses involving large sets of these words have been very successful.

The fact that these words are so common gives researchers plenty of data and thus a better chance of detecting a stylistic signature above statistical noise. Forms of stylometry date back to the 1800s and has been used to discover the works of renowned writers like William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon.

Compare statistics between countries. Compare weather statistics, or the length of television programs and the length of adverts. What relationships can be identified? How do these relate to media regulations? What is the average length of a movie? – see the Internet Movie DabaBase. What is the longest movie ever made? Keep a copy of the Guinness Book of Records handy. You may discover that 60 Minutes is in fact 37 Minutes.

Use the mathematical perspective as a tool for engaging more mathematically inclined students into the area of study or simply mathematics in general. Students may like to find old newspapers and compare football statistics – how have they changed over the years or how do they vary between current matches?

Microscopic

Take the area of knowledge and view it as if from a microscopic perspective. See it in all its intricacy and detail. How would it look from a very close perspective?

Imagine that you are teaching a novel. How can it be viewed in microscopic detail? Take for instance a small part of the text – it can also be a small part of a film or non-fiction text – and look at it in intricate detail. What do you learn about the characters, the words and the letters themselves? What do they reveal about the rest of the text and the way the author writes? What themes, even at a microscopic level, inform the rest of the text?

Imagine studying bridges within physics. Take a small detail of that bridge and look at in microscopic detail. What is its shape, what is it made of, what forces are at work?

Look at the microscopic detail of a character within the novel, or simply a person within the room. What is occurring at a microscopic level? The character has just been informed of a tragedy. How does the heart rate change, how does the body temperature rise? What happens to the skin? Guess what may happen. Conduct experiments in the group. Explore the actual truth.

Train your students to look at the world from this perspective: to see the subtleties and intricacies that occur at a microscopic level. In a world focusing on larger detail we tend to ignore smaller details and the many forces and almost magical processes at work. We too often look at the surface of everyday life without realizing the extraordinary things happening at a microscopic level.

What is more important for us, at an elemental level, than the control, the owning and operation, of our own physical selves? And yet it is so automatic, so familiar, we never give it a thought.

- Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Picador, 1985.

The text called "The Secret Family": Twenty four hours inside the mysterious world of our minds and bodies is part of an excellent series written by David Bodanis that connects the reality of the everyday with the world of science.

Eggs are brought out from the refrigerator. When he sees that they are running low he prints a note to get more and adds it to the crucial family connection device, which architects repeatedly forget to supply; he sticks it with a little magnet up on the refrigerator door.

Invisible forces of magnetic force swoop into the room’s air, generated by quick swimming atoms inside that magnet. The iron atoms were created in a slow build up over aeons in distant stars.

The magnetic lines streaming through the dad have little effect on his body, but the ones connecting the metal door hold the paper on tight…. And modern magnets are made by exposing appropriate materials to powerful magnetic fields supplied by a surrounding electric coil.

The other portable memory holder on fridge doors – the ubiquitous little yellow sticker – almost didn’t make it, for the 3M scientist who discovered their glue nearly discarded the formula when he discovered what a poor adhesive it was.

The book moves consistently from an exploration of a family into that of science. Perhaps you can buy it, or create your own examples. Let your students create their own science stories.

Get your students to create stories from a microscopic level – the story of a family of microbes that live and feed on the skin. How do they relate? How do they live? What do they do?

Macroscopic

How can the area of study be seen from a macroscopic perspective? Imagine looking at the subject from a much larger perspective, seeing it in relation to a much broader range of connections.

The novel being studied is seen in relation to larger themes, the history of novels, or even the history of language. Even when students can’t fill in the connections it is important to adopt this mindset. It allows us to see an area of study in relation to other areas of study – an opportunity to cross boundaries and to find similarities and differences.

Take, for example, a study of volcanoes. How may a volcano and its activity affect others? Students may even be able to see connections with the earth’s core and how this of course connects to other volcanoes. Here we have the famous analogy of how the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can affect events across the globe.

The "Butterfly Effect" is often ascribed to Lorenz. In a paper in 1963 given to the New York Academy of Sciences he remarks:

One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever.

By the time of his talk at the December 1972 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. the seagull had evolved into the more poetic butterfly - the title of his talk was:

Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?

Ecological

Look at the issue or subject in a much broader perspective. How does it relate to our planet? Think of the possible connections even if you are dealing with maths, science or characters in a novel. Surely there must be an impact on the world surrounding. Perhaps other characters are disturbed. How will this affect others? What will be the effects on the property or the location? An angry person can cause all types of ripples within a family, a set of colleagues, spreading into the outside world. We can tend to carry our anxieties with us. What connections can be found with the surrounding environment?

Think of the world as a system. If all things are connected then there are lots of connections to explore. This will move the students from perceptions that isolate people and events. Even something two generations ago can be rippling through a family or a community. Think of how events from hundreds of years ago are still being played out.

Explore the history of the Uncertainty Principle.

Scientific

Let students view the area of study as if they are scientists. Imagine that you are all scientists and that you are viewing the area of study for the first time. How would it look? What are the elements, what do you start with, what are the consequences of the experiment?

Your students can analyze what a character, or person, has done in a text and the consequences – the results of the experiment. How does the information look from a cool and calculated perspective? Why is this occurring? What has caused this phenomenon? Take a template from a scientific experiment – your students may be able to take this out of a science folder. Ask your students to transfer the information that they are currently studying onto this template.

You may be studying an historical event. See it as if from a scientific perspective. So, this is a famous civil war battle. What are the effects? What are the statistics? What are the causes? What data can be found? How is it recorded? How is the data verified? What patterns are discernible? What impact is my research having on this data? Imagine that you are present at this event and are recording information – this creates many new possibilities.

Here we have the experimental problem cited by Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics – the Uncertainty Principle – the instrument of measurement can affect the outcome! One wants to measure the temperature of a cup of coffee. As soon as one places the thermometer in the cup one conducts heat away from the liquid. The truth of the temperature is altered.

I can remember a British television series that showed major battles from the perspective of an onsite current affairs film crew. Like Pasolini’s film on the death of Christ – Gospel According to St. Matthew – a documentary style with hand held camera can allow us to see an event in new ways. Can your students imagine the area of study from this perspective? Can we see events from new perspectives if we shift into scientific analysis?

The scientific perspective opens the possibilities for students to look at information within the rules and skills of a scientist. What are these skills? What are the rules? How important is imagination and guesswork in reaching scientific answers? Where does a science perspective merge with the arts?

The arts and sciences do not have to be separated. Nowadays we see more than ever the ways in which the scientific perspective is informing the arts. Look at the new scientific analysis of ancient bodies, or the analysis of Shakespeare’s language by the programming of it into computers. Many areas of scientific pursuit, such as anthropology or archaeology, allow your students to look at issues and topics in a new light. To what extent can scientific analysis inform the arts? To what extent can it detract from the experience of art?

My title (Unweaving the Rainbow) is from Keats, who believed that Newton had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to prismatic colours. Keats could hardly have been more wrong, and my aim is to guide all those who are tempted by a similar view towards the opposite conclusion. Science is, or ought to be, the inspiration for great poetry…

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touching of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know here woof, her texture: she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine –
Unweave a rainbow.

Lamia 1820 by John Keats

Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins, Penguin Books, 1998.

Cryptic Science

Take areas of Science and represent them cryptically. Here is an example:

h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o, is H20 - water

Innovations

The theremin is an extraordinary example of a musical instrument ahead of its time. It influenced electronic music, has been used widely in modern music and is also the subject of a great documentary called Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey. See also Theremin History.

Darron Davies