ImagineIT: Phase One
The following images capture the big idea for my ImagineIT project: that science is social, and learning should be made public. This is a central aspect of the nature of science that is often overlooked in the classroom. The exchange of ideas and peer review are necessary for the advancement of science and to maintain the integrity of scientific knowledge. Making learning public to authentic audiences will increase student engagement and create channels of communication between various community groups to strengthen and extend learning in and out of the classroom. These images unveil this idea beginning by demonstrating the interconnectedness of physical phenomena and processes. The second image extends this theme to human thought, and the final image broadly proclaims that nothing exists in isolation, and all things are part of an elaborate network of interconnected elements. This series is composed of original photos mixed with text using Apple Pages.
This video was created to express the big idea of my ImagineIT project: that science is social, and learning should be made public. First the interconnectedness of the brain and thought is explored. The firing of individual neurons combine to create larger patterns of thought, which combine to create actions. This idea is then extended to other things, such as birds. The interdependency of everything in nature is then made the analogue of drawing a bird in flight. The imagery of the motion is broken down into iterations of the image, and then into strokes, emphasizing that the whole is created from smaller interconnected parts, just like the scientific body of knowledge has been created from the contributions of many individuals. Finally, this idea is extended to student learning by comparison to flowers, another natural object, the growth of which is a direct product of its environment, just as students do not learn in a vacuum, but in a deeply sophisticated web of interconnectedness.