This was a day to wrap up the seminar.  We started with music, which the Haitians love and I believe that it played a significant role in the success of the seminar. It fits into my intention to stimulate the brain in a variety of ways.  I don’t thinking that thinking outside the box can develop with just repetition of a single type of problem-solving exercise.  We must stimulate different parts of the brain because they will work together.  There is some evidence of that in some of the students’ reports of the connections they saw between different types of exercises we used and also relevance to their own lives.

The journals show a remarkable number of associations of the exercises with things that were never specifically taught.  There were no lectures on any subject matter field.  They were simply asked to think about some subjects and they came up with surprising insights.  I will be posting more of the journal materials in the next few days.  They constitute most of the data we have in English.  The rest will have to be translated from Creole.  We have asked two of the attendees, who did some translation of seminar materials, earlier and they have agreed to translate data for us.  This will take some time.

We took the usual photos of the whole group and the individual work groups.  I will be posting some of them.

They were given a final essay involving questions about the most important things they learned in the seminar and how they see that they can use those things in their lives.  I am eager to see what they said and they will be the focus of our first translation efforts.

The last song we used was the Glee version of Lean on Me.  It is a powerful encouragement for the students to continue to work together.

We collected email addresses from the students and gave them ours.  I promised to stay in touch and send them additional Tricky Qs and What happens next? exercises from time to time.

I also encouraged them to continue to get together and think about ways that they can contribute to the improvement of Haiti.

At Rita’s suggestion we put together a short PowerPoint show to reveiw the seminar.  We ended the seminar with it.  I will post that, as well.

People associated with UNOGA are talking about offering the seminar to all students.  That will require more seminars than I (and Rita) can even consider doing.  There is a young man who works and teaches at UNOGA, who attended the seminar.  He is very excited about it and will be incorporating some of the teaching methods into his classes this fall.  We are hoping that we can find a way to give him some training so that he can present future seminars.

The next work for me is to get the data we collected translated into English so that we can analyze it.  My goal for this week and next is to get the data organized so that we can tell exactly what we have.

After that Rita and I are driving west to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and other interesting places.  I need a break.

Before I end, some thank you’s are required.

First, the students, whose eagerness to learn and delight in the insights they gained, made teaching this seminar a delight like I have not experienced before.

My wife Rita who supported and encouraged me, as well as offering great suggestions for some of the materials.  She also went with me and at times became the presenter of some of the exercises she suggested.  She is my favorite traveling companion.

Dr. Mercedes McGowen, who provided materials from her long teaching experience that I could use or adapt for the seminar.  I thank her for her determination to keep me going at times when I was discouraged, for the long discussions that helped me to get the seminar into focus. and for her friendship.

Dr. Henry Markovitz and his group at the U. Of Quebec in Montreal who provided encouragement and some of the exercises used in the seminar.

Renate Schneider, vice directrix at UNOGA, who gave my proposal the go-ahead, translated some materials, and took care of the many arrangements that had to be made in Haiti.  She also put up with my insistence on checking multiple times that things had been done.  I watched her enthusiasm grow as the seminar developed.

Fr. Medard Laz, our long-time friend who always encourages the good things we try to do.  He is responsible for our involment in Haiti and his financial assistance helped make the seminar possible.

Finally, our children and grandchildren who support us in the things we do, in spite of their misgivings at times when we must seem a little crazy to them.  I have a special thank you for my daughter Maria, fellow educator, who has been very supportive and convinced me that I have information that needs to be disseminated further into the education community.

Thank you all!

Now to get ready for the Grand Canyon and points west.

Bob

Students were finally slowing down today.  They have had 9 days of pretty intense mental stimulation.  I think it’s time to wrap it up, which we will do tomorrow with a short essay that allows them to describe what they gained from the seminar.  We will do a group picture, sing some songs and show them a summary powerpoint presentation that will review the seminar in pictures, video and quotes.  Should be fun.

We started today with the exercise of describing an orange in terms of its effect on their senses, what do you see, hear, smell, taste and feel.  They were very excited about it and eager to tell the class about their experiences.  Here is one of them, just so you can get a sense of the detail they went into.

“The color of the orange is yellow.  The shape is oval.  There are a lot of blemishes on it.  There a spot on the back to show the center of the orange.  When I touch it I find dimples and it is not smooth.  There is a line on the side that looks like the Nike sign and a brown color as a mark.  It smells strong on the top and weak on the bottom.  It does not have the same smell.  When I turn it around in my hand I do not feel the dimples.  When I removed the peels from the orange there was a lot of zest.  It smelled good and strong.   In side the orange there are nine segments of different size.  Some segments had seeds.  It was delicious not too sweet not to salty.  It has a bitter taste on my gums when I finished.”

One student said that it was a beautiful experience because she eats oranges all the time but never takes the time to appreciate them with her senses.

I took them through some fun experiences with a Moebius Strip.  It is made by taping the two ends of a narrow strip of paper (we used a ribbon) together with a half twist.  The first exercise was to use a pen or pencil to make a line down the middle of the strip, keeping it continuously on the ribbon until you return to your starting point.  The second was to use a scissors to cut along that line until you return to your starting point.  The third was to use a new strip to make a cut 1/3 of the width of the ribbon from one edge and keep going until you reach your starting point.  If you want to see what they saw, you’ll have to try it yourself.

As promised, I let them try to build another high tower. I wanted to see the effects of the experience they had earlier building with the blocks.  As expected, they were able to build higher and more stable towers.

By this time they were restless and attention was fading, so we sang a song and sent them on their way.

We spent a little time with Haitian Senator Maxime Roumer this afternoon and gave him a T-shirt.  He was surprised.  We told him some of our experiences during the seminar, then he asked us to move here permanently as faculty at UNOGA.  We declined.

This afternoon we also learned that we will be part of the procession at the graduation ceremony as faculty on Saturday.  We feel honored to be part of the University’s first graduation.

We will be moving to the B&B up on the mountain again tomorrow evening.  We will have very limited internet there and until we get home late Sunday evening, so I plan make my next post from home on Monday.

Enjoy.

I had another bout with diarrhea last night, but several doses of medicine got me back in shape by this morning.  I was a bit draggy and low on energy today.  I hope we can get to Sunday without further incidents.

On Saturday I asked the students to pay attention during the weekend to any ways that what they learned last week affected their thinking about situations they were in or caused them to see things differently.  We spent quite a bit of time recording their experiences.  We learned that last week did have a positive effect on them.  It remains to be seen how much of it lasts well into the future.

Jeremie’s Needs went well. It gave students a chance to think about ways to make Jeremie and the Grand Anse region a better place to live.  The produced more kinds of needs than I anticipated, including infrastructure, health care and on to improving the downtown square and cleaning up the beach.  There was extended discussion about things that could be done now, including various kinds of volunteering.  We challenged them to get involved in volunteer activities before they graduate.

Quick Items:  Keys.  They found this one to be very easy and solved it almost immediately.  Probably has little value.

By this time they were tired and having trouble staying on task.  I let them play games and sing and sent them home a little early.

Enjoy

Report from Haiti 8/22

We moved from the UNOGA guest house on Friday to a B&B called Place Charmant which is located a distance up the mountain.  It is a very nice place with a great view of Jeremie and Carribbean and high enough to have lower temperatures and humidity than downtown Jeremie.  It also had air-conditioning when the state power was on.  It was nice to have some time when we were not sweating.  Unfortunately, the wi-fi didn’t work well and I gave up trying to use the internet.  We are now back at the guest house.

On Friday I continued with the journals and senses.  As I expected, the students have less to add than they did on the first couple of days.  I will continue to ask what they have each morning, but reduce the number of comments I take.

We looked at Tricky Q 8, on the way to the market.  The students like the challenge the present and want me to keep using them.  They are also becoming a bit more savvy about the things that make the questions tricky and more of them are getting the answers more quickly.

The Estimating exercise is too long – I stopped after estimating the size of field needed for planting 100 breadfruit trees. They had to find the surfaces areas of a printed square, triangle and circle, by covering the surface with 1 cm cubes and counting the number of cubes.  The earlier parts of the exercise were not so much of a challenge, but they were intrigued that they could get the values of the areas of triangles and circles that were close to the calculated areas and were aware that the blocks that projected beyond the edge of the shape compensated for areas that weren’t covered.

The concept of estimating the size of a rectangular needed to plant 100 Breadfruit trees was rather difficult.  Some had good suggestions but the needed some coaching to see that one needed estimates of the size of a grown tree and open space needed between trees in order to estimate the size of the field.  We had some problems, I think, with getting them to that I was asking for the dimensions of the rectangle.  After that was cleared up they quickly understood that field could have different dimensions (different numbers of trees in each rows and numbers of rows as long as the area was enough to meet the requirement of 100 trees.

By the time we finished with Estimating, the students were fading after five days of more intense thinking than they have ever done.  The keep telling me to keep the challenges coming.

Report from Haiti 8/23

St Luis Cathedral in downtown Jeremie means that St Luis is the patron of the city.  His feast day is the subject of a large celebration with Masses and partying.  This year had the extra benefit of a visit from Haiti’s first Catholic cardinal, who was recently installed.  Saturday evening we went with Renate to a concert at the cathedral featuring the groups singing at the Cardinal’s Mass on Sunday.  The actual feast day is on Aug 25 (Mon) and feature another big Mass and celebrating all day, so Renate decided that we would run day 6 of the seminar on Sat and let the students party on Monday.  We are happy tohave the chance to experience a piece of the Hatian culture in Jeremie that most outsiders will never experience.  Some of the students tell me they will be tired on Tuesday.

With the late schedule change a few students had other commitments, but most were there.  After the long week, they were a little hard to get start on an exercise, but when they got started they stayed with it and continued to work hard.

I kept the journal and senses feedback short, took a little time to set up their journal and senses exercises for the weekend. I asked them to reflect on ways that the things they learned this week affect their experience of the weekend.  On Tue we will see how that works.

The What Happens Next? exercise was a letter sequence in which they had to find the next letter in the sequence.  Some students got it quickly and most of them got it in a short time.  They are getting better at this.

The Seeds exercise from the Montreal group was challenging.  It took them a while to work on getting all the possibilities.  One group finished more quickly than the others, with a correct number (20) of possibilities and  one member expressed great confidence that they had it right.  I haven’t had a chance to look at it, but I’m guessing that he quickly found a pattern that worked.  They appeared to be working very systematically under his guidance.  One group had only one member present and she opted to work on the problem alone.  It was interesting to watch her going slowly and systematically through the arrangements.  She came up with 19.  The other two groups had a good strategy of trying to create all the patterns using the cm cubes, but it seemed to take them a whiled before they tried to verify their results in a systematic way.  If I remember right, they got 16 and 17 possibilities.  We had a couple of glitches with language and getting them to understand the constraint, but they got results very quickly when they understood.

I would do this one again, for the challenge of finding verifying that they have all possible patterns.

After Seeds, I decided that they had worked hard all week and that they deserved a little fun, so we played some music, and let them play games for a while.

The music continues to be good.  Many students comment that it relaxes them and makes them happy and prepares them for the challenges.  I can’t wait to show you the video of sixteen adults dancing, smiling and shouting as they listened to “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands….”

Some groups like Jenga and get very competitive and they are learning ways to keep the stack standing when nobody thinks it is possible. I have watched games continue for several plays after reaching that point.  Some qroups like Qwirkle.  Some students pick it up quicly and others have a hard time.  The better students are becoming competitive and have learned to applies strategies to make it harder for other players to get points.

Tomorrow we’re off the the Mass and party for St. Luis.

That’s all for now.  More on Tuesday.

Enjoy.

The seminar continues to go well.  The students are enthusiastic and happy to be there, but the week has been intense and I can see them fading a little.  Unfortunately, tomorrow is not the last day of the week.  There is a major festial in Jeremie on Monday that everybody wants to participate in, so Renate decided that we would work Saturday and take Monday off.  I’m not sure that is best for the seminar, but we will have a chance to participate in an important event in Jeremie’s culture.  We are always interested in the cultural festivals of countries we visit.

It is getting late so I will be brief.

The journaling and being aware of senses are going well and students report finding things that are important to them in surprising place and in surprising connections between the different types of activities.  The report that paying attention to their five senses make them more aware of their surroundings.  Some have all also found that they can imagine things like smell and taste.  I keep encouraging them to imagine their future and imagine themselves in it.

The Edible Plants in Haiti exercise didn’t seem to get their attention.  My speculation is that food is less important to them than it is some cultures.  Poverty may also be involved, if getting enough to eat is more important than how it is prepared.  I think their might be ways to change it to make it more useful, but I’ll worry about that the next time I get involved in preparing a seminar.

We also did Trick Q 5, soil in a hole.  Some got it very quickly and after a short time most of them figured it out.

The Bridge Building exercise went well.  The had about 50 min to work with blocks and were able to build bridges with spans of 30-44 cm.  I could see their construction skills growing and they were more efficient and did more planning compared to the Tower Building.  I will try to give them one more time to build an object, but will probably point out some of the features of the blocks that they haven’t discovered yet.  It has been fascinating to see a group of adults on the floor intently busy cooperating in playing with blocks.

Tomorrow afternoon we are going to move up to a B&B called Place Charmont to get a break from the conditions here at the guest house.  We will stay Fri and Sat nights.  We pampered Americans are eager for a good shower and a comfortable place to sit.

Enjoy!

Sunshine 92 deg F  Humid

We had another interesting night at the guest house.  The power went off about 11:00 pm and stayed off until about 5:00 pm today.  Fortunately I was prepared for today and my computer was fully charged.  I plug it in during the seminar, but I want to be prepared in case UNOGA has a power problem.  We were also without water last night and didn’t think we would be able take showers this morning, but Maxo had the water running by the time we got up.  As minimal as they are (a small stream of cold water), they are better than no shower.

Rita is recovering from the bee stings – the swelling has gone way down.  My skin on my face and arms seems to be irritated by the mosquito repellent.  Rita offered me some of her skin lotion and it seems to help. Otherwise we are fit and hardy and keeping up with the seminar.

The student comments on their journals were again interesting.  Several commented on the tower building.

When you build something, you have to have a good base to make it stand.

You can make a start that doesn’t work, but start over and be successful.
You can make a better design and build it quickly, if you work together.
Groups can have the same goal (building a tower) but accomplish it in different  ways.
One student made a connection between a Tricky Question and the process of building a tower and appeared to generalize the idea that something you learn in one place can be useful in another.

The students made an attempt to be aware of their senses and most came up with a situation in which they were aware of one of their senses.  They appeared to like the idea. I will give them more input tomorrow.

The M. C. Escher Waterfall was difficult on several levels.  The copy I had was not as clear as I would have liked.  They had some difficulty understanding what they were looking at, e.g., recognizing the water as being water.  Some also wanted to know where the building was located and what it was used for.  They did see that it was somehow odd.  I explained that it came from an artist’s mind and that it is impossible to build.  I was able to use that to point out that in our minds we can have images of things that are real, things that are possible, and even things that are impossible.  They liked that.

The Tricky Q Rope Ladder was very difficult.  All groups tried to do computations and continued to have difficulty when it was explained.  Rita solved the problem by cutting the bottom half off of a water bottle and floating the cap while we added water. I could see the lights go on.

The HM Route exercise from the Montreal group was very easy for them.  They did enjoy showing off by maximizing the route along the water.  I think this one was too easy and I probably wouldn’t use it again.

What happens next:  Woman on road.  A woman walks down the mountain carrying something.  Where is she going?  What happens next?  Today I had each group do their own exercise.  Their stories were significantly different. one was creative and did not have a happy ending.  Tomorrow I will insist that they take turns going around the group, so that all members must actively participate.  I think that I will also make some types of responses (those that are used too much) off limits, to promote creative thinking.

Another good day!

Please leave your comments.

Bob

Sunshine 85 deg F, Humidity 73%

Day 2 of the Divergent Thinking seminar went as well as Day 1.  The students are eager to learn and try to cooperate, even when the language issues make it difficult at times.

I started by allowing students to share something from the journals they were assigned yesterday.  Many were willing to share and I was impressed with what they wrote.  Much of the material we worked with yesterday was reported by at least one student to lead to an important insight by one or more students.  The following are a few of the insights that came up:

This class is not stressful, we are learning by thinking and not by rote, which is stressful.

I learned that different people see different things in the same image.

I learned that a problem can have multiple solutions and that different solutions can be right for different people.

I learned that when we work in groups I can learn ideas from other people.

I learned that thinking outside the box allows you to learn things that can help not only you, but others as well.

We must take time to think to find mutiple solutions to a problem and to study which is the best one.

I am looking forward to seeing how the journals change as the seminar progresses.

The students were introduce to the Tricky Q’s with Q1:  What is the color of the bus driver’s eyes?  They started out puzzled by it, but made up some interesting scenarios before one student figured it out.  I expected difficulty with this – probably none of them had ever encountered this type of question before.  I will keep popping them up and see if they get better with practice.

What’s in a School Bag went easily at first.  Their ability to make the lists was better than I anticipated. They found the request to add a non-school-related item to their list more difficult.  It took some coaching for many of them to move away from seeing the only utility of the bag as carrying items to school.  I collected their lists, but can’t get much information from them, since most of the information is written in Creole.  I think this exercise may be modified or deleted from future seminars.

After the break, the group was introduced to:  What Happpens Next:  Renel buys an airplane ticket to a place outside Haiti.  Where is he going?  Why?  What happens next? This last question is repeated each time it is answered.  At first some students were puzzled.  Then one made up an answer:  New York City.  From there they quickly got the idea and created a long list of things that happened to Renel in his life.  When I told them that it was time to go and asked how it should end, one student promptly replied:  “He dies”!  They thought it was great fun – even Renel, who is in the group.

The educational experience of most Hatian students is of a classroom where the learning is by rote, the discipline is rigid and questioning the teacher, who is very often poorly prepared, will get you thrown out of the class.  I see them laughing and joking with their friends, but in the classroom the do not feel comfortable with humor.  It is hard for me to tell, when I crack a joke, whether they do not understand or are afraid to laugh.  I am trying to convince them that learning can be fun and that it is OK to make outrageous suggestion when trying to solve a problem.  I think today was start – they had great fun having Renel get married and have 12 children.

Haiti has very few textbooks that are written in Creole and often classes have no text or written materials.  While Haiti has a rich heritage of internationally known and respected poets and writers, the students have little exposure to their writings.  Their is almost no children’s literature available to introduce them to story-telling.  A second goal of these exercises is to introduce them to making up tales, even crazy ones.  I hope those skills and the freedom to express offbeat ideas that goes with it can be transferred to solving problems as well as making life more fun.

The Tower Building exercise I borrowed from Dr. Mercedes McGowen.  She used it to build math skills in underachieving high school students.  I used the first part, which is to build towers (stacks) of blocks 4 blocks high using two colors of blocks.  The objective is to build as many unique towers as possible and explain how you could be sure that it was the maximum.  The students worked in 4 groups.  All 4 got the correct number, 16, but used different ways to make their argument.  Two groups arrived by seeing a pattern that they could build and knew they were finished when the pattern was complete, but they used different patterns.  A student in the third group recognized that they were looking for all the Combinations of 4 items taken 2 at a time.  The fourth group had the sixteen towers built and made the wrong guess that it is because 4 is the square root of 16.

It was another example of a problem that can be solved in multiple ways and required some analytical thing in the process.

I stopped at this point with Dr. McGowen’s exercise and add a different tower building problem.  The blocks are small, 1 cm, cubes that interlock. The assignment is to build the tallest tower you can with the 200 blocks available.  A tower built with a single stack of blocks more than 12-15 high will not stand on its own.

This exercise went better than expected.  All 4 groups huddled around their blocks, trying various ways to stack them and failing frequently.  The had intense discussions and then proceeded to make some structures that worked.  By the end of the half hour we had left in class, the had built 4 towers ranging in height from 43 cm to 59 cm. There was some good engineering in them and I could see some of what they had planned.  They complained that they could have gone higher, so I promised to try to find them a full hour on another day.

The students were tired by the end of the day.  Perhaps its a sign that their brains are burning a lot of calories.

I have more goodies planned for tommorow.  Stop in again for next installment.

I would be happy to get your comments.

Bob

Sunshine, 94 deg F, humid

Update from yesterday.  Last night Rita went up to bed and in a short time came back with a stinger in her finger.  We tracked the source to a bee that landed on her shirt and it stung her as she brushed it off.  We found a large nest of bees in the outside wall of the house next to our room.  With no screen or glass in the windows they were flying right in, probably attracted by the small room light.  As she was trying to put something on her feet, she stepped on a second one and was stung again, this time no stinger left behind.  I got the stinger out of her finger as it started to swell.  The finger is still quite swollen this afternoon and may be getting more so.  Her foot has a small swollen spot, but doesn’t appear to be serious.  She is taking Ibuprofen and we hope that it will start receding.

The seminar is off to a great start.  We were late getting to UNOGA, which isn’t unusual, and got a late start.  After handing out T-shirts, name tags and some materials, I gave them a brief introduction to the seminar and we got started.

As the first event of the day I showed the Quick Items:  M and Arrow slide.  Some people instantly see an M in the middle of the slide, others see four arrows pointing up, down and to either side outward from the center.  The group was roughly evenly split between the two possibilities.  After some discussion about individual differences, in the way people see the same object, we moved on. The students were interested and responsive.

The Make A Wish exercise, asks students to write down and describe something that they would like do or have or accomplish in the future.  They are to describe their wish and how they want to see it fulfilled in as much detail as they can.  Some students found this difficult, as I expected.  I gave it to get an idea of their ability to see possibilities for their future.  I will give it again as a post- exercise to see if these abilities change as a result of the seminar.

The Classroom Arrangement exercise from Henry Markovitz’ Group in Montreal was the first of this type for the group and we had the usual glitches getting everybody to understand the procedure.  There are also some translation/interpreter  issues to be resolved, but they were minor.  Fortunately Haitian students are not shy about asking questions and we got everybody on the same page.  Some of the instructions could be improved for them but their requests for clarification also made it clear that they were thinking.  Overall, very  good for a first attempt.

After the break Rita led the group in song, starting with the children’s song “If you’re happy and you know it , clap your hands.  She used the same technique to teach English when we were last there.  In this context, it is primarily for a little fun and helps to build community in the group.

The hour of the day was mostly spent playing games .  The Haitians have little access to games and love them.  I chose Jenga for this seminar because it involves strategy and helps to build physical intuition – what will happen when I remove THIS block.  One of the 2 groups became very intense at studying the stack and finding a way to keep is standing.  The other game is Qwirkle, which is a relative of dominoes, using square tiles with colors a shapes on the surface, and is easy to learn.  I chose it because it allows strategy, thinking about future moves and fun.

It was interesting to see that some students learned it more easily than others.  I think there is learning value in holding physical objects and manipulating them.  We will have other exercise that involve manipulation of objects and will provide time to play the game periodically.

We ended the day with the introduction of journaling.  Students are to write at least 5 sentences each day about something learned or an insight that they want to remember.  This is a daily homework exercise.  I will not collect these, but we will start each class by allowing a few students share something that they wrote.  I will also attempt to get permission from a few students to share something with me from their journal that I can take home as examples.

A closing comment:  a student told me that the most important thing he learned today was that problems can have multiple solutions and that different solutions work best for different people.

Enjoy.

I have been moving along with the development of materials and added instructor’s guides for several more today.  I have given up on Zaption.  It sounded good and would be desirable, it took too much time to create the tours and technology in Haiti is too iffy to depend on it.  I will have the students use worksheets instead.

Translation is moving ahead with the help of Renate and two Haitian students, Pierre Moise and Pierre Renel.  They are graduation and were busy preparing their final projects.  They are now finished and have some time to help.  I will try to have all the student materials in both English and Haitian Creole and do the same with PowerPoint presentations.

I have purchased a tub of 1000 cubes 1 cm on a side that can be locked together.  Small, but small is good for carrying in my luggage.  I will be using them in several exercises, including Tower Building, Bridge Building, Estimation and Scaling.

I will try to update more often, so keep checking in to see the progress.  We are less than 5 weeks from the start of the seminar.

Late last week I updated the instructor’s guides for the What’s in the Bag and the Estimating exercises.  I have posted them on this site.  They are still marked as Drafts, but I consider them to be close to their final form.  The pattern of the exercise and the use of Zaption are becoming clearer.  Have a look and see what you think.  I welcome comments.

Renel and Moise, the two graduating UNOGA students who are working on the seminar with us, have offered to translate materials into Haitian Creole.  I sent them the first two documents this morning.  It is my goal to have the Zaption tours presented to them in both Creole and English.I am very pleased to have their help.  With some materials in Creole, an interpreter, and some students with some English skills, I think we will be able to communicate well enough to make this work.

Look for another update later this week.