COURSE SYLLABUS 

Creative Thinking Experiences

Catalog description: 2 graduate hours

This course is designed to create an atmosphere where participants will learn to see differently, and change their creative thinking process by changing their perception.  Participants will experience a mental shift, as well as getting personal working skills under better control through the uncovering of drawing abilities.  They will also engage in critiquing media and learning to involve children with their environments.

Knowledge Bases Rationale:

Educators can learn to see differently by changing their perception, thereby increasing their creative thinking process.  Participants will experience a mental shift and will possess the ability to creatively problem solve.  Untapped skills, including the ability to draw will be pursued.  Though beginning students may have little or no drawing skills, in the end a high degree of drawing skill and an even higher level of creative thinking will be achieved.  Participants will also engage in critiquing media and learn to teach children to respond to their complex environment.

Course Objectives:

1. Provide participants with a variety of techniques to expand visual and mental perceptions

2. Introduce participants to the concept of right brain thinking

3. Provide participants with a progressive set of drawing techniques with which to prove changes in perception produce direct results

4. Provide participants with skills to find creative solutions to personal and  professional problems and get working skills under better control

5. Provide participants with skills to incorporate perceptual concepts into their individual subject areas

6. Provide participants with skills needed to re-evaluate their own subject matter, design an implementation plan to improve teaching techniques to answer the needs of  more students

Benefits/skills:

1. Participants will learn to change their visual perceptions and preconceived ideas, through a more direct way of seeing

2. Participants will experience an increased awareness of perceptual changes, and the positive effects on personal growth

3. Participants will learn to draw from simple line drawing to complex portraits, as a means to an end: not an end

4. Participants will be able to involve students in their own classroom, in the critically recognizing and responding to their complex environment

5. Participants will experience an increased confidence with regard to their individual artistic and creative abilities

6. Participants will be able to trouble shoot ineffective teaching techniques used in the past, and have the skills to perceive their subject matter differently, and reconstruct an effective program involving each of their students

Supplies: no. 2 pencils, eraser, drawing sketchpad (larger than 9X12), small bottle India ink, small watercolor brush, mirror, color pencils (optional)

1. Comparison of right and left brain mode characteristics

   1. Experiencing the shift form right to left brain thinking

   2. Class activity

      1. drawing without direction

      2. drawing with directed criteria

   3. Using the power of the whole brain

   4. Steps of the Problem Solving Sequence

   5. Research biographies – personal perceptions

   6. Think and Grow Rich - Chapt. One

2. Meeting edges and contours

   1. Preparing the brain to see

   2. Think and Grow Rich - Chapt. 2 &3

   3. Drawing as a means to an end - not the end

      1. a more direct way of seeing

      2. dealing with comparisons

   4. class activity

      1. drawing upside down

      2. drawing without looking at work/ looking at work

      3. photograph profile of yourself

3. Logical light and shadow

   1. Believing what you see

      1. seeing better and seeing more

      2. alternatives

   2. Class activity - negative space

   3. “Biography” of F.W. Woolworth

   4. Think and Grow Rich - Chapt. 4

4. Understanding perception

   1. Learning thinking

   2. Moving from broad to narrower concepts

   3. Principles and Elements of Art/ responding to art

   4. Think and Grow Rich – Chapt. 5 & 6

   5. Critique of outside assignment

   6. Class activity – finish drawing partial portraits

5. Dealing with objectives and constraints

   1. Removing labels

   2. Seeing each other

   3. Think and Grow Rich – Chapt. 7

   4. Class activity – portrait profiles

   5. Submit biographies