Imagination, Future, Science Images

Imagination

Future Studies

• "The problem with the future is that it keeps becoming the present." (Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes)

• Futures studies (also called futurology) – Study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and

the worldviews and myths that underlie them. – Debate: Is this discipline an art or science? – Concerns a much bigger and more complex world system.

Future Studies• Methodologies

– Use a wide range of models and methods (theory and practice) from other academic disciplines, including: • Economics• Sociology• Geography• History• Engineering• Mathematics• Psychology• Technology• Tourism• Physics• Biology• Astronomy• Theology (specifically, the range of future beliefs)

Thinking with Images

• Thinking with images plays a central role in scientific creativity and communication, but is neglected in science classrooms.

• Fundamental role of imagery in science and technology and our current knowledge of visual-spatial cognition.

• Visual-spatial thinking includes vision-using the eyes to identify, locate, and think about objects and ourselves in the world, and imagery-the formation, inspection, transformation, and maintenance of images in the "mind's eye" in the absence of a visual stimulus.

• Vision and imagery are fundamental cognitive processes using specialized pathways in the brain and rely on our memory of prior experience.

• Visual-spatial thinking develops from birth, together with language and other specialized abilities, through interactions between inherited capabilities and experience.

• Scientific creativity can be considered as an amalgam of three closely allied mental formats: images; metaphors; and unifying ideas (themes).

Thinking with Images

• Combinations of images, analogies, and themes pervade science in the form of "master images" and visualization techniques.

• A critique of current practice in education contrasts the subservient role of visual-spatial learning with the dominance of the alphanumeric encoding skills in classroom and textbooks.

• The lack of coherence in curriculum, pedagogy, and learning theory requires reform that addresses thinking skills, including imagery.

• Successful integration of information, skills and attitudes into cohesive mental schemata employed by self-aware human beings is a basic goal of education.

• The current attempt to impose integration using themes is criticized on the grounds that the required underpinning in cognitive skills and content knowledge by teachers and students may be absent.

Thinking with Images

• Teaching strategies that employ visual-spatial thinking are reviewed. Master images are recommended as a novel point of departure for a systematic development of programs on visual-spatial thinking in research, teacher education, curriculum, and classroom.

• Source - JAMES H. MATHEWSON, Department of Chemistry, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA . Sci Ed 83:33-54,1999.

Master Images in Science

• Boundaries• Branching• Circuits• Containers• Coils• Color• Cycles• Dimensions• Gradients• Groups

• Motion• Ordering• Paths• Points• Presentation• Space• Structure• Symmetry• Units• Data Display & Manipulation

• Encoding• Gestalt• Location• Perceptual Extension• Reference Frame• Signs

Interdisciplinary CollaborationOhio Valley Creative Energy

About The OVCE Arts CenterCapital Campaign Under Way Now

• Sustainable Arts & Education Center • Located near the Clark-Floyd landfill in Southern Indiana• Powered by excess methane gas (Fire Arts):

– Clay– Glass– Metal

• Studios, gallery, greenhouses, and education center• Partners:

– Artists & Urban Planners– Clark County Commissioners– Hoosier Energy – Environmental Protection Agency– Horseshoe Foundation

• Hoosier Energy´s 2 MW electricity generation project provides “green’ energy for over 1200 Southern Indiana homes.

• Vision - Transform the local ecology of the landfill through an eco-vention, or an artist initiated project that will involve the entire community in turning a landfill into a resource for our community. Inspire visitors to consider and recognize their individual ability to have a positive impact on the earth, in our community, and the health and well being of all.

Ohio Valley Creative Energy

• Partnered with 6th Grade class at an urban middle school to create this stop-motion / claymation video about the project

• We Must be the Change we Wish to See in the World. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

http://youtu.be/aQjGQvlceFc

Imagination & Drawing

• Projection into the future of (across content areas):– Biology– Astronomy– Culture– Theology– Politics– Technology– Engineering– Music– Tourism

•Envision a Negative Future•Envision a Positive Future

Collaborate and Design YOUR Future

•How are you, as an educator, already a professional in the field of “future studies”?