What’s The Big Idea? CEP 818 Playing & Transforming Definition and examples Deep play involves manipulating objects without worrying about abiding by rules. The main purpose of deep play is to learn more from unexpected results. Most inventions came to light due to the playful character of their inventors, or indirectly as most people would say. Basically, those inventors were ‘fooling around’ with their devices or ‘toys’ when something unexpected happened. Had they not been ‘fooling around’, or ‘playing’, they wouldn’t have come across those unexpected outcomes. When the German physicist Roentgen evacuated his tube of air, filled it with a special gas and passed an electric voltage through it, he wasn’t really expecting anything in particular. He was just ‘fooling around’ to see what would happen. Transforming, on the other hand, is making sense of those unexpected results and turning them into something useful. It’s the ability to create something from unexpected results. When Roentgen saw the green colored fluorescent light after covering his tube with black heavy paper, he didn’t stop there and say, “Well, that’s strange.” He tried to understand what he had just seen and put it into practical use. Roentgen transformed his discovery into an invention crucially important to the medical field.
Roentgen at work.
Created by: Jean-Claude Aura
X ray tube
Date: November 2010
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What’s The Big Idea? CEP 818
X ray image so essential to the medical field.
Impact on my own personal life I am by nature playful, and this has helped me a lot in my life. When I took up the piano, my sister had started a year before me. Before taking formal piano classes, I used to sit at the piano and try out different musical combinations. After 7 years of formal training, I started losing interest as I was no longer playing for fun or for myself. Rather, I was playing for some concert or for regular visitors. Like Feynman, I started losing interest in the piano because I was no longer deriving any pleasure from it. Unlike Feynman, however, I quit the piano altogether and took up another hobby for the same fun the piano had once provided me: carving on mirrors. All the same, when I started selling my little mirrors to schools (for First Communion, graduation, …), I sold all my mirrors and quit carving. I only kept the ones I had made for fun! I was too little back then to understand this sudden loss of interest in hobbies I once loved. Morale: When I take up a new hobby, I make sure it’s for the fun of it. Whatever I learn from this hobby would be for sheer satisfaction and nothing else.
Impact on my ability to teach creatively My students notice my playfulness and welcome it with open arms. I never go about a lesson expecting anything in particular. This may sound odd as teachers have to stick to objectives and curricular outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that these are not in the back of my mind. I just don’t mention them to students, as traditional schools expect teachers to. The following Created by: Jean-Claude Aura
Date: November 2010
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What’s The Big Idea? CEP 818 example on blogs showcases my approach. We all know that blogs are a major educational trend nowadays for their interactive aspect. When I initiate my students to blogs, I don’t particularly mention that they will posting assignments for others to see and comment on; that would be daunting! Instead, we start off by creating blogs and everyone starts ‘fooling around’ to see what blogs can do. Step by step, they figure out that they can post things for people to read. So, they start by introducing themselves. Luck would always have it that some student would ask if it was possible to reply to someone. Bingo! Sooner than they know it, these students would be replying to each other for fun. Not long afterward, students would be posting their assignments and others would be commenting on them. What started as a plaything ended up with an educational boon. Some students went as far as posting some personal problems to seek advice. Others posted some major discoveries to inform their classmates, like where to find the best car deals, or an essay they’re proud of for others to read.
Created by: Jean-Claude Aura
Date: November 2010
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