Ladies and gents, for your entertainement only

One of the biggest frustrations when you have outstanding ideas is that unless you are able to clearly articulate them and “sell” them to your audience, no one will see the value of it.  This is essential especially in the world of work.

So I’ve found a framwork that could help you when you’re considering how to organize your ideas so that they can be clearly understood on the other hand.  It’s called the “six ways to organize your ideas”, simply enough.  Instead of using definitions, I’ve just copied the example with trying to organize the ideas about a car, to illustrate.  You’ll probably be able to infer quickly what each organizing principle means.

 

Organizing Principle:

 

Chronological
Arrange according to the order in which it is made: weld frame, assemble engine, insert seats, dashboard, etc.

Geographical
Arrange parts according to where the raw materials come from: glass, plastics, metal, etc

Dialectical
Best Part: personal transportation
Worst part: polluting

Concentric
General overall picture of weight, overall size
Specific picture of each component part

Functional
Many systems: fuel, braking, drive train, electrical, navigation, etc.

Allegorical
Personal freedom; power;
Smelly, heavy dinosaur

Technology mashups

 

Business (application) mashups

 

Music

 

Film/animation

 

Education/Information

 

Jokes aside, here are a few tricks for not staying online more than necessary :

(1)  Set yourself a precise objective when you go online.  Ex: find out about some topic you need to research, make 1 blog entry, answer to your emails.

(2)  Set yourself a time limit from the start.  Ex.  I will stay only 30 minutes.

(3)  Have something planned right after so you are not tempted to do something else.  This is true of all habits you’re trying to modify: the key is to find substitutes.  For instance, instead of Internet, I’ll read a good book in a warm bath.  Or instead of eating something unhealthy, I’ll find out recipes that are healthy and yummy.  Then when you think about it, you won’t think of what you can’t do but of what you’ll be doing instead, which makes it so much more appealing!

 

 

One more reason to dream,

To learn,

To inspire,

To be touched by beauty,

To explore,

To imagine…

 

I never knew there were some subdivisions between levels of giftedness, and double-giftedness, but I had never framed giftedness in 6 different categories, with distinct needs.  A very interesting article  published by Alla Kondra talks about how giftedness is not just one big category but rather a collection of sub-groups that have varying needs:

-  Successful gifted children, who are labeled gifted at school and succeed very well

- Challenging gifted children, who are angry with life and rebellious

- Undergroung gifted childrend may not have been recognized by their school or environment as being gifted and who may not understandand utilize  their gift fully

-  Dropout gifted children often drop out because they are unchallenged and under-recognized in their school environment

- Double-labeled gifted children may have disabilities (physical, emotional, etc.) that make it harder to spot their talent

- Autonomous Gifted Children, who are independent, self-confident and successful in their studies

 

For each of those categories, the author explains in more details how to identify the type of giftedness of children or ex-gifted children, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to best encourage them.

You can read the entire article here.

Here are some videos that exploit the ideas of multritracking and of split screens. Little explanations before we start the fun:

“Multitrack recording (also known as multitracking or just tracking for short) is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole. This is the most common method of recording popular music. In the 2000s, multitracking software for computers became widely used.” (Wikipedia).

“A number of music videos have made creative use of split screen presentations. In Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video a number of freeze frames are shown in split screen. Video and film director Michel Gondry has made extensive use of split screen techniques in his videos. One notable example is “Sugar Water” – Cibo Matto (1996), where one side of the screen shows the video played normally, and the other side shows the same video played backwards. Through careful and creative staging the two sides appear to interact directly – passing objects from side to side and visually referencing each other.”

If you think this was very cool, you can investigate on “multi-layered visuals”.