Module 6 Big Idea

Module 6 -- What is the big idea

        As Robert and Michele Root- Bernstein describe in Sparks of Genius, “War games really are practical tools, simulations created, as the U.S. Department of Defense puts it, to mimic ‘military operations involving two or more opposing forces and using rules, data, and procedures designed to depict an actual or hypothetical real-life situation.’ This definition, with minor modifications, could be used to define modeling in any discipline (p.229).” “Modeling requires and therefore teaches many imaginative skills. Models can be formulated only after a real system or situation has been intensively observed, simplified by abstracting critical features, rescaled for human manipulation, and embodied physically or expressed in some verbal, mathematical, or artistic form… Models that render imperceptible phenomena accessible to direct cognition require strong imaging skills. Models that ‘stand in’ for the ‘real thing’ depend upon analogizing and abstracting. Nearly all models utilize dimensional –thinking skills as well (p. 230).”

        When I was doing research for my wikiwiki project, I found a webpage displaying Osnat Tzadok’s abstract paintings, which caught my attention. The paintings are quite abstract, but intense. I didn’t understand why I was strongly attracted to the paintings by merely seeing the abstract 2D lines and shapes until I read the chapter of Modeling. In my mind, when I was looking at Osnat Tzadok’s painting, such as Ocean Deep, I saw the real ocean that is near my hometown in China: dark blue water, strong waves, cold and deep. I also I saw the water’s movement as well the sounds that comes from the wave and the ocean. In other words, the reason I was so attached to the painting Ocean Deep is that I experienced the dimensional transition from a 2D abstract and flat oil painting to a 3D real life experience. Because I was born and grew up in a northern seaside city, I was able to feel the authenticity of the water, the sky, and the waves, as well as the cold and the intensity from the ocean.

        To incorporate this theory into teaching Chinese more effectively, I am planning to apply the dimensional thinking strategy when I teach Chinese characters. In many people’s opinion, Chinese characters are like squares: flat, abstract and complex. What if we looked at the characters from a different angle, for instance, looking at each character and see a 3D picture in it? Take the character 女as an example. Before I teach this character, I can model the character, which is kneeing down on the floor with two hands crossed. For the students, before they learn the abstract character, they are aware and see the real 3D pose of it, so that they are able to transition from a 3D conception to a 2D character learning. Also, for teaching Chinese reading and speaking, instead of merely reading with the teacher, the students can also be encouraged to play-act in order to help them to link the 2D reading contents with their 3D role playing that is related with their life experience context.

        The next creative thinking tool is play. As Robert and Michele Root- Bernstein state, “Play is simply for the fun of it, for the enjoyment of doing and making without responsibility. There is no success or failure in play, no bolding to account, no mandatory achievement. Play breaks the rules of serious activity and establishes its own. Play is frivolous, slandering according to the whims of curiosity and interest. It involves what anthropologies Stephen Miller has called ‘galumphing’ –awkward, exaggerated, even subversive action and the deliberate complication or elaboration of activity for its own sake, whether this involves body movements, and-held objects, symbolically expressed ideas, golf, or microbes. However, to say that play has no inherent goal does not mean that its results cannot afterward be put to good purposes beyond motivating enjoyment (p.248).”

        I always like to make earrings because for me, it is such a fun way to relax. I have been doing it for a few years and I would like to open an e-shop to sell those earrings. Why not? It is fun for me to do it. It will also be fun to see that people like the earrings I designed and weill wear them! This fun habit might lead me to a potential success.

        I did not like sitting in a chair and listening to the teacher’s lecture when I was a student (well, I’m still a student, but this online course provides me lots of freedom and flexibility). Because of this experience, I understand how my students would feel if they were asked to do what the teacher told without having their own time and space to think and play. Therefore, when I teach Chinese, I will encourage my students to learn from having fun and playing. In order to teach the grammatical differences between 要 and了 without solely lecturing that “the former one should be used to indicate future tense; the latter one should be used to indicate past tense”, the students can use whatever way they like to distinguish the differences between future tense and past tense, and then play out the differences! They can either act, which can be fun for younger students, or switch words around and have fun with it if they are older students. Moreover, they can also play as if they are a builder— building their own sentences, and then ask their peers to act it out! I have tried this strategy when I was teaching younger students, and it was so fun! The students certainly enjoyed the play and learned much from it!

Xin Wang