Yifan's Blog :)

So this week was diversity week and this is what happened.

The first session on Monday (session four) was about stereotypes and why they exist. Why when we think of someone/thing an expectation is immediately formed? Why can’t we just look at everyone with the same open mindedness? I guess it’s just the society that we’ve grown up in; people around us have had these expectations like family and sometimes friends and it sorts off rubs off on us. I think that everyone will have a few stereotypes; it’s just part of our human nature. Then we had a class on multiculturalism, what is culture? Culture for us, was basically everything that made up our lives. From the clothes we wear to our religion, it’s all our culture. We also talked about the culture that we could see and those that we can’t.  The last session was just team projects, in which we got rejected a few more times, no one seemed to want to talk to us…

On Tuesday I had skills workshop first thing and we worked on interviewing. Basically it was about how to be a good interviewer, to let the interviewee tell their own story. We got into small groups and started interviewing each other. I was in a group with Kim, Mai and Frida, because Mai was in our group our interview topic was, Reece Mastin. Mai played as Reece Mastin and answered questions about his (her) career. To be honest though her imitation of Reece Mastin was, let’s say, a bit feminine? It was a lot of fun though and I, personally, enjoyed that session. On this day, a group of students from Ascot Vale Special School came to visit us. We split into home groups and they were also split into three groups. We got to introduce ourselves to them and talk about just what a robot was. The group I was in confirmed that robots were machines that have no brains, no hearts, but can move by themselves (and don’t cellular respirate). Next we got to build a few ‘robots’ for ourselves with lego. It was pretty fun, although we got a bit confused on how to make the design that we were assigned. We also had lunch with them, a barbeque too! After lunch we played a game of poison ball, it was somewhat hard to run because I was wearing flats at the time (should’ve gotten an earlier warning, I would’ve worn proper shoes to run in). So, I got out pretty early in the game, but it was still a fun experience. At the end, we had a group photo with both AVSP students and UHS students. It was really great having them here with us and they’re really nice too. We finished off with another session of team projects.

Wednesday was trail day, I chose the religion trail to go on. It sounded alright on the wiki, but it was actually really interesting learning about the two different religions. First we went to the Coburg Islamic Centre after much travelling and was guided by Sherene. We learned so much just in that one session and I really enjoyed that. When we were going out, we got offered Turkish delights which aren’t normally my cup of tea, but these were actually pretty good. Then we went travelling again to the Jewish museum in St Kilda. After we arrived at the Jewish museum we put our bags in ‘lockers’ and left for the Synagogue which was just across the road from the museum. We had two guides who informed us of how Judaism works and the history of it. After that we moved back to the Jewish museum, just looked around and took some notes. The last thing we did before collecting our bags and leaving was a ritual of sorts. At the end we got grape juice and a bit of special bread that is baked especially for these occasions. In my opinion, both of the places we visited we really interesting to learn about and interact with.

Thursday, we didn’t do much in our team project session; we were getting quite worried by this point because we STILL hadn’t gotten an interview yet… My community service visit can be read here —>6th week of community service.

The first thing we did was sexual diversity and a few of the questions we wrote the day before were answered. Next I had team project which was just as productive as the last session we had, which wasn’t very productive at all. After recess we had two sessions on body image. It was actually a pretty fun session with Carly and the rest of the girls, we talked about our own body image, the body image of celebrities and how they manage to look the way they do in magazines. It turns out that 99.9% of photos in magazines have been retouched in some way or another, which wasn’t all that surprising for me because I already knew those statistics, but really, only 0.1% of photos haven’t been retouched. We also talked about many other things that were really interesting and a lot of the time we were laughing and just having a good time.  For the last two sessions we walked to Royal Park and had a choice between Ultimate Frisbee and taking a relaxing walk. I chose the relaxing walk, we all left our bags with the ultimate Frisbee people and just walked around the park. It was really nice just walking around the park and listening to music with friends. We even got to go to a park along the way! After our walk around, we returned back to the place where we started and got dismissed from there.

What are the similarities between Islam and Judaism?

Some of the similarities are that they believe in Jesus, but not that he was God’s son.
They both don’t eat pork, because of their beliefs.

What are the differences between Islam and Judaism?

Some of the differences are the Islamic pray in a Mosque and the Jewish pray in a Synagogue.

In what ways does religion potentially enhance a person’s life?

It may enhance a person’s life by giving them hope when in doubt.

In what ways does religion potentially restrict/detract from a person’s life?

You may have some commitments that are compulsory for some religions.

In a multicultural society, should all religions be allowed or are some religious practices too extreme to be accepted in Australia?

I think that most religions should be allowed in Australia since it’s a multicultural society and all, although some practices are sometimes frowned upon.

Did you thinking/assumptions about either or both of these religions change following the trail? If so, in what ways?

I guess, yes, in some way my thinking about these religions did change to some extent. I assumed that both religions would be willing to take in just about anyone who wanted to change religions, but I found out that to become Jewish, people are only accepted if they are sure they want to do this, complete many years worth of study and an do exam. This doesn’t change that I still respect the religion.

So that’s it for diversity week.

Yes, this is still only the sixth visit to my community service because last week we had camp so unfortunately we missed a visit.

We set off at our usual time of 1 o’clock and started our walk to St. Vinnies. Along the way, we met another group who were also going to community service: Melinda, Caitlin and Jeffery. I guess we all found it odd that even though we were walking in the same direction, this week was the first time we had seen each other on the way to our community service destinations. We went our different ways after a few minutes walking together, although we could still see them across the road for a while. For some reason our bus that we normally took came early and left just as we arrived at the bus stop, talk about bad timing. Luckily, we weren’t really all that late at all, only a minute or so, so it was alright.

Again, we signed in and this time around, we went to put some clothes on display, which had already been tagged and priced by Zee. There were actually quite a few to put out, I worked with Christine while Ewan was helping another member of the staff. We got that done pretty quickly and went to help a volunteer worker who had come in to help too. She was sorting and pricing some shoes; we sorted the shoes while Christine held the labelling gun and priced the shoes that we had sorted. After we had sorted and priced the whole bag full of shoes we placed them inside a basket and took them outside to put on display. By this time Ewan had finished his previous job and helped us put the shoes on display. Mind you, it was actually quite frustrating work because there wasn’t a lot of space on the racks (if you would call them racks) and we had to strategically places the shoes so they would fit. When we’d finally finished putting all of the shoes on display we once again went into the back room and started sorting clothes like we normally do. Time passed pretty quickly and soon it was time to go again, we signed out and bade the staff goodbye.

That was this week’s community service.

Just a note in advance, yes, this is a really long post , but this week was exciting, so what would you expect? >.<

On Monday it was a pretty uneventful day, we had a session of team project in which our group tried to call the ATMV, but they weren’t there so we left a voicemail although none of us really thought that they’d reply. In the last two sessions we planned for the trail on Wednesday. I was in a group with Xiaoyi, Mai and Kim (with special guest Sharon). We decided to make a brochure and named it Hesse, Hesse, Hesse because I guess Hesse St. is the name of the road in which our trail will focus on. We had to pick 6 destinations to go to and make ourselves a challenge that we needed to complete on the trail. The six destinations we chose were St Vincent de Paul, Rolling Pin Bakery Shop, Vue Grande Hotel, Queenscliff Arcade, Scandinavian Ice-cream and the United Care Op Shop.

Tuesday was the day of the amazing race. So basically we had to make groups of 4 and take photos of places/ objects/ people as listed on some sheets we got. I was in a group with Xiaoyi, Michael and Thomas. The first thing we decided to do was to plan out which of the places/ objects/ people were closest to each other and worked on those first. Our first stop was St Francis’ Church, we took a few photos and moved on to Federation square. After we got to Federation we realised that the photos that we had taken back at St Francis’ Church didn’t have the required amount of people in it, but we decided to head back after we had taken the photos we needed at Federation Square. Next stop was at the Eureka Tower, it was nearly lunch time so went to eat lunch there too (and we got an extra 20 points too!). While going up the elevator to the 88^th floor Michael and Thomas seemed to be a bit unsettled, but right after we got out of the elevator we were all back to normal. At the top floor, we had half an hour to waste so we ate lunch, took some photos and even played a few rounds of 13 (a card game). I don’t remember exactly where we went afterwards, but we did get to visit the occupy Melbourne protesters. At first we weren’t really sure how they would react to a group of school kids asking for a photo, but to be honest, they seemed to enjoy the attention and even passed around out sheets so that they could show others that they were on our list of places/ objects/ people. They were a really nice bunch of people and even asked us to join them in their activities, although we politely refused because we were in a hurry, they didn’t seem to mind too much. Anyway, when it was around 2:45 we decided to start heading back. It seemed like everyone caught the same tram as us and as soon as we reached our stop every one bolted towards the school in hopes of arriving on time. Even though we ran, we were still late by 3 minutes, it would have been maybe 2 minutes, but Thomas and Michael decided to get their bags from their lockers on their way to the loft so we lost a minute but I’m pretty happy about our score. Even though we definitely didn’t win, we did our best and got a higher score than I expected even though we walked the whole way when other groups ran. It was really fun, but tiring at the same time.

So Wednesday was the day we’d be leaving for camp. I was actually really excited about camp, but because the day before was really tiring I slept pretty early, 11 o’clock maybe? I arrived at school at about 8 o’clock and put my luggage in room 163 then went to have some breakfast in the canteen. We waited for quite a while for the bus to come, but that wasn’t a big deal, we were too hyped up to notice. I sat next to Mai for the trip and all we basically did was listen to music the whole way. When we finally got to camp (after a long bus ride) we went straight to our cabins which were ok I guess, they were sort of average, not outstanding, but they weren’t too bad either. After much unpacking, we set off for the trail that we planned previously. We started off near Hesse St which was pretty convenient for my group because our trail was just based on Hesse St so all our destinations were on Hesse St. Our first stop was St Vincent de Paul and we tried to find an outfit to complete our challenge, but there were just simply too many people in the shop at the time so we moved on after just a few minutes of browsing. Our second destination was at the Rolling Pin Bakery shop which looked pretty cool and all, but everything there was so expensive, I guess that didn’t stop Kim and Mai from buying a vanilla slice and caramel slice. The Vue Grande Hotel was supposed to be our next stop although it wasn’t really open to the public on that particular day which was a shame but no matter, we just took a few photos and moved on again. We didn’t really do much at the Queenscliff Arcade because Mai got a bit bored, but the Scandinavian Ice-Cream Company was another story. We spent quite a lot of time just looking at the different flavours of ice-creams there. In the end I chose a single waffle (one scoop) with Mango flavoured ice-cream. It was actually a really nice ice-cream. We sat outside the store for a bit just eating our ice-creams (yes, everyone else in my group got one too). Not surprisingly I was the last to finish, as always. Our last stop was at the United Care Op Shop, there, we bought a top for Sharon because she was unable to come to camp with us. We decided to go back to St Vincent de Paul’s and try on some high heels Xiaoyi, Kim and I tried the heels while Mai looked at some more clothes. It’s pretty depressing, even with high heels on, I’m still shorter than Xiaoyi *sigh*. Anyway, after taking photos of us in heels, we started to head back to the meeting point and from there the whole group walked to a field where we played soccer. I must admit, playing soccer really isn’t my favourite sport and I’m not the best soccer player either so, I guess I helped my team when I could although I didn’t really do much. Turns out that my home group came second overall, which was alright but then again there are only three home groups to start off with. After the soccer we head back to our cabins (got a bit lost on the way) and went to have dinner. I guess dinner was alright although after dinner we had a bit of a trivia night and were put into groups according to the table we were on. It wasn’t really fair because we had a small group of 4 but, it was rather amusing too. Our group came, last, I mean it’s not like we didn’t try, we did, and it’s just that we didn’t really know much about the questions they asked. The campfire came after dinner which was pretty cool although the smoke kept getting into people’s eyes when they walked past. We went back to our cabins to ‘sleep’, but really, we just stayed up to watch a movie: she’s the man. It’s a hilarious movie that we’ve all seen at least once but still, it’s always nice to watch a good movie with friends.

On Thursday we were actually still pretty hyped up even though we had around 4 hours sleep probably less. My cabin got up pretty early, I got up at around 6 o’clock and when I got up everyone else woke up too, it was like a chain reaction…except Mai, she kept sleeping. Breakfast was at 8 so I had heaps of time to get ready. Breakfast was a pretty normal event, it wasn’t really too exciting so I may as well move on. The first activity I had was damper making. We were to team up into groups of 4 (except one group had 2) and we competed against each other to make the best looking/ tasking damper. I was in a group with Kim, Tamika and Adeline. First we split up into groups of two, I was with Kim and Tamika and Adeline were together. We both had a cup of flour and we poured them onto the table (separately) and started to mix a bit of water into it. While Adeline and I knead the dough, Kim started to pour water in and Tamika bought both our ingredients with the money provided in our ‘mystery box’. Tamika and Adeline had jam and chocolate while Kim and I had raisins. We decided to plait the damper so it’d look more presentable, rolled it up in foil, gave the dampers to our instructer and then cleared the table. While we were waiting for the damper to cook we played a few games of Ga Ga Go, which is actually pretty fun when you get used to it. At first I got out pretty easily, but then as we played more rounds it gradually became easier and I even won once! After a while, our dampers were ready and we took them out, laid them on a plate and tried to add some finishing touches. We spread a bit of jam onto the jam and chocolate damper and tipped the rest of the jam next to the raisin damper so it was optional to dip it. Unfortunately we didn’t win, but that didn’t really dampen our mood. Next we had fishing which sounded quite boring but turned out to be pretty fun. I didn’t actually manage to catch any fish, but that was alright, it was a really good experience. Although I did get quite tanned from just sitting there in the sun…The last activity was snorkelling, which was kind of funny in a way. After finally managing to put our wetsuits on we walked down to the beach and talked about the route that we would be taking. Next we paired up, I was in a pair with Adeline and we were supposed to help each other and always be in contact with each other. When we got into the water, it was actually not as bad as all the other people exaggerated it as, although I did have a bit of difficulty breathing for a bit because I kept forgetting to breathe through my mouth and not my nose, but after I got that under control, it was really fun. While we were swimming we came across two string ray, which was pretty cool. It was much easier swimming with the current and not against it, but both were a really good experience because before that I’d never been snorkelling. When we finally got back to shore and changed back to our normal clothes, the bus decided not to come and pick us up on time so we basically just stood there shivering for a while. When it took longer than 10 minutes we decided to play a few rounds of 13 which were pretty fun. When we got back to camp we had a bit of time to shower or whatever then we had dinner. It would have been enjoyable although Kim got really sick halfway through eating and she wouldn’t eat the rest of her food which isn’t normal for her. We got quite worried and stayed with her in our cabin for a bit before going back to the hall for the variety show. I sang in the talent show with Mai, Xiaoyi and Melinda. Unfortunately we were slightly under prepared so we made a couple of mistakes, but it was pretty fun anyway. The rest of the variety show was pretty funny and the acts were great! The campfire was lit again but this time there were marshmallows too. Luckily none of mine were set on fire although I saw many others leave theirs in the flame for too long and it caught on fire, I found it rather humorous. No offence intended to those who did have their marshmallow set on fire though. It was generally a good night. This time we didn’t sleep quite as late, but I did stay up until nearly 2 o’clock which was alright for a camp night.

Friday was the last camp day, sadly. I already packed a bit before going to sleep so there wasn’t really all that much to pack, although the room was still quite messy. After breakfast we broke up into groups of B3 and S3. We (B3) went to the beach first and just had fun there. The beach was actually quite fun although at some point Mai just came up to me while I was standing in the water and started splashing me with water. I couldn’t really be bothered doing anything back because she was already wet and because it was the last day of camp, just relax. Our last stop was at the Marine Discovery Centre which was slightly awkward at times, but I guess it was alright. After that we had a bit of a gathering and a few photos, but then we got straight onto the bus and started the journey back to school. Camp was amazing, although the lack of sleep at camp took it’s toll after I got home.

What were your personal highlights?

My personal highlight was when we were around the campfire, we were all there and it sort of showed how much like a community we are.

Did you learn anything new about students or teachers?

I’ve learnt that even though the teachers may seem to be strict they do have a funny side to them…sometimes.

How do you think the experience of camp will affect how the Galileo community operates?

I think that the camp experience just brought the Galileo community closer, I guess we know more about how different people work and their strengths and/or weaknesses in some cases.

So, this week’s focus question is Melbourne: fair enough? This week’s question has been set out so that it’s very open and it needs to be narrowed down so again, we’ll need to break this question down even before we even start. Define fair. The definition of ‘fair’ in dictionary.com is just: free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice. That will be the definition of ‘fair’ that I’ll use for this focus question, I know it may not be the most accurate, but there are many different definitions for ‘fair’ and I apologize in advance if this definition isn’t the one you’re used to. I’d also like clarify that I will be talking about the fairness in terms of the law system. Although the system of law is also a very broad topic, it’ll be the topic I’ll be talking about for this week’s focus question. In my opinion, I think that Melbourne isn’t necessarily fair or not fair, it really depends on how you look at it and how different people with different needs see this system of law.

So basically the law applies differently for a homeless or disadvantaged person and people who are financially stable and aren’t disadvantaged, let me explain. Let’s take an example from our visit to PILCH (The Public Interest Law Clearing House), they help those who are disadvantaged and cannot afford legal help, so they give legal help to those in need for free. While we were there, our tour guide, Liz, explained that if someone was eating and drinking at a restaurant they wouldn’t be breaking any laws, whereas if you saw someone who was homeless and was eating and drinking on the lawn, they would be breaking many different laws at once, even if they are only sitting a couple of metres away from each other and are doing the exact same thing. It just shows that your status really does contribute to the way law affects you and that if you’re of a slightly lower status than some people then the law can run against you, but if you are of a slightly higher status than some people than you can use the law to your advantage.

To be completely fair, we would most probably need to have a communist society and everyone would have to agree to that, which is very unlikely. In a communist society everyone is the same, they have the same wages and same social status even though they may be working in different jobs. This would be a ‘fair’ system of law, but we don’t have that, we have a democracy which supposedly allows everyone to have a choice, to have a say in what happens to our country. Even though that seems to be a pretty ‘fair’ statement, but this still only applies to most of the population, not everyone. To those who are able to contribute to this, we can agree that it’s pretty fair for us, although still not all of us get our say on what happens. While at PILCH we decided to ask some of the lawyers there: ‘is Melbourne fair? (Law wise)’ we asked six people and of those six people, four of them said that Melbourne was somewhat fair, but it depends, one said that it was fair and the other said it wasn’t fair at all. I’m not implying anything, but those were just the statistics we gathered.

As our tour guide, Liz, said, ‘If you have connections, are rich and have a good education, it’s easier for you to get let off in most cases.’ For example, when you’re in a court room, even if you are guilty of an offence, as long as you have a good lawyer, you have a good chance of getting let off. But, if you’re in a court room and cannot afford a good lawyer, you might be passed as guilty even if you weren’t actually guilty for that particular offence. You do have different organisations helping you if you are disadvantaged and there are always others who will cheer you on, even if you don’t really know them, they could just be someone on a helpline or maybe someone at PILCH.

So, my conclusion is that, as long as you are of a high status, the law is a bit more ‘fair’ towards you, but if you are of a lower status, then, the law may not be as fair as it is to those of a higher status. It just comes back to how you’re doing financially and socially, even though we’re all human and supposedly equal, the law will lean towards those who are better off, but I’m really just sitting on the fence here. I cannot argue that Melbourne is fair, or that Melbourne isn’t fair and that’s my conclusion for this focus question.

References:

• http://www.pilch.org.au/
• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fair
• http://www.enotes.com/law/q-and-a/what-difference-between-fair-equal-law-fair-expand-102509
• resources.education.tas.gov.au/item/…/LawinAustralia_print.doc
• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/communism

This week was justice week and this is what happened this week.

On Monday we were introduced to law, what law system we use, how it works and why we have it. We questioned if the law we have at the moment was the most efficient. We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both our law and other laws that could have been our law like for example: no law, the law of God/s and the law of the king. In all the scenarios there were more disadvantages than advantages, maybe there ARE actually more disadvantages to these systems but then again, maybe we’re just pessimists. In the last session of the day we were introduced to our action project for this term, it actually looks like a lot of fun and surprisingly we got a lot of work done in this session and established what we’d be doing.

Tuesday started off with two sessions of the skills workshop which was activism. I’ve learnt that even though you are only one person, you can make a big difference to the world. In session three and four we played a game to do with distributive justice. We started off in groups of three (one group had four) and we needed to make the most money, by making shaped out of paper and selling them to Chris, the banker. We needed to make the most money to win. My group consisted of Conor, Tamika and myself. We started off with a sheet of white paper, a sheet of pink paper (which was worth double the amount of white), a ruler and a pair of scissors. To be honest, we didn’t have the best strategy, although I guess some of the lost time was because either Kevin was trying to make a deal (which he pulled out of many times), Chris kept changing the prices of the shapes and the group next to us, who were having a civil war and we really couldn’t concentrate on our tactics. It was pretty fun though and I guess I’ve learnt that the stock market is ever changing and your wealth may be just out of luck. In the last two sessions of the day, I was in the global poverty class, it was actually pretty informative and I’ve learnt that, no matter where you are and how we evolve, someone/ people will always be in relative poverty because everyone will have different jobs, different salaries and different ways of life.

Wednesday was trail day again and this time we went to visit the choir of hope and inspiration (formally named the choir of hard knocks). They were a group who were either homeless or disadvantaged and decided to come together to form a choir. They did quite a few singing exercises and encouraged us to join in. After the exercises they sang ‘angels’ by Robbie Williams, I remember singing this song in primary song in the choir that I had joined there, they were incredible. They also sang a few others songs, but half-way through their rehearsal, they invited us with them. It was somewhat embarrassing and I’m really not the best singer out there, but it was nice to join in with their rehearsal. We had lunch with them which was really lovely of them to invite us, the food there was good although I didn’t really finish all of it (I ate too slowly unfortunately). We went to PILCH (the Public Interest Law Clearing House) which gave free legal help to those who can’t afford it. It was pretty interesting learning how it worked and asking the lawyers there if Melbourne was fair or not.

On Thursday, the only session I had was a team project session. In this session, we continued to work on both our options trail and our action project. It seems like we’re finally getting some work done. My community service visit can be read here —>5th week of community service

Friday was the last day of justice week and the first thing we did we was meet up at Flagstaff Gardens. I was there by about 8:20, which was sort of late considering I had planned to be there by 8:00 (my train was delayed). At the magistrate’s court, we first had a bit of an insight on how the court worked and got to speak to one of the magistrates who worked here which was a privilege. We got to roam around from courtroom to courtroom for a while. The most interesting courtroom was court 17 for me, I guess it was because I could actually understand what was happening. It was about a guy who owns a store of some kind and got attacked by two men. He was going through the cross-examination when we entered which was really cool to see in real life although at some point the lawyer got denied by the magistrate, it was quite humorous to watch even though none of us laughed out loud.

Has your understanding of ‘Justice’ become broader during the week?

Yes, I think that my understanding of justice has become broader during this week, we’ve had many different informative sessions this week and it’s been really interesting to see the ways people deal with justice.

What are the major things you found yourself thinking about and has your understanding of Melbourne and/or the world changed as a result?

I guess the main question I was asking was: is Melbourne fair? Which is just our focus question, but it’s such a vague question to ask that we need to break it down and focus on one bit at a time and the activities definitely helped with answering this question. So yes, I think that my understanding of Melbourne and the world has changed.

That’s it for this week’s reflection. (:

This week we were early again, although not as much as last time. This time we decided to start our shift a bit earlier than we were assigned to. After signing in, we were led to the back room and got to sort out, price and put the bric-a-brac on display. We worked together to price all the things fairly, to be honest, I’m not very good with coming up with the best price, but if I ever had any doubts with the pricings I could ask Zee to approve. It was good to have a change from the usual sorting, tagging and pricing of clothing. We finished the rest of the bric-a-bracs halfway through our shift and so we went back to our usual sorting, tagging and pricing of clothes. Once again we all started off sorting the clothes, but when the rack was full of sorted clothes, it was Ewan and I who tagged and Christine priced (seeing as though she was the fastest at it and she had memorised all the different categories and departments). We worked pretty efficiently with a few jokes on the way, which made it a bit more bearable than it normally is, not that it’s unbearable normally.

That’s it for this week’s community service.

So, this week’s focus question is ‘are we getting more or less creative?’ I guess to be able to answer this question; we need to define ‘creativity’. According to dictionary.com one of the definitions for creativity is: ‘the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, and interpretations.’ About ten years ago, the visionary educator Sir Ken Robinson was invited to advise the British Government. A politician took the opportunity to lecture him. “T he problem is,” the politician said, “You can’t define creativity.”“No,” Sir Ken replied, “I think the problem is you can’t.” Ken Robinson’s definition of creativity was that creativity is a process to have original ideas that have value. I will use Ken Robinson’s definition of creativity because it is simple, but as I’ve said before, there are many different definitions of creativity. Another thing we need to determine is what sort of time frame we are looking at, are we looking at the different generations or the different stages of life? I’ll be talking about creativity throughout the different generations and how it has affected the world. In my opinion we are getting more creative as time passes and I will explain I have come to that conclusion.

All the time we are making new things that have value, we use these things in everyday life. If you look back let’s say 110 years to the year 1901, King C. Gillette invents the safety razor and Willis Carrier invents industrial air conditioning. Although these may not seem like very important objects, these people had thought up something that had otherwise not existed. It fits into Ken Robinson’s definition, they processed these original ideas and have added value to them. These objects have been modified and improved to make it even more efficient as our technology advances. Take ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image) for example, they’re always looking for different ways ‘the moving image has emerged and evolved as a powerful creative medium’. We are always developing new ideas and from those ideas, new technology is made although many of these ideas haven’t been completely successful.

People are always demanding new things, we want better designs, better games and whatnot but who are creating these things? All of these inventors and designers of sorts are being ‘forced’ to think in a creative sense, to make more products/ designs. Perhaps it’s because of the pressure we put on these designers/ inventors that motivate them to think up new ideas to satisfy this society. Nothing is ever completely good enough and so people will always demand designs that are more ‘creative’ or interesting than the last. The pressure is always on because we have already created so many different things and so when you are asked to create something that is completely different to anything else that is already out in the market and has value, you need to think outside of the box. You would need to think without boundaries and still come up with something that the people will appreciate and use. When we have less to work with, we have to be more creative, how else will we be able to keep the new ideas coming in?

People may argue that consumerism is ‘killing’ our creativity. Nowadays people have been distracted by, things, wanting, finding, buying these things. Shopping has now become somewhat like an addiction to many people, you are determined to buy this particular item, you can shop around and bargain, but when you look back, you think where’d all my time go? Generally, we tend to procrastinate when things get a bit difficult and there isn’t a simple straight answer that you can get, although this just may be a stereotype because lots of people may not procrastinate as often as others. So instead of actually creating things, we just tend to buy/want what other people have already made. While consumerism can serve as an addictive substitute for the stimulation of creative activity, it offers nowhere near the same reward in the long term.

People have asked, is art part of creativity? If so, then what is art? When we went to ACCA (The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)for a trail, our tour guide, Annabelle, stated that there are many different definitions of ‘art’, but the one that she came up with was: ‘art is a form of expression that cannot be put into words.’ People have interpreted art in many different ways and so creating different styles of art. At ACCA Annabelle introduced us to Peter Friedl’s exhibition, which was where some costumes were laid out and we were free to put them on and ‘be’ the artwork.  Instead of looking at art, we were experiencing being the art, being observed at all times. It was just another creative way of expressing art, something that the more ‘traditional’ paintings we saw at the Ian Potter Centre didn’t have, although they did have a few interesting paintings there. The majority of the artwork at the Ian Potter Centre were paintings, there were a few sculptures, but none of the exhibitions were incorporating the viewers, unlike at ACCA, we got to be part of the artwork or even ‘be’ the artwork itself. Even just looking at art, you can see that through the years, people have been exploring different ways to express their art, making their own artwork unique to the rest.

Creativity is something that has really always been a part of our lives, even going back more than 100 years you can see that people have always been continuously creating more things. As time passes we have greater demands and higher expectations so the things that people create now are more suited to the needs of the people in the 21^st century. So, those were the reasons why I’ve decided that our society now is getting more creative, hopefully I’ve clearly proven my point, but it’s up to you whether or not you think we are getting more creative.

References:

• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creativity
• http://the99percent.com/articles/6775/is-consumerism-killing-our-creativity
• http://nextness.com.au/creativity/creativity-what-is-it-who-has-it-and-how-can-we-get-more/
• http://www.gocreate.com/history/ra20.htm
• http://www.acmi.net.au/
• http://www.accaonline.org.au/

Achievement

For achievement I’d give myself a 70.

Rubric for 80:

Honest reflection on progress (or lack of) with regard to four of the student’s stated goals. All required homework tasks have been attempted, are consistently completed at a high standard and display some improvement. Contribution to Team Project demonstrated an ability to work independently and with initiative.

I try to be honest when writing my work and I’ve completed all the homework tasks so far. When in team project groups I try to contribute to the group discussions and offer some of my own opinions and ideas although sometimes I’m just presented with a task to complete.

Attitude and behaviour

For attitude and behaviour I’d honestly give myself a 70.

Rubric for 80:

• Incorporates teacher feedback into future work
• Joins in class discussions/activities without being prompted
• Responds respectfully to points of disagreement
• Always brings necessary materials
• Always on time to class

I normally try to improve my work by incorporating any feedback I get from both teachers and students, when disagreeing with a point I try to be respectful. I normally bring all things we need for class and I’m hardly ever late. Only sometimes do I join in with class discussions without being prompted, but that would be the only thing I’m unsure of.

So, this week was art/science week, we got to choose which topic we wanted to do this week, I chose art.

On Monday we started off with an activity which was meant to stimulate our divergent thinking. We had to make groups of 3 and write down as many different uses, for the object Carly read out, as we could in 10 minutes. I was in a group with Sharon and Kim, we waited in anticipation while Carly handed out pieces of paper for us to write on, and there was a moment of silence when Carly paused before saying the object we needed to write about, it was a brick. As soon as Carly had read it out, everyone was frantically writing down all these different uses on separate pieces of paper, it was a really intense, but fun 10 minutes. At one point our group ran out of paper and had to ask for more, we wasted precious seconds for that. At the end of the 10 minutes Carly asked each group to count the number of uses there were, a group was yelling in triumph when their group got a number in the high 60’s, but when it came to our group, we proudly announced that we got 91 different uses for a brick. The prize was chocolate, in addition to the satisfaction of winning. After that, we just did a bit on team projects.

Tuesday we had skills workshop for the first two sessions, which was courageous conversations. We had to do a few role plays on some situations in which you need to be courageous and assertive with. After that we did a few activities on cold calling and also did a role play on this, with a few different scenarios to choose from. In the next two sessions we learnt about work experience and whatnot, although it wasn’t very beneficial for me because I can’t do work experience next year… Next, we had two sessions on, basically, what is creativity? We got into groups of three and had to order several pictures of art from least creative to most creative. My group and I didn’t really have the same views of what was more creative than another, but we did have a mutual agreement on what the order would be, eventually.

Wednesday was trail day; we went on a trail to many different places, one of which was ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art). Our tour guide (Annabelle) showed us a few of the many different exhibitions that were there. We sat in a small circle and had a discussion on: what is art? Everyone had a different way of interpreting art and gave many different definitions. Annabelle talked to us about the history and the possible meaning behind each exhibition, some of which we got to try out and experience for ourselves. It was actually quite fun, being part of the exhibition. After ACCA we split up into groups of three which we had chosen beforehand. I was in a group with Melinda and Xiaomin, first we went to Bourke street mall to make our own art, although it did take a while to get there because of the rain and wind kept blowing our umbrellas backwards, even though it was frustrating I couldn’t help but see the funny side to it. When we arrived at Bourke Street mall, we found a blank wall and sat down next to it, brainstorming different ways of using the wall to help with the making of our art. Before we left school we had already brought with us several sheets of A3 coloured paper. In the end we agreed on cutting letters out of the paper and sticking them on the wall, spelling: ‘How creative will U be this Christmas’. It was really fun creating our own masterpiece in the middle of the city, lots of people stopped to make out what we were writing or to ask us some question while we were making it. When it finally finished (after an hour of cutting and sticking paper onto the wall) we sat back and admired our work, it was pretty cool, I must admit. Our next destination was the Ian Potter Centre, it was basically just an art gallery where what you would call ‘traditional’ art was showed. Half way through we lost Melinda who had wandered off into another exhibition, but we didn’t really do much there. Our last stop was at ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image), it was really fun, interacting with many forms of the moving image. After that, we met Carly outside and reflected on what we did that day.

Thursday was an alright day, I was only at school for one session which was just team projects and not much was really done in that session. During lunch time, I left with my community service group to our allocated community service placement which you can read here –>4th week of community service.

On Friday we started the day with a session of team projects, in this session we actually established where we were going and who we would call to organise the interview. Unfortunately we didn’t get enough time to do any cold calling, but we’ll be sure to do that in the next team project session. The session after that was one on convergent thinking, the opposite of divergent thinking, or the ‘cousin/sibling’ as you could put it. We incorporated Socrates’ questions into a little activity, we got into groups of three (I was in a group with Sharon and Kim) and allocated roles for each person, you were the questioner, defender or observer. The questioner’s role was to ask the defender some of Socrates’ questions, the defender’s job was to answer the questions without contradicting themself and the observer’s job was to just observe and write the whole conversation down. It was actually a pretty fun activity and we got to show exactly how argumentative we can be without contradicting our own statements or hesitating for too long. The rest of the day was left for a trail, we needed to take photos which corresponded to sayings that we were given; it was really fun trying to think up different ways of looking at the sayings.

How are you going with your goals? Reflect on your progress (or lack of) with respect to your chosen goals:

I think that I’ve already touched on practically all of my goals in one way or another, as I’ve said before (here —>my goals for galileo). My goals for Galileo were:

• Communication

-I’ve communicated to teachers when in trouble and I guess with team members too when in confusion.

• Writing blogs

-I’ve been writing on the blogs for the whole term and I think that I’ve learnt a whole lot more about blogs than I would have by myself.

• Reflecting

-Every week we do reflections and the feedback that I’ve been getting has definitely helped with my reflections.

• Melbourne streets

-Every time I go on a trail I learn that much more about the streets in Melbourne, because we go to different places every week.

• Edublogs

-Using Edublogs this often has definitely helped with my understanding of the site.

• Society

-I’ve learnt a lot about the ways of society and how it works through Galileo and I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

• Social awareness

-While on trails I’ve (hopefully) been more socially aware than I have been at the start of Galileo.

• Team player

-While in Galileo we need to work in groups and I’ve tried to be a co-operative team member.

• Open minded

-I try to be flexible with the program and anything that comes my way really.

Reflect on your understanding of the role that The Arts/Science plays in our society. Did it develop over the week? Give examples:

Yes, I think that my understanding of the role that the arts play in our society developed during the week. I’ve learnt a lot about the different ways art has contributed to our society, for example we went to ACCA (The Australian Centre of Contemporary Art), and the tour guide (Annabelle) showed us how some of the art has contributed to society and how people reacted to it. I’ve also learnt that the arts are actually a really big part of society and you can’t really remove it without lots of controversy.

That’s it for this week.

This time for community service we left school at our usual time of 1 o’clock and set off to the bus stop. We ended up catching the early bus again and arrived at St. Vinnies 15 minutes early. The round about seemed like a good place to go to pass a bit of time, so we went round again.

When we entered the shop at the designated time, we signed in and went back to sorting out the clothes. This week they were short of staff so we weren’t visited a lot by the staff. This time we also gave out the roles for each person, we would start off all sorting and putting the clothes on clothes hangers (making sure the clothes hangers were on the right way around) from a huge basket of clothes. After we had sorted out the whole basket, Ewan and I would tag the clothes while Christine would categorize them into their respectful categories. We worked quite efficiently and time passed quickly. By the time we’d finally finished sorting, tagging and categorizing all the clothes from the basket, it was already 3 o’clock. Zee came in for a bit to give us some more clothes to sort; it was already 3:15 so we finished the last of the clothes and signed out.

That’s this week’s community service