Ready,set,jump! Reuse #1

My idea for this blog and the shell of this blog has been around for much longer than this post, my first post of 1000. Why?
 1. TIME It is said that part of the creative process is paying attention to a hunch and letting that hunch or idea incubate. While beginning to process this so called transformation in education, again and again this blog seems to make sense. David Allen has a great quote: "Pay attention to what has your attention".
2. PROCESS Any creative project is by its nature unique and often without structure. Messy. So my first impulse was to try and finalise the format and nature of this blog before I put up any posts. Naturally no posts were happening. Now I realize I need to just start and work out the tangles as they come.
3. FEAR
 This compelling quote from Stephen Pressfield's book, The War of Art  (via Maria Popava) grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me hard onto my scaredy butt and then picked me up again by the hand:

    
 "Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates the strength of Resistance. Therefore, the           more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to  the growth of our soul.”  

And that is why I have started a blog that revolves around a plastic milk container of all things.
So all right, all ready! So no drumroll, it's messy, it's ..but here it is.

Reuse #1 Milk Jug Igloo - A beautifully constructed igloo that reuses 400 milk jugs!!, costs under 30$ to make and provides a fantastic structure for school or home. This Squidoo site provides video instructions, educational tips and other examples of milk jug igloos.

Creativity Defined

    As a starting point to my project, part of which is taking a close look at creativity and its place in education, I thought I would find a basic definition to start with. Due to the very nature of creativity, which is surrounded by terms like "novel", "innovation", "problem-solving" etc., there doesn't seem to be one, agreed-upon definition. I suppose this makes sense, as boxing in a standard definition of the word would go against all things that creativity is generally defined as. The most agreed upon defintion seems to echo that of The International Center for Studies in Creativity  which asserts that, "the most widely used working definition within the field is 'novel and useful' or in other words,

the production of original ideas that serve a purpose. "

I think it is important  to note that the idea can be simply original to the individual or orginal in a much larger public arena, and that serving a purpose can be interpreted in many different ways.

 Reading a little more deeply, how creativity is considered is based on different aspects like PROCESS, PRODUCT, PERSON OR PLACE. These different aspects will be considered more closely in posts to follow while continuing to feature original ideas to reuse the ubiquitous plastic milk jug.