Gears of My Childhood

My Object of Influence and Inspiration

Gears of My Childhood

M.I.T. - Creative Learning - Assignment WK2

There can be no question that my object of choice was a clean sheet of paper. With crayons first, then finger paints and then pencils and pens, my "workshop" or, “drawing board,” was created each time I was presented with a new piece of paper. As I began to focus on learning, I become a visual learner very quickly, translating single topics into an aerial view of topics that could be laid out on a piece of paper. In higher education, I could draw schematics, process models, and demonstrate relationships either with words, or pictures, or graphs or some other visual aid.

The workshop jumped off the sheet of paper and became documents on the computer. No matter where I roamed in research or writing, I always came back to my paper...or papers...or computer documents….that created my evolved "drawing board" of ideas. What started with my piece of paper was the whole idea of capturing ideas and fixing them into a form that could be shared. The paper became my medium for self-expression and communication, learning and demonstrating knowledge as well as pursuing innovation. Composition stemmed from one drawing board into the next in a series of drawing boards at each step of the process, until a finished product was realized.

As I started working with computer programs, my drawing board became an Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Data spread sheets to gather my information and bring it back to documents to work with. Surfing the internet, I found I could bring back links, clip art, quotes, take screen shots, search for graphics and expert opinions. and bring them all back to work with on my workshop (akin to my piece of paper), in any of its forms. The piece of paper symbolized me as a working pallet, all the artistic creations I had yet to form. I AM the pallet, and have been since that first clean piece of paper that was mine to design. It was a mirror of my first attempts to see myself, through self-expression of my own ideas and creativity.

 About the Author:  http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855