Application and Creativity in Our Schools

I believe there is a fault in our school system. What is this fault? It’s a simple as this: there’s little to no creativity. From a students’ perspective, all the classes I take feel extremely linear. In a music class, we learn fundamentals. There’s nothing wrong with fundamentals, as it’s the building blocks to further success in music; or for that matter, anything we do. However, the only way we apply the fundamentals is by playing sheet music over and over again. As a musician, I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. I can play sheet music fine, and it feels easy. I’ve never been asked to improvise, or write a piece of music, so I could apply the scales, dynamics, and bowings I’ve learned and see how they all intertwine together creating a masterpiece.
As a student, I look ahead 20 or 30 years wondering where I’ll work. At that office, the stuff I learn here at school seems obsolete  Sure I’ll end up using multiplication tables to figure out math problems at work, but everything else hasn’t been taught in application. In order to be able to apply that knowledge, I’ll need to have learned how to be creative. I’ll need to know how to build a project from a simple idea, much like creating a science experiment from the ground up. I need to be creative, so I can see how the vocabulary I’m memorizing can be applied beyond the unit test.
According to Mr. Robert Strenberg and Ms. Wendy Williams of the Center for Development and Learning (http://www.cdl.org), creative work requires balance of synthetic ability, analytic ability, and practical ability. Synthetic ability is the talent to come up with new, unique ideas. This ability will help us solve global warming, come up with new strategies to end world hunger, and make more efficient cause. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are great examples of those who have tapped into their synthetic ability. They came up with new, innovative ideas that have changed the world.
Analytic ability can be associated as critical thinking. It is the ability to distinguish your good ideas from your bad ideas, and which ideas to develop into a full blown thesis or invention. These are the people who see where changes need to made, like the scientists who realized there was global warming and said something about it.
Finally, we have arrived to practical thinking. It’s like the sum of the past two abilities. You have to come up with ideas with the synthetic ability and narrow down the good ideas, but now you have to turn them into a reality. Practical thinking is the ability to turn ideas into a reality. You’ll see this at any small business that made it past it’s first year, or the big stores you walk into at the mall. It’s the ability to turn that idea of a clothing store into a national brand, and the ability to make Facebook a worldwide sensation.
A creative person will have all of these abilities; A creative person will not only survive, but thrive in today’s world. In order to encourage the creativity in our schools, this is what I want: Encourage more open-ended projects. When I took art, everyone’s projects ended up as the same style. If you want us to do a self portrait, let us do it on our own terms, deciding what mediums to use, and what style our portrait will be; allow our creativity to shine.
In conclusion, we need to be better suited to survive in the real world. If we build on our ideas using synthetic, analytic, and practical thinking skills, we will learn to apply what we’ve learned and use everything we learn in school, instead of it all being a bunch of irrelevant information that we’ll never use again.

Crestview Blog Issue 1

Why Video Games Aren’t The Cause

Video games (particularly the violent ones) are commonly associated with mass shootings caused by young men. Adam Lanza was associated with being a frequent player of violent video games, so of course, the games are at fault, right? Not necessarily. Perhaps it wasn’t the games, but the fact that he simply wasn’t happy with his life. And it came to the point where he simply boiled over. What we have to ask ourselves is this: “Would he have not done this horrible thing if there were no violent games?” In my opinion, getting rid of the games wouldn’t make a difference. People aren’t going to be inspired by the video games to go out and commit crimes; something else has to push them over the edge.
The United States of America has more gun violence per capita than any other country in the world, and we are one of the biggest investors of violent media. But South Korea and the Netherlands spend around twice as more than the US on video games, yet have significantly lower gun violence rates than the US.
Why is it that video games are mentioned so much in the media? Personally, I think it’s because it’s an easy target for media and officials. Instead of focusing on that persons family and social behavior, it’s easy for them to blame the violence on “Modern Warfare.” And before you dismiss this idea as a radical young person’s opinion, consider this: in the past, comic books were considered to violence and strange behaviors in its young audience. Also, television shows have been blamed for crime waves in the 70s and 80s. So are video games just the new way to blame the media? I think so.

This Week In Technology

This week, Sony held a press conference announcing the PlayStation 4, the next generation home console, as well as a handful of games to be released with the system this holiday. The console will feature many abilities that allow you to enhance your experience, such as the “PlayStation App”, which allows your phone to become a second screen for your console.
How it effects us: Beyond the high prices come the holiday season, the PS4 will unlock a whole new layer of storytelling for game developers. The PS4 will allow larger, more detailed worlds, and characters that seem more alive, making stories seem all the more immersive.
Google released information on their new virtual reality eyewear dubbed, “Google Glass.” It appears much like a pair of glasses, but has no lenses and has a small display screen in the top right corner designed to not block your vision. The glasses will be able to send text messages, record and stream your point of view to friends and family members on a computer, and even translate your speech. Currently the only way to get your hands on it is to fork over $1500 to Google for a meetup in one of 3 cities for a demo. Expect the Glass to hit shelves Q4 this year at a still undisclosed price.

How it effects us: The Google Glass will not only affect the standard consumer, but others as well. Surgeons could pull up a patient’s medical history on the spot, firefighters could pull up layouts of buildings and their position within that structure in real-time, and police officers could check liscence plates with a simple command.

The Petition by Kaykicing

Why do they call them “answers” on a math test? Or really, any test for that matter? How come they can’t be called “impressions”? That’s a more agreeable term for me. So, it’s not a wrong answer, it’s just someone else’s point of view, or “impression”, right? Just make sure you don’t have a dumb impression.

Editor’s Note:

Welcome to the first edition of the Crestview Blog! I can’t thank you enough for reading and supporting the blog. It’s been a journey getting approval from Dr. Scheulen to make this blog, as well as learning to make a site that’s halfway usable. I can say that getting this first post out of the way is a relief. I hope you enjoy this edition as much as my fellow writers and I enjoyed making it.On another note, you might have noticed this issue is a bit short, so if you are a Crestview student and want to be a part of this blog, send your articles to us following the directions in the “Submit an Article!” tab on the homepage. We’re working on a way to submit feed back and post comments, and hope to bring that to you soon. Enjoy the first issue of the Crestview Blog! Finally, if you are viewing this as a Crestview student, read this at home or on a teacher’s account to enjoy the Youtube videos and other multimedia.