2 replies on “The challenges of the creative class for professional writing students”
Glad to see the video blog on the site. Curious if it took more or less time than it might have taken to write up your thoughts. As to the point you make at the end about pumping money into education as a means for sparking creativity, I have to agree with the call for more specificity about what that might look like, especially since you are thinking about creativity. I think the creativity link gets washed out in discussions of literacy and education which tend to boil into skill set thinking that dampens creativity. How can literacy be viewed as process, not skill set, and what is the relationship between motivation and creativity and education geared toward servicing disciplines by building skill sets? The Florida book sounds like it is worth a look.
Thanks Dan. To answer your question. I’d say it didn’t take any longer than doing a text blog. This probably would have been on the shorter side of my blog posts if it had been text. However, I just used the built-in iSight camera and a USB mic (probably could have used the built-in mic) on my MacBook Pro with iMovie. From recording the video to compressing to uploading to YouTube and then putting it on the blog I spent maybe 15-20 minutes.
I think you ask an important question there at the end about how we need to rethink education. Clearly some undergrads go to college in a professionalizing program with the idea of getting specific skill sets (even though those skills sets are quickly outdated in our culture). I think most of us, however, don’t get specific skill sets.
One of the interesting things about Florida’s book is that he rejects the notion of measuring human capital/education simply in terms of “seat time” (how much education have you had?). I would add to that that you could reject measuring education in terms of discrete measurable knowledge (how many facts do you know?). What Florida does focus on are these more humanistic skills. I hesitate to call them skills, b/c we have such negative, functional-literacy associations with skills (and drills). But if we start to think about creativity as a set of skills, as cognitive/cultural practices that can be learned and developed, you’d start to get an idea of what Florida is suggesting.
That’s what we’re about in professional writing. Trying to study these creative skills, particularly those that relate to rhetoric and communication.
Alex Reid
2 replies on “The challenges of the creative class for professional writing students”
Glad to see the video blog on the site. Curious if it took more or less time than it might have taken to write up your thoughts. As to the point you make at the end about pumping money into education as a means for sparking creativity, I have to agree with the call for more specificity about what that might look like, especially since you are thinking about creativity. I think the creativity link gets washed out in discussions of literacy and education which tend to boil into skill set thinking that dampens creativity. How can literacy be viewed as process, not skill set, and what is the relationship between motivation and creativity and education geared toward servicing disciplines by building skill sets? The Florida book sounds like it is worth a look.
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Thanks Dan. To answer your question. I’d say it didn’t take any longer than doing a text blog. This probably would have been on the shorter side of my blog posts if it had been text. However, I just used the built-in iSight camera and a USB mic (probably could have used the built-in mic) on my MacBook Pro with iMovie. From recording the video to compressing to uploading to YouTube and then putting it on the blog I spent maybe 15-20 minutes.
I think you ask an important question there at the end about how we need to rethink education. Clearly some undergrads go to college in a professionalizing program with the idea of getting specific skill sets (even though those skills sets are quickly outdated in our culture). I think most of us, however, don’t get specific skill sets.
One of the interesting things about Florida’s book is that he rejects the notion of measuring human capital/education simply in terms of “seat time” (how much education have you had?). I would add to that that you could reject measuring education in terms of discrete measurable knowledge (how many facts do you know?). What Florida does focus on are these more humanistic skills. I hesitate to call them skills, b/c we have such negative, functional-literacy associations with skills (and drills). But if we start to think about creativity as a set of skills, as cognitive/cultural practices that can be learned and developed, you’d start to get an idea of what Florida is suggesting.
That’s what we’re about in professional writing. Trying to study these creative skills, particularly those that relate to rhetoric and communication.
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