CCT News

25 November 2010

See also previous news, alum news and exchanges, items for the upcoming news, and CCT calendar.
Inform cct@umb.edu if you have news OR want to be emailed when there's a new news compilation (no more than once/month) OR want to be removed from such mailings.

Contents: Student matters, CCT community, CCT events, alums, other events, opportunities, resources, food for thought, humor

Student Matters

Registration is open for winter and spring 2011 courses. See files/courses.html for details and full descriptions.
Winter session courses run from January 3-21. Spring courses start January 24, 2011 (week of Jan. 31st for online courses).

Fall 2010 Marathon Day: Saturday, December 18, in the CCT office W02-093. Come anytime between 10:00am-4:00pm.
Marathon Day is when CCT students complete their required mid-program check-ins, update reflective practice portfolios, focus on finishing Synthesis and other writing, and finish incomplete coursework left over from the semester, with assistance from faculty and other students as needed.
Feel free to bring gift items for swapping--if it's not taken by someone else by the end of the day, it'll go to Good Will

Peter Taylor asks that anyone planning to apply for his Gender & Science PBL course let him know what other days and times is it possible for you to attend the class. (The co-instructor is hoping to find a time different from 5-8pm Thursdays.)

CCT Community

Peter Taylor's blog continues, with (so far) daily entries on critical thinking and reflective practice in environment, biomedicine, and social change.

CCT Events

CCT Community Open House
Fall 2010 Student Presentations - Synthesis and Reflective Practice students
Monday, December 6, 2010; 6- 9pm
Wheatley W01-0019. Email cct@umb.edu to RSVP and for additional details.
Join us and hear about the work of students completing their Synthesis and Reflective Practice projects.
Feel free to bring gift items for swapping--if it's not taken by someone else by the end of the evening, you can take it home or we can keep it for Marathon Day

Alum and CCT associates Notes

Events

Luanne Witkowski's show about environmental installation as sketchbook, November 3 - 28, 2010
KINGSTON GALLERY, 450 Harrison Ave., Boston, MA 02118, Wed – Sun 12 – 5 pm; and by appointment
Directions and more information, see: http://www.kingstongallery.com

The 9th Annual Boston Latino International Film Festival, Dec. 2-5, 2010, http://www.bliff.org/ (Luz Valdez, CCT alum AND filmmaker is helping to organize this.)

Take the ultimate intelligence test to help researchers "looking for the smallest number of tests that could cover the broadest range of cognitive skills that are believed to contribute to intelligence, from memory to planning," http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19592

Conference on Creative Education (CCE 2011) will be held from April 8 to 10, 2011 in Wuhan, China, www.creativedu.org/2011

ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIVERSITY IN ORGANISATIONS, COMMUNITIES AND NATIONS
University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, 20-22 June 2011
http://www.Diversity-Conference.com

Venture: Northeastern was part of Global Entrepreneurship Week activities on campus in mid-November. Sponsored by the School of Technology Entrepreneurship at Northeastern University and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).

Opportunities

Call for Proposals: "Collections and Collaborations," International Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference (Indiana University - Bloomington from March 24th - 26th, 2011, hosted by the graduate students of the IU Department of English)
We encourage proposals for individual papers as well as panel proposals organized by topic. In the past, this conference has bridged the "critical" and "creative," and we intend to host both critical and creative panels. Please submit (both as an attachment AND in the body of the email) an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a few personal details (name, institutional affiliation, degree level, email, and phone number) by Jan. 15th, 2011 to iugradconference@gmail.com
(http://www.indiana.edu/~engsac/conference/)
We hope to receive papers from a variety of disciplines, employing any number of methodologies and considering any time period. Below are some suggestions for possible topics. This list is by no means exhaustive; rather, we hope these ideas might inspire some exciting new thoughts related to the theme - see http://www.indiana.edu/~engsac/conference/cfp.html

Resources

CCT was "unique," but we've learned that there is another critical & creative thinking program... or at least a course in a graduate program (online) from Melbourne, Australia (Peter Taylor's homeplace), http://www.capa.edu.au/roadshows/CriticalandCreativeThinking

A compilation of forms of diagrams
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/xmldb/rest/db/Visualization/editTag.xql?username=chriswallace&tag=spatial

and a most simple example

Food for Thought

Interviewed on the BBC a year or so before his death, [Harold] Pinter was accused of being overly pessimistic about life and politics. He replied... with a line that could stand as his motto: “Life is beautiful but the world is hell.” source

Public workers and perceptions:
http://www.labornotes.org/2010/10/convenient-scapegoats-teachers-firefighters-parks-workers-all-public-workers

Interview with Noam Chomsky for Platypus Review , to discuss the history of the Left and the state of radical politics today.

The Hermitary: a response to the constant connectivity experienced in the modern world

Humor

On blogging, etc. http://xkcd.com/386/

Sometimes a solution comes from an unexpected approach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJHrHQMPFVQ&NR=1

From http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827862.600-feedback-a-most-prolific-falsehood.html
[This disclaimer] "came with the manual for the solar-powered house-number panel bought by Matthew Hilder in Wentworth Falls, New South Wales, Australia. 'Warning: The warnings, cautions, and instructions discussed in this instruction manual cannot cover all possible conditions and situations that may occur. It must be understood by the operator that common sense and caution are factors which cannot be built into this product, but must be supplied by the operator.'"

Know someone who thinks they walk on water?