News2015January
News from the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
University of Massachusetts Boston23 January 2015
Student Matters
Spaces remain in some sections of spring 2015 courses. Non-degree students may register through http://caps-courses.umb.edu/courses/spring/cr/gr/crcrth/.
Hybrid (note class numbers following each course; distance students should register for those labeled as online)
CRCRTH 615 Holistic and Transformative Teaching (Wednesdays 4:00-6:45pm / face-to-face:#7315 / online:#7314)
CRCRTH 652L Children and Science (emphasis on Conceptual Change and Learning) (Mondays 4:00-6:45pm / face-to-face:#7218 / online:#6783)
CRCRTH 653L Epidemiological Thinking and Population Health (Tuesdays 4:00-6:45pm / face-to-face:#7219 / online:#6784)
CRCRTH 688 Reflective Practice (first Monday of each month 6:30-9:00pm / face-to-face:#7220 / online:#6785)
CRCRTH 693 Action Research for Educational, Professional, and Personal Change (Wednesdays, 7:00-9:45pm / face-to-face:#7221 / online:#6786)
Fully Online:
CRCRTH 616 Dialogue Processes (#6781)
Face-to-face:
WGS 597 Gender, Race & the Complexities of Science and Technology (inter-campus course, co-taught by Peter Taylor, meets at MIT, Thurs 4-7pm, place TBA (#13501); application form )
UMass Boston hosts Welcome Week from January 26-30 to celebrate the start of the spring semester. Students attending classes on campus may be interested to join some of the planned activities. See the schedule here:
http://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/student_involvement/activities/saec/welcome_week
CCT Community
In November, Professor Peter Taylor led an external review of a proposed M.A. Program in Critical & Creative Thinking at the University of Nebraska. The program is quite different from our own CCT program in that students pursue two interdisciplinary concentrations from a set of options between a single foundation and a single capstone course. The faculty members were keen and the University seemed very supportive, so we may soon have to change our line from CCT as unique to CCT as one of two programs of this name.
CCT faculty Orin Davis has released a new blog post,
Does innovation require diversity?: http://www.prescouter.com/2015/01/does-innovation-require-diversity/
CCT Events
CCT Community Open House: Connecting and Reflecting with Critical and Creative Thinking (online)
Monday, February 2, 7:00-8:30pm on Google+ Hangout.
RSVP to cct@umb.edu with your Gmail address to receive an email invitation to the Hangout session.
All are invited, including new, returning, and prospective students and others in the CCT community. Please join us as we welcome each other back to the spring semester and reconnect. The online session will include a discussion that allows us to get to know each other and connect around how we have developed an interest in critical and creative thinking and reflective practice.
Upcoming spring open house events are tentatively planned for March 2, April 6, and May 4 or 5.
Spring 2015 Online Information Sessions for the Critical and Creative Thinking Program
Prospective students are invited to join these online information sessions to learn more about the program through informal, relaxed discussion in Google+ Hangout. Enter or leave any time during the hour and bring any questions that you have about graduate study with the program and its tracks focusing on Critical, Creative, and Reflective Practice, Science in a Changing World, and Liberal and Interdisciplinary Studies. Email cct@umb.edu with questions or use the links below to RSVP or join the session.
Info. session dates:
Thursday, January 29, 4:00-5:00pm ET
Thursday, February 26, 4:00-5:00pm ET
Thursday, March 26, 4:00-5:00pm ET
Thursday, April 23, 4:00-5:00pm ET
Register now for upcoming Collaborative Exploration (CE) for February 2015: Whys to look for genes: Pros and complications
Free, online Collaboration Exploration (CE), open to all, in which participants consider what it would mean for the public to be treated as capable of thinking about the complexities that surround the application of genetic knowledge.
.A CE involves four 1-hour online meetings in Google+ Hangout spaced one week apart, with time in between the online meetings for independent investigation of the topic according to individual interest. The day and time of the online meetings will be determined based on availability of those who register early. For more full details, see http://cct.wikispaces.com/CEFeb15, and register here: http://bit.ly/CEApply
New England Workshop on Science and Social Change
Location: Old Fire Station, Woods Hole MA, USA*
Dates Saturday, May 23, 2015, 8:00am through Wednesday, May 27, 2:30pm
Organizer: CCT Professor Peter Taylor
(*a limited number can participate from a distance via Google+ Hangout)
Full details, fees, and to register: http://sicw.wikispaces.com/newssc15
Applications via http://bit.ly/NewSSCa. Target date for applications: 31 January 2015.
In this five-day workshop participants will create spaces, interactions, and support in formulating plans to extend our own projects of inquiry and engagement around "Fostering Critical Thinking and Reflective Practice in Times of Crisis." A wide range of projects might fit under this intentionally broad topic, allowing, in 2015, for projects that are not directly related to science and society. Activities will, as they have at NewSSC since 2004, build on what the particular group of participants contribute and employ a range of tools and processes for "connecting, probing, and reflecting" so as to support and learn from each others' inquiries.
Alum and CCT associates Notes
CCT alums and associates are encouraged to send items of interest to the Critical and Creative Thinking community to be included in future newsletters. Please submit events, announcements, and opportunities through this form: http://bit.ly/CCTSICWi
Events
Creative Oklahoma invites you to sign up now for the upcoming 2015 Creativity World Forum on March 31: https://register.wciconferences.org/ehome/index.php?eventid=107848&
International Conference on New Horizons in Education
Barcelona, Spain
June 10-12, 2015
More information: http://www.taset.net/ and http://www.int-e.net/
The Association of Science, Education and Technology (TASET), Governors State University and Sakarya University are pleased to invite you to the 6th "International Conference on New Horizons in Education" to be held at Barcelona, Spain on June 10-12, 2015. The main aim of the INTE Conference is to bring scholars, researchers, educators, students, professionals and other groups interested in education to present their works in educational sciences.
Deadlines:
Abstract Submission Deadline: May 30, 2015
Registration Deadline: June 07, 2015
Full Paper Submission Deadline: June 30, 2015
The UMass Boston Film series begins on Thursday, February 26, 2015. For a schedule of all of this spring's planned film showings, please see
http://www.umb.edu/filmseries
All films are free, open to the public, and do not require tickets. Many films include additional talks/Q&A by the filmmakers following the film.
Opportunities
Exciting opportunity for graduate student who is interested in academically advanced learners to work with children at the Driscoll School, a Brookline, MA public elementary school "Enrichment and Challenge Support Program", in close collaboration with an experienced Enrichment teacher and mentor. Unpaid, flexible hours, please contact Ellen Davidson, ECS teacher, at ellen.davidson@simmons.edu, 617-521-2549 at Simmons College and 617-817-1632 cell. and/or Principal Heidi Cook, at heidi_cook@brookline.k12.ma.us, Driscoll School office phone:617-879-4250.
South Shore Tutoring Services, Inc (Stoughton, MA) seeking private tutors for children.
Tutors work with children and benefit from a most rewarding work experience helping students reach their goals. We hire individuals with a minimum of a four-year college degree and pay an hourly rate between $20 and $30 per hour working one-on-one with students in the privacy of their homes. We are looking for tutors in all academic disciplines, including test preparation (SAT/ACT, etc.), for students in Kindergarten through grade 12. Please contact Ava Goldman by phone at 781-344-1953, or by email at southshoreclubz@verizon.net.
Call for Papers: Power and (In)Visibility
For more information, see: http://web.mit.edu/gcws/news+events/powerandinvisibility.html
Contact Email: gcws.symposium2015@gmail.com
The Graduate Consortium of Women’s Studies (GCWS) is a unique interdisciplinary program housed at MIT that brings together feminist scholars from nine Boston area institutions: Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Northeastern University, Harvard University, MIT, Tufts University, Simmons College, and the University of Massachusetts Boston. The consortium is devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women’s Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies scholarship. The students of the GCWS are currently preparing to host a one-day graduate studies symposium at MIT on Saturday, March 28, 2015. We welcome papers from all disciplines in gender and/or sexuality from graduate students associated with our member institutions.
This symposium is an interdisciplinary inquiry rooted in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies that explores the simultaneous nature of hyper visibility and invisibility. As intelligibility is relative to (in)visibility, how/why are certain identities (un)intelligible and made invisible or hypervisible? How do the intersections that individuals inhabit become legible through systems of power?
Please submit a 250-300 word abstract to gcws.symposium2015@gmail.com by January 20, 2015. Submissions should be for 15-minute presentations and should include your name, program, university affiliation, email address, a short bio, and up to six keywords. Participants will be notified about the status of their proposal no later than February 5, 2015. Please be aware we are currently unable to provide funding for travel/accommodations.
Resources
The Foundation for Critical Thinking announces the newly established Academy of Critical Thinking. The Academy offers Socratic learning opportunities through direct, and online, workshops and conferences. In the future, The Academy of Critical Thinking will offer memberships and showcase exemplary practices in critical thinking. For more information, please see http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/the-academy-of-critical-thinking/1213
Food for Thought
(additional web links and posts can also be found on CCT's Diigo pages. General critical and creative thinking focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/ccreflect; Science in a Changing World focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/sicwumb)
To Watch:
Is this the most unusual sound in the Swedish language?
Animated “Gif-iti” Is Whole New Way to Look at Street
To Read:
Why Sweden Has the World's Safest Roads
A School for Children—and Their Parents
Man Saves Wife’s Sight by 3D Printing Her Tumor
Art Is Free: Responses to Charlie Hebdo
The Power of Personal Storytelling in Design and Innovation
The Most Isolated People on Earth Want to Stay That Way
‘Cloaking’ device uses ordinary lenses to hide objects across range of angles
A Tree Grows 40 Different Types of Fruit
Want To Be More Creative? Don’t Sleep
Education: Does Differentiation Really Work?
The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People
Hybrid Classes Outlearn Traditional Classes
Killing Your Inner Child
Why Falling Arts Attendance Has Major Implications for the US Economy
The role of empathy in research
Bill Moyers’ farewell message to young activists: ‘Over to you. Welcome to the fight’
What Does “Happy New Year” Even Really Mean?: Physicists engage in a strange debate about whether time really passes
Among the Disrupted: Books, Culture, and Economy
Texas, Textbooks, and the Public Schools
Five-year-old boy gets a bill for missing school friend's birthday party
Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code
Tiny frogs and giant spiders: the best of friends
PERMIE KIDs: A Community of Educational Designers
Changing the Climate Change Narrative
Design Thinking for Libraries: A Toolkit for Patron-Centered Design
Changing Lives with Microloans: http://www.lendwithcare.org/ | http://www.kiva.org/home | http://www.solarcookers.org/
Why we are looking at the ‘value’ of college all wrong
HumorOn Problem-Finding: (Real, or imagined?) problems and the products that solve them (video)