Top 10 NDCE Ideas

10. Converting simple into more compelling. One of the work of art videos put together by one of my classmates that struck my mind, was about Chris Jordan;s artwork. He took something that is not compelling, and created amazing artwork that is so compelling but also had a message behind it. That is the work of art!

9. Being detail oriented. My professional job is detail orientated, however, this applied to creating a compelling experience. Details matter and to create a compelling experience you must zoom in!

8. Being artful in teaching and in your professional job. A lot of what I learned in this class can be applied to my professional job, creating more compelling presentations which would involve my audience.

7. Fashion is how you represent yourself and how it makes you feel. Fashion is unique definition of your identity and how you feel that day. How does this translate to education? Let your students experiment with specific’s of the topic and have them choose their own way how to move forward with the lesson. For example, give them a generic topic that needs to be covered and have the students pick other details of the topic according to their interest. Students will learn so much more this way.

6. The Hook. I have to admit, but I have never heard of a hook. I have never had to listen more carefully to the music piece and pay attention to every single instrument, note, and the flow of music. Again, more careful attention to the flow of music, its tempo, harmony, dynamics and rhythm, evokes feelings in you. How can we evoke feeling in teaching a lesson or giving a presentation? One has to include a hook at the beginning of the presentation which would need to be repeated throughout the presentation which would keep your audience interested.

5. Architecture and design matters to your performance. This module opened my eyes at looking differently at architecture and design. The mood, experience and your job/school performance depends a lot on where you work, teach or where you have a cup of coffee.  This module had taught me to look at the smallest details of architecture that I’ve never imagined existed and how it affected the overall experience of your being as well the overall design of a place.

4. Telling a distinct story with a short video. This was one of the hardest modules. One has to combine a lot of aspects into producing a compelling short video clip. Everything matters, music in the background, idea, the meaning of a story. I struggled to come up with something compelling. However, this class has given me a great experience to create something compelling next time.

3. Photography – zoom in and tell a story. I learned so much during the photography module. Compelling photography is not just taking random pictures; it is about telling a story with your picture, it is about zooming in to your object. In my personal pictures, I like to capture and show emotion of a person. I learned to take pictures with open ended message, where the viewer would fill in the gaps…

2. The real meaning of art. According to John Dewey, art is “To feel the meaning of what one is doing, and to rejoice in that meaning; to unite in one concurrent fact the unfolding of the inner life and the ordered development of material conditions – that is art.” For my Art of Work project, I explained how “Painting as a Hobby” is work of art to me. Art is not the type of paint, canvas or type of technique I use, art is how I feel when I paint and what feeling I create when my viewers are looking and exploring my art.

1. The real meaning of compelling experience. I always struggled to understand the meaning of compelling. After this class and Professor Wong’s explanation during each module, I finally understand that compelling is not something that looks pretty or beautiful or attracts our attention; it is something that makes us think twice about its real meaning, something that has a meaning behind it, something that teaches us something, and something that involves deeper thinking and emotions.

My Work of Art Project

My Work of Art Project.

Imaginative Bridges post on Fashion

This week's module is fashion. I agree that fashion is not only about nice stylish clothes. I agree that it is about creating oneself, forming one's identity and image. How one dresses at work, school, is how one presents himself. How does fashion relates to education? I have been working on a website for children. I have to present/create in such a way that it is compelling and kids want to come back to it. It has to be colorful and well presented, easy to navigate and not only good on outside but on inside as well.

At work, I have I have to dress well since I often have meetings with coworkers, other staff from MSU campus, and I also present. By dressing well, I feel more confident in myself when I present workshops, I feel more stylish, and truly speaking, in a better mood. I believe how you are dressed and how you present yourself is how your speakers will pay attention to your presentation.

I remember one funny thing about fashion. My mom came to visit me from Europe. We went to a grocery store. She actually dresses up to go to grocery store! Once we got to grocery store, she gasped when she saw some people in pajamas, some in sweatshirts and sweatpants. It was an eye opening how differently we understand fashion.

Music Project Video

My music video can be found at:

Hope you enjoy it.

Music - Week 2

As I am working today on this week's project, I really worry about not evaluating the music piece perfectly. I am not a music person and I do not listen to music much. This module gave me different perspectives at looking at a music piece. Some of the important points from this week's reading that were of interest to me were: according to Aaron Copland, the meaning of music, if there is any meaning, must be sought in the music itself, music is a language without a dictionary whose symbols are interpreted by the listener.  I agree with Copland that whatever the music may be, we experience basic reactions such as tension and release, density and transparency, a smooth and angry surface, the music swellings and subsidings, its pushing forward and hanging back, its length, its speed, its thunders and whisperings. As I am looking at the music piece, I will try my best to analyze its flow, tempo, rhythm, and dynamics. I will try my best to analyze the music piece and recognize the feelings it gives to a listener.
I was also reading through my classmates blogs this week and I thought it was interesting how some of them compared teachers to composers. I agree with them. Teachers create lesson plans as composers create music pieces. As composers try to create compelling music, teachers try to create compelling lesson plans. I was thinking what the "hook" piece would be in a lesson plan. It's something that would catch student's interest and keep student's interest throughout the lesson. I would have never compared music creation to lesson creation.

Music in Teaching

I am currently working on creating a website for children where they could learn basic Lithuanian. As I am studying "music" in this week's module, I am thinking how can I incorporate music into my website and teaching. I think children learn faster and memorize better with music. My son who is currently learning Lithuanian did not know much Lithuanian but he knew a few songs and poems in Lithuanian. This helped him learn pronunciation of words and improve his listening skills.
As I am working on a few assignments to teach colors and numbers using iMovie, I am thinking of adding music in the background which will attract student's attention and will keep them interested throughout assignment. The music will have to be catchy and grabbing with the "hook" at the beginning and then continuously repeating throughout the video.
I am also thinking of incorporating the use of Lithuanian songs to teach Lithuanian in my website. The use of Lithuanian songs will teach children grammar, accent, vocabulary. Children will not be forced to sit at the desk to learn vocabularies. Vocabulary can be learned through positive and memorable experience rather than forceful and negative experience. Children will feel motivated to learn the language.

The Work of Art Storyboard

My Work of Art Storyboard can be found at:


The Work of Art Storyboard

The Work of Art Proposal

My work of art proposal idea would be a project about myself and my hobby - painting. A few years ago, I discovered that I like to draw and paint. I am not an expert in painting and I have not done much painting in the past year because of lack of time but when I do have a chance to paint, I really enjoy it. To me personally, painting is a special time to relax. I have to be inspired to paint. It cannot be a scheduled time. I cannot have any distraction around me when I paint and most importantly, my house must be organized.

To me, the compelling experience is an experience of painting itself. To me painting is spontaneous and inspirational experience. 

Some of the forms in painting I will explore in painting are patterns, shades, shapes, patterns, texture, color, type of paint, and contrast. I become inspired by the work of other artists and try to get some ideas from other artists’ techniques to create a compelling artwork for myself or for my family. 

I plan to set a time and make a painting of a tree. I really like nature and I am a person of nature. I like camping, hiking and spending time outside. I have been inspired by all the bare trees in my backyard so I have been motivated to make a painting. I plan to take a day off from work for this particular project because I know that I will not be able to concentrate on this project with my toddler running around. I plan to explore different ways to paint the tree and will explain what experiences were involved when painting. 

Sometime when I paint, I do not have an image in my mind, I paint how I feel at that moment. But sometime I like to plan and paint of something that I thought of and planned in my mind. I will also look closely on how colors create mood.

Some good questions to explore and ask an artist are:

How did you become interested in art?

Talk about something you are working on right now.

How would you describe your style? Why do you find it compelling? 

Are you creative more when you create something for yourself or for others?

Architecture in My Workplace

As this week's discussion is about cubicles vs open space, I thought I would elaborate more in my blog about that. I am not a teacher so I will not talk about bridges between teaching and architecture.

I think the workplace must be designed according to the type of work one is performing. If a job requires a lot of collaboration, bouncing off ideas, creating something, one will be more productive when working in an open space. Someone who is advising students or personal issues or working on immigration documents that do not require creativity and collaboration, would need a private closed space. Our office provides immigration advising to international students, faculty and staff but there is a programing team that meet regularly for event panning, outreach activities, etc. They usually meat in someone's small office or conference room which which does not inspire one to be creative. I think that someone would perform better and come up with many more different ideas if a meeting was conducted in an open space with a lot of natural light coming in, in a room with bright wall colors.

Our office has a small open area, it's an area for our interns who work for programming team. It's a perfect place for interns to collaborate, bounce off ideas, and work on different projects.

I also noticed that when I give immigration presentations in a formal conference room, all students are very stiff and seem scared to ask questions. I sometimes pick a room that has more relaxed environment, open, with comfy chairs, where we can sit in a circle and those presentations are so much more lively, students feel more relaxed and are not scared to ask questions. What a difference an open, well designed space can make!

The Tale of Two Retail Spaces

My video of Two Retail Spaces posted below. Hope you enjoy it!

Architecture and Interior Design

I thought Sarah Susanka's article "Home by Design" was very interesting and I was able to learn more about the relationships between architecture & interior design and the experiences evoked by them. I wish I read her article before buying my house and would have known what to look for in the house.
For the past two years, the office where I work at, has been remodeled a few times. Recently we remodeled our front lobby. We see a lot of traffic in the lobby and we knew we had to remodel it to make it more welcoming, efficient, and usable. I wish I had a picture before the remodeling. The place was very small, with not much seating. So the front lobby was very cramped during our walk-in hours which reflected poorly on our customer service to our international students. In addition to our remodeled lobby, we have remodeled our offices. We were able to choose our furniture and its style so it fits our work environments. We also do student advising in our offices. I think the new offices are more welcoming to our students. I have a bid window in my office which enlivens the room.

Pictures of the front lobby of my office:

More videos!

Last Friday, Office for International Students and Scholars hosted Valentine Coffee Hour. I really like our coffee hour event, it is always lively and I thought I would make a video about it. I think I did a very good job capturing the mood of the event and students having a great time drinking coffee and socializing with old friends and new friends. Enjoy "Valentine Coffee Hour video::

I also took a 10 minute video of myself and my coworker and compressed it on one minute video. This video is called "Just another work day." I think it is interesting video but I wish I was able to take it at the beginning of the semester when we were very busy and show the volume of students we see in just 10-15 minutes! Enjoy:

Ducks in Action

"Ducks in Action"

Director’s Commentary:

One of my favorite things to do on MSU’s campus besides taking walks is to go feed the ducks especially in winter time. I though I would try to making a compelling video about the ducks. I asked my spouse and my son to come with me so they can feed the ducks and I would take a video. They are not in the video. I did not want them to be part of the video because it would distract the viewer from concentrating on my main object of the movie-the ducks.
I recorded about 20 minutes of video with my camera of the ducks. I was thinking to myself how am I going to fit this all in one minute. I was reviewing the videos for a good one to two hours. I realized that there were a lot of redundant shots and they were not compelling at all. What was most compelling to me were the scenes where I captured the docks flying out of the river and flying back in the river.  I was also able to capture video of the ducks trying to catch the bread in the water and because the stream of the water was so strong, they had to use a lot of energy to swim back up or to fly back up to get more bread. What was captivating was their ability to pick up their heavy bodies from the water and their heavy landing in the water. I also noticed the beautiful colors of their feathers, which I showed at the beginning of the video by zooming in very closely to the two ducks just standing there. There were also two gorgeous big geese. There is one compelling these where I zoomed in very close to the two geese and in the background there is a group of ducks flying back in the water.

I used iMovie to create my one-minute video. Once I put all of my favorite scenes together, I realized that I had over 2 minutes of video. I though I would fast-forward some of the scenes which shrunk my video to less than a minute. But when I watched it, it did not look very compelling to me. It looked like a very boring movie about the ducks. Then I thought of showing some scenes in slow motion especially the ones where ducks were flying. And what a difference it made! Their slow movement of the wings flapping and the heavy landing in the river was so captivating.
I also thought a lot about the storyline for my video. When I put all the scenes together, they were just random scenes. It did not make much sense. Then I thought of starting the video with two ducks just standing there and I added a title “Ducks in Action.” At first I show the ducks in action in the river and then show them flying out of the river in slow motion. The next scene has two big geese just standing there and in the background in slow motion a group of ducks flying back in the river. I end the video with one goose just swimming away. I also added the credits at the end of the video.
I shot the video around 5pm in the evening and that gave me the best lighting.
I also added music in the background of the video. I think it goes very well with the video and with the movement of the ducks.
It took me about 5 hours to put this 1 minute video together. At one point I spent an hour working on 10 seconds of video. I made a couple of different videos and I had my spouse and my brother rate them. And they thought the duck video was the most compelling.

Filmmaking

As I was reviewing the readings and planning for my video project, I have a big admiration for film producers and even commercial producers. It does take a lot of thought, time, creativity to produce an hour and a half movie or even a 30 second commercial. 

As I am working on my project, I came up with this question: Does my video need to be informational and teach something or it can be just about anything but produced and presented in a compelling way? I think the purpose of this module is to give us tools and teach us how to produce a compelling piece of artwork. If we learn how to do that, then as educators we will be able to use these tools in our workplace, classroom to teach students the material in a compelling way. 

I found it interesting when reading "Filmmaking and Research: An Intersection" by Paul Goodman, how camera really could be used for anything. Paul Goodman was discussing the role of camera in research for example, to use camera in organizational research. Today, I took my camera to work and I filmed my coworker (whose office is next to mine) and myself for a few minutes just working and also our student/intern area. When I looked at my recordings, I noticed that out office is very busy in the afternoon and not so much in the morning. There was much more traffic in the afternoon than morning. I hope to put that video on my blog later this week.

I also think that sometimes you can tell so much more with camera than with words. I took a video of students/faculty/staff/visitors on MSU campus just walking/jogging/biking and it was so interesting just to observe everyone rushing through the lunch our to their destinations.

As I am designing a website for children of Lithuanian immigrant families I will find the use of camera very useful.

Compelling videos

I think one of the main purposes in film making is to tell a story and bring out involvement and feelings from the audience. If a film maker is able to make a movie where audience can relate to it, that makes it compelling. This reminds me a lot of times when I turn on TV and try to switch through different TV channels. It takes me 15-20 seconds to determine whether the program on that particular channel is going to be interesting or not. Therefore, if documentary or movie maker did not create a compelling scene that I happened to watch at that moment, I will be switching to another channel.

What I learned from this lesson, that it takes so many components to make a compelling video or compelling movie. You have to think of an idea, you audience, how my audience will associate and what feelings will have towards the movie, and what music will I use in the background.
I think it is very important to learn to use compelling videos in the classroom. Compelling videos would leave meaningful and memorable experiences to students that nurtures more creativity and deeper thinking.
I am not a teacher so I do not have examples of using compelling videos in education. However, I work with international students and our office is thinking how to create compelling videos for new incoming international students, videos that would help them to get around Michigan State University and would help adjust to American lifestyle.

More compelling pictures....

I had so much fun with my last week photography assignment, I though I would post more compelling pictures:

Wood in my backyard.

More compelling picture of the woods and the blue sky!!!

Just a pile of wood.

Getting close up picture of a pile of wood makes it more compelling.

MSU's Beaumont Tower.

Not so compelling Beaumont Tower.

Compelling Picture Assignment

I had so much fun with this assignment as I LOVE photography and taking pictures. This assignment taught me that taking pictures is not just about capturing pretty landscape or sunset it’s about telling a story, establishing a mood, capturing someone’s attention.

A couple of weeks ago, our family was visiting Miami, Florida. What surprised me so much that the weather during those few days we were there was changing every hour. We say that the weather in Michigan is unpredictable but Miami weather was even more unpredictable. We stayed in a hotel by the harbor with a very nice scenery. One afternoon, all of a sudden the sky was divided into two parts:  sunny and stormy with big clouds. I quickly grabbed my camera and I was able to get some nice shots. I was able to capture a picture of incoming storm after a sunny afternoon. I think the integration of the boats in the story make the picture look complete. 

I believe this picture clearly shows the intensity of emotion. The picture shows the action of an incoming storm and makes the viewers question, is the storm just approaching or is it over? The contrast of the gloomy and clear sky in the same picture makes it look very compelling. The picture of just a cloudy sky is not compelling as there is really no story behind it and the mood is not captivating.

The shot of the clear sky and approaching storm is well exposed and that what gives it more compelling look.

The diagonal lines of the bridge and removal of the crane makes the first picture more compelling.

The not so compelling picture:

The Art of Photography and Graphic Design

The purpose of the blog is facilitate your learning about the nature and design of compelling experiences (NDCE). Writing down your thoughts and observations is an excellent way to clarify and develop your understanding. We hope you enjoy and benefit from your NDCE blog.

I was very happy when I found out I will have a photography assignment because that's one of my favorite hobbies. I have a three year old so I take pictures constantly. I have over 140,000 pictures on my computer. Our family travels a lot so we take pictures all the time. I carry my camera with me all the time and my friends call me paparazzi.
However, when I was finished all the required class readings and watched the video about taking compelling pictures, I gained totally different perspective of taking pictures. I never knew about the 2/3rds rule or framing or that every picture should have narration and story behind it. 
I started thinking of different ideas where to take my pictures and what story I will tell with my pictures. It was very hard to come up with a good idea. I work on MSU Campus and I thought I could take a walk and take pictures of Red Cedar River or some famous buildings. I am working on preparing a welcome handbook for MSU's international faculty and staff and I thought I would include one of my compelling photos on the cover book. I captured some nice shots of Beaumont Tower but it did not feel like it had a story behind it. On the way back to work I took some pictures of ducks in the Red Cedar River but they were not as compelling either.
Today I stayed home with my sick son and I thought that I could take some pictures of the woods which is right in my backyard. Then I noticed a pile of woods stacked up in my neighbor's yard and so I took some pictures. They were not neatly stacked up and I thought with some editing I can make it a pretty compelling picture.