bloggy-tag Archives - Successful Blog

The Kids with Cameras in the Merle Hay Mall

April 28, 2007 by Liz Leave a Comment

Get Creative

It happens at banks. It happens at hotels. In this story it happened at a shopping mall.

The assignment was that students were to phorograph examples of specific attributes of creativity. Students were sent in groups to several malls in the same city.

Someone thought she was in charge of the ~~world.~~ the Merle Hay Mall. She stopped the students and sent them away. They were told they had been belligerent in HER MALL. Here’s a quote about it.

My students were incensed by her accusations. For starters, groups at other malls did not have run-ins with mall security. If questioned, they explained the assignment and the guards did not hinder them. Second, belligerence (like beauty) appears to be in the eyes of the beholder, because they felt harassed by the guards from the second they came into the mall. Third, the individual store owners from whom they asked permission were thrilled to have their store featured in an assignment about creativity. And finally, I went back to the mall and photographed their posted code of conduct myself. There’s no mention of a photography ban listed anywhere.

The question was: How would I respond to that if I were the teacher who made the assignment? Please remember that I have the benefit of hindsight and knowing what’s already been tried.

This lady is obviously a high-structure person. She sees things running one way and gets thrown terribly when something new gets added to the mix — no matter what it is. She’s probably read about terrorists taking pictures of buildings too. She added two and two and action was her defensive response.

I would have put the problem to the students as a question of creativity. How might we use creativity to get to the solution we want? This could be fun.

Looking at the problem from another angle. What would make someone hold onto the keys to the mall so tightly? How might we creatively get her to give them up with a smile? The answer lies in making her feel generous and important. How hard is that?

Let’s say that we invite her to lunch or for an interview with the class. Maybe we ask to meet with her at her office. I would dress in my best business clothes and bring two or three students dressed similarly. We’d ask her to explain her responsibilities and the breadth and depth of her “kingdom.” We would show appropriate respect for how hard she works.

Then we’d ask if we could take a few pictures of her. Would she mind helping us with our project? How might we work together to get this done? It would certainly be a feather in her cap to be an ambassador to the local school. I would see to it that folks knew about it. Perhaps she would like to send someone to watch the students work?

Yes, this would take extra time to get past the barriers, but it would be such a life lesson. The kids would be learning how to use their creativity to solve a problem that meant something to them and get a chance to “outsmart a grownup” too.

Who doesn’t like to “outsmart a grownup” –especially a cranky one who’s been on a rampage like that?

I bet those kids would come up with a better solution than this in even less time than I wrote this post.

After all, their teacher is the guy who wrote the book, GUST. He could guide them, much better than I ever could.

Click to the “Bloggy Tag Button” to see who tagged me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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How to Write an Outstanding Blog Post

April 28, 2007 by Liz 17 Comments

It Takes ALL of You

What does it take to write an outstanding blog post, one that I look back on months later and still think it’s the best I could write? months after I’ve gone on to write about other things?

Choose to write about your passion whenever you can, but when you cannot, be passionate about what you write.

I write the most outstanding blog posts when I bring all of me to the keyboard to write. All of me is the one who’s been writing for years and the one who still remembers what it’s like to be a kid. All of me means head and heart together in every word. It means taking time to make sure that I’m there. Here’s a way you might do that.

Before you even begin, STOP.

Reflect on what you want to say. Know in your mind what your message is. Try it on for size. Imagine what you want readers to know, want them to see, want them to feel in their bones.
Give those feelings spectacular words such as breathtaking, exhilarating, compelling, stunning, amazed, intrigued, or entranced. Imagine being a kid discovering this information for the first time. Try to capture the way it would feel.

Those two steps will connect your heart to your head. When you stop to breathe before you write, all of you will be there when you click that first key.

Capture the whole message before you edit what you say. Trust your mind and your heart to give you the right ideas first. Worry about the sentences and the words later. The ideas are what you want to share. Make the ideas big. Make them real. Tell your story by showing your readers what you want them to see.

Use your own voice. Make the words sound like you think. When you read the words through, read aloud and listen to how the words sound. Do they sound like you do? Do they have rhythm and music?

When the ideas are right and the voice is yours, then look at the sentences. Are they long and short? Do they sparkle and shine? Do they say what you mean? Do they feel right? You probably won’t need to do much.

If your heart is with you, don’t be surprised if you find yourself feeling passionate, even emotional, about what you write. To this day, I still cry when I read some of the best blog posts I’ve ever written.

How do you write an outstanding blog post?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Introducing Bloggy Tag — I’m it, You’re it, I’m it. . . .

April 28, 2007 by Liz Leave a Comment

As we established on Monday, a meme is an idea that propagates itself. Memes (rhymes with dreams) got their name from Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene, and are the cultural counterpart of biological unit gene.

I get bloggy tagged often by the pseudo-memes that travel the blogosphere. I’m lucky the bloggy tags that march my way are usually fun and often offer a way they can be made useful or entertaining for folks reading my blog.

On Monday, folks asked me to start a campaign to rename the bloggy memes something . . . um . . . er . . . more appropriate. Unfortunately, I have no faith in my ability or strength to move the blogosphere in such a noisy way.

Heck, I got a passel of Bloggy Tags this week to address. That’s a force to contend with. So I choose to take a quieter route — one that makes sense for me –to formally describe and name what we do and give it a button of its own.

Introducing, “Bloggy Tag.” It’s a scattershot Internet version of the children’s game. Here’s how you play.

Do a written task or answer a question. Then tag 1-5 others to do as you did.

Tag your post with the button shown to the right to alert readers that you’re playing.

Link the button to the post of the person who tagged you, if you didn’t start the game.

Tell your readers to click the button to find out who came before you. It’s a surprise for them.

One cool part of the whole thing is that everyone can tell at a glance when a post is the answer to a tag. We no longer have to write extreme explanations about who made the tag. Once everyone gets the rules down, we won’t have to repeat them over and over either. YEA!

If it works for you feel free to take the button with you and use it the next time you get tagged. Meanwhile . . . this weekend . . .

Bloggy Tag Weekend: I have named this an Official Bloggy-Tag Weekend on Successful-Blog. I plan to catch up on all of the bloggy tags recently sent my way and any I might have missed in the past.

If you have bloggy tagged me in 2007 and you haven’t seen your answer yet, please email me at lizsun2 @ gmail.com with a link to the post that has your tag. Thanks in advance for that help.

After all, we can’t have mutant memes running loose on the Internet. The meme pool could contract a memetic disorder.

That would be bad.

Now on to a few games of tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help with a problem you’re having with your writing, check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.