31 Days

3/09/2008 05:25:00 pm

Working online has made me more digitally literate. More than that, as I share what I've learned with others in various workshops and presentations I've been struck how my thinking about teaching has evolved to include a storytelling element and become more and more visually based. I've begun to think differently. flickr is the place I go looking for inspiration and metaphors to use in my classroom each day and in the presentations I give.

A number of people I know have taken D'Arcy Norman's lead and joined his 366 Days flickr group. Many report that after a while they experience a change in the way the view the world around them. I don't think I have the stamina to go 366 days (and I missed the start date for 2008) so I'm trying out my own experiment. One picture each day for the 31 days of March; taken with my cell phone. March is a month of dramatic change in the weather here in Winnipeg. We'll see how this plays out in my little experiment.

Also, my students have all begun their first flickr photo assignments for this semester. Since I'm asking them to look at their world differently I thought it only fair that I do something similar. I'm thinking my next photo experiment, in another month, might be to take a photo a day somehow connected to noticing the math in the world around me.

For now, here is the bucket full of photos I've taken so far. New pictures will be added daily and this slideshow will update itself automatically.

I wonder if 31 days is long enough for me to experience the change in visual perception I've heard others describe?

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Darren Kuropatwa

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9 comments

  1. Anonymous9/3/08 19:32

    I make a point of taking a digicam with me wherever I go, every day. I have been doing that for at least a year. I don't always see anything I want to take, but more often than not I do. It definitely makes you see the world in a different way, and makes you see more.

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  2. Anonymous9/3/08 23:46

    It started tonight. My wife and I were out at a lecture and the fellow next to me was taking pictures of the speaker. As he set the shot in the frame I couldn't help thinking: "Aim a little more to the left; it'll look better." ;-)

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  3. Gabriela Sellart10/3/08 14:28

    I've always loved taking photos and in spite of not having technical knowledge, I used to take some memorable photos. But when I started to use a digital cam, I felt I had lost my intuition. It took some time to understand that as the final result was different, my eye had to look differently too. Flickr certainly helped me to notice that. Now my photos are much better.
    I'll be waiting for your photos about the math in the world around you. The math in the world around me is one of the things my eyes don't see.

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  4. Anonymous11/3/08 14:26

    Last year I, whose knowledge of mathematics can be written on the back of a postage stamp, took pics of numbers in the world around me -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/terryfreedman/sets/637584/ -- it's amazing what you start to see. I wrote a blog about it, but it seems to have got lost.

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  5. Anonymous12/3/08 08:25

    I really like the idea of taking pictures for only a month. I too couldn't take the challenge, at least right now, of doing this for 365 days. I think trying it for a month is doable. I enjoyed your pictures. I see an eye for math in quite a few.

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  6. Graham Wegner13/3/08 00:08

    What's that white stuff on the ground? ;-0 I thought about doing something similar but lost motivation mid way through January - doing it for a month sounds more doable.

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  7. Anonymous13/3/08 00:33

    You guys inspired me. Just today I've started my second flickr experiment and I'm crossing it over with this one: taking a picture a day of "Math in the world Around Us".

    Today's image shows one example of how the Fibonacci sequence manifests in nature, in this case, in the way trees grow.

    Ah Graham. If only I were where you are right now. Australia must be beautiful this time of year. ;-) The white stuff is turning black (mud) then it will go to brown (dead grass) and possibly green before my 31Days are done.

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  8. Graham Wegner14/3/08 00:10

    Hmmm... with the drought and the heat wave, I'm not so sure that we're looking that good. But I'll be definitely digging out the mobile phone camera a bit more often. I often use it in class to capture some form of learning unfolding as well.

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  9. Anonymous31/3/08 19:45

    Understanding the way I view the world around helps increase my sensitivity to the immediate moment in my life. I think that this project is great for teachers and students to expereince in the classroom

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