Education

Blog / Education / Freedom / Leadership

Emotions, values, children, and school

At my niece's kindergarten graduation Friday the entire graduating class of four-and-five-year-olds sang a song with a chorus "I love America." The song was light-hearted and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. As a thoughtful person, I couldn't help think about what having a whole class sing the song meant. I enjoy playing with ideas and what better time to ponder education than at a graduation? I'll be the first to say the following is a tempest in a teacup. The interaction wasn't that big a deal, but this blog is about values and emotions, with the guiding principle that the better we understand them, especially our own, the better our lives will be. Why not examine them in simple cases so that we know them…

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June 21, 2011
Blog / Education

A review of my seminars

Lillian Chan is an independent film producer and friend who has attended and recorded a couple of my seminars and now my gallery opening. She wrote a few paragraphs reviewing the seminars.

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June 20, 2011
Blog / Education / Leadership

Leadership seminar at New York Academy of Sciences posted

The leadership development seminar I led in April at the New York Academy of Sciences has been posted as an e-briefing. Now you can see me speak where Einstein and Darwin did, or at least they were members. You have to be a member to see the video, but the academy has great events. I recommend joining. You do love science, don't you? Here's the overview of the e-briefing: Overview Leadership coach, entrepreneur, and former physicist Joshua Spodek spoke from a scientist's and entrepreneur's perspective on developing personal leadership skills. The two-day, eight-hour interactive seminar took place April 5 and 7, 2011 at the New York Academy of Sciences and was designed to provide a foundation for the continued development of skills of personal leadership,…

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June 9, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Education / Leadership

Leadership and personal development and school

In my seminar yesterday I mentioned "plays well with others" may be one of the most valuable skills in adulthood for team-based activities. Yet we treat it as a joke for children, or at best a euphemism implying the student in question doesn't do well academically. Have you ever learned something amazing while developing yourself as a leader or person and wondered why leadership and personal development isn't taught in school? School taught me valuable things like math, science, history, and so on. It vaguely addressed things like physical fitness. What didn't school teach? When I lead seminars on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, personal development, leadership development, and such, we cover things like how to motivate yourself and others, how to raise awareness of your emotions…

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June 6, 2011
Art / Creativity / Education

Parsons student linear zoetrope videos

Here are videos of the final non-digital linear zoetropes made by the students in Parsons Submedia collaboration studio in the spring of 2011. The students are superstars. The students' next step will be the display in Union Square, so stay tuned. I took all the videos with my low quality camera phone. More videos are at the course blog. First the grand tour of all the zoetropes in the Arts, Media, and Technology department -- i.e., the tenth floor. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/grand_tour_tenth_floor_zoetropes.avi The linear zoetropes downstairs facing Fifth Avenue and 13th Street at night. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/5th_and_13th_night.avi The linear zoetropes downstairs facing Fifth Avenue and 13th Street during the daytime. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/5th_and_13th_day.avi linear zoetropes that were downstairs back upstairs.   Group 1's linear zoetrope -- the Unicorn.   Group 2's…

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May 27, 2011
Observations on Flow, part II: two improvements
Emotional state resulting from level of challenge and skill
Awareness / Education / Fitness / Models / Visualization

Observations on Flow, part II: two improvements

Following yesterday's primer on flow, here are two simple ideas to bring more flow. If you've read only Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book, they may be new. The Wikipedia page on flow but not Csikszentmihalyi's book covers the first. The second is new, as far as I know, though small. Recall the ten conditions of the flow state (from Wikipedia, citing Csikszentmihalyi articles): Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high. Concentrating, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it). A loss of…

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May 26, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Education / Fitness

Observations on Flow, part I

Do you remember the last time you felt like this musician? You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as if you almost don't exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself. We all know the feeling. We love it. It's one of the great states of being. It comes through many ways -- sports, hobbies, work, conversation, etc. A psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, studied that state and called it flow, now established as a something to be studied and understood. I figure most…

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May 25, 2011
Blog / Education

Thinking about business school?

An entrepreneurial friend asked about business school. I shared the following with him and thought it might be useful for others. As long as it is, I could have written more. I got an MBA at Columbia. It was one of the best decisions of my life -- different than I expected, because I expected an academic experience. I did it after starting a business in the early 2000's. Some people do fine without formal business training. I did well up to a point -- getting the project started, getting people onto the team as employees, investors, suppliers, etc. But I had little to no experience in some important basics: accounting, how to read financial statements, managing teams, and a few other things. Business school…

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May 12, 2011
My next leadership seminar: June 4 and 5 at the New School (jointly with Columbia Business School)
Awareness / Blog / Education / Leadership

My next leadership seminar: June 4 and 5 at the New School (jointly with Columbia Business School)

(Some details TBD, but mark your calendars. The room is beautiful and centrally located. Please contact me with any questions. I'll update details as they are determined.)   LEADERSHIP THROUGH SELF-AWARENESS AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE At a time when businesses and business schools seek to learn from designers and design schools seek to prepare "students to be leaders in their professions and society", cross-pollination between communities over common interests is as valuable as ever. Personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence have emerged as common and fundamental to both communities. In a weekend, learn how to develop these skills using recent advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology in group including the communities of the world's premier business and design schools. Schedule: Day…

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May 10, 2011
New images and videos of the Parsons Displays
Final Fifth Avenue and 13th Street Parsons Student Linear Zoetropes
Art / Creativity / Education

New images and videos of the Parsons Displays

Here are some videos and images of the displays the Parsons students put up in the corner of 5th Avenue and 13th Street. As usual, my camera is not great and my recording ability is worse. Cameras don't capture the medium. The final product also doesn't capture the challenge and work that went into creating the displays. Also, please see the course blog for lots of other images and videos of projects they did along the way.

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May 5, 2011
Art / Education

Update #3 on the Union Square display

We made the minimum on the Parsons Union Square kickstarter project! The project raised $5,017, just over the minimum of $5,000 we set (which is still below the what we'll need, but we'll figure out how to make it). Here's the latest updated we sent out. Update #3: We made it! Thank you! We made it! Just barely! Making it this close ($5,017 out of $5,000) means every contribution counted. Thank you to every one of you from all of us. We appreciate each of your contributions all the more for each one counting so much. We are that much more dedicated to making a beautiful display. Whether you contributed to help make New York more beautiful, to help students, to contribute to art, for…

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April 30, 2011
Update #1 on the Union Square display
Fifth Avenue display being installed
Art / Creativity / Education

Update #1 on the Union Square display

Here is an update to the Parsons Union Square kickstarter project. Update #1: Prototype displays go up in Parsons windows, 5th Avenue and 13th Street The class has been preparing prototype linear zoetropes to be placed in the windows of Parsons' building at 5th Avenue and 13th Street, facing the street. We shouldn't call them prototypes because they are full art pieces everyone in the class participated in creating, hosted by a great institution, on display for the public to see. But they are preparation for the Union Square display, which will be bigger and digital. Below are some pictures of the students completing and installing these linear zoetropes. If you are near Manhattan, please come see them. By this point, most of the difficult…

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April 26, 2011
Art / Blog / Creativity / Education

Tonight’s talk’s map

Here's the mindmap for tonight's Fred talk. Slightly evolved from my last one. Not everything made it into the presentation. Drag it around and click around. To navigate use arrow keys or click white space and drag to move the map click the '+' or '-' icon at the top to resize the map click the "fit" icon at the top (to the right of the '-') to fit the visible part of the mindmap in the space available click nodes  in the mindmap to show or hide nodes beneath them -- dragging, resizing, or re-fitting as necessary afterward [freemind height='500px' width='600px']/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/creativity_map_110423.mm[/freemind]

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April 23, 2011
See me speak on creativity!
Fred Invitation for Saturday. Come!
Blog / Creativity / Education / Events

See me speak on creativity!

See my Fred talk this Saturday, April 23, 7:30pm at 136 Lawrence Street, Brooklyn. From my previous post about the talk (before it was rescheduled to this Saturday): Fred talks are do-it-yourself Ted talks with the slogan "Your friends' ideas worth spreading." Who says you need some huge conference for thousands of people that costs lots of money? You probably learned more from your grandmother than most of your teachers, let alone famous people you don't know. Let's do it ourselves! Sharing locally can do things pristine, beautifully-produced things can't. Who isn't a fan of do-it-yourself community building? A big part of why I'm doing it is that the people behind it give me the feeling they may make Fred talks huge. Maybe huger than…

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April 20, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Education

Values and diversity in higher education

"Does Harvard pay off?" was the title of a thread a friend posted on A Small World (and re-posted on his blog) whether a higher education was worth it. The discussion didn't lead to a full consensus, but many people from within Harvard's community and the Ivy League answered yes for various reasons. Based on my faithfully rewarding strategy "don't look for blame, but take responsibility for making things better to the extent you can," I believe a more valuable perspective than if something is worth it is what you can do to get the most out of it. I wrote the response below, which the author of the thread asked if he could refer to. When I started at Columbia it seemed every sentence…

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April 20, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Education

More rapid life-level changes and an origin of this blog

Another example of a significant life-level change that happened almost instantly came from my performing in Follies in business school. You are capable of the same level of change. The scene was my second semester of business school. I had not performed on stage since third grade, thinking I didn't want to, thoughtlessly continuing my third grade rebellious streak. When a friend told me he was thinking about joining the group, I mentioned I was thinking of writing a sketch for it. The next semester I went to the first Follies practice, in which people propose sketch ideas. They liked one of mine -- the one from the conversation with my friend -- but told me what I was afraid of hearing: they only consider…

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April 11, 2011
Art / Education

Awesome Union Square Parsons art project gaining support!

As I write, the Union Square Parsons art project is gaining momentum -- at $614, we're over 12% of the way there. Supporting art is rewarding! So is supporting students and making New York City a better place for everyone. Your donation counts. Please check out the page to support it! Spread the link to friends. Enjoy me looking dorky on camera! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/492851406/big-beautiful-public-art-by-parsons-class-in-union

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April 7, 2011
Art / Education

Donations begun. You can be next!

Already $178 donated for the biggest best most beautiful public art piece New York will see this year! Student-built! You can be next! Please contribute to this awesome project! See this morning's post.

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April 2, 2011
Art / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship

My next big beautiful public art piece! (please contribute!)

My next big beautiful public art piece will be with my Parsons class in Union Square. You can help make New York more beautiful, give people something to enjoy in their busy days, help students learn and build experience. Visit the project's Kickstarter page and donate! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/492851406/big-beautiful-public-art-by-parsons-class-in-union About this project: We are 18 young talented art students and 2 professors in a class together at Parsons The New School of Design's Art, Media, and Technology (AMT) program. We are raising money to build a big beautiful interactive public art installation in New York City's Union Square. Our goal is to create a dramatic new interactive digital motion-picture display unlike any the world has seen, entertaining and engaging to all New Yorkers for free, in the…

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April 2, 2011
Blog / Education / Fitness / Humor / Nature

The fun side of raw food

One of my raw food friends met these guys who call themselves the Raw Brahs (sounds like Raw Bro's). They make goofy, funny, informative videos about eating raw food, being buff, living a life of abundance, and having fun. They eat tons of food, mostly fruits and vegetables, and are seriously buff. I watched them videotape their antics at a McDonalds in Union Square, which they made fun of. In a few days I guess I'll see it posted. In the meantime, I've been watching and laughing at their videos. Plus salivating at their smoothies and fruits. I'm ambivalent about raw food, but I like having fun, laughing, and enjoying whatever I eat, which these guys do in spades. Check them out.

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April 1, 2011
Blog / Creativity / Education / Tips

Creativity talk mindmap

I've written about mindmaps recently and my upcoming creativity talk on April 10. I thought I'd share the draft mindmap I've prepared so far for the talk. Freemind lets me export to a flash-based mindmap that you can navigate. You can't edit it or see how I edit it to see how fun, useful, and effective it is, but you can see the output. It's an incomplete draft — too long for a twenty minute talk, but at least illustrates mindmaps. To navigate use arrow keys or click white space and drag to move the map click the '+' or '-' icon at the top to resize the map click the "fit" icon at the top (to the right of the '-') to fit the…

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March 30, 2011

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