Some of the best long form reading I have done of late has been on Medium including the Hans de Zwart one on Ai WeiWei (and, apparently, on the entire universe of privacy). I ran across another from my RSS feed this morning by Rob Walker, How To Pay Attention: 20 Ways To Win The War Against Seeing
I have ripped all 20 ways and bulleted them here for your consideration. As we move from consumer to producer and from passive taker to active maker, I think they all bear translation into our lives as teachers and learners. Every one of these is a touchstone to further thought and a manifesto to action.
Here are the ways to re-attend that Walker lists and discusses. I really am using this as a way to get folks into this post. There is so much more there. These should just whet your tongue for the rest of the article.
- Conduct an overlooked-object scavenger hunt …
- a single-color scavenger hunt
- Spot something new every day
- Change Perspective
- Reframe the familiar
- Walk with an expert
- Talk to a stranger
- Let a stranger lead you
- Take a day-long walk through an unfamiliar part of town
- Poeticize the irritating
- Look slowly
- Look really, really slowly
- Look repeatedly
- Repeat your viewpoint
- Just Listen
- Soundmap
- Follow the quiet
- Look at anything besides your phone
- Misuse a Tech Tool
- Care for something
I will be returning to these bullet points all week by adding my own annotations to them using Diigo. Here is the link to these ‘bonus tracks’ although now I am thinking of them more as a ‘director’s commentary’: https://diigo.com/078f8v If you want to join in the active annotation of this post, just join Diigo and then join the public and open Diigo Group that will allow that sharing: https://groups.diigo.com/group/ccourses