Sunday, October 27, 2013

Lesson 5: Wire Wrapping

Hallelujah! A miracle has happened! haha! I made a flawless piece of jewelry, and... you know what? I enjoyed the process! Will you take a look at this beauty?


Well, ok, it is not that beautiful, but at least it has no obvious flaws and it is wearable. I actually might wear it to class this week. Wink! Wink!

Wire wrapping seemed to have wired my brain properly. (Got it? Wires wired my brain! Sorry, I couldn't resist that pun.) As it seems, the critical period might be over since I notice that my learning curve is starting to pick up. Perhaps, as the book mentions, enough cycles of synapse overproduction and selection happened for a change to occur in my brain. When watching the tutorial on wire wrapping, I was not overwhelmed trying to memorize every single detail. I was actually able to focus on the details that matter and that make this technique different from those I had learned before. 

These alterations that happened in my brain due to learning made my nerve cells more efficient and powerful. I noticed that as I was trying to wrap the wire (even though I did it for the first time in my life), I handled the pliers and the wire cutter much more efficiently. Even though the technique was different, it was much more natural for me to hold tiny beads and pearls and manipulate them to my wanting. 

Finally, perhaps, even the time was a big factor. This is the eighth week or so that I am actively thinking and researching (and learning) about jewelry making. The book mentioned that different parts of the brain are ready to learn at different times. Perhaps I once had the potential to learn jewelry making but that ability has died out as I never did anything about it. However, after spending a significant amount of time working on it, a piece of that ability got revived. 

Perhaps...

In either case, may I just be happy with my new bracelet? Thanks.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Lesson 4: Friendship Bracelets - What Can I Learn from Previous Experience?


A funny thing happened the other day in class. Xavier, Erica and I were talking about our blogs and I mentioned how we used to make these bracelets in high school. It was an absolute imperative for everyone to have, make or give them away. Xavier said: You mean Friendship Bracelets? Upon google-ing them, we realized that all three of us share a memory about this object (or should I say phenomenon?), a memory which originated in three different continents! So, I guess I lied when I said I had had no experience with jewelry making! Oops! Sorry! 

This conversation made me think! Here I am struggling to tie knots between pearls, all clumsy and imprecise, when I should actually build on my prior knowledge. BUT, is my knowledge about Friendship Bracelets relevant to this new learning situation? Can I activate it to an extent that would help me improve some of the more modern techniques I want to master? Or am I perhaps misinterpreting new information because I subconsciously use this experience to construct new understandings? The book says "all learning involves transfer from previous experiences" (p.68). I decided to investigate this sudden memory and the transfer I might be experiencing (Still shocked about that, by the way! Isn't human mind an absolutely fascinating thing? I guess our buddy Martinez is correct in calling long-term memory the warehouse of the mind!).


Here is an image of my first attempt! (Looks like a snake a bit, doesn't it? :P) I used embroidery floss and tried to recreate the Friendship bracelet from my memory, but it turned out to be all curled and twisted. I think I experienced a bit of negative transfer there, because I now have the knowledge of pearl knotting in my mind, which involves one knot only, while the friendship bracelet needs double half-hitch knots to prevent the curling from happening. However, even though I made plenty of these 20 years ago, that detail somehow got erased and the new knowledge hurt my performance in my first attempt.On the other hand, there was a lot of near transfer that helped me work on it almost automatically. I got used to the knots, tension I need to apply and hand movements I need to coordinate. Luckily for me, with bracelet making, "deliberate practice" is doable. The second I make something, I get visual feedback on whether it looks good or not. Not only that I do not want to wear a "snake" around my wrist, but it is all twisty and annoying. Hence, I decided to prompt myself with a Youtube video on how to do this.


This "deliberate practice" as the book calls it provided much better results. Watching a video after making an attempt to make a bracelet actually prompted me to specific details that I was vigilant of, such as the details from my long-term memory that I could not recall and that caused problems in my end product. For instance, how to avoid the twisting situation, or how to buckle it up temporarily. Therefore, my second attempt was pretty good. Finally, progress! :)


Lesson 3: Automaticity

Reading about expertise this week made me work on automaticity. Last week when I worked on my first pearl knotted bracelet the feeling was a bit overwhelming. Hold the pliers! Pull! No, untie the know! It is too far away! Hold the awl! Pull! No, too soon! Aghhhh! 

So I thought why don't I spend this week perfecting the procedure I've learnt last week. There aren't that many steps! It should be fine! The cognitive demands of pearl knotting will change for the better. The burden to my working memory will reduce (Martinez, 2010), and I will be able to learn new techniques quicker once I master holding the tools and tiny beads and pears.

You know how it all makes sense when you listen to the teacher or an expert explaining the procedure? You have no questions! You are ready to go! You even think some pieces of advice are kinda silly (shhh!) so you neglect them (sort of) when you start working on your own! That's what happened this time. I had plans to replicate my success from last time (this time for a present) and try another pearl type.

End result? Complete disaster!


The knots were too obvious (read: ugly!) because the pearls were too small (just like the expert explained in the video!). But the greatest disaster of them all happened at the very end when I only had one step left - to put the buckle. My needle got stuck with the silk inside the last pearl, which made my whole project totally useless. (Need I say, just like the expert warned might happen if you do not match the right tread size with the pearl hole size.)

How curious! As if my procedural knowledge was organized in a completely interrupted and illogical manner. My "big ideas" and principles, as the book calls them, turned out to be irrelevant (Did I miss the main points? Or do I lack experience to be able to form them properly?). I tried avoiding leaning on superficial attributes in my sense-making, but it seems that the relations between concepts in my mind were formed in an inefficient way.

Hence, I started all over again. :( I cut piece by piece of the silk to liberate the pearls. I tried applying my newly gained knowledge to correct my mistakes from the previous mistakes and I made a pretty decent bracelet. Was it perfect? Well, it had one tiny mistake. The buckle does not lock properly, but hey! Progressing from making a completely useless and ugly bracelet to making an almost useful bracelet, I think deserves to be called a success.