Learning in the 21st century
About CreativeSpace✧
We believe learning is essential for life and well-being.
Our mission is to support lifelong learning.
Our vision is a world where learning is accessible, enjoyable, and meaningful; where we are equipped to thrive in the 21st century.
We are here to help you reach your learning goals.
✧ We collect, curate, and create resources for learning.
✧ We draw from vetted sources across the web and beyond; many of these resources are freely available here on <https://csapp.us>, our internet home.
✧ We offer a Resource Request Service for people with specific learning interests.
Hello, and thanks for checking out CreativeSpace✧. It is my honor and privilege to be able to share with you the early results of years of hard work, and contribution from many people across a wide range of backgrounds and expertise.
CreativeSpace✧ is committed to supporting life-long learning pursuits, in recognition of the belief that life-long learning is essential to life and well-being. Learning has never been more important than it is today. We presently face unprecedented global challenges, serious economic demands, and unique personal obstacles.
But there is also a profound opportunity to improve our approach to learning; making thoughtful use of new technology and hard-earned insights into how people learn. Simply put, we have to rapidly improve our ways of learning if we are to thrive in the 21st century. Fortunately, people around the globe have already begun to take up that task.
With your consideration and support CreativeSpace✧ is poised to contribute in legion with life-long learners across the globe who seek to improve the way we learn about ourselves, our society and the world we inhabit.
Cameron Sow
General Manager
CreativeSpace✧
Cameron Sow is a life-long learner and polymath with 10 years of experience in the field of education. He has worked in the learning departments of Adler Planetarium and Shedd Aquarium, and has led professional development workshops for Adler as well as Chicago Learning Exchange. His primary expertise are in learning sciences, curricula development, and the collection, curation and creation of resources for learning. He is an alumnus of Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy and a board member of Chi Hack Night, a civic technology non-profit in Chicago.
Letter from the General Manager
Our Approach
We collect, curate, and create resources for learning.
Our approach to curatorial, collections, curricular, and creative have their respective nuances, but are collectively referred to here as ’our approach’.
The term ‘resources’ includes multimedia resources like videos, audio, interactives, and explorables.
Our approach is distinguished by a comprehensive set of processes, refined over a decade of navigating and cataloging the world’s most substantial digital collections for curricular, curatorial, and programatic use.
Our approach involves extensive research, reference to a range of subject matter experts, formal institutions, creators/teams of creators, and more.
We have a stringent vetting process which includes clearly defined standards and criteria, general heuristics, special considerations, multiple layers of quality assurance, expert counsel, and periodic process review.
Some of our methods, processes and operational approaches are proprietary. We are committed to periodic audits by a third party, and community review.
Our approach is informed by current and historical literature; academic, editorial, journalistic and otherwise. We pay close attention to developments at the frontiers of all of our particular subject-matter areas, with special emphasis on philosophy, pedagogy, civics, information science, interpretation, curation, design, experience design, interface design, exhibit design, computation; with correspondent foundations.
Due diligence is an essential practice to our work. And yet, we make occasional mistakes. We commit to recognizing when we do err, with appropriate disclosure and amelioration. We invite and welcome our growing audience of curious site visitors, class and pilot participants, Resource Request Service customers, teachers, partners and others to let us know when an error has been identified; respectfully and in good-faith (with requisite context and detail).
We look forward to sharing more detailed documentation, reporting, and reflection on our approach (and respective specifics for curatorial, curricular, curatorial, and creative) through additional channels in the coming months.
Type Icons
CreativeSpace✧ Type Icons indicate the ‘type’ of resource presented.
The various types are based on an adapted Dublin Core metadata standard and proprietary insights.
A primary consideration in the type selection process is: ‘which type most accurately and comprehensively describes this resource in the current curatorial situation?’
Primacy is given to type suggestions explicitly indicated or emphasized by a resource’s publisher or creator.
Resources are often represented by more than one type. In such cases, types are arranged in a hierarchical order. In general, types with less comprehensive descriptive ability are ranked below those that more comprehensively describe the resource. The opacity of each type icon decreases from top to bottom of the triad.
The type selection process is an art based on well founded techniques from the field of information science.
There are caveats and special considerations in the type selection process.
Type Icon colors are part of a constrained color palette.
Type Icon colors are selected with special consideration to dimensions of accessibility, legibility, comprehension, attention, arrangement, memory, and correspondence.
Our Type Icon palette and approach to type selection will continue to evolve as new insights emerge in the relevant fields noted above.
