EDC 665 - Week 3 Blog

Think back now to a learning experience you have recently had- were the goals explicitly stated? If not, were they still clear? Were you aware of them as a learner during the learning experience?

Thinking back to last semester with Gary Stager, as MicroWorlds comes to mind, I had a learning experience trying to learn commands to move my virtual "turtle." In the beginning of our 4th learning adventure, I was excited to create a quilt piece of which I would later learn to attach as a quilt to others' pieces.

The goals of this project were explicitly stated. Gary told us to use MicroWorlds commands to create a quilt piece. We could do anything we wanted, as long as the piece was the same size as all the rest would be. While the goals were explicit, I did not, at times, feel like the "directions" were. Then I think, "do explicit goals always need directions from point A to point B? Or is the goal enough to supply a learning activity with its purpose?"

I grew beyond creating the quilt piece, an enjoyable activity, onto creating the quilt itself and had real difficulty. I hated the process as I struggled and realized there was no tutorial or "direction" to take that would end in my desired result.

I was completely aware of the goal the entire time, so much that I wanted to stop at nothing until it was achieved. While my quilt was sub par to a couple other cadre mates, I achieved my goal of having a symmetrical quilt piece.

Going back to my original internal reflections, I believe that goals can be stated and yet directions can be excluded from the equation. It is not entirely necessary, if the goal achieved is not the exact same for everyone, to have directions. Otherwise, the goal would look identical for all.

Gary never gave us explicit directions, yet supplied us with a clear goal in mind. Looking back, no two formulas were identical (although some alike) and no two quilts turned out to be the same either. It was a matter of the creator-- which is what I love about open-ended learning. It's also the most challenging of all learning... because without directions that are certain, there in lies the risk of failure.

The Comedian

I wish I had the opportunity to schedule the viewing of The Comedian with my cadre-mates, but unfortunately I will be away from Internet access until about Sunday evening beginning tomorrow.

This is going to be a strange experience. Throughout this program thus far, my attachment to my computer is unreal! The idea of not checking email or logging on to CNN is something that I can't wrap my brain around. Speaking of technology, I was writing on the Distinguished School committee today and I was designated by other members as being the most computer savvy. If you would have asked me 4 months ago... I would have had skills, but not to the polished caliber I feel I am at now. I have A LOT to learn, but I am proud of my achievements. Even the small steps have proven powerful.

Yesterday's unveiling of the Second Life theorist project went marvelously. I really saw a lot of value in a student-run project that did not result in a paper that was written. I had some great conversations with visitors and educators who I normally would not have the opportunity to interface with. My only downfall in learning: I don't feel like I spent enough time holding myself accountable to learning and making connections with other theorists. Having our own rooms allowed for creativity, but it stripped us from the collaboration aspect in many ways. I simply placed a teleport ball in my room, but really had to dig for connects to that theorist as the reason I placed the teleport ball in the first place. I included information on my notecard about Csikszentmihalyi and information about connecting theorists, but never spent a good portion of time consulting about learning theory with those other theorist experts (can I call them that given our knowledge of Surpassing Ourselves?). Demonstration of learning can be brought about in so many ways... I need to be doing more of that and less of the paper/pencil assessments in my own classroom. The only concern is... would others view me "too easy a teacher?"

Back to The Comedian. I will speak further about this once all of the cadre has viewed the movie, but would like to add some information I found regarding communities of practice. First, the most fascinating this I observed throughout the documentary was amount of uncertainty that professionals possess in their "skill." Going back to the expert definition, I don't believe I would qualify any of those men as experts in the field, but ever changing expert-novices (re-word?). Although they are comedians, they are never the same comedian. (Hmmm... but then again, I am a teacher... so does that make me a changing novice too? I believe so... always adding more and revising the tools in my toolbelt). Much of the lifestyle they live is isolating and difficult. The irony that interlies is that we envision those who make us laugh to be free-spirited, well-rested, and fun-loving characters. Orny Adams certainly did not seem too terribly fun-loving or free-spirited. As a matter of fact, I researched his website, http://www.ornyadams.com/ and it said he did finally make it to Los Angeles as he "dreamed aloud" about in the film. In fact, he is a frequent of the Comedy and Magic Club right here in Hermosa Beach, just 9 blocks from my house. I run by it every week! I went there recently to see Jay Leno.

I digress, as a community of comedians, there is a single bond they carry and the same struggles that drive one, drive all of them (despite Cosby who is a living comedian God). The frustrations, struggles, praises, excitements, and turmoil they go through occurs in such a small bracket of time and their work is not nearly as praised for its efforts as the likes of non-talented pop star teenagers. The resounding word however, was... within your community support system, keep what you love alive, as no one can do it for you. It's a one man show... with a body of supporters.

... although, I don't feel too terribly sad for Jerry Seinfeld who flew around in his private jet. Tough gig, really.

Teaching, Grad School, Thanksgiving update

I am feeling very excited about the culmination of our 1st real semester in grad school! I don't feel like the summer semester counted too much as it was really short. I am enjoying learning so much... and never being bored. Haha.

Teaching has been fine... except that I am never actually teaching. My principal has placed me (and the other 2 competent teachers at our school) on multiple committees which means we are never in our classrooms! We are either at the district for trainings or we are writing for our California Distinguished School award. We finished the rough draft and are now going to peel it apart, connect ideas, etc. We are also recruiting one of my students' parents who teaches at our feeder middle school to edit for us.

Funny classroom story for the week: One student was absent and I had another student give her the words for her spelling test. My kids are awesome at spelling... so it's almost a joke. About 25 of the 31 have an A+ in spelling. Anyway, I had a boy give her the test... and he took a peek at the upcoming test's bonus words. These words are selected by me... just randomly from whatever we learned throughout the week. Anyway, he told the rest of the class in private... thinking I'm never going to find out. Turns out I have ONE honest kid who emailed me with this information. I never busted anyone... just simply changed my bonus words to INTEGRITY, HONESTY, UNACCEPTABLE, CHEATING. Too bad I had a sub yesterday. I would have loved to have seen their faces. :)

For Thanksgiving, I am driving up to N. Cal with my parents and Elliot. During this nice 12 hour trip, I plan to bring my laptop and do some serious revisions to my lit. review.

I am close to being done with the conversions of videos for Gary's class and I worked very hard on the SL project for Bill's class... that I am looking forward to presenting on Monday. I need to work for Margaret's class and design my ARP plan and clean up my lit. review this weekend/through Thanksgiving.

I'm also looking forward to watching The Comedian! :)

Second Life Project, Learning Adventure #6, ARP project... updates

The SL project is going well... although slow. I have never in my life spent so much time building things in virtual environments. I swear it took me a few hours to get walls to line up. Regardless, what my room has come to is something I am proud of. Todd and I teamed up with Papert and Csikszentmihalyi (although Todd is the master and has essentially taken the Papert room on his own) and has helped me with the scripting for my room... and the game idea.

I am proud of how hard some people are working at this project. The structures are impressive... but even more impressive is the amount of single-handed work that some are placing on the project. I tried my hardest to create everything in my room. I love to see what others have done as well.

Learning Adventure #6 sounds cool... but it's hard to get a lot of this done in a distributed learning environment like this one. Again, being in a VirtCamp setting is such an easier way to handle these types of team projects. We are meant to find presidential campaign clips download them, find a conversion/compression/storage ability for next year's group to tackle. I can't wait to read their blogs about this and see what they come up with. The perks of the OMET program and how learning doesn't stop upon the diploma. I can already see myself becoming addicted to their thoughts, reading their reflections, etc.

The ARP is slow right now. I was pretty discouraged at Margaret's comments on my Lit. Review. I know there was plenty to be corrected, but I guess I saw this project as more of a constructivist writing/research/action project that I wasn't going to be judged so heavily on the writing part. Considering I know my strengths and weakenesses as a writer, I didn't enjoy the feedback much... but I never really do. That's part of my reflection here... learning to handle the heat, (I guess). I also see writing and research as a subjectivist activity where the writer is not always seen as great in some eyes, and wonderful in others. Could be why some people like certain authors and others can't stand them.

It gives me new light in offering criticism to my students on their writing.

Trecking along... feeling a bit overwhelmed and know I still have many months to go! Looking forward to getting pumped up again in January at the FETC conference.

...

I'm really tired... just really, really tired.

My Brain on OMET

Anyone remember that commercial about the brain on drugs... and then the guy fries an egg in a pan to illustrate that drugs fry your brain... well I think OMET does too.

My reflections:

638b: I am working, working, working away. I spent a good number of hours working on a lit. review that I have a feeling will be revised more than one time in the coming weeks. That makes me nervous. I have never been great at revising my work because I always feel like I did a great job. It's a tough process. I am also struggling through reading some of the books. I am all booked out for right now. I read a lot in the beginning and needed a little lull here. In addition, if I try to even think about sitting down to read (considering standing up), I will be asleep in a hot second.

664: I have enjoyed some of the adventures, but above all, I have enjoyed MicroWorlds the very best so far. I knew I would... considering that I had been messing around with it for awhile before we started up with it.

633: The Second Life project makes me anxious. I don't really know if we are going to be able to pull this off and make it as grand as we are hoping. I think we all want to do an amazing job, but are seeing the difficulty in distance learning as of now. Doing this project at VirtCamp seems like an easier task because we would all be in the same room. We are starting to see the major players in the program... especially on projects like this. Looking forward to beginning the building challenge. :) Turtles here I come!

Students teaching Students

In having dinner tonight with a friend of my fiance, we began talking about her education. She is a senior level student in her undergraduate program at UCSB. While definitely a hippie with the utmost respect in using the term, she's a world traveler and has been many places in her 20 years on this earth.

This was my first time meeting her and I have been anxious because I love her mom who I recently visited in Colorado (see earlier blogs). She has a passion for making change in the world but shuns the idea of teaching because she does not want to conform to the Western World's view of education. She doesn't want to become a professor and simply have knowledge that proves to be less useful than going into the world and changing it. She has aspirations to work with those who are less fortunate in countries she has already traveled to and intends to go back and help... she simply has dreams that many people keep in the closet.

Since we've been learning about progressive education movements throughout OMET thus far, it was interesting that she brought up an upcoming opportunity at UCSB. Apparently, there is this program that allows students to teach classes about essentially anything they want. Now, they have to be sponsored by (I think) another professor in the school or at least within her department of study and it has to be legitimate. When I asked what class she planned to teach (they get credits for teaching too), she said very quickly "How to Change the World" as if she'd been planning this her entire life.

I asked about her curriculum and she told me that she was hoping to have speakers come in from different organizations and different scholars come in to express needs within our world for the first portion of the class, and for the second half, to create a "project" collectively as a class to change the world... could be an excursion, something. She also expressed this idea of having her students interview their professors (who are researchers) about their research and ask them how they could use the information they teach in their class to better the world or make a difference in some way. In this "homework" assignment, students would learn from their professors and open their eyes to new ways to rejuvinate their own brains to hopefully making a difference. I found this to be awesome. I took multiple classes in my undergraduate years that added no value to my brain or to the world. I would've rather spent time at least seeing the world through other's eyes and opening my eyes to the world of need around me. Although such a typical hippie thing to want... I still loved the idea.

Finally, she talked about a professor she had who spent half of the year in India and the other half teaching at UCSB and said that the reason he continues to come back and teach (besides the $) is because he feels that if he can even steer 1 or 2 students to proactivity, he feels it is worth the while. She brought up a good point and talked to her professor about raising his bar. What about wanting 50 students to become proactive?

Even more profound from a 20-year old... she mentions that since she used that "homework" assignment with herself to talk to her own professors about ways she can use the information they teach to better the world, she was able to speak openly with her obviously intelligent professor who may have been living in research (but no application) land and needed to have the fresh mind of a young adult to free him from his stagnance.

Finally, thanks Todd. I posted the music onto my website and it can be found here: http://students.pepperdine.edu/blfoster/OMEThome/fall07/index.html

Learning Adventure #1 - Musical Ensemble

I just finished my musical ensemble using a program called Finale Notepad. I was really impressed with the options that were free to use!

I have never been musically inclined or played a single note on a musical instrument (unlike most everyone I've see from our cadre) but I was determined to use my ears to create something pleasing. Although my piece is simple, it was not meant to be something dramatic, but for me to learn how to use something new to enrich my learning.

In listening to my fellow cadre mate pieces (Jackie's was just amazing), I grew a little jealous of their abilities. I needed to stop thinking this way and enjoy the process. Jessica helped me to just "picture some experience" and then it would come naturally.

Again, although simple, it certainly represents serenity to me...

In one of Stager's forum discussions, I read that Todd said he did not learn anything more about music, but about the process of working through something. I echo this statement.

If anyone is reading this that knows how I might post my music (it seems like blogger is only allowing me to post pictures or videos, not link documents...), please let me know. Thanks! :)

Radio: An Illustrated Guide

I just finished reading Radio: An Illustrated Guide. It was the highly recommended book from Stager's book list. Anyhow, when I saw how short it was, I was up for buying it...

Indeed, it only took about 30 minutes to read through. Being a former journalism student/guru, I loved it. Not only do I find radio to be the most fun medium, but I understood a lot of the lingo they spoke of in the booklet. I even took it upon myself to email an old radio journalism professor from my undergrad to express the greatness of the book and to pass it on to future students.

Read it! It's funny. Now I'm anxious to listen to the show. Even more exciting... my future (as of right now) is looking at the high possibility of moving to the Chicago area in the next few years. That's where the show takes place. Maybe I will be an intern for fun!

P.S. I was an intern at KKJZ fm, 88.1 (it's jazz, I did the news) until their budget was cut and pushed the program director and all of his interns out the door. I loved working in radio and cutting sound. I also interned at a big shot station, Star 98.7 while in college too. However, I did very little hands-on there. I attribute most of my learning to the KKJZ experience. I only have one of my stories taped (my first and unfortunately, not my best) but it's on cassette. In addition to the many humiliating VHS tapes from broadcasting camps and the like.

The Hundred Languages of Children - The Constructivist Approach

In reading the article, here, I have come to connect the schools of Reggio Emilia in Italy to be among a group of constructivist schools. The constructivism theory, like Reggio Emilia's school follows, does not require all students to learn the same thing, but the teacher act more as partners of learning rather than an authoritative figure.

The students in Reggio Emilia are given the tools to use as they process and create their own learning --without deadlines, outcomes, objectives or major roadblock boundaries.

(really... I am doing reading right now, but I will have fun today. I also start back to work tomorrow and I'm trying to get a little heads up on reading---although I feel like I still have PLENTY to read)

Interesting quote - The Hundred Languages of Children

For any elementary ed. teachers that have read or are reading the book, The Hundred Languages of Children, this quote can be found on page 67:

"What children learn does not follow as an automatic result from what is taught. Rather, it is in large part due to the children's own doing as a consequence of their activities and our resources."

It's interesting that children don't just learn by observation. Like all of us (view ourselves), we are comfortable most when the learning is done by discovery. Lecturing and testing is not long-term learning and results in creating little for our brains to use as connectors.

This book mentions a lot of John Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky to name a few. The Reggio Emilia approach (by the way... does anyone else want to visit with me?!?) is certainly interesting so far. I wonder if Stager has been there? I also wonder if the entire instruction is spoken in Italian?

Interesting book... although the interview with Malaguzzi does seem to drag on. I enjoyed reading about the supermarket "project" and I absolutely love the idea of using projects with young children to build on their understanding and giving them the ability to use all of their "languages" to communicate their thoughts.

Final thoughts: Dewey's Experience & Education

I just finished Dewey's book, Experience & Education. I have some thoughts to sum up my understanding (I found about 1/3 of it difficult to follow).

Dewey expresses that all education should be based on the learner's past experiences and should then build on those experiences to create new experiences... creating a never ending cycle. Starting with the current understanding of the learner allows them to build on what they already know to create further learning/experiences.

The educator's job is to facilitate this learning process and become a contributor to the student's learning. My understanding is that since no one student is learning the same thing (because no student will have the exact same knowledge or experiences), it is difficult, as Dewey expresses, for the educator to design curriculum to suit every student's needs.

When I was speaking to that woman I met that went to the University of Chicago's school that John Dewey claimed part of in his studies at, she expressed to me that she was very good at math as a student. Because of this "experience" and skill, she learned a lot of math when she was attending that school (as progressive ideals state: you learn based on what you already know... she knew math... she learned more math). The negative side, as she mentioned, was that she remembered occasionally not understanding the work she was to "add to her experience" and felt like a failure as a result. She also mentioned the absence of grades and felt that she was out of touch with other students from other schools, confused as a child as to why she was given different treatment. She did not feel there was a lot of group activity or working with other students as much as she would have liked.

Although Dewey's theory seems logical... that all education should be based on experiences of individual students, building on their intelligence and challenging them to further intelligences and higher learning in creating new experiences... it does not seem as fluid as expected. Students are not machines and are not always understanding of the next level of learning as well as they understood the previous lesson.

Finally, although I am not educated enough to be an advocate for either traditional (in which I suppose I teach at, although arguable) or progressive schools, I do believe that the responsibilities of educators listed in the book are respectable:

1. Problems grow out of conditions of experiences being held at present and within the range of the capacity of the students.
2. It is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and production of new ideas.

John Dewey - Experience and Education

I'm currently in Colorado staying with friends with my fiance. We are actually out here for a business meeting my fiance is having with the board of directors for a future business venture. So, I have my laptop on the counter in their living area and one of the wives of a board member notices that I have the book, Experience & Education by John Dewey and walks up creating conversation. At first, I'm thinking... "sure, he's famous for his writings... and she's probably heard of him, but not read his books..." but then she says that she was a student in one of the studies done at John Dewey's school. I'm thinking... hmm... sure. Then, she goes on to tell me that she went to school in Chicago and at the time, there was a grade school based on Dewey's writings and philosophy and until she was in middle school did she realize that she didn't receive grades, but other students did. She began to tell me more about this school. She attended it because the other schools around were dangerous and her parents went to the University there... providing safer schools for students who attended. She indeed, was a student who experienced this. How cool! I was actually bored of this book initially and then met her and now I'm interested to get back. I'll keep you posted. :)

Eugenics Movement

I'm currently reading The Book of Learning and Forgetting and I just hit page 62... which is by far the most shocking thing I've read thus far:

There was a eugenics movement (eugenics means "the production of fine offspring") in the early 1900's and probably still is... that was largely run by Charles Darwin's half cousin Francis Galton (seen here).

He believed that IQ was based entirely on genetics and that those with high intelligences (generally upper class) should propagate only among their class. He believed that those who had low intelligences should then be segregated from the upper class so that they would not "cross" and propagate with one another... spreading the lower IQ.

This was spurred by the study of why generally intelligent, wealthy families produce less children while those families of little wealth produce more children. It was said that eventually, the poor would reign and the higher intelligence would in a sense, be washed away... and that needed to be changed.

Their answer to this was that those who are poor (monetarily) and make poor (bad) judgements should also be sterilized, in addition to those women who are promiscuous. In addition, it was encouraged that those of lower intelligence should also be sterilized. Broken families should have parent sterilization to prevent further "mistakes" of child care payments, etc.

Anyone else outraged by this? I know the author is against this... seeing as how he doesn't believe in testing or that children of one intelligence or another are of a higher status.

I can't say that I completely buy his viewpoint -- I do believe that learning might require some effort (if it's difficult to understand and we really want to learn it) but I also agree that there needs to be an education reform that does not revolve around tests. I also believe that we learn constantly and with little effort... but again, I believe that some things are more difficult to understand and I work harder to learn them (willingly... he seems to place a negative emphasis on forcing yourself = effort to learn something is not learning at all).

Correct me if I'm wrong, go ahead. :)