Week 3 - Reading Post: Observations...

What I’ve observed from the readings this week (especially from Chapter 6) is that many of Ben’s philosophies about putting others first and living your life in a positive way have been in the Bible for thousands of years. The problem is, most people (including me) have not been so good about reading these principles and applying them to our lives. I believe that if we all spent more time reading and applying THAT guidebook that we would be able to show much more love and genuine concern for each other.

That aside, I particularly liked the discussions in the book on opening up your thinking to possibilities and using the word “and” instead of “but” to describe our current situation. I think it’s this type of positive thinking that can really help make or break your day and your outlook on your current situation. I also liked the discussion of leading from any chair. I think this idea is especially important to share with a classroom of students that might have confidence issues (which, for most teens, is almost a given). To understand that your contributions are valued no matter what your role is, is a very important concept to get across to a class and I appreciated the authors insights and stories about this idea.

(image by: Jacob Botter, "Thinking RFID", Jan 17, 2009, Creative Commons License)

Week 2 - Publishing/Leadership project part 1 of 2: - AR Presentation Choice

According to one of the MAC videos, we were to declare our presentation style for our Action Research Project so here it is: I've decided to aim for a paper as my presentation choice. My ultimate goal is to present this in front of the pastors and youth leaders at the church but I don't know that I want to do it formally so having a research paper is probably going to be a better way to go. In their eyes it might give me more credibility as well, so, there you have it. We'll see how it goes!

(picture by mortsan, "Papers", Feb 9, 2011, Creative Commons Attribution)

Week 2 - Response 2

ORIGINAL POST – TOM TURNER:

These legos to the right of here sum up what I conceptualize what our reading is about for this week. For many, myself included, this pile of legos present an enormous road block in the creative process. Ask someone like myself what they see in this picture and the response is easy, "A pile of legos". We'll get back to what the other creative minded people will respond with here in a little while.

This week's reading consisted of Chapters 1 - 4 of "The Art of Possibility". I'm a very avid reader, and will enjoy reading this summer once we are done with this EMDT program. I've so missed sitting out in the pool with a book. One tool that I like to use when I read is to imagine someone else's voice as I'm reading particular areas of text. For some reason when I was reading the other night the only voice I had going through my head was that of Dr. Siegel. One of the takeaways for the Gaming Strategies and Motivation (GSM) course 2 months ago was to always imagine the unimaginable and then to make it possible. This is mostly because gaming strategies for education is one of those taboos that mainstream educators and administrators don't want to talk about, think about or dream about. In my mind this is what Chapter 1 was all about. For example, the Zander and Zander shared on page 15 the following:

"What might I now invent, That I have not yet invented, That would give me other choices?"

In my head this SCREAMS Dr. Dan! The entire month of GSM revolved around finding limitless opportunities for our students to create and invent and explore worlds and realms that are not possible to visit in the traditional classrooms.

I was also very intrigued with the third chapter, "Giving an A". I very much enjoyed reading how the instructor of the music class attempted to get the best out of students. In the past I would start off the each marking period with the same statements. That right now EVERYONE has an A in my class. After reading this chapter I can see how I would amend that and utilize a similar method. Zander and Zander believed that giving an A to students would lead to students to take risks that they normally would not take. All with the hopes of after reflecting upon positives and negatives that the creative processes will be unimpeded thereby letting innovation take place (p. 34).

The great thing about this philosophy to learning is that it breaks down the barriers to learning between student and instructor. This frees up students to be as creative as they can be and for teachers to maintain a facilitative role (Zander & Zander, p, 36).

Now, back to that pile of legos above. If that pile was placed in front of student in an environment where they are not given the freedom to take chances would it be possible to end up putting together a design such as the Millenium Falcon? I am highly doubtful that students would be willing, or wanting, to put the effort needed to create something as elaborate as the falcon (or a building tower, car, etc) where they didn't feel their teacher was supportive to their learning and risk taking.

MY REPONSE:

Tom, your post definitely helped me gather more from the reading than I had previously. Your explanation of the quote you chose from p.15 of the text opened my eyes to more possibilities from that part of the reading.

I too am intrigued by the idea of “giving everyone an A” but I honestly wonder how it would work with at-risk low motivated freshman and sophomores. I wonder if they would choose to skip because the class “didn’t matter” or would choose to not do any homework for the same reason? I’ve thought a lot about this possibility and how it would work at a school I’ll be interviewing for on Monday and Tuesday (physics/physical science and engineering/physical science) positions. The school population has VERY diverse learners with diverse abilities. My entire educational philosophy is based on building relationships with students and I feel this is a must for students to buy-in to this idea but it’s definitely something I will think more about if I’m asked to work at this school.

Week 2 - Response 1

ORIGINAL POST – Josh Tolar:

I keep thinking about the current situation about my job and how it happened so fast. While I was hastily updating my resume to look for a new job to cure my unhappiness with my current one, an opportunity came out from no where and basically slapped me in the face. I’m now in a new position with the same company, but I don’t know for how long. I have this hidden fear that one day this position will be over and I will have to go back where I used to work and fall into an unhappy lifestyle again where my expertise is nothing but a title on a sheet of paper. It is here that I have enclosed myself into a box and never stopped to think about the opportunity I have right now and how it might actually affect my future; An opportunity to seize the moment.

By reading the first 4 chapters of “Art of Possibility”, I realized the potentials I have as well as the weaknesses I have had and still have. When thinking about giving an A to someone, it somehow calms my nerves from expecting too much and allows me to focus on how to contribute to someone else’s life or a project. This IS a realization, but NOT THE END of realizations. While giving an A to someone might make it easier for two people to work together in a more harmonious fashion, there is still the realization of giving yourself an A. For so many years I have been controlled by a never-ending urge to please everyone. It has caused me to go above and beyond to the extent that my body shuts down and causes many problems like stress or an occasional illness. This is from my past of always having to live up to an A or suffer the consequences or living up to the expectations of a parent and it never stopped. It never stopped because I never allowed it to stop. I have always given in to the persistent calculations and measurements in my head. I have always been afraid that if I don’t do the best possible work then I would fail or cause someone to feel disappointed. I have always been in the realm of self-doubt despite of what others say. This is just like what Ben Zander was describing about his students and how giving an A would open up the possibilities of being creative and not focusing on the measurements in their head. If I give myself an A first, then I feel I can start handing out A’s to other people and I can then start a successful domino effect of contribution.

Life is constantly changing and the past year at Full Sail has not only given me strength and trust in myself, but has shown me that when you work with others and recognize their contributions as well as your own, amazing things start to happen. I have always been told, “If you put your mind to it, anything can happen”. This is so true in so many ways, but you have to first realize that if you give in to self-doubt and the measurements that we are so conditioned with, you start to focus on the negative instead of the positive. You become enclosed in a box. I think that by realizing our contributions and the contributions of other people, we can start to open the lid of the box and slowly come out.

MY RESPONSE:

Josh, your post was really deep. It seems like your life really opened up as a result of the reading, which is really quite powerful. I feel like I have a better idea of who you are and where you’ve come from after reading this post and also understand more about where your drive to perfection comes from. As you insinuated, perfection comes with a cost and sometimes that cost is health or stress. I suffer too from perfectionism but recently have been able to allow myself to be freed from it in situations where the end result was not critical (although I still struggle with it). I’m very excited for you and your new position as well and hope that it is just the beginning. But as you said, with a different view on the work and the people you’re working with, the old job may be “new” already.

Week 2 - Wimba Make-Up

Most of the conversation was directed at the videos we just finished watching so it was a good review of the copyright content. I had a hard time figuring out if titles were copyrighted or not until Joe explained that further. Jason Reed mentioned something he called the “poor man’s” copyright, which I had never heard of before. It sounds like a few other members of the groups had used that seal-in-the-envelope approach too. Another piece that was a surprise was that all you had to do now was save something in order for it to be copyrighted. The most significant piece of copyright info for me was the portion about Fair Use in education – “if the lesson can be taught without the material it’s not Fair Use”. I’m not entirely clear on one point though. If it is a breach of copyright to play music in a classroom from our computer, is it also a breach of copyright to play music from the radio? What about Pandora? I’m hoping for some insight on these questions so if you have any real legal answers, please respond.

(SqueegyX, "Pandora", Jan 8, 2008, Creative Commons License)

Week 2 - Reading Post: A Revelation

I think the thing that I learned most from the first two chapters of this book was something about myself. This “thing” is something that I’ve had to deal with throughout this course and upon reflection, throughout my entire life. I’m talking about the types of books that speak to me and the type that I really cannot in any way relate to. Unfortunately, this book seems to be of the latter. I would classify it as more of a philosophical get-in-touch-with-your-inner-self type book. After finished up the first couple chapters, I felt a rush of all the books I’d read come back to me – those I enjoyed and those I did not (regardless of the genre or content). As an individual with a severe case of concrete logical-mathematical thinking, I realize that my brain has a particularly hard time processing text that is deeply philosophical, yet reading a physics, chemistry, or calculus text is relatively easy. As is reading any manual on whatever the topic. And I find some of the statements in the book particularly hard for my brain to accept. Take this passage on p.20 for example: “The pie is enormous, and if you take a slice, the pie is whole again.” (Zander, 2000) Now, as we all know, if you subtract a part from the whole, as long as the part is > 0, you no longer have the whole, as is insinuated by the authors.

Poor mathematics aside, the awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses in reading opened my eyes to the difficulties that some student may have in reading such texts as I enjoy, and quite truthfully, this was my greatest take-away from the first couple chapters.

So, that aside, I do see the value of thinking outside the box, as explained in the text. Another part of the text that resonated with me was the part about scarcity thinking. I believe as Americans, we have really fallen into that mind-set and try to accumulate as much as we possibly can, without much regard for those that have little to nothing.

Moving into chapter three was fearful (because it was much longer than the infinitely long previous two chapters combined) but I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the authors take on “giving an A” and thought at length about what kind of effect that would have on a student population I might be working with next year.

Ironically, I didn’t really start to get into the text myself until I watched the TED talk (which I had seen a couple years ago) and remembered how much I enjoyed watching Ben Zander. And at that point, I decided to give the book an A, and have enjoyed it much more ever since.

(image from the cover of The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander)

Week 1 - Response 2

ORINIGAL POST - Michael Wood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM_4YpXoetw&feature=player_embedded

MY RESPONSE

Michael,

That’s an awesome story about getting into an artist job at Knott’s Berry Farms! I think you’re right on when it comes to student’s using Google images, but more profoundly was your comment on how teachers really don’t care if students copy and past other people’s work. I was (and maybe still am although I’m TRYING to change) one of those teachers but with more education on creative commons, I think I might be able to change.

I agree with your comments on Netflix as a solution for piracy. I think that we’re on the verge of a music version of this through Apple called iCloud and I’m really curious to see where this goes. They’ve invested huge amounts of money in a facility dedicated to music storage along with petabytes of hard drive storage space. Hopefully, we’ll be ushered into a place where we don’t have to be as concerned about copyright because we’ll have other viable options.