We decided to meet face to face since there were so many “pieces” involved in this project.  We actually made some good progress – completing the preliminary questions and our flow charts.

We also landed on our group “plan” and structure for completing the new website for Georgina’s class.  From this point forward we will primarily work via email and phone to complete the project in the next couple of weeks.

I now know what it feels like to be an educational consultant – many frustrations when a class is in much disarray.

Until next time…

I recently listened to two separate podcasts that might be considered opposite ends of the spectrum. One is the podcast for “Mike and Mike in the Morning” a national sports radio program that I usually listen to on the radio. When I miss the program in the morning live, sometimes I’ll listen to it on podcast. It is an edited version of the actual radio program and includes special guests, opinions and trivia about the national sports scene.

The second is a message by Francis Chan. Chan is a pastor at Cornerstone Church in Simi, California. His message, called “Texting God” talked about the “shallow nature” of our relationships with people and God because of technology (texting, email) and how it hurries up and waters down our relationships.

In both of these instances, I would prefer listening instead of reading because when reading something, it is difficult to pick up on someone’s personality or the heart with which they are communicating a particular topic. Even though when I listen, I need almost complete absence of distractions…I can still “engage” more in what I’m listening to instead of reading. The benefit of reading would be having it in print to refer to I suppose. Podcasts are a genius innovation that has become more and more mainstream…I highly recommend it as a part of your weekly, if not daily schedule.

In education, I would use podcasts to record parent and/or student orientation. Possibly a lecture or some other medium of passing along information to my students.

Until next time…

Here’s another “reminder” that we need to make sure we’re speaking the language of our students.  It wouldn’t be very smart to try and teach me how to fix a car if you spoke German to me the whole time….so we shouldn’t expect our students to learn very well if we’re speaking a language that’s foreign (or outdated) to them.

I just turned forty years old this past summer.  When I think about my education…back as far as elementary school, I have fond memories of teachers who cared about me and genuinely “rooted” for me to become a productive person when I grew up.   I remember creative elements like show and tell and special visitors to our classroom like policemen, doctors, engineers and athletes.  My memory of my elementary education are great.

Its beginning with Jr. High that my memories aren’t quite as special.  I had good times and established life-long friendships in Jr. High and High School but the creativity with which my teachers approached their jobs quickly disappeared.  I entered the “real-world” at age nineteen and didn’t return to finish my college degree until 2007 at age thirty-eight and I wondered how different the educational experience would be when I returned to the classroom.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t changed much at all…aside from projectors in every room and a few professors that used the occasional picture or PowerPoint slide, I was surprised to realize that the level of creativity with which most (let me re-emphasize MOST – NOT ALL) of my professors was exactly zero.  In fact…if anything, I quickly came to the conclusion that evidently many of them didn’t really even enjoy their jobs (Based on their body language and personalities – or lack there of).

As I watched the video above, it reminded me how much learners have changed in the twenty years since I was last a student and how little most educators have changed with their learners.  It’s almost as if the two are speaking completely different languages.  Not totally…but the argument could be made.  Though I would never categorize myself as a “21st century learner”, I would say that I’m a visual learner who not only wants but NEEDS cranial stimulation beyond the mundane and sometimes monotone voice of an educator who has taught the same lecture the SAME WAY for twenty years. 

I would venture to guess that there are many high school teachers and especially college professors who might watch the video above and become offended or jaded that anyone would indict their way of teaching as outdated or even obsolete.  I want to be clear that I am NOT a professor hater.   There are a few teachers at my university who have genuinely inspired me with their passion for the topic that they teach but also with the creativity with which they approached the class I was a part of.  That said though, this video is a perfect picture of the communication gap that has grown to an epidemic level in the world of education.  We have learners who speak one language and teachers, many of whom are either afraid or too lazy to learn that language.

At every high school and university in America, there sits in some class a student who has what it takes to be a difference maker in their world, but their potential may never be realized because they can’t understand what their teacher is trying to teach them.  Creativity, Technology and educational design should be forever fused together to ensure that generations to come will be challenged to leave their mark on this world.  Challenged and taught in their own language.

I would recommend mind mapping when studying for an exam, overseeing a project or managing a team and their responsibilities.  If you haven’t tried mind mapping, give it a shot.  You’ll be surprised at how easy and fun it is. 
Until next time…

As generations have grown, students have progressed through these levels thinking skills which we now call Bloom’s “Revised” Taxonomy:

With new technologies such as blogging and twitter, students can sharpen their skills and move “up the ladder” to higher learning.  For example, twittering allows students the opportunity to understand theirs and other peoples’ worlds by keeping up to date with the “everyday life” that goes on when we’re not actually face to face with many of our friends and family.

Blogging on the other hand, can actually sharpen multiple skills such as understanding (reading blogs written by others), evaluating (commenting on different blogs) and eventually creating (designing and writing one’s own blog). 

My opinion is that its not as important which level of learning we currently fall into but instead that we are progressing and learning which never stops regardless of age or level of intellect.

Until next time…

Giving thought to who the students are that you’re teaching, where they come from and how they learn best are critical to the success of the learning experience for both instructor and student.

A great example of this is how “cell phone oriented” students are today.  If teachers just turn a blind eye to cell phones and expect students to completely ignore them during school…they’re probably only asking for conflict.  Cell phones and PDA’s are now as much a part of students’ lives as pen and pencil were 30 years ago.  It has become an essential part of life for them.

Forbidding students from cell will only create discipline situations that could otherwise be avoided.  There are however, some solutions (though not perfect) that can help instructors understand their students technological bent and capitalize on it.  For example, my daughter’s school allows students to use cell phones between class and at lunch time.  The only time they cannot use it is during actual class time.  This helps lessen students “urge” to text or tweet during class. 

I think taking it one step further in class may work as well…An instructor could create a game with students and post questions on the screen/board and give the first student to tweet the answer a point/prize/credit or whatever.   Tweeting versus texting would be safer since the instructor wouldn’t have to give out his/her personal cell phone number.

Until next time…

One of the myths that quickly faded for me was the idea that online classes would be easier than a face to face class.  In reality, the opposite has been true for me.  While I would necessarily call it self-teaching, there is a large element of self-discipline required to be successful with distance learning.  For me, it took until half way through my first online class to realize that I was going to have to put in roughly twice the time for online classes as I did for regular ones.

Another myth I’ve overcome while taking online classes is that distance learning doesn’t have to be a solitary experience…unless you want it to.  There are endless opportunities to engage other students and the instructor while taking online classes.  Some interactions are, in fact, required.  But if solitude is your thing…except for the required elements, you can enjoy almost complete anonymity during your online learning experience.

When it comes to online learning, I would categorize myself as a satisfied customer.

With the emergence of the internet over the past fifteen to twenty years, “fair use” and copyright laws have become a much more “fuzzy” topic to define.  The copy and paste options on our computers make it so easy (and tempting) to highlight something we like on the internet, copy and paste it to a document we are writing, our Facebook page or even Twitter and call it our own.  The issue is not the copying and pasting, its when we (intentionally or not) portray something in such a way that it would appear to others to be our own work.

Around the year 2000, I became personally aware of this issue through the use of video and particularly movie clips.  In my work with teenagers, we would often use video clips from a dvd or the internet as motivational tools.  For instance, we might show a clip of the movie “Hoosiers” to communicate that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to.  Our students enjoyed them and we used them often until our media director informed me that we were actually breaking the law by using the media clips in a “public performance” setting. 

While using media on our website or in a public setting has become much easier over the years, it does not make it universally acceptable.  There are some clips and situations where no license is required but with the growth of the internet with sites like www.youtube.com, it is more important than ever to make sure we are aware of the legal ramifications surrounding anything we use on the internet or from a movie or television show.

While not a case dealing directly with movie or video clips, the case of Lucasfilms Ltd vs. Shepperton Design Studios in 2006 is a great example of the problems that can arise when we pass someone else’s work off as our own.  Shepperton principal Andrew Ainsworth and his company were ordered to pay Lucas Films $20,000,000 in damages for reproducing the “stormtrooper” helmet from the 1977 motion picture and claiming the design as their own.[1]  Lucasfilm vice president Howard Roffman states, “We do not intend to use this ruling to discourage our fans from expressing their imagination, creativity and passion for Star Wars through the costumes and props they make for their personal use,” Roffman said. “Rather, we see the Court’s decision as reaffirming that those who seek to illegally profit from Star Wars will be brought to task, wherever they may be.”[2]

The best protection against infringing on someone else’s work is to err on the side of caution every time, do the leg work required to find out the legal situation surrounding

[2] Lucasfilm Ltd. wins copyright infringement case (2008, July 31)  Retrieved September 16, 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://www.starwars.com/vault/collecting/news20080731.html

On a normal day, when I get up I check my email real quick before heading out the door.  On school days…I check email frequently (Why do we love getting mail so much?) and check a few of my standard sites -

www.weather.com, www.espn.com, www.foxnews.com, www.facebook.com, www.twitter.com

This pattern repeats itself on average about 5 times per day ending with one last email and website check right before bed.

During football season…that routine changes.  I reset my homepage on both my pc and laptop to my fantasy football league website and Friday-Sunday spend MUCH more time on that sight than any other.  Can you say addiction?

Until next time…