MAC Wk 4 Blog 2: Comments

Jeff Kohls published a piece in his blog this week that addressed his time here at Full Sail and the relationships we've all built with our classmates. Much appreciate Jeff. Check out his post here, and my comments below:

Jeff,

It is very hard not to comment on such a post when you call out half of your classmates by name. Thank you, and let me respond.

Almost daily, someone asks me about my Masters program here at Full Sail. How's it going? Are you done yet? When will you have any free time again? All of these are constant questions that I field throughout the day. Matter of fact, one colleague is thinking about enrolling in EMDT next fall.

(If I encourage him, do I get a finder's fee?)

And as such, whenever I describe the program, I'm led into the deeper conversation of why I chose to pursue a degree to begin within. While it is difficult to pinpoint the specific inspiration of a moment that was easily 20 months ago, I invariably respond to such inquiries that I was looking to add more concrete knowledge and pedagogy to my own classroom practice.

Furthermore, as I researched a slew of programs, Full Sail's EMDT degree really stood out as it seemed to address educational psychology and curricula design with a technological emphasis. In all honesty, this seemed like an amazing combination that would perfectly fulfill the gaps in my own personal knowledge base around education that I was hoping to develop.

Now, nearing completion of the course, I've learned quite a few things:

1. Online education can be amazingly affective
2. Programs like this are very time consuming
3. "Working around your own schedule" (as so many institutional literature pieces purport is possible) is a misnomer
4. There is an unprecedented amount of resources available in today's modern communication tools to make real and lasting impacts in both analog and digital classrooms

Additionally, my Action Research project has been dealing specifically with technology based learning mechanisms in order to boost student engagement. And as I've worked through the literature, I've discovered that the most crucial element for success of any digitally supported educational initiative is careful and deliberate implementation of those resources. In order to create a portal or interface that really supports the needs of learners, an institution should:

1. Encourage group work
2. Allow participants to share historical and biographical information
3. Foster regular large and small group discussion opportunities
4. Distribute media through a variety of formats
5. Focus on project and media based assignments to complement the program's nature rather than rely on writing assignments alone

In short, the literature suggests that administrations and educators looking to develop a quality digital or distance program would mirror much of what we've experienced here at Full Sail.

It can work. This program has been so personally rewarding (and yes, challenging) that I feel absolutely blessed to have been able to participate and learn in such an environment. And to your post Jeff, without question, this learning and personal growth is directly related to the support, encouragement, and integrity of my classmates.

Collaborative learning doesn't work very well without collaborators. This cohort is truly a talented and passionate bunch who will only continue to make lasting and powerful changes in the lives of their students and coworkers.

Thank you all.

MAC Wk 4 Blog 1: Reading

MAC Wk 4 Blog 1: Reading


I now ride the bus. Every day, I walk 7 blocks to the Downtown Minneapolis 5th Street Station. From there, I catch the 94Express and ride into downtown St. Paul. If I'm a little early (a rare feat), I'm able to grab a seat by the window and sit relatively distraction free from the chaos that can be indicative of public transportation in a major metropolitan area.

I wasn't excited about being a commuter. For the last few years, I've tried to maintain a strict rule of living within a short bike ride or walk from the workplace. Still, when I received an invitation to teach Media Economics at the McNally Smith College of Music, I couldn't refuse the offer.

And so I commute. Initially, I was pretty against the idea. It was going to be inconvenient and take too long. On good days, the trip usually takes about 30 minutes. Yet, come January, I can only assume that a brief snow flurry will easily extend the trip to over an hour making the ordeal even more excruciating.

Yet what I've learned to do is to take this unique opportunity and reframe the experience into an opportunity. This new daily ritual is a break. A breath. And even a chance to read, prep for class, and watch the world go by. As it stands, only two weeks into the school year, I'm enjoying the bus.

In some ways, this process is akin to what the Zanders describe as "being the board"- readjusting your perspective regarding the systems of cause and effect that create specific situations. In this simple case, I've found that over time, this strategy (and the others already prescribed in the Art of Possibility) is real. We can pause, reflect on a situation, and draw from it a more positive conclusion or perspective than we had first held.

In one brief paragraph of analysis, the Zanders spoke of the strong reactionary powers that we have adopted as human beings. It is true, biologically and physiologically we have developed an extremely perceptive ability to sense potential danger. Clearly, this adaptation was instrumental in escaping predators and protecting early communities from danger. However, today, these same powers are likely a contributor to the negative feelings we can harbor towards new situations and events.

Without question, it is imperative that we avoid letting these receptive powers lead us towards a "downward spiral" of behavior or attitude. And, if we take a broader view towards the seemingly seismic changes happening in our schools, workplace, country, and world, our students especially need to be reminded of this concern.

Honestly, I think an excellent title for a teacher today could be that of one who "creates frameworks for possibility". I can see no greater nobility to extend to our young learners. The world is complicated. It is scary. And, being left to one's own devices without a roadmap, support, or self confidence building feedback, I'm sure today's students could develop severely negative opinions of the future and their place in it.

I'm really enjoying reading the Art of Possibility. It is refreshing, and I'm able to bring ideas and quotes straight from my reading into the classroom minutes later… after getting off the bus.

MAC Wk 3 Blog 3

Sharon Jones posted a very poignant blog that I had to respond to this week. Her post can be found here and my comments are below:

Sharon,

You couldn't be more right.

In many ways, I think our country has lost its middle ground. And by that, I mean our space for debate, discussion, and compromise. We seemed to have moved from an era or place of discourse to a populace filled with rebuke and judgement.

I fall into this trap quite easily also. All to often, many conversations with friends and family alike end in my exclamation that, "well yeah, they are idiots!".

As our schools, communities, and country alike are faced with a myriad of challenges, sometimes administrations of all ilk are forced to make specific dogmatic or pragmatic decisions. Within these scenarios, many of us are left out of the decision making process.

For educators, I think being left out of the conversation is exceedingly difficult. The decision to teach is not one borne out of fiscal gain. We teach because we care. Correspondingly, I've found that teachers generally care about a whole host of issues throughout their institutions that they might not have any direct control or responsibility over. This reality only further frustrates those of us that my girlfriend Kelly refers to as "heart" people. It is these very situations that contribute to the "well if I were the boss…" perceptions.

However, Sharon, your closing observations are absolutely spot on. In order to avoid this constant circular behavior and frustration, we need to focus on the small but immensely valuable impact and change that we can create in the classroom every day. Once the bell rings, the room is only occupied by us, and our students. Those small changes, approaches to curricula, perspectives in lesson planning, and technology resources we leverage build upon themselves to create real and lasting impacts for our students.

We can make a difference even if we aren't the boss. Step by step, student by student. Innovative web stream by innovative web stream. Or at least student by student...

MAC Wk 3 Blog 2

John Harvey had a very honest and open post about how difficult rejections and expectations can be. Check his post out here, and see my comments below. Thanks John.


John,

I agree, on several levels.

First, we are faced with rejection from an assortment of daily sources. I have a whole cadre of friends like you: artists, filmmakers, musicians, and other creatives of one ilk or another who are continuously faced with criticism.

However, it seems that despite this barrage of feedback, many of these same keep creating. My guess is that the initial motivation for creating in the first place had nothing to do with feedback or professional acclaim, but a need to share an idea, concept, feeling, or even message.

Your blog post is a perfect example therein. An initial project idea didn't work out, but you went ahead and created something. Not only did you create something, you shared it with all of us while discounting some of the aesthetic and technical aspects. Clearly, the message, not the F-Stop, focus or other technical minutia was the central element you wanted to share.

Personally, I think that when a creative develops some content irregardless of inevitable negative feedback, that creative piece is often the most honest and welcomed by others.

And, to your point that now is the time to start something, I've found that often, "starting" is never easy. Its the most inhibiting process of any project. Our inner voice questions whether anyone will like it, whether we'll be able to repeat an earlier success, or whether we'll never get another gig again.

Yet if we never start, or try once again, we'll never know will we? Trying is difficult. Starting is difficult. But, it can be immensely rewarding, and generally, I've generally found that once I started something, I usually wondered, "what was I so worried about?"

Well done. Thanks for the post.

MAC Wk 3 Blog 4: Open Subject

There is an ancient "Chinese Curse" which seems to be oft repeated these days: May you live in interesting times.

After reading another report on testing models and international education programming in last week's New York Times, I am convinced that we live in interesting times indeed.

Over the past 11 months, we have had the unique opportunity to study educational design theory through a media rich portal while the following is being debated and discussed in national and international forums:

1. The lack of creative aptitude and problem solving skills in today's school children
2. The effectiveness of No Child Left Behind
3. The sky-rocketing cost of higher education
4. The value of testing
5. How to teach meaning over fact in an age of Google
6. The validity of Wikipedia
7. The wiring of the entire world via the internet
8. Video in education
9. Online education
10. The crash of our financial markets and changing workplace needs
11. Unions vs merit pay
12. For-profit education and "career colleges"
13. Technology in the classroom: ie iPads or books
14. The notion of DIY-U and untethered / piecemeal higher education opportunities
15. MI and BBL
16…

The list goes on and on.

Yet, what continues to inspire and encourage me in this age of confusion and challenge (felt on behalf of my students who are seeking future employment and myself on how to empower them with appropriate skills and worldviews), is that we have been able to observe the international educational and social debates through the FSO portal supported by the expertise of committed educators. I believe that this is no small asset.

This past year has shown me what is possible in order to leverage today's modern communication tools within learning environments. And, what has been most apparent is that rarely did this experience ever appear to involve technology simply for technology's sake. Personally, I have really appreciated the balance between varying activities while an online student here at Full Sail. In nearly equal measure, our coursework from month to month has involved discussion, media development, research, reading, and a host of other "traditional" educational exercises.

Often, when the debate of educational (or political) change enters the public sphere, sentiments seem to sway dramatically towards one or another diametrically opposed position. While our program was certainly technology intensive, the deployment of modern tools was often used in order to simply facilitate a somewhat traditional or common classroom discussion or lecture.

I really feel encouraged by the wide swath of tools and resources that we've discussed and used. This week alone, our class has collectively shared over 50 video links that could be brought into the classroom. Or beamed to our students' laptops, iPhones, or iPads.

Yet still remaining is the challenge of finding the break in the day (or school year) to affectively implement these tools into the classroom. It seems that every morning I'm working through a giant jigsaw puzzle in my mind investigating a hundred different scenarios while trying to decide which link should be used in which class for which subject for…

Without question, my Action Research Project has been an invaluable opportunity. While reviewing my classroom activities student surveys, I've learned to see a much more immediate and true perspective of how affective my classroom is on any given day. As such, I'm learning to react at the "speed of observation" per the needs and expectations of my students in this complex world.

Returning to the classroom (albeit a new classroom) has been exhilarating. While the summer break is always needed in June, and I get ancy by mid-July, sometimes I wish we had another 2 months off to work this video into that curricula and this discussion blog into that course.

Or maybe, just maybe, mirroring every other individual journey in the game of life, we get a little further and a little better as time allows and patience is one of the best medicines for these "interesting" times.

MAC Wk 3 Blog 1

MAC Wk 3 Blog 1

We are surrounded by perfection. Whether we've turned on the television or visited any news blog, we are confronted with perfect people, that have perfect faces, and dress their perfect bodies in immaculately styled fashion.

In many ways, this unsurpassed perception and aura of success envelops us. Magic sporting events are constantly replayed on television, while equally surrealistic and virtuostic musical displays are frozen into our collective psyche through the radio and other mediums. Personally, I think that the proverbial bar has been set a little too high. And yet, we are constantly reminded of its presence in a cruel and ceaseless way as media distributors bombard us with a myriad of images, videos, and web streams.

However, countering this trend, authors like the Zanders' are suggesting we learn to see things "the way they are" and "embrace the passion and vitality" of honest performance rather than simply celebrating the staggeringly rare moments that escape classification.

Ben's anecdotes about performance and music were especially poignant as he recollected that Stravinsky chose a musician with less aptitude to play a particular line in The Rite of Spring. In Stravinsky's mind, as a "master" or virtuoso" would likely have played the particular passage with relative ease, the maestro realized that a more desperate player might imbue the concert with a greater sense of emotion or delicacy. In reality, the part actually needed to be desperate, conflicted, and even emotive in order to convey the message the writer had intended.

We often live in fear of measuring up in not only our professional lives, but also in our personal lives, appearances, and even relationships. Too often, individuals and society as a whole miss the fact that the excitement of anticipation or attempt can actually accentuate the moments we hope to experience in life.

In many ways, I found the Zanders's observations to be in line with those of Sir Ken Robinson and other contemporary thinkers. In his now famous TED Talk entitled, "Do Schools Kill Creativity", Robinson reminds us that if anyone is ever afraid of being wrong, it is quite likely that they will never try anything original out of fear of failure or rejection.

Personally, reading the Art of Possibility has been a very timely experience. As Newsweek, the New York Times, and other major media outlets have all decried the lack of creative acumen in our younger student population, I believe that it is high time for all of us to embrace realistic and personally applicable measures of "success" and accomplishment for our students.

Within my short lifetime, I have been witness to a variety of sublime displays of human prowess. However, if I set my daily barometer to the level set by the likes of Michael Jordan or Prince, I don't know if I would get out of bed.

Besides, there are some things that I aspire to do that I don't they could do either.

And I bet our students would agree. There are a lot of other jobs to be done in the world today…

MAC Wk 2 Blog 4: Open Subject

There are a million acronyms that teachers, businesses and governments will use to explain or simplify complex collections of information. Often times, the acronym can illustrate a progression of information, or simply tie together some relevant truism.

This week, the classic acronym "K.I.S.S." (Keep It Simple Stupid) is ringing particularly true in my classroom.

Last week, I started a new position at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota. McNally Smith is music focused media arts college which offers BA degrees in music performance, composition, business, and other disciplines. Starting on the 7th of September, I joined the Business Department and am now teaching Media Economics, Music Business History, and Ethics.

I am always motivated by new challenges, and I was especially excited to join the team at McNally and explore an all new classroom environment. However, I was not necessarily prepared to teach an entirely new slate of courses. Granted, I have been teaching media related issues for almost a decade, however one course in particular, Ethics, was quite new to me as a stand-alone subject.

As my close friends and family can attest, I barely slept the last week of August. With Full Sail's program still in full swing and a myriad of other commitments looming, I felt completely unprepared to digest a whole new set of texts and course materials while developing dynamic and motivating lesson plans for an entire semester.

Sometimes, actually starting can be the hardest point of a project. As the days passed, I found myself almost intimidated by the process. I didn't want to walk into the classroom without a complete and holistic view of the courses entire progression.

Not surprisingly, when I walked into the classroom Tuesday afternoon, I did not have the entire course elegantly mapped out for the next 15 weeks. Instead, I took a deep breath (almost out of desperation) and simply started talking with my students. Who were they? Why had they come to such a unique institution? What were their goals and aspirations? What does it mean to conduct one's self ethically in the workplace?

We had a wonderful class. And, as I reviewed the discussion notes from our first session together, I realized that their input had contributed to a litany of different conversation points which could manifest into any number of potential projects and activities.

Clearly, the stress of creating the "perfect" lesson had clouded my ability to follow the advice of almost every educational researcher and our entire program here at Full Sail: before you implement something, consider the audience, apply the material to their needs, and have fun.

Keep it simple. Start at the beginning. Work with your students and find points of entry to bridge the complex structures of the material that has to be covered, and make it relatable in a relaxed and engaging atmosphere.

In truth, this program and our journey together has been impactful beyond measure. I feel much more empowered and inspired to engage with my students and explore complex and important issues. Sometimes, however, I just need to breathe, reflect on the past year, and remember the basics.

Keep it simple stupid. It gets easier once you start. At least starting somewhere is probably what matters most.

I hope the week and school year has begun auspiciously for you all as well.

Thanks...