MAC wk4 BP5 Response to Amanda McGhee

I can't wait to have a week away from the computer. There have been times during this program that I've not had time to look at my personal interests online due to the coursework load and my job work load. I can say that my Wimba presentation this week made me aware of just how disorganized my thoughts were regarding how the presentation should go next month. I plan to create an outline and possibly a powerpoint to guide my article presentation. I'm glad I had the opportunity to practice.

MAC wk4 BP4 Response to Zoe Marlowe

Like you, Zoe, I felt that my presentation of my article in Wimba was disorganized to say the least. I have also reflected about how I can streamline this presentation for next month’s final! We’re almost done!!!

MAC wk4 BP3 Where to Publish

I am proud that my research shows positive impact with my students despite all of the technical issues we faced over the year. My students never lost motivation to participate in class, even when the computers were down. I think that my article may stand a chance to be published in The Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR) and in ISTE's Journal of Research on Technology in Education (JRTE). And although I’m not sure that my research is worthy of publishing in an authentic educational journal, I do plan to use it to acquire grant money from possible donors. If I can accomplish what this research shows, then imagine the mountains I could move with computers that work!

MAC wk4 BP2 Reading Reaction

I think one of my strengths as an educator is my ability to light a spark with not only my students but my colleagues as well. I’ve been told that when I’m working with my students I do what it takes to keep the students involved and engaged. When I heard this, I questioned the critic, “Isn’t that what a teacher is supposed to do?”

I know that my students trust me. I look them in the eyes when they talk to me, and I find out what makes them excited. I always tell them that they can do whatever I ask them to do, even if it’s hard. I celebrate their successes. I validate their disappointment and pump them up to try again, instructing them about pitfalls to avoid. I work hard to create trustful relationships with my students, and I endorse having FUN learning in class.

Not only do I practice my own responsibility for myself, but I teach my students how to do so as well. One of the ways that I’m able to do this is by separating behaviors from the child. I take extra time and effort to tell a student that their choices have consequences and rewards depending on the path they choose. I’m consistent. I point out specific behaviors that need to stop instead of blaming a student for what is happening. I try to make an opportunity to address students privately to minimize embarrassment. By attempting to eliminate emotional reactions to behavioral redirection, I show students how they are in control of their own choices, and make them their own boards.

I believe that by establishing an environment of trust in my classroom, the students understand that our objectives are ours and not just mine or theirs. WE are on a mission toward each other’s success. WE approach the lessons together, and WE succeed together.

MAC wk4 BP1 To Publish or Present, That is the Question

Thinking aloud...

When presented with the options to present my research to an exciting conference full of educators or to publish my research as an article, I choose the latter. My students were motivated through out the entire project even though they encountered so many set-backs and problems with the technology available to them. And while most of the students showed improvements in all areas tested, it is my professional opinion that the gains made were not as impressive as they'd have been had the conditions been more favorable. So although I plan to use many of the skills in my future educational lessons, I anticipate that a much more exciting presentation is yet to come.

MAC wk3 BP4 iWebsite will not publish

One of the most frustrating things about Technology is when it just doesn’t work the way we think it should. For instance, over the last year, I have documented everything about my research on a beautifully prepared iWeb site for my final presentation. When I renewed my Mobile Me account, the website apparently did not renew. I now have grades pending because of this technical glitch (for which I thankfully have a ticket number Ticket 62117). I have created posts on the support site, I’ve chatted with support personel at Full Sail, and I’ve been hung up on by an answering machine who deemed my issues unworthy of human interaction. Times like these make me want to scream and cause an increasingly more sever pain in my neck.

MAC wk3 BP3 Comments to Jerusha Hufstetler

I find it interesting how you bring up your seperate selves in different places of your life. It makes me aware of how different I am in the situations of my life as well. I speak differently to my daughter than to my students, and differently to my friends than to many of my colleagues. I think that making the exchange of 'and' for "but" help us to stop making excuses for why we aren't satisfied in any areas of our lives, but to accept our place in creating a satisfying opportunity for ourselves.

MAC wk3 BP2 Comments to Anna Dooley

I agree with your statement about how hard it is to fit a years worth of work into a little keynote presentation. I initially thought that I'd present as well. Now that the process has begun, I'm thinking that publishing may be easier.

MAC Wk 3 BP 1

Leading from Any Chair challenges me to give up more control to the students. It’s very difficult for me to trust that I have provided my students with everything that they need to get their jobs done. Unlike the orchestra, my students aren’t assigned seats according to their training or specialty. A good deal of assessment would need to take place in order to assign the leadership tasks, I suppose that this is would come into play when analyzing learning preferences, strengths and weaknesses.

The 6th Rule reminds me to stop taking everything so seriously, stop worrying so much about the results of the state mandated tests and the predicament at my school. This is very difficult for me at this time, as I just received word that 11 of our students did not pass the reading portion of this test in the third grade. 18% of our students is a very high rate of failure. In the development of this crisis, meetings with angry administration have been held in which an obvious breakdown in communication has occurred. The critical selves of all involved have risen to the surface, and it is really difficult for all of us to find our central selves. We all, faculty and administration, need an opportunity to divert attention away from the threat against the survival of our struggling school towards the ever mounting tasks at hand. The time to react to the news is over, and we must create and commence upon a plan of attack to insure it does not happen again.

If I allow myself the time to be present in the moment and discuss the way things are, it feels very scary. I’m finishing a year of significant struggle to teach well and earn a master’s degree. I am so close to the end that I can taste the sweet victory of the degree with the bitter tinge of a massive disappointment as a teacher. The possibilities ahead of me seem grim. Will I be reprimanded for the diversion of attention away from my students toward my personal goals and gains? The question itself takes away from being in the conflicting moment of disappointment and excitement.

When reading Giving Way to Passion, I could only think of how I might use the new skills I’ve attained in the EMDT program towards guiding next year’s students toward success on this exam. I have already offered to participate in training for the online management system purchased by the school to help streamline administrative functioning as well as lesson plans and other classroom management tools. I’d like to participate in the training to attain proficiency with the program as well as to create training or tutorial videos for the faculty to refer when attempting to use it.

MAC wk2 bp4 AR website

I really enjoyed this year. My students did as well. It was fun to try the innovative techniques with my reading classes. They were always motivated and often talked about my class as a favorite. They were very proud of their animation projects. I’m convinced that if they had the resources at home, they’d continue to play and create with the Go Animate website just for fun.

Although my students showed progress in the areas of basic writing skills acquisition, I am confident that if the computers had been faster and more reliable that the gains would have been more significant. Too much time was wasted attempting to log into computers and email accounts on the very slow Internet speeds in this lab. I feel that valuable educational time was wasted in this manner. Even with all of the work-arounds and attempts to adapt to the situation, I feel that the students deserved a better experience. I am so happy that they never gave up on their projects. Certainly this is a testament to the motivational powers of the creative abilities when given technology.

I am so happy to see the project documented in the website. It’s fun to look back at the pictures from the year, and to read my blog posts during the experience. Thankfully, I tried to keep it updated as I went, so it has been fairly easy to maintain. I am certain that I will continue to refine and try these techniques with future classes.

MAC wk2 BP3 Comment on Spencer Lunsford's blog

Wowza! Quadruplets, a full time job and Full Sail EMDT program all in one sounds much more difficult than anything I can come up with. Congratulations on your beautiful babies. You must be looking forward to finishing the program even more than me. We will be able to cherish the feelings of accomplishment and a job well done soon!



How are you planning to attack the final presentation? Will you prepare your work to be published or are you planning to create a presentation?

MAC wk2 BP2 Comment on Anne Alsup's blog

You seem to have clearly captured my own feelings in your blog post… and, you did it in a creative way! Kudos to you! I have completed my research on increasing writing skills using discussion boards as well as email, and other fun writing based projects with a group of fourth graders based on literature we were reading in class. Although, I feel confident that given the proper circumstances, my research would have been consistent with the literature I reviewed, unfortunately technical glitches made the project very difficult to complete. I do not feel that my results were very conclusive because of these issues that were out of our control. And I wish that I could have a chance to try it again, with more updated computers that were capable of performing the tasks with less trouble. Like you, I do not think that my results are worthy of publishing in a scholarly journal. I am planning to do the presentation. I think the presentation allows a little more freedom in reviewing our projects and hopefully lends itself to more personal inflection.

MAC wk2 BP2 Comment on Anne Alsup

MAC Wk 2 BP 1

Reading the book “ The Art of Possibility” by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander reminds me of one of my favorite sayings when I come to an obvious impasse in an argument or heated debate. I have often told the opposing side “Your perception is skewed”. When in fact, all of our realities are skewed in our favor from creation. If our perception of reality is invented by our brains to accommodate our experiences, then it seems that all of us should be capable of living happy lives by practicing positive and forward thinking skills. If we allow ourselves permission for our thoughts to wander beyond the constraints of how we see order and expand boundaries, then creativity begins to happen. When we begin to shift our perception, and look at situations from different angles, we allow ourselves the freedom to grow and learn and the power to invent or create. When we realize that we are just part of a larger construction and open ourselves to the realm of possibility greater than what our previous boundaries had allowed, it often changes our perspective in a very spiritual way. Allowing ourselves to consider another’s experiences brings about empathy and seeing a change brought about by a collective effort can alter our realities in a self-actualizing way.

Having this type of perspective as an educator opens up a magnitude in the realm of possibilities for each student. I love the analogy of Michelangelo’s ability to see a statue in each chunk of rock or stone to how educators could see our students. If we were truly able to forget the constraints of achievement testing and cultivate the individual talents and strengths of each student, the world would be a much better place. I think children would grow into happier adults. They would understand who and why they belong. They would be able to see how they fit into the grand scheme and value their contributions to the greater good.

MAC Free Choice Wk1

For Mother’s Day, I gave myself an iPhone 4. I’ve spent the last couple of days getting used to the interface and syncing with my iTunes. I’m so excited to have such a wonderful opportunity as the App Store available at my fingertips. However, upon my first few visits, I’ve become very overwhelmed at all of the choices available to me. Where do I begin?

I’ve searched Google for top 10 lists and other information. I’d like to know what’s available to educators. I found one app, called videolicious, that allows you to upload a song with your photos to create a little music video. I thought that might be interesting to use with students.

Please leave comments about any educational apps I might want to check out.

MAC Reply 2 Wk 1 Cherie Hellenbrand

You seem to be handling copyright law issues the same way that our professors have done at Full Sail. I'm curious to know if your students facilitate a great deal of creative commons materials. I'm also curious to know if they submit their own original works to creative commons. From my own perspective, I think it would be interesting to see how my own works might evolve or be used by others.

MAC Reply 1 Wk 1 Thomas Meringolo

As the child of an attorney, I agree that I never wanted to become a lawyer. Your statement about laws not keeping up with the times triggers thoughts about how our society is changing so quickly that nothing seems to be keeping up with it. Both our judicial as well as our educational system seem to be struggling to keep up with how rapidly the culture of our youth is evolving. The resistance to change is frightening.

MAC Reading Wk1 Creative Commons and Girl Talk

Years of grueling piano practice and lessons under abusive instructors left a nasty taste in mouth. I gained a valuable understanding of how music is read, and I understand how to read it, although not fluently. The artist GirlTalk has made me change the way that I think about music. Because of his story, I believe that with enough practice using the tools on my laptop, I, too, may create bits of musical genius that ebb and flow through the genres that produced the soundtrack of my life.

I first heard GirlTalk when I tuned into a local radio station one Sunday night a couple of years ago. I was delighted to hear Fugazi’s Waiting Room bass line under the lyrics of Rhianna’s Rude Boy. I assumed the DJ was local until recently a friend burned me a copy of his album “All Day”. I quickly recognized the mix that I’d cranked so loudly in the car years before. I searched the Internet to find out more about him and ran across the documentary several months ago. I was amazed

The evolution of copyright into the Remix generation hasn’t effected me horribly, however, I have been paying attention. One of my most favorite discoveries on the Internet before starting my Educational Media Design and Technology Master’s program at Full Sail University was the discovery of a sweet little network of torrent hosts. These sweet little packets of media files located all over the virtual world were available to download for free with ease at my convenience. I no longer had to fear that the government would track my IP address and embarrass me in public and shameful court procedures for having a copy of my friends’ cd’s in my iTunes account. But my computer soon fell victim to a deadly virus that eventually retired my machine.

Creative Commons has created an outlet that offers a more open environment conducive to sharing. Artists have more freedom and agility with their creative practices. I love remembering my teenaged years listening to Black Sabbath, and admittedly, Ludacris almost always makes me nod my head in rhythm as I drive. But listening to GirlTalk’s mash up of “War Pigs and Move Bitch” not only makes my whole body happy, but also seems to make the traffic so much easier to deal with. It’s this ability of taking the classic and evolving it into a new expression that should be protected and respected.