MAC Week 4: Wrap Up

What a long road this has been and now we are moving on to month 12, the final stretch to the finish line. What an experience this whole thing has been and it still feels like yesterday that I just got into the EMDT program and now, I am just about done. The MAC course was a good final touch that put everything that I had worked on into a more finalized form so, as I walk into month 12, I have a pretty much completed presentation and solid goal on where to take all that I have done and show it to others. I did have an enjoyable time in this class and the reading alone was a good eye opener for me. Now, I must push forward and complete the final tasks set before be before I am truly finished, then I can sit back and fully reflect upon my experiences from the past year. What an amazing ride this has been.

MAC Week 4 Reading: Art of Possibility Ch. 9 - 12

I will say, these last four chapters were pretty much the best part of the book I really enjoyed reading, though the whole of the book was still highly insightful and educational.  The last four chapters really dived into some of the things that really plaque our society today, namely not creating that spark in others and pushing the blame. I think the first chapter in this reading stood out for me the most and was one of the more powerful, thought provoking reads, and that was on the concept of doing things face to face to light that spark in others. This is one thing that I do firmly believe many should do. If given the option of calling or meeting a person face to face, currently, most will end up opting to do just the phone call. When we do this, it will not show just how passionate you are about a topic and you will most likely end up finding disinterest in the person you are trying to light that spark in if you didn't meet them face to face.
This is one of the reasons why I do miss teaching in a brick and mortar classroom. I did love teaching my students face to face, where I could ignite that spark in them to make them want to learn. Nothing gave me as sense of accomplishment than seeing one of my students suddenly light up and crave all knowledge I could impart upon them after I was able to sit there one on one with them. Being an online instructor is rough in trying to do this for the students as I cannot be there face to face with them, to show them that enthusiasm and passion that will make them want to learn and succeed.
The concept of 'being the board' instead of 'being the piece' really stood out for me as well. How many times have you heard someone tell you to 'be the ball'? I found this new concept to be quite the eye opener as 'being the board' means that you are the foundation upon which you place all of your life on instead of 'being the ball' and being carried through life one move at a time. This was a pretty profound analogy in this one.
Another concept that stood out for me in the reading was assigning blame. How many times have we assigned blame to another person when it was not really warranted? This instinct is one of the ones that come from being taught since a young age to be competitive. Throwing blame out on another shows their fault and can raise us up to get ahead, which is not a good thing to do. If we just took a step back, analyzed the situation and tried to come up with a less accusing tone and not just throwing the blame at people, we would cause a much more positive response in others that could turn around an ugly situation into a more positive one.

I found this book to be a very good read and it shows us some good ways to try and change our views and interactions on the world to make them a more positive and influential. Sadly, this world does need to get out of its competitive nature and learn to treat others as equals and to truly help one another. This would make life much more pleasurable to be in and we all are here only a short time so why not live it to its fullest?

MAC Week 4: Response to Lionel Jacques

Wk4 Reading – Art of Possibility [9-12]

What a great read this week!  The Zander’s manage to remind us about positive things in such a delightful manner.  This week we cover passion, apologies, blame and a host of other heavier type aspects of discussion but shared with stories and a refreshing view.

The start of this weeks reading grabbed me – mainly because the story about Some things are just better done in person was one of my childhood memories as well!  Great to see some thing echoed throughout the world.  It really covers engaging others with the possibilities.  They key trait to this though is not cajoling them into joining in, but by opening up the doors to share the way.  One of the stories Ben shares is great in the way it unfolded – the trip to London to get a company on board with his companies desire for sponsorship turning into Ben enrolling into their plan for education! 

This truly comes up a lot in education, especially as we move up into possibly more administrative/political arenas – you cannot always insist on the way things may be carried out – but by really being committed to what we do we can get others on board supportively more readily!  Ben’s school tale in London is the best example of this – awesome things happen if we share our passion and share possibilities with others.

We move on later to discuss being the board – seeing ourselves as the framework for all that happens in our lives.  This was a great twist – as almost universally I think folks view themselves as pieces on the board – moving around in response to stimuli and such.  What a refreshing change to take the active role and understand that our life itself is the stage upon which all things happen instead of just reacting to the moves of others.

They also cover the whole aspect of blame – of apologizing – but in a refreshing manner that is also a different approach than we may do out of habit.  It is not to say that others have no fault in things that go wrong – but that a kernel of all faults lay within us as well.  What could we have done differently to avoided getting into the conflicting situation?    Making the act of apologizing not being a sign of our remorse over an action, but instead taking it as responsibility in our part.  These are all great things to remember when we interact with others throughout our lives and open up doors of possibility!

I am grateful for the chance I’ve had this month to read The Art of Possibility – it is not the normal sort of book I delve into as I am an avid non-fiction fan in the form of history books.  This pushed me outside of that and was a wonderfully refreshing reminder of things we can keep in mind in OUR lives and enjoy more satisfaction.  

Response:

@ Lionel

I, too, had kind of an eye opener with this book as well. At the beginning, I just really could not get into it, but as I worked my way through it, I saw the different aspects that the book was trying to impart on us.  Assigning blame tends to be something that most of us fall into easily, especially when the mistake also affects us. Sadly, this is another one of those things we are taught early on as we are shown that we have to be competitive with one another. It is amazing just how easily we can fall back into this situation as it has become habit to us the older we are.  I found these four chapters to be very insightful and I see from your post here that you pretty much had the exact same experience as I did when I read them. Very insightful post, Lionel! I am glad you enjoyed the journey through the book.

MAC Week 4 = Response to Thomas Moore

MAC blog wk. Reading: The art of possibility

Once again, the Zanders excell with their "practices" in the chapters that were in the reading for this week.  Using the "one buttock" technique was funny, but it had a message:  play, work or do life with full attention to the important "stuff."  The cello player that didn't get one job because he played the first way, but got a better job when he played the second way (one buttock) for more pay drove the point home.
Also, doing things that are important, in person, does make a difference.  I weigh whether to make a phone call or see a person face to face.  Sometimes, it does make a difference.
The adage, "bloom where you are planted" came to mind when Ben talked about his experiences as a young conductor.  He has made all the difference where he is placed.  On a white piece of paper, he has fit the chord of life in proper sequence.  This class has been blessed with musicians this month.  A great group of people to work with!  I have enjoyed the class.

Response:

@ Thomas

Good points where hit in your post. The biggest thing that I find is that if you are face to face with someone, they can see your passion and read your body language so things will most likely turn out better than if you just did a phone call where all the person heard was your voice. There are times where doing a face to face with someone just cannot be, but if you can do it, it is better that you do. I think that chapter in the book was the most powerful for me as it was like affirming something I already practiced, which further steeled my resolve to continue on to do face to face where I could, not only at my workplace, but in other aspects of my life.

MAC Week 4 - Final Publication/Leadership Project

The goal of my Action Research Project was to show how Second Life could be used as a tool to increase motivation, collaboration, engagement, and creativity in online education. My literature review showed how others used Second Life in their research to see just how viable the virtual world could be in education and other aspects of social networking.  Both cycles had students using Second Life as a collaboration and creativity platform for the group work they had to do. Each cycle had two surveys the students had to fill out as well as random interviews done as the main data gathering technique. The data collected showed a high percentage of success in the students using Second Life and the final projects they produced were some of the best I have seen to date.

My two places I will be sending out my presentation to see if I can present at their conferences are listed below:
ASHE, or the Association for the Study of Higher Education, holds a couple conferences a year where educators from all around can come and collaborate on different ways to increase ways to make higher education better.  They also put out a full journal of all that was focused on through research, conferences, and other journals for educators to read and catch up on all the new innovations that might end up showing up in education.  One of the reasons why I chose this is because this would be a good conference to present at and this association has been around for awhile and has gotten a good backing as well as there will be many instructors from all over that do attend the conferences this association hosts.  I may or may not get in, but it would be a good place to present to if able.

EDUCAUSE is the second place that I would be interested in doing a presentation at for one of their conferences. This one deals more in the technology and since my project and presentation is talking about the benefits of the use of Second Life for education, I feel that this would be a good fit for a conference here.  EDUCAUSE is another well known in the education field and would provide me with a way to get my presentation out to other teachers and instructors to show them my research and how they could use it to supplement their own teaching. Ideally, I would love to at least be able to present one time as I am passionate about my topic and I feel that many more would benefit from what I concluded.

 The Publication/Leadership Project summary

As online education became popular, the need to keep students engaged increased greatly as well.  The problem I focused on was how to use Second Life as a tool for collaboration and creativity for students to increase engagement and motivation in online education.  I tackled this problem by first researching others work that they did in Second Life and then did a two-month data collection through the use of two surveys, special work assignments, and random interviews on the participants in Second Life.  The ending data collected showed a 90% success rate in student engagement using Second Life. The conclusion of my research showed that Second Life could indeed be a tool to help engage students in online education.

First Think Out Loud Post

http://krisnewton.blogspot.com/2011/05/mac-week-1-presentation-vs-paper.html


Second Think Out Loud Post

http://krisnewton.blogspot.com/2011/05/extra-post-think-out-loud.html


Link to my Presentation:

Kristopher Newton's Publication/Leadership Project

Presentation Download:

Newton_Kristopher_PubLeadProject.ppt

MAC Wk4 Publishing/Leadership project part 2 of 2: Presentation Findings

After doing some steady thinking about exactly what I want to do for my Publication/Leadership Project, I am definitely going with the Presentation way.  I am not very good at writing papers and I feel that I would do much better at presenting my material to an audience where they can see my enthusiasm and passion for showing it than having a long, data intensive paper that probably would not get read. What better way to draw interest than showing interest and passion in the work by standing up and talking about it. So, I searched for a bunch of conferences on the web. Needless to say, this was much more difficult than I had anticipated as most of the conferences were done overseas and I really did not want to have to travel out of the country to do a conference as I do not have the financial backing for that.  I did end up finding two places that I would like to send my material to so I can see if I could get a chance to present my ARP to. Here they are:

ASHE - http://www.ashe.ws/

ASHE, or the Association for the Study of Higher Education, holds a couple conferences a year where educators from all around can come and collaborate on different ways to increase ways to make higher education better.  They also put out a full journal of all that was focused on through research, conferences, and other journals for educators to read and catch up on all the new innovations that might end up showing up in education.  One of the reasons why I believe this would be a good conference to present at is due to the fact that this association has been around for awhile and has gotten a good backing as well as there will be many instructors from all over that do attend the conferences this association hosts.  I may or may not get in, but it would be a good place to present to if able.

EDUCAUSE - http://www.educause.edu/

EDUCAUSE would be the second place that I would be interested in doing a presentation at for one of their conferences. This one deals more in the technology and since my project and presentation is talking about the benefits of the use of Second Life for education, I feel that this would be a good fit for a conference here.  EDUCAUSE is another well known in the education field and would provide me with a way to get my presentation out to other teachers and instructors to show them my research and how they could use it to supplement their own teaching. Ideally, I would love to at least be able to present one time as I am passionate about my topic and I feel that many more would benefit from what I concluded.

These would be my two primary choices where I would want to present my project to as they are both well established and have a good amount of memberships so I could tap into that database of knowledge and also impart some of my own to help better the educational cause.

MAC Week 3 - Free Choice: Pushing the Envelope

Now that most of my ARP work is finished, I have already contacted a few other instructors and have setup a Second Life round table on the 26th to see if I can get more instructors interested in learning how to incorporate the virtual world into their curriculum to help bring about more engagement for their students.  This is just one way that I am wanting to show that using this virtual environment can indeed bring more engagement and creativity for the students. I do not know why so many tend to be resistant to at least attempting this really.  Full Sail is supposed to be a cutting edge technology school so why are we still afraid to really plunge into this type of technology and see exactly what it has to offer? Is it because some instructors don't want to take the time to learn how to use it?  Is it because they haven't really spent a good enough time delving into it perhaps?  This is why I pushed for this round table Continuing Education time, so I can speak to the instructors and help them learn more about the many different aspects to Second Life and perhaps brainstorm with them to come up with different ways to use Second Life to fit in with their courses.

It is all about engaging the students, getting them motivated, to want to learn, especially in the online educational environment.  Here is a tool that could help in that aspect, but as of yet I have only seen a few dabble in it and have not really pushed the envelope in using it. This is what I want to challenge others in. If they want to give their students a more engaging educational experience, get out of that comfort zone, push that envelope, dive into this technology and see what it can really do. Quit dwelling on the negatives and keep an open mind about it, this is what we were taught how to look at things after all. Think outside that box...Push that envelope...