Sources:

Youtube video: Paradigm Shift Uploaded by jenneylou on Oct 28, 2010
An awesome video for which I cannot claim credit. In fact, I received this in a post on fb. I had to share it! It’s that good! I traced it back to David McLain.

とらちゃんとfacetime (2012/3/6) by yto

I had this one friend, when I was a kid, who always responded the same way when my mom asked if he wanted to stay for dinner. Let me call my mom and see what she’s making for dinner, he’d say. He didn’t mean anything by his response, but I later learned that mom felt that it was kind of a rude response. One doesn’t examine ones options when invited for dinner. Who knew? Today we might call this FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out” syndrome, where one evaluates ones social opportunities often when engaged in one of the social opportunities. If done poorly or with too much obviousness, one is likely to irritate those in attendance with a sense that their presence is unimportant. This isn’t strictly a social networking phenomenon, given that my friend perfectly illustrated this behavior decades before the advent of social networking. But many feel, in this social networking era with friends sitting about at restaurants and other gatherings staring at their smartphones instead of talking with one another, that social networking is making this phenomenon worse.

In a previous relationship we suffered from long periods of not being able to see one another, but both of us spent enough time every day near our computers that we fostered a sense of connection when we saw the other logged into our instant message accounts (this was long before Facebook took off). We’d exchange a short “hello” or two and then fall silent for a couple hours, like we might do had we been actually working in the same physical office. And then if one of us had to go (offline) we’d break the silence with a good-bye. This behavior seemed to help maintain some sense of connection. Maybe that wasn’t such a great thing, in view of how the relationship went, but it’s an example of how one can adapt a tool that doesn’t diminish the relationship.

An opposite example might be from when I worked nights with the phone company during which I often has extended opportunities … well, to use the phone. My significant-other wasn’t entirely happy that I wasn’t home during normal evening hours and decided that talking on the phone was no substitute for actually spending time together, so she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in my calls if I couldn’t actually be there. Needless to say, that relationship was not long for this existence. And this isn’t to say that had she saw the value of keeping the conversation going, even if only by phone, that the relationship would have survived. But the unwillingness to adapt might indicate faltering interest that went much more deeply than the tool.

So are meaningless connections being “maintained” by social networking or is it a means of maintaining connections with those who really mean something to us, but are otherwise unavailable? I know of many who, like my ex-wife, choose to not use the tools because they feel like, if you’re not really there then it can’t be real, so why try. Then there are those on the other end of the spectrum who seem to be desperately trying to fill in their lack of meaningful relationships with as much social networking as they can muster. And finally, there are the FOMO sitting with friends, checking in on what friends who are not present are doing. Can we really blame the tool for the behavior?

As much as much of my professional life is connected to staying plugged in and informed on what’s cutting edge with technology and education I am skeptical about those who pursue technology for technology’s sake or foster all this hype that sounds suspiciously like “better living through technology.” I mean, I love the shiny but it’s not about the shiny. And I feel like we’re getting it wrong when I get all the apologies from those looking for help with their gadgets, that they’re not very good with technology. What I find funny is this often comes from someone who is in fact a wizard with Excel, making a good living with their mad spreadsheet skills, but they feel intimidated because they can’t get their damn music synced to their handheld devices. It’s not much of a stretch that it’s the same with using social networks in ones personal life: you use the tools that work for you and should never have to apologize because you aren’t an expert on all that’s out there.

My girlfriend, Tricia, and I have settled into a routine where we stay connected with one another via text-messaging and mobile-phone and when we’re not together at the end of the day we usually make time to talk via video Skype. Text-messaging was something that Tricia didn’t do much before getting involved with me but she was already a video-Skype veteran, keeping in contact with a childhood friend in Canada regularly through video Skype. Interestingly, even though we do spend a lot of our work day near our computers we’ve never connected via IM or maintained a sense of presence with an IM connection. And we both monitor our friendships and family via Facebook, with Tricia often telling me things that my nieces are posting, for example, that seem to get by me. Thus she gets the better-at-Facebook award from me. So, surprise, surprise, we seem to have a balanced approach to how we stay connected with one another and with our friends that helps us maintain our need to be connected without feeling like the tool is more important than the connection.

Skype by jayneandd

At the same time I still haven’t quite figured out how to foster better connections with my friends and family far flung across the country. I used to take the time to call friends much more regularly. Sadly I have to confess that my motivation to connect was stronger in no small part because I didn’t have someone special in my life, so I was trying to fill the void via my array of friends. Damn. As much as I’d love to have closer relationships with friends and family such that a video Skype call would be a regular ongoing thing, the problem isn’t tech-related as much as changing the relationship patterns that we’ve created over the years. It is one of those things that’s completely understandable that they might feel like it doesn’t make sense to make the effort if it isn’t something that either party is going to maintain. It’s kind’a sad and it is something that might be improved with the addition of seeing the smiling faces that I miss. But I tend to fall back on the belief that my intended-communique-comrades already have full lives, that something like a video Skype call would be too intrusive or even artificial. Too bad, but then I guess it’s up to me to put the effort into it.

I didn’t expect my article on social networking during TMI week to turn into a confession that I seem to suck at friendships. Not something that I can blame on the technology, not something that I can claim the higher ground on, and it’s definitely not something that’s one-size-fits-all. There will always be those like my ex-wife who reject any connection attempt that isn’t mostly face-to-face and there will always be those who go further, believing that these tools are destroying our culture. I guess I don’t have to worry about trying to set up a video Skype call with them (and they probably don’t have the hardware to do a video Facetime call either). But it would be nice to go beyond the relationship snippets that flow by me in my Facebook and Twitter streams, and spend a few meaningful minutes smiling into the faces of those whom I’ve loved, laughed and cried with and who helped me build this amazing life I’ve been lucky enough to have and appreciate.

Sources:

image: とらちゃんとfacetime (2012/3/6) by yto, http://www.flickr.com/photos/yto/6814049128/ retrieved 5/17/2012.

image: Skype by jayneandd, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayneandd/4500707987/ retrieved 5/17/2012.

Youtube Video: Inspiration: Nokia – The Fourth Screen Uploaded by stevelitchfield on Oct 6, 2007
Archived from Nokia’s press material for the Go:Play events, this short video is truly inspirational and applies to all true smartphone and next generation mobile devices.

So, when I was creating my course for Full Sail, it should not be too much of a surprise that I took my 13-year experience working in public education, research from the Internet and combined it with the style of course materials I saw my co-workers using to create my course. My doctorate brethren, no doubt, used materials from their dissertation or prior work, that eventually led back to research that probably had components found on the Internet. What I’m trying to say is that a lot of what goes into classes can, in fact, be found on the Internet. So what are we paying for again? This subject is much bigger than can be fully addressed in a simple blog post, but I think that three observations can be made about the value of organized education in the era of everything on the Internet.

The first one is anecdotal, but why is it with all of the courses available to me on Lynda.com, ScreencastsOnline and iTunes U do I rarely bother with taking any of these amazingly well produced courses? With so much information and training available to me 24/7 365 days a year, why do I rarely spend any real time there? It certainly isn’t a problem of access to high quality materials. I’m afraid that as much as it might have been one of Steve Jobs’ desires to unbundle great coursework and learning from what he probably felt was antiquated institutions, it’s not enough to just post the course materials. Even if the materials are available for free, something is still missing. My thoughts are that these antiquated institutions well know that humans, without a certain level of structure, set goals and deadlines, won’t set aside the time or energy to avail themselves of the potential learning. Without some level of structure and purpose even the most professionally produced courses available to anyone willing to engage are all like disjointed sounds that have the vague familiarity of a song but blow by on the wind with no effect and no memory. Jobs himself, with everything that was available to him, never made it through even one year of study. Something about dropping into classes with no structure, may be appealing, doesn’t have enough energy or capacity to achieve the level of learning possible by a full program. A class here or there… but committing oneself to move up the learning ladder requires more than just the availability of courses.

The next two elements are based on a thought that I have been continually harping on, especially since coming to Full Sail to teach online: Real Learning is Not Solo Learning. The official teaching profession been trying for some time to make the factory model of education work, where the teacher bestows upon each individual student the magic mark of “Now Educated” on their person (hopefully close to their cranium). Alas, it’s much more complicated than that. And the first error seems to be the emphasis on learning as the achievement of individuals. Etienne Wenger in Communities of Practice and Situated Learning postulated that what we call learning is much more than just the acquisition of data, but also the social movement from being outside the learning circle as a non-participants, toward the center becoming participants and novices, and possibly eventually masters within the learning circle. Even in traditional institutions the individual is brought into the fold by the teacher, the master within the circle, and moves from outside the learning circle to a position within the circle. Essentially the idea of getting a degree is about getting the recognition of being a part of the learning group based on the strength or credibility of the learning group. Thus, if the credibility of the university is suspect than the value of the degree is diminished. Wenger recognized that the strength of education wasn’t in the individual but in the strength of the community.

So, getting back to our professor in Texas, he may have understood that he wasn’t risking anything by posting his course online because the real power and value was the relationship his students might have with him. Add to that, my experience has been, particularly in online learning, that it’s all the more re-enforced and strengthened based on the strength of the relationships between students. As much as we may want to make it all about individual achievement, it’s completely meaningless without the recognition, renewal and camaraderie of fellow participants. Given the amount of hours spent together and difficulty of the achievement, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that education is at it’s best as a communal experience. Perhaps it’s most obvious in online education because it’s least expected by participants and some educators. But when it’s done to the greatest extent of its potential, it is not the work of one, but the work of many, often working as one.

So those fearing that putting courses online will be the end of the teaching profession don’t know what they’re talking about. And those who assume that the role of the instructor can be filled by any warm body or that it’s not important to have student work as much together as possible, are selling a luke-warm version of something that could be revolutionary and life-changing. Given the effort it takes to get ones education going, why would you settle for anything less than the best?

It may just be nostalgia, but when I think about how I stay informed I always go back to memories of my dad reading the LA Times in the morning and watching TV news in the evening and that being enough. Granted, it is kind of part of my job to stay on top of a large host of information but it seems like I just can’t quite seem to get a meaningful handle on this. There has to be a more productive way of staying informed that doesn’t require trying to drink from the fire-hose that is RSS based feeds.

On my iPhone I’ve subscribed to 18 audio podcasts and on my iPad I have 34 video podcasts subscriptions (using the Downcast app). Three audio podcasts and five of the video podcasts are daily, three of the video podcasts are two times a week and the rest, 41 podcasts, are weekly. In my RSS reader I’m subscribed to 86 feeds with anywhere between 200 to 1500 articles waiting in my queue (depending on how frequently I scan the lists). In my two active Twitter accounts I’m following 551 persons in one account and 146 in the other averaging about 200 tweets to read whenever I check in. I have sixteen news apps on my iPad, subscribed to one magazine in Newsstand and five magazines using Zinio. And any of the seven TWiT video podcasts that I regularly watch are available live when recorded or 24/7 on-demand. Yeah, I don’t have a life.

Like my dad, I could just pick a few sources to go directly to for my info. All the mainstream sources have their own apps: ABC news, the BBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, LA Times, New York Times. Hell, even the Orlando Sentinel has an app. But, wasn’t it the promise of this information age, that I don’t have to depend on a curated version of the news but can get my news from sources much closer to the story. In fact, when I do skim through the Sentinel most of the local info is police blotter stuff and all the rest are wire stories that I could probably get much more in-depth coverage from where-ever the story originated from. I mean, I would only try to get my tech news from CNN if i wanted to see the mainstream media spin on a tech story. Thus the 52 podcasts, 86 RSS feeds and hundreds of twitter sources, resulting in many hundreds of news items per 24-hour period. It does seem wise to prune the stream back.

One thought I’ve had is, because many of the news items are just quoting or getting their information from other sources, I’d love it if I could enter all of the sources that I want my news stream to come from, but only view news items as close as possible to the original post. I’m guessing that that alone would reduce the number of articles skimmed by easily one-third. I don’ t know if that app or service exists (I would most definitely want it on my iPad, my news viewing platform of choice). Any suggestions would be most welcomed because I’m tired of the fire-hose experience.

This next video illustrates how important a teacher’s meaningful comment can mean to a young person:

This next video is a PSA featuring celebrities thanking their teachers. Interestingly this video was produced by the folks behind the “Waiting for Superman” documentary, which was not entirely supportive of teachers… but in the end, appreciation for the individuals that made a difference is important.

This last video tells the story of a school that turned things around. The video was featured in an Edutopia article by George Lucas. Again, a good educator can make a huge difference… Enjoy and don’t forget to thank a teacher. Thanks Mr. Mitchell.

Sources:

Taylor Mali: What Do Teachers Make? Uploaded by TeachingChannel on May 12, 2011
Taylor Mail provides the ultimate comeback for anyone with the audacity to ask what a teacher makes.

A Teacher Appreciation Story that Inspires Uploaded by njeaweb on Apr 30, 2009
Sometimes, it takes a life-changing event to spur people to action. Dr. Lee Buono, a neurosurgeon from Medford, Burlington County, was encouraged by one of his patients to thank Albert Siedlecki, the teacher who inspired him to become a neurosurgeon. In the 1980s, Mr. Siedlecki taught Dr. Buono how to dissect a frogs brain. Nearly 20 years later, Dr. Buono is saving lives. Watch their story.

May 3-9, 2009 is Teacher Appreciation Week – a great time to celebrate the achievements of New Jerseys teachers. This week and every week NJEA is working to highlight the stories of teachers and educational support professionals who are making a difference in the lives of students. Watch Classroom Close-up, NJ on NJN or online to hear more stories of educators making a difference.

Thank a Teacher Uploaded by takepart on Oct 14, 2010
Great teachers shape who we are today. Brought to you by www.takepart.com

Education: The Single Most Important Job by George Lucas, http://www.edutopia.org/blog/importance-of-education-george-lucas?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29

There were friends who were concerned that I’d given up on relationships after I started teaching. Like I said, I felt like I was on a mission and put the social life on a lower priority. Being in my mid-thirties at the time, it didn’t seem like there were all that many opportunities to begin with and I wasn’t willing to put more energy into it making something happen. I decided that if I was going to find someone, that I’d find that person probably doing the things that I loved and not doing something because I was just interested in finding someone. Well, that was the idea. I spent a lot of years without someone in my life. One year, when I was at camp with our sixth-grade students, standing in line for lunch, one student asked if I was married or had a family. I shrugged and said no. She was flabbergasted, I’m sure that she’d never known what it would be like to live in a small house without at least three generations of her family together. She asked, “Don’t you get lonely?” Ouch. That was a bit too close to the truth. This was the choice that I’d made. It was frustrating at times, but I was doing what I loved and I knew that I was fortunate in that alone.

Then when the opportunity to teach online came up and it was with my fellow Pepperdine online classmate, Dr. Ludgate, I knew that I had to make the transition. Interestingly, the job I left, teaching computers and media at a middle school in Long Beach, California, the job and the school are no longer there. They announced at a meeting, not long after I decided to take the online job, that they were phasing out the school and would transition to becoming a vocational high school. It’s been almost four-years since I left and it doesn’t look like the vocational school happened. All of my coworkers, a third for each year, needed to find jobs elsewhere. I left at the perfect time. It’s not that I really knew what would happen. But it was the right choice for me, for personal and career reasons at the time.

At the same time I felt like there was an analogy between my move to online teaching and what was going to happen to traditional public education. Having worked in technology for my whole adult life and having worked with kids for the past 15-years, I knew that a lot of things were and are going to need to change, that the traditional school was going to have to make a radical transition. Conversely, I couldn’t imagine most of my former coworkers smoothly adapting to the transition I made going from classroom teaching to online teaching. Simply put, I worked around the clock when I was running my labs and I still tend to do that now that I’m working online. But then I can see an advantage of teaching this way, with students Instant-Messaging me into the evening. I’m at home, dressed very comfortably, listening to the music that I want to listen to, being a teacher.

It reminds me of a difference between my brother and I. Back in the phone company days I was given a pager (late 80s) and while I had an office to report to, I’d often get calls to work on troubles clear across the county. Back in those days I pretty much felt like i could get almost anywhere in the county in 15- to 30-minutes. So, on more than a few occasions I’d find a nice place to relax or meet a friend for lunch, knowing that if the company needed me, they could reach me and I could be where-ever they needed in a matter of minutes. The pager was my friend that kept me from being tethered to a desk. My brother, on the other hand, was always leaving his pager at home, because it felt like to him that he was being tracked down. I saw the advantage and he saw the hassle (he’s much better now… this was a long time ago).

But traditional education is so stuck in the past. For example, I always felt like the traditional school calendar was a relic, out of place with how the rest of the world worked. But, it’s anathema to suggest doing away with summer break, like it’s the only thing left that’s good about teaching. Well, if it’s the only thing left, then perhaps the whole enterprise needs much more than a calendar adjustment. Being the on-campus tech guy, I saw how often and how many classrooms felt like they were just holding-tanks for our student population, babysitting on a community level. What a waste. I don’t fault my coworkers. My principal said it best when my students were acting out: “he gets paid the same whether you do the work or not, so you’re only hurting yourselves by not cooperating.” I know he meant to defuse their negative motivation, but it would seem that many have learned this lesson and put in just enough effort (like our students) to not get fired.

It’s a complicated problem and online teaching is by no-means a cure-all for what’s wrong with education. But, it is an opportunity for us to reassess what we’re trying to accomplish with our institutions. And maybe that’s the real message here: that we need to examine our choices and not let things continue the way they are just out of cultural inertia. Choice, like my choice to be dedicated to my mission as an educator. That didn’t change when I went online. In fact, I believe that I’ve been able to bring much more to the table because teaching online has required all of my skills as a communicator, as a listener, as a problem-solver, as a team-member and as a technologist.

And I’m lucky that I have a girlfriend who understands that I have a drive to do better and that I don’t believe in the 9-to-5. It’s fun having these kinds of choices at this stage in my life.

So, let’s dispel with some of the misinformation. For starters, just like education in general, online education isn’t just one thing. As much as I’d love to make definitive statements about all of online education, my comments are based on my own 10-years as an online student and educator with an emphasis on what seems to work best in college level education, but there are definitely elements that could be adapted to any age or grade level. So, as much as I’d like to make fun of decision makers using their own personal experiences as a basis for their decisions, I’m doing the same thing. The difference being that I’ve been at this for over 16-years, at the ground floor level, so I might have something more to offer than what one can get based on cursory three-hour fact-finding tour.

Online Learning is NOT Solo Learning

Pepperdine OMAET CadreBleu - Summer 2001

This is probably the most surprising discovery about online learning. When it is done correctly, it is quite the opposite of what one might expect. During my first go-around with online ed, at Pepperdine University, they did something brilliant. The summer before we were going to begin our online masters program they required that we come out to their West Coast campus for a week so that we could get to know our classmates and put us through a kind of technology boot-camp. Besides making sure that we were ready for the technology requirements that we’d face the rest of the year, we also got use to the sound of each other’s voice and how each of us dealt with challenges during our brief time together. The idea was that when we were back to our own hometowns working with just chat, email and webpages, we could supply the non-verbal cues we’d recognized in one another during our time together. That was intended, but what wasn’t intended or expected was that many of us would exchange IM information and whenever we met together for a class session, many of us would also create a private chatroom separate from the main room where “class” was taking place.

We called our private chatroom group, “the back row,” because it functioned like we were virtually sitting in the back of the classroom, free to exchange notes, make comments inappropriate for the main room discussion and on more than one occasion wake a sleeping classmate who wasn’t responding to a question from the main room. Not everyone participated in a private chatroom during class, sometimes it might be their technical inability to monitor more than one chat stream rapidly flying by (at the time our main class sessions were all text-only chat sessions) and sometimes it was a “personality thing.” The point was that even though we were spread half-way across the world, from California to Saudi Arabia, we made an effort to be there for our virtual classroom sessions because we wanted to hang out with our friends (well, and also chat with the professor about whatever we were studying…). It shouldn’t be too surprising that what works for third graders and eighth graders, the desire to be with their friends, is still a meaningful component of learning at the college level and online. And this isn’t to say that there isn’t room for the outliers who insist on going it alone. It’s just that there’s no reason to assume that because one is working online that one needs to work in isolation, bereft of human contact and companionship.

Not Limited to a Specific Time or Specific Place

Our First Online Session - Together - Back Row Club - 2001

Because we’re not getting in a car and driving to a campus in town isn’t a shortcoming of online education. In fact because our class is online we’re not limited to any specific time or place. Education isn’t the building we might meet in or something we do Tuesday evenings for fourteen weeks beginning in September. Education can become as ubiquitous as having the course materials to work with 24/7 and friends all around the world to work with … well, when everyone else in the house is asleep. Unlike my experiences working on my teaching credential or when I was working on my second bachelor’s degree, where I’d stare at the back of someone’s head for three hours once a week and had very little interaction with my classmates because we were all so busy, my online classmates checked on me if I hadn’t submitted a response to our class discussion threads for more than a couple days.

I get that some people do not want this level of intensity and would prefer to keep their educational experience at arms length. My sense is that if it’s worth doing it’s worth letting it change your life and challenge whatever little comfortable existence you’ve carved out for yourself. I mean, why are you doing this anyway? If all you want is a certificate or the piece of paper, well, that’s your choice. But you are missing out on something much greater and more meaningful then you’ve ever had before. Far from being a weak distant cousin to face-to-face education, online education can deliver on a level not easily possible with large anonymous classrooms. But it really comes down to the quality of the instructors, the depth and flexibility of the curriculum and that the community of learners see the value of their interaction and participation, all without the hinderance of time and space.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

LMS/CMS:
Learning Management Systems/Course Management Systems (respectively). In the virtual world where do you go to access your course information, course calendar, turn in completed work and check your grades? Some school website, right? On the simple end of the spectrum we have PDFs of course materials pasted to webpages (not an optimal learning environment). Then there are much more complicated interactive portals that are a cross between a social network where one can communicate with instructors and classmates, and an interactive portal where one can turn in work and engage published lessons/units. We have a whole course in the EMDT masters program, that I taught for several months, devoted just to exploring the wonderful world of learning management systems. While teaching that course I created the following two videos, the first being about Full Sail University’s own learning portal:

FSO Behind the Scenes Walk-Thru

My first month or so at Full Sail I was sitting in class where we were being given the run through of the FSO platform and I saw that HTML tags could be added to the content text boxes and that completely freed me to post course material that went several generations beyond the dreaded PDFs posted to a website version of online learning. I’d been creating webpages and blogging for almost ten-years at this point, so I was very much at home making my course pages much more visual and self-contained. Before FSO, I’d used a platform called SchoolLoop and Digication to teach my middle school students. Hell, I even used a combination of iCal and webpages as a home-grown CMS where my students could access materials (when I didn’t have a proper course management system to use).

Digication Walk-Thru

Since the latter video was posted, I’m not entirely sure if Digication is still available for free. But there are several systems that are available for free for those interested in getting their course(s) online, such as Edmodo and Schoology. These systems are primarily asynchronous, meaning that the instructor creates or posts course materials and the students access the course at a different time.

Synchronous Sessions:
In contrast to the asynchronous websites where instructors post course materials and students turn in their assignments are the portals that most mimic a traditional class, where instructors and students meet in realtime, albeit, virtually on the Internet. These are called synchronous sessions. At Full Sail University we use a platform called Wimba to meet with our students. These sessions feature a window where the instructor can post presentation images while talking, or share his actual computer desktop or share a webcam view of himself as he’s sharing the lesson. There’s a chat stream for participants to post questions and comments and a list of who is in the room with status indicators and place for them to indicate a raised hand. There’s also polling/quiz features and a way to break the room down into smaller interactive groups. Some features work better than others (screen sharing can be funny with the audio/video delays), but even still this system is much better than the text-only system that Pepperdine used called Tappedin, while I was working on my masters degree online with them. Ack.

IM/Chat/Social Networks:
Continuing with the analogy between the virtual classroom and the traditional classroom, where the asynchronous website is like the printed syllabus with assignments, assignment dates and where one can turn in work, and the synchronous sessions are like actual classroom meetings, IM/Chat/Social Networks fits in as “office hours” where one can interact with ones instructors that’s not connected to class time. As one might expect, the idea of office hours and traditional limitations on when can interact with students is completely artificial with online learning. We’ll talk about that in a later blog post. For now, it should be noted that one needs to look at IM/Chat/Social Networks as tools to connect with students, meet them where they’re at and continue the learning conversation begun with the other tools. It’s about participation, conversation and availability and much less about using IM/chat/social networks to broadcast or push a unidirectional message. And all of this presents special challenges for K-12 instructors that one would be wise to not ignore or not have policies in place to deal with possible complications. This is where closed educational systems like Edmodo can really shine for those willing to do the work.

Year after year, month after month, the online tools are getting better and better. I paid for one-year’s usage of a platform called SoapBox where students can ask questions, answer polls and post whether they’re getting the lesson, all in realtime in a way that can work for face-to-face classroom and virtual classrooms. I’m also a big fan of having students on-camera in class, so that it increases the level of “being there” versus just being passively plugged in. So with smaller groups I’m thinking of experimenting with Google hangouts as a way to have more participants on camera at the same time.

Something that we learned at the beginning of the desktop publishing revolution in the mid-80s: All the fancy technology in the world is not going to make you a better writer if you can’t write. That’s probably putting it too negatively, but whether online or face-to-face, technology is not going to save you if you’re not a very good teacher. It helps if you’re comfortable and are good at using the tools, but it’s not about the tools. It’s about the task of learning and working with learners. I love the tools, but I came into the classroom not knowing what I could and couldn’t do from the beginning, so that I now do this thing completely online shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Love the tools and what they can enable me to do, but it’s not about the tools.

So… you might have noticed that there haven’t been any new blog posts this week. Most non-pro bloggers don’t keep to any kind of schedule, but I’ve been trying since the beginning of the year to have at least five posts per week and more recently one post per category (tech, education, media, lifestyle) per week. Alas, as we were finishing last week I was scrambling to produce several videos for the class that I teach at Full Sail and that kept me pretty busy. As Monday turned to Tuesday I thought I could still get at least four articles posted this week (the posting schedule that I was leaning toward). But then I knew I’d be incapacitated for much of Thursday following getting an epidural for my back pain that’s been tormenting me for the past two months. So, I decided yesterday that I wouldn’t post anything (except this notice) this week and the articles that I was planning on working on would be posted next week. Thanks for your patience. It’s tough running a publishing empire with an all-ready-full teaching schedule and a disgruntled back that’s been keeping me from decent sleep and my normal energetic work-habits for over two-months. Apologies for the break in witty observations and piercing insights. See you on the other side. jbb

Uploaded by sakura4250 on Mar 10, 2011
ドコモのサイトでステキな映像発見。

TOUCHWOOD SH-08C

http://answer.nttdocomo.co.jp/touchwood/

I can’t tell you how many times when I was working with frustrated sixth grade boys that I wished I could have directed their energies to something constructive, like playing music. I knew what it had done for me when I was in high school, but generally felt like it wasn’t my place to make the suggestion. Too bad. But I guess all of us need to find our own path. Lord knows my path toward music was anything but direct.

As a little kid in the early 60s I listened to the Beatles, thanks to my two older sisters and on at least one occasion my sisters, myself, my younger brother and younger sister did an impromptu Beatles concert for the gathered relatives when one uncle had the nerve to dismiss the Fab Four. Music was definitely in the family blood. But when the opportunity came up to join the school music program in the fourth grade my folks said no. They’d previously bought an accordion for my oldest sister, but she was a bit too young and they probably should have rented. Either way, they weren’t going to repeat that mistake. So, my dreams of playing the drums (my first choice) or the clarinet (second choice) were going to remain just dreams, it would have seemed.

Then when I was in high school it was the 70s and my first girlfriend played guitar. I didn’t learn to play guitar from her, however. I guess I wasn’t opened to learn and she wasn’t open to teach me. But i wasn’t too shy to pick up her guitar and make noises with it. Then some time later, I was at a party hosted by friends of my folks, I got bored and found a guitar in the bedroom of one of their daughters. When the daughter came in and found me making pathetic plucky noises on the thing she showed me how to play three or four chords. That was pretty much all the encouragement I needed. Whenever there was a guitar in the area I’d find it and play my four chords until someone wrestled it from my arms.

Around this time I’d become a born-again Christian, so the combination of my nascent faith and largely un-formed musical skills probably was rather difficult for others to bare. Fortunately I had a friend, Jim Davis, who had also just come to Christ and had much better musical skills. I’m guessing that putting up with my playing in those days was his daily good deed especially when I would try to tune his dad’s 12-string guitar (lord I did not have the finger strength to play that thing, but I loved trying). Then one day Jim told me he’d written a song and I was shocked, I’d never thought to do something like that. Actually, he’d just added his words to an already existing song, but he planted the seed that this was doable. My girlfriend was into Country/Folk which I wasn’t really into and I didn’t feel like anything I’d learned to play on the guitar spoke to my soul, especially after my conversion.

So, from 1974 to the early 1980s I cobbled together over sixty original tunes. Fortunately only around a dozen still survive in anyones memory. They were some of the worst, trite, fatalistic songs that one would largely expect from a frustrated passionate person who knows virtually nothing about life. Scary. But, there were a few of those songs and memories from those times that reached me and helped calm the madness at those times when I didn’t know what to believe and didn’t think that there was anyone to talk to. And I would reach back across the years and either listen to or play a very select play list from that era in my life, even when none of it fit whatever else was going on in my life. On more than a few occasions I caught myself wondering what the girlfriend I was living with must have thought of all of this musical-Christian nostalgia. I’m sure that she might have thought that sooner or later I was going to go all religious on her. Didn’t happen. But it kept me connected to my past.

In fact the only through line in my life has been been my music. More than any relationship (not counting family, of course), more than even my faith, the tunes that I created as a kid stayed with me. I also found myself, even in the exiled years, listening to Mark Heard and Sam (Leslie) Phillips. There was a reality to their music that transcended the usual religious pop tune. They wrote about a life that I could remember, even if I wasn’t so sure about the God they were singing about.

So, I guess the irony in these latter years is that I did, in fact, come back to playing music and performing on stage when I got involved my married “friend” and found myself fully back in the emotional/spiritual place I thought I’d left 15 years before. That was unexpected. But when that connection didn’t turn out to be what I wanted, I could have walked away from the performing part of the music, as I had before. But I decided that I needed to stay connected to this thing that had meant so much to me, even if I didn’t fully understand “god” part. And when I moved to Florida I decided that I would continue to pursue the music part of myself and see where that would take me. Alas, in the three, approaching four years that I’ve been in Florida haven’t really gone back to performing or playing as much as I wanted to or learning new things like the keys or drums. But it’s still a part of who I am, even if only Tricia and a very small group of friends are aware of it.

A few years before my move to Florida, my folks had one of their last big anniversary celebration and I played and sang a couple songs for the gathering. Afterwards my brother expressed surprise at my voice and music. See, I guess I kept it from family too. Going back decades, when I did a church concert I invited everyone. Mom and dad went to one, that I remember, but weren’t too happy with the preachy, judgmental tone of my music. That was probably the last time I shared with family (up until the anniversary thing decades later). Silly, but understandable that I would choose to not share. I should probably do something about that.

It’s been a long unexpected journey. I guess I thought that it would be too difficult to explain all of the different eras of my life. I remember toward the end of my Christian-concert era, that I began to write non-get saved songs and worried that that wouldn’t fit with the ministry, and that probably contributed to walking away from performing. And when I decided that I was agnostic I couldn’t imagine the confusion of me performing some of my early “You Need Jesus” stuff. I guess I forgot what Dylan did in 1980. Of course when I did go back to church and start playing again… It’s an incomplete, imperfect story. I don’t know how it will end, only that music has been with me the whole time and I want to celebrate that for however long I might have.

The following MP3 are recordings that I did in the early 80s, just my guitar and my voice. Then in 2003 I digitized and arranged into a kind of album. Mixed in are a couple concert recordings and other silliness. It’s hard to imagine that this is from over thirty-years ago. Enjoy. Click on the player below the song to hear the song and click on the song title to pull up the lyrics in a separate window.

Stormmaker 2003

KBOR Ad (circa late 1980s):