Sunday, June 12, 2011
Free Post - Art of Possibility pt 2
One of the ideas I came away with after reading the first four chapters of the book is that people do not put themselves in position to move up the ladder or to succeed. I feel that is what the chapter Being a Contribution was hinting at and that is also something that I personally believe. I think people get very comfortable in their lives with what they do and, as humans, we are creatures of habit. So we become comfortable in our daily lives, not moving up the chain as educators or in other jobs as well. I think that is what separates the people who are bosses from the people who work for the bosses a lot of the time. I think people are not contributing like they should be or like they could be to help themselves because we get comfortable in our lives that we do not like to take the extra step.
Blog Response Week 2
Week #2 Reading Post: Inventing Possibilities By Writing Into the Future and Being A Contribution
During the final week of school, I ask students to write a letter into the future that they will read as a graduating senior. I suggest that they speak about goals, reflect on the past year, reminisce or a combination of those. I promise not to read them. The Zander activity is similar. Students write to themselves in past tense about their future. But this is where a major break happens.
Whereas, my intentions are for students to set goals to measure themselves and to reflect on past experiences for self-improvement, the Zander method challenges students to see the selves they want to become in the present. Whereas, my students assess themselves for growth and change by reading their letters from three years ago, the Zander method works as a teacher/student assessment to determine which path will exact the growth needed to change now.
This gave me pause to consider that I am expecting my students to singlehandedly invent themselves based on a set of standards, when I should align with them on knocking down the barriers that block the infinite possibilities that are before them. My assignment, then, should occur 10 months earlier with a new intent on students “inventing” themselves based on their future self – validations.
In a few weeks I will be teaching an experimental writing course for incoming freshmen. One of the things that I will try is giving them an “A” and making their initial writing assignments the “A” letter and observations on “Being A Contribution.” One of the things that I most enjoyed about Film Making Principles and Gaming class was the release of pressure I felt. Kathy would assign AAA (Absolute “A” Assignments) and Dr. Dan would just have us play games. Even without the pressure, I ironically dug deeper and challenged myself creatively. I think that this can work for my future students.
2 comments:
- Karen Gearns said...
- Ishia, You just gave me a new first week activity for my classes. I have two letter writing assignments I do with students. One I assign the first week of school where students tell me about themselves. The second I do the last week of school where students write to incoming freshmen to give them advice on how to be successful in high school. I teach at an alternative high school where all of my students have had some obstacle that brought them to our school. Many of them feel like they have failed because they did not complete their career in a traditional setting. The assignment to write to incoming freshmen is meant to put them in the role of expert where they can help someone from their experiences. This fall I will be adding the letter you described based on what you gleaned from The Art of Possibility. My students will write a letter to themselves in the past about their future. They will talk about what they have accomplished and how they got to those accomplishments. It is interesting that while I read the same four chapters you did, the letter assignment did not jump out at me until I read your blog post. Thanks for helping me see the light.
- Taylor Stoker said...
- I think that the write a future letter is a good idea as well and it's cool that you have done this before I read about it in this book. I am a very recent graduate from college and in all of my education courses we learned about non traditional grading and the negativity of standardized testing
The Art of Possibility Post
This book is pretty crazy and really makes you think. I can't say I agree with the things that I have read so far because some of the things I've read seem to make me believe that X-Men are real. Even though I realize that is not what it is saying, it still seems far fetched to me. It really makes you think and the book is on a deep thinking level. It pretty much leads me to a thought, then breaks that thought down and so on and so forth until I sit there wondering to myself. I did agree with the book about the As and measurement tools. That is how I teach my class which is one reason why I hate standardized testing so much.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Richard Blog Response
2nd Blog-I got my “A” or in my case, I got my “Master’s”
I had to dedicate one of my blogs to what I read in the book, giving an “A”. Mr. Z, as the students called him, chose to abolish the norm of giving A’s, B’s, etc. for his classes. He did this to loosen the confines of competition and help his students see, they are all “A” students. The only thing that the students had to do was write a letter in past tense stating why they earned their “A”. I want to write my “A” or “Master’s” letter.
Dear Full Sail,
I got my Master’s because it helped find new job opportunities and confidence in my career life. Before, I was discouraged, unmotivated about not advancing in career. The job place had become a paycheck, a means of just getting by in life. Sometimes I had felt depressed. I didn’t want to gather more debt that I knew would take me more time to pay off.
Now, I have accomplished something that I thought I wouldn’t happen. Even with my move to Egypt, the job opportunities have continued come in. Its not that my life is a measurement of what job I have or what I have accomplished, but the feeling of self-confidence that comes with this accomplishment. The discouragements are gone, my motivation high, and the thought of knowing I have done it! Thank you FS, you have helped a dream come true.
- A very creative and heartfelt blog entry. That's awesome how something like what we've been doing can help us find new jobs and opportunities. I also got a new job and I feel this masters played a large part in that. I also agree and hate traditional A B C grades. It seems much to hard to determine what a person is learning based on traditional grading criteria.
Tina DeLuca blog response
The long and short of copyright is if you are the creator it is yours and nobody can use it unless they have your permission or you pay a royalty. For educational purposes there is a thing called Fair Use. However, if you can teach with out it then it is not Fair Use. There is nothing fair about Fair Use but the way that you use the content is the idea. This is very important in my class room because one of the projects is to research alternate energies and make a brochure. In order to complete this project the students need to look on the web for pictures of said energy then a diagram of how it works. I have a couple sites that pictures are free but if a student does it at home how am I supposed to know if it is legal or not.
I like the idea of Creative Commons trying to balance the field of All Restricted and Public Domain. This will allow our students to be creative and still get credit for their work. With out all of the laws getting in the way. I do think that the creator deserves the credit for their work. Just not sure about the money. I thought the way they handle music CD sales in Brazil was very interesting. The CD’s are given to street vendors as a promotional tool to help bring people to a concert, that is where the artist make the money, not off of the CD’s or copyrights.
The 21st century student have technology at their finger tips they speak through video and songs remixing. If we allow them to do this in schools the projects would be fantastic. However, copyright laws stand in the way of that. Creative Commons has help some, but more people need to put things on there.1 Comment 
I agree with your ideas on Creative Commons and how they are a balancing factor in this whole big long copyright debate. I also think it's very interesting how Brazil does their CD copyright material, although I'm not sure I agree with it. It is an interesting idea though. I also think you're right about if copyright laws were out of the way some of the cooler things our kids could do in school.
Sunday, June 5, 2011 - 09:59 AM
Free Post - Motivation
I am having a very hard time staying motivated the last month or so. I procrastinate everything til the last minute and cannot convince myself to sit down and do it earlier. I have been in the process of interviewing for new jobs over the last three months and now I got one! I'm very excited, however this masters has moved to the back of my mind. We only have two months left and I keep telling myself that but it still does nothing for my mentality right now! Any suggestions for ways you guys stay motivated to finish up these last 7 weeks of our year long masters?
Copyright Issues
Copyright issues have always been a difficult situation for myself. I grew up in the heyday of Limewire, Kazza and uTorrent. Music was always near at hand when I was young and in school. My friends always had the newest music and viruses. As I grew older it was always in the news of how people were being prosecuted for downloading music illegally and it was a scary thought. As I grew older and graduated from college, became more aware of how hard it is to create music and create video games I began to see how downloading illegal things was truly stealing. It takes a lot of creativity to do the things some of these people do for others to come in and use it without permission. Full Sail has also done a good job of making it's students aware of such issues as well.
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