Week 3 – Response to Patricia Ort’s Post on Zander

Pat wrote:

This is good timing for this book. Since my co-worker is also reading the book, I have had the chance to talk about the Zander's ideas with her, as well blog about it. The concept of dealing with negative feelings by sticking with them and using them as a form of exercise to enable us to be able to handle and rise above greater challenges we will face in the future was novel. It was also empowering. A fellow teacher who was given a difficult assignment used to say, "It is what it is." Not quite the same thing, but the idea of acknowledging the way things are, then moving on made me think. I wonder if my way of giving way to passion and getting out of a survival mind set would be to take the leap of leaving my current position and looking for an opportunity to work in a really creative environment that embraces the use of technology in education.

If so, what would that be? What am I most passionate about? The book has made me ponder these questions. I also have revisited the ideas in the book and challenged them. What gives the Zanders the authority to make these claims? Why do they resonate with me and with my colleagues? Is it because we recognize the innate truth in them, or because we want them to be true?

I also appreciated the bit about not taking ones self so seriously. Funny, but good advice. The discussion of leading from every chair is relevant to me because there is a parallel to teaching. Enabling musicians to be their best is really a lot like enabling students to achieve academically. The idea of giving the students a chance to lead is appealing, too. I have done that from time to time, but certainly not enough. I was reminded to make a point of giving students more opportunities to "be the teacher." I know they really like to do that and it builds up their self-confidence.

I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book. It has certainly encouraged me and given me a lot to think about.

My comment to Pat:

Hi Pat,

I think it’s pretty awesome that you and your co-worker are both reading the book, what an excellent idea you had to order extra copies. I too love the book because it is interesting and thought provoking to say the least. I agree with you about the empowerment of using the negative feelings. I never thought about this in these terms before but it makes sense. Acknowledging the ‘way things are’ is also a big discussion point in the book, and I’m glad you mentioned it because I think I neglected to but was definitely interested in that philosophy when thinking of my own life and decisions I’ve made. You are certainly at a huge crossroads right now Pat, with all the turmoil you are facing at your school of employment. I have listened to you talk about the issues you deal with there since practically the beginning of our creation of Team Digital Horizon in Month 2. I know it has been so hard for you to hold everything together as you and your co-workers get shuffled around hither, thither and yon, and you have done everything that was asked of you and more, which is more than most people would have endured. I think the Zander book is perfect timing for you as you state in the beginning of your post. I hope it continues to help you as you rethink what you want to do as a teacher, especially now that you are about to graduate with this really cool degree in Education, Media Design and Technology!

Week 3 – Think Out Loud Post – Conference

In my search for a conference to present my AR project at, I came upon the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, which fits right in with my project perfectly! My e-book, “The Adventures of Little Boat,” would fit well into the education, the communications, and the technology, so I decided for fun to just drop a quick note to one of their conference organizers. I wasn’t thinking that I would get a response; I just wanted to put the feelers out there and see if I could get any further information. The surprise came to me within hours, a very positive response to my query! Below is a paste of my email to Judy Donovan and her response to me is below it (golly, I may end up at the conference next year!):

My email:

Hi Judy,

My name is Zoe Marlowe, and I am close to completing my Master's degree in Education, Media Design and Technology (EMDT) from Full Sail University in Winter Park, FL. I am looking to be a possible presenter at your 2012 conference, whenever it is that there will be one. I read your web page for the 2011 conference and it looked like it is right in my 'wheelhouse.'

Please allow me to give you a brief background on my area of study. For my Master's Action Research Project, I have written a high-tech, interactive children's e-book called "The Adventures of Little Boat" with 3rd to 6th grade students in mind. My book is a PDF format, is fully illustrated by me, and contains interactive links to my website where I have included video content with animal and bird videos I personally captured (I am a photographer/videographer). The purpose of my book is to reach young children in the way of inspiring them to spend time outdoors and in nature, in their natural environment in this day and age of electronic media and distractions. I am concerned with a fascinating condition, which is getting more and more media attention: Nature Deficit Disorder or NDD. Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods" wrote at length in books and articles about this condition, and is also the person who coined the definition of Nature Deficit Disorder. I feel as though my e-book has a lot to offer classroom teachers of younger children, and I have tested my book out on small test groups of children, and also an entire 5th grade classroom of 29 children, all experiments with resoundingly positive results, providing data I would love to share with teachers looking for technologically sound ways to reach their students. I believe my ideas are innovative, technologically savvy, and also inspirational. I will be creating a proposal to present at your conference as a part of my Master's degree program during this month, and I sincerely hope we can correspond further about this.

Judy’s response:
Hi Zoe - your research sounds very interesting and timely and I
believe the topic would be a good fit for the School Media and
Technology Division of AECT. I suggest you join AECT as a student and
attend the 2011 conference in Jacksonville, Florida this fall. I think
you would have a great time and be able to attend some fascinating
sessions. We will have a couple of sessions on Augmented Reality books
you might enjoy in particular. Thanks for writing.

Judy Donovan


Judy's response was unexpected and very positive. I think I may even try to get to the conference next year. This year is out of the question because I will be overseas for the entire rest of the year after graduation. Anyway, it was a nice email to receive!

Week 3 - Missed Wimba Notes

I had oral surgery on Monday to extract a very troublesome back tooth. The recovery from this operation has not been pleasant, and unfortunately, I was so drugged-up on Tuesday that I fell asleep and never made it to Wimba (only the second Wimba I have missed in my entire year of Wimbas at FSO!). So, here are a few notes I made from the wonderful archive!

It was good to listen to Joe talking about the 120 word abstract. I was pretty clear on what I needed to do, but listening to his description helped to solidify what I had done. I may have to revisit it, but at least I think I got it into some semblance of coherent form! Not a movie trailer! I get it!

Publishing and leadership - Joe reviewed our requirements for our presentations/papers. What we need is a link posted on the class igoogle doc, posted 24 hours before the session, to our Keynote or PowerPoint presentation. Joe is interested in our speakers notes. I will need to type in everything I am going to say. We need this so the instructors can see them.

Our ‘audience’ for our presentations - Audience depends on where we want it published. For my conference I will compress it and keep it academic and to the facts that I have. I will use my graphics and cut down my iMovie footage so it keeps the file size small. If my file size ends up being too large, I can put placeholders where the movies go and have links to my Viddler page where the movies can be viewed separately if necessary.

By Sunday in my class blog Week4 Publishing Leadership Project. Paragraph describing the project and links to my two previous think out loud blog posts, and a link to my Keynote document in igoogle. I’m working on my ‘think out loud’ blog post for this week at the moment and should have it posted soon. I’m kind of excited about it actually!

Presentation length limit: We will have about 10 mins to talk about our presentation on Wed (the day I signed up on). Joe will call on us and ask us to talk about our project, we briefly walk the people thru it. Class comments too. Condense my AR website and add the graphics for my 2nd cycle. 1st cycle needs data graphics revisions, I can talk about that.

Everyone knows I love the Art of Possibility. I didn’t spend a lot of time on this in the Wimba archive because I have already posted a very long blog entry about it. I wanted to concentrate on what Joe had to say about our upcoming Publishing and Leadership project, that is paramount for me right now! I did enjoy the Van Halen video!

Week 3 Reading: Embracing The BTFI Principle!

Once again, Ben and Roz Zander’s book filled my mind with all sorts of revelations about myself as I read the chapters 5 through 8. It was interesting really because chapter 5 was very ‘ground breaking’ for me to read, and then chapter 8 capped everything in-between off with it’s BTFI concept. This was all a bit ‘Von Restorff” for me as the first and last chapters stuck with me the most in this section of assigned reading. As I mentioned last week in my blog, this book is one of the most interesting ‘textbooks’ I have ever read. It really is just a collection of interesting stories told by Ben and Roz about the different happenings in both their lives as an orchestra conductor and music teacher, and psychologist, respectively. I am enjoying both of their stories so much as I read each chapter, in fact I really have a hard time stopping reading and going onto something else because I want to keep reading MORE!

In the “Leading from any chair” chapter, I loved the question Ben asked himself which made him become a much better instructor and conductor. This question “What makes a group lively and engaged?” is really a marvelous question for teachers to ask themselves. It made me think of teachers asking themselves this, because just asking the question would make that teacher much more open to finding out how their students respond to the teaching methodology that was currently being used, and what changes could be made to get the student interest higher, thus making them more lively and engaged.

I loved that Zander placed a sheet of paper on each music stand for the purpose of obtaining comments from the orchestra players. The ‘white sheet’ idea could be used in so many areas of teaching, in order to allow comments to the instructor. I think this method could be used in college courses anyway, not necessarily high school, but it could work there as well.

Another ‘take away’ from my reading of chapter five was a quote from one of Ben’s students at the school he teaches at: “Things change when you care enough to grab whatever you love, and give it everything.” Amanda Burr, student, Walnut Hill School.
What a lovely, insightful statement, and I can agree with it wholeheartedly.

Chapters 6 and 7 both had lots of interesting stories and wisdom, but perhaps chapter 8 sticks with me the most because of the BTFI concept, and the reason for this, is the fact that I am living proof of the BTFI factor in my own life because of choosing to complete this degree at Full Sail, and instead of locking myself into what I had originally planned to do after graduation, which was quickly get accepted into a PhD program, I decided to say “heck with that, I want to have fun and discover the world,” and now I am getting ready to embark upon the trip of a lifetime in Europe and the Middle East. I would never have done this ‘normally,’ but something changed in me as a result of this Master’s program at Full Sail, and with that, I let myself go and throw caution to the wind, and let my passion for photography and film (plus a few other factors) inspire me to take a whirlwind trip to discover what else is ‘out there’ for me to experience. I feel like this chapter of Zander’s book is dedicated to me and my transformation from who I was before Full Sail, to who I will be after Full Sail! Talk about everything just ‘falling into place”… oh my goodness more true words were never uttered!

Random Funny Post

This was on my iGoogle quotes from famous people today. I had to laugh as we just have had a lot of discussion at school regarding copyright, including the focus of our blogs during week 2!

Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

Mark Twain


I think Mr. Twain was onto something!

Week 3 - Personal Choice Blog Entry: My Life After EMDT

I was feeling bereft at the thought of leaving Full Sail...


For my blog post this week I want to mention how much I will miss the wonderful EMDT program at Full Sail University. It has been the hardest work I’ve ever loved doing. Seriously, you get out of a program what YOU put into it. I put a lot of myself into this program, and I learned so much great information and techniques that I will use for the rest of my life, that I know I will succeed in whatever I decide to do or whatever path I take after graduation. I found myself feeling bereft every time I thought of this being the nearly last month of my program recently. I know I am going to have a really exciting summer of travel, just going home to England then off to the Middle East and other countries to do some photography and videography. But, I thought to myself, then what? I have a lot of choices really, and it is up to me, I know that. I was originally pretty much set on applying to different PhD programs so I could eventually secure employment as a University professor some place. However, now that I have learned so much amazing stuff at Full Sail, I am finding that I really have a love for film production. I want to take the amazing opportunity I have this summer and shoot some documentary-style videos of different aspects of the Middle East, and then see if I have what it takes to produce documentaries and short films. YouTube is a great media vehicle for this type of experimentation, and I plan to make full use of my account there and the one I have at Viddler as well. This leads me to my next idea. I think I want to pursue another Master’s degree at Full Sail, but this time in Film Production. I think it would be amazing to spend another year doing the time consuming but incredibly productive and enlightening coursework at Full Sail. I am getting closer to a decision about this. Stay tuned to my blog for more!

Week 2 – Comment on Josh Tolar’s Post about Publishing AR

Josh Wrote:

Since I know that I want to go with the publishing option for my action research, finding a publisher is the next step. At first I started thinking about military e-learning and some of the publications that exist for that type of environment, but because my action research has nothing to do with the topics I work with in my professional environment, I decided to go with a more commercial technology based publication. I looked at some of the publications from my literature review, but those were targeted more towards interactive digital storytelling and educational simulations. While I may start developing research for educational simulations in the future, my final choice for a publisher was the Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR). JILR has more of a variety of educational platforms, a great list of papers that they publish, and I felt right at home when reading about computer based training and interactive learning environments. I did look at some other publications and I almost chose the International Journal on E-learning (IJEL) – Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education, but I decided to stick with JILR because of the different types of papers they accepted. While the course I developed for my research is hosted in an e-learning environment and might seem to be a better choice to go with IJEL, I feel that educators or trainers that are working with other types of content might benefit from the results showed in my research with digital storytelling. So sticking with JILR feels like the right decision.

My choice:
Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR)
http://aace.org/pubs/jilr/default.htm


My comment to Josh:

Hi Josh!

I am very interested in the publishing aspect of AR project for myself as well. I like your ideas here, and your approach as your project doesn’t have anything to do with the topics you work with, so you obviously felt like you were outside your comfort zone a little bit when shopping for a publication? Not sure, but I sort of got that from your statement. The Journal of Interactive Learning Research sounds great. I may even have to look into that publication for myself, as I am a bit ‘clueless’ on this aspect of our AR projects. Journals are interesting entities in and of themselves. I have seen tenured professors of engineering at the university I used to work at get turned down for journals over the strangest things, such as the formatting of their papers, etc. So I think it’s good to go over the guidelines that many of these journals have on the Internet, I plan to do that anyway. It looks to me like you are really on track with this and I wish you luck with it Josh!