MOOC MOOC Day 1

I'm joining a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).  This is a first for me.  Normally, I'm a lurker, but, I want to learn more about contemporary teaching pedagogy.  In higher education, this seems to be how the playing field is shifting: more access to more information for more people. (I dream to see this information be accessible to everyone, regardless of socio-economic status, but this may be a while away).

I am involved in contemporary education thanks to my interest in/study and practice of alternative, mostly experiential, education and my connection with the Rangjung Yeshe Institute and their Online Learning program.  I join this MOOC with the intention to expand my understanding of how we, with our limited resources, can best create the opportunities for people to find our online courses, and get the most out of them.

This RSAnimate video is one I've seen before, but this context has made it all the more pertinent.  Hunches need a little help from their friends sometimes, and what a way to do it with this incredible, addictive tool we have in the 21st century. It convinced me to jump on board this journey and engage rather than lurk.

More to come - let's see how this first MOOC goes for me.  I look forward to networking with any and all who are interested in similar topics!

Secret Powers of Time

Past Oriented - 1. past positive - focus on the 'good old times' 2. past negative - focus on regret/failure
Present Oriented - 1. Hedonistic - live for pleasure avoid pain.  2. My life is fated (by religion, poverty) Fatalism
Future Oriented - 1. We've learned to work rather than play, and avoid temptation.  2. Life begins after the death of the mortal body.

shared time perspectives characterize nations ---  culture too?

The Geography of Time - Robert Levine
Pace of Life - Time Perspective - How people divide their experiences into partitions
Time Duration - are you bored?  are you excited?

Different cultures have a different pace of life.

Education? Purpose of school is to make present-oriented beasts into future oriented adults (some cultures make them past-oriented).


Kids need to be in a situation where they feel like they are controling something (video games...)
all of our educational systems are designed toward future-oriented kids, yet, they already know the cultural time perspectives - future-oriented kids succeed in school as we have it set up.  How to teach present-oriented kids?

Kids are totally different than we were - revolution of time.

"Many of life's puzzles can be solved simply by understanding our own time perspective, and the time perspective of others.  Conflict we have with other people is simply conflict we have with each other's time perspectives.  Once we're aware of that, we stop making negative attributions like 'you're dumb' or 'you're childish' or 'you're pig-headed' or 'you're authoritarian'.  It's really the most simple idea in the world."

Top Grammar Reminders - Spring 2010

1. Know the difference between their, they’re, and there  
2. Eliminate your contractions (including they’re) – there are NO contractions in scholarly writing. 
3. Check your comma usage around quotation marks.    
4. Do not use single quotation marks as you would with your fingers in general speech.  Technically, the single quotation mark does not exist in scholarly writing.  
5. Possessive apostrophe usage: Ben’s sitar, Akbar’s tomb, Chelsea’s elephant.  The most common mistake this semester has been writing, “It’s,” when you mean, “Its.”
6. Proper colon and semicolon usage. 
7. Proper usage of italics - words in another language. 
8. SPELLING – especially names and places. 

Learning Styles

Having 24 students makes it difficult to meet everyone's needs in a cross-cultural environment.  Some get it, some don't.  Some voraciously take notes, some fall asleep in the back of a lecture. 

Here's Wikipedia Learning Styles
Thus, research on what people think about how people learn.

David Kolb (my hero) introduced a really conplicated learning model that, even after 10 years of studying it, I still don't truly understand the difference between all of the quadrants. 

I've taught the DISC method, and "What color are you?" things.
None of it really sticks, and it all seems like a cheap 'soul-searching' workshop marketed toward the same folks that fall into the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People world - that we actually have control over our environment by knowing something about it.

Makes me think of that story of the guy that gets shot with the poisoned arrow and rather than pulling it out of his chest, he starts thinking, "Who shot that arrow? What kind of duck feather is on the end of it? What type of poison was on the tip?  How big is the arrowhead?"  Like that. 

waste of time? 

The Slowest Horse

I don't think I've ever heard a better explanation of myself - horse #4.  There is no Question at all.  I bet there are many ways I can use this analogy for teaching... connected with EN's xeroxed world analogy - that experiencing things first person rather than second or third person is the only way we learn, and also the only way we are able to speak honesty and authentically about anything.  Experience is essential.

"The Buddha's compassion is the basis for the parable of the four horses that he preached when he resided at the Kalandaka Grove. The first horse, he explained, runs swiftly the instant he sees the shadow of a whip. The next horse will run fast the moment his skin feels the whip. The third horse runs when the whip cuts into his flesh. The slowest horse will run only after repeated lashings.

The scripture uses the parable of the four horses in order to describe four kinds of people on the path of Buddhism. The first kind awakens and moves forward on the path of the Four Noble Truths the instant they hear about the sufferings caused by old age, illness, and death. The second kind moves when they actually see sufferings with their own eyes. The third kind is not affected by the sufferings of others, but when a family member experiences sufferings, they move forward on the path. And the fourth kind is not distressed at all by seeing old age, illness, and death in others or even among family members, but they are pushed forward on the path when they personally experience these sufferings.

The sympathy of the Buddha identifies with the slowest horse, this last group of people that includes most of us."

- Taitetsu Unno, "Number One Fool," (Spring 2008)

Elephants, I like Elephants.

Maizie's fave.

Write songs like this.

"gotta like frogs! (yeah! yeah!) Running through a maze for some cheese."

What is special about it?
simple, clever, cheeky concept.
fingerpicking guitar - clever "b" and "c" sections with simple 5th modulation structure leading in to a "d" section reminiscent of "a".
repetitive.
kids like animals.

International Politics Major at Peking University -

i'm looking at a student's transcripts from an IP Major in China.
I don't know what year she is, maybe halfway through her studies? 

The course work is mostly Chinese history - Modern Chinese History, Chinese Historiography, History of Social Life in Ancient China, Local Government and Primary Society in Ming and Qing Dynasties, Ancient Chinese History (part 1 and 2), General History of the World (part 2), Special Subjects on Ancient Chinese History Before the Qin Dynasty, Special Subjects on the History of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Histories of Nationality in Ancient China, Selected Readings on "Zuozhuan".

International Politics, mainly studying Chinese history -  ?  Sounds like just Chinese history to me.

Is it ethical to post this?  One might say: if I have to ask....

More than One Story

Power, stereotypes, and seeing them and others as more than one dimension.

What other examples are there - personal?

Good for - FSS session about perspectives, facilitation (in English) about stereotypes, unpacking assumptions, looking at others in a new light.

Facilitation Skillz

Just finished facilitating an ISP Debrief - 11 students talking about their experiences conducting fieldwork in the last month.  I realized I haven't been in a discussion the entire semester.

I can still do it.

In fact, I kept pretty quiet after presenting some context about why we would want to do some debriefing as a group, and planted a general start up question, "What were some significant moments for you in the past month?"  The students talked for just over two hours - speaking to each other, commenting, commiserating, sharing moments that they felt were significant.  They talked about gaining trust (what methods were helpful, and were they ethical i.e. language learning, helping in the kitchen, spending time with their families and newly made friends), talked about how it felt to encounter other 'tourists' and feel much more culturally appropriate, concepts of home, identity, whether or not the US has a culture and if so, what is it?

I directed them a bit when they were getting away from focusing on the what, so what, now what of the actual experience, but rather drifting off into metaphorical analysis of whether or not experience dictates reality.

I also stepped back in to ask them, "What was the most challenging piece of the last month."   The conversation got a little negative.  I said something clever about how part of the skill developing has to do with putting all the experiences (individually and collectively) in the middle and taking a step back to look at everything from an 'objective' angle.  Not taking things too personally.  Then we finished up with talking about how they see this experience as relevant to the remainder of their school career, and their lives.  They gushed about how it wasn't the 'research' but the life experience which made all the difference.  The space helped them identify confidence and passion to continue their work. 

They thanked me at the end - first for creating the space for them to process about their experience, and then for listening.  For planting open-ended questions and expecting honest responses.  For being a good facilitator.

It's not about me, it's about them processing their experience to get to the next place in their journey with new knowledge.  But it felt wonderful to be in that role again.  I had lost my own confidence and passion in the fact that I am okay at interacting with people and students.  That there's not something wrong with me and therefore I should stay far away from them.  Maybe some of that has been restored this afternoon.

Though, the processing of MY learning experience this semester would dictate that it's important to function from a place of humility.  There's no right way to do something.  Sometimes when someone projects that there indeed IS a right way, or if someone perceives that someone else thinks there is a right way to do something and there is no agreement, it creates lots of conflict.   I finish this afternoon gratefully, and humbly.

I can be a teacher, I think.  I can guide others to finding their truths. maybe.

PhD You Say???

What would these possible topics of study for a phd look like:

ecology and conflict

international diplomacy and systems thinking

political science and community building

an ecological approach to conflict transformation

I'm thinking that if I do, indeed want to pursue a phd somewhere I need to understand first what my motivation for doing so is.  Do I want to be AD of SIT Nepal?  Do I want to teach in the US? Do I want to work as a practitioner in some field of study here in the Himalayan region?  and of course, where can my skill set be of most benefit and relevance to others?

Most importantly - what would a phd give me that I don't have right now?  credibility?  The insistance that I am 'not just a kid' trying to fumble her way through the professional world.  Would some time spent studying and focusing on one topic really do that for me?  or am I approaching this issue from the wrong angle?

What kind of life experience do I need between now and potentially starting a phd in, say, Fall 2011 or Fall 2012?  More work with an NGO?  Management?  Field work?

Grammar

Did I miss something, or do students not learn anymore that there needs to be a comma after a preposition that introduces a statement.

I.E.

During the day I walked up and down the hillside looking for four-leaf clovers.

The correction should be:

During the day, I walked up and down the hillside looking for four-leaf clovers.

Right? or Wrong? 

and according to what rules?

It's ISP Draft Reading Time!

One of my students writes in their introduction,

"Education is a vehicle for development. It is very important to understand the value of education because educating the future generation can help solve the problems the public faces today."

agreed in one sense - this sentence made me think that understanding complex human and environmental dynamics in this day and age, and then "teaching" what we think about that is important for creating a context for future generations to take the reigns.

I see my role, or any teachers' role, in a new light - or the same light as always.  Now just able to articulate.  Contextualize contextualize contextualize.  Learning cycle, right?  what, so what, now what.  a teacher's job is present lots of whats from lots of perspectives.  next piece is to faciltate activity, conversation, process around figuring out the so whats.  and finally, once the students have some new ideas about the so whats the unit ends with the now what discussion.  okay. good.

this student's following sentence is:

"The way the people are educated and reasons they attend certain schools must be understood in order to understand how to develop Nepal."