Wk4 Classmate Comment: Faith Olarsch

Faith's Original Post;

MAC week 4 blog 1 reading: The Art of Possibility byBenjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander

Used with permission from: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1387982

What if wewere the circuit board of our life?

Perhaps this book is all about being Zen.  I particularly like the portion of Zen that explores the lack of people living in a bottle.  I find that at times I am guilty of the desire to be unaffected by the outside world.  I like isolation, which is witnessed by the National Forest surroundings of my home.  I find that too many people clutter my thoughts too easily.  Yet despite this isolation we affect each other, and we are part responsible no matter which direction the outcome.  I would like to be more efficient in the game of chess, but the concept of being the board seems harder for me to grasp.  I understand that actions and reactions occur, and most of the time I do not assign blame.  There are times though, when feeling low, that I am bound by insufficient thought and overwhelmed with negativity. When those times occur action is required to re-establish a positive mode of thinking and being. 

My Comments;

Hi Faith;
Chess is a game about strategy. In fact, it's the ultimate strategy game. Ben and Roz used the chess board analogy as a way to explain that each of us have our own board and we control "our" board. The will be situations that you cannot avoid, for example Bishop takes Pawn. Bishop moves different from Pawn in the game. it has a better range compared to Pawn. There will be days where "your" pawn could be overwhelmed by the "bishop" (a problem). It is how you move the situation to your favor. How can a pawn can take over the bishop with the right move. That's the reason why chess games are so lengthy. Chess players don't look at one movement, they look at the whole board, all possible moves that can affect the outcome of the game.

In Internal Martial Arts, such as Bagua, Taijiquan and Xingyiquan we train our body to use as a whole, not as a individual entity. We channel our energy thru our body, therefore eliminating "outside" interference like stress & sickness. Although a common cold is not avoidable, we can prevent that cold could get worse.

Wk4 Classmate Comment: Shrav Krishna

Shrav's Original Post;

Wk4 Blog Post - The Art of Possibility ch. 9-12

Good evening fellow EMDT cohort and staff,

First and foremost, I'd like to congratulate each and every one of you all that shared your Leadership Document drafts during Wimba on Tuesday night and Wednesday night. I thought you all did a fantastic job, and I am super stoked of the great possibilities in hearing several success stories down the road!

Now onto this week's Art of Possibility blog post. Chapter's 9-12 were simply incredible. I'm going to chime in on a particular passage that I felt was truly profound and was just the type of motivation I needed to hear should I get selected to present my Leadership Project at The Illinois Education and Technology Conference.

Zander is by far the most resilient, confident, gregarious, and focused human being that I have ever in my entire life come to discover. Flying out from Boston to Washington at 8am, JUST for an UNEXPECTED 20 minute meeting to entice the LEGENDARY Rostropovich to play in his orchestra, and fly back to Boston at 12pm with successfully getting the guy to agree??? The man truly knows how to enroll others and light a spark. If that were me, I'd be too busy preparing myself on that flight on how to come across to him. However, I shouldn't need to allow my fear and nerves to beat myself over -- Our universe is ALIVE with sparks and the capacity to make the impossible, possible, so long as we bare passion! First, I wholeheartedly agree with Ben Zander's dad, Walter Zander, that "certain things in life are better done in person". My cohort and I are enormously lucky and grateful to have the opportunity of a lifetime to engage our passions and action research with a receptive audience of likeminded visionaries. To enroll them into adopting our passion, we need to approach them with the confidence that they are willing to get swept off their feet and inspired. We need to speak with the premise of that which would make US be swept away with inspiration. We need to have NO doubt whatsoever that others will love our pioneering ideas. Only then, can we reap the given benefits that were already promised to us from the get-go. Showing up is half the work, if you have the passion for success and change.

Here's an inspirational story I'd like to share. Last night, I was watching Conan O'Brien's talk showConan and we were all pleasantly delighted to engage in a comedic standup routine by up-and-coming comedian, Brody Stevens. It was clear in my eyes that he hadn't had too much experience performing before a huge publicized live audience. However, the man did exceptionally well simply by periodically saying out loud "Yes! Positive ENERGY!". It was an addicting mantra that helped him remain on top of his game. In one of his bits, Brody said that he wanted to get laid -- fair enough. However, he said he'd have a BETTER chance of getting laid after making people laugh through his live standup routine, rather than call up his lady friends via telephone.

Check out his debut on Conan: 

...YES! POSITIVE ENERGY! Can you guys harbor the same outlook and desire to create a spark in your Leadership Project presentations or papers? A "no" from your audience can seem like a door slamming in your face, especially when you tell yourself that your audience is not engaged. However, even when the audience was not laughing at each and every one his jokes, Brody still told himself out loud, "yes" and kept ENROLLING us into HIS passion. Don't throw in the towel while you're in the heat of selling OPPORTUNITIES and POSSIBILITIES, just hold on to it until you make a cruise ship towel animal!!! 

Thank you for reading my loyal subscribers. See you all in Month 12. 

-Shrav

My Comments;

Hi Shrav.

I remember that my former boss said the same thing, when I was coordinating the audiovisual requirements for a students' convention. She told me to go to the director's department office and confirm that everything is set. Working in public service made you realize that people like when they are treated as friends and not as clients. I think or should I say, I believe that one of the reasons that professors or directors ask for my participation in activities is that I "personalized" my work according to their needs.

Wk4 Leadership Blog Post: Leadership Role Model Reflection

Like the discussion board post at the beginning of MAC course this month, I believe that this is a difficult topic for me to write. During my 43 years, I've been influenced by many people that I can't write about only one.  Let me see if by writing this words, I can go down to one.

What can I say about a leader? What defines a leader? Vision, determination, motivation, imagination are some of the qualities that a leader should have to inspire, light a spark within ourselves, and make us take his vision, his example and improve it, go beyond of what he/she did.

In music, Elvis and the Beatles led by opening the world to create and to listen music as a whole, not as different genres or colors. Modern music has a mix of Blues, Jazz, Classical, Reggae, Country, etc.  Elvis gave us American by mixing blues and country.  Beatles gave us the world.  They redid rock 'n' roll, and opened the doors to Indian music through Ravi Shankar.

A personal favorite is baseball great, Roberto Clemente. Not only he was the first Puertorican to have batted 3,000 hits, but his humanitarian work in giving baseball clinics to kids and to help those in dire need.  He died on his way to Managua, Nicaragua after the earthquake of 1972. He is one of those opened the door to hispanics in Baseball. I remember watching on "PBS" the Ken Burns documentary "Baseball" and baseball players, reporters and announcers, still talk about his "greatness" on the field and in life. I remember when I was in little league and we were always looking who had the No. 21 on his shirt.

Video from YouTube Roberto Clemente-Sportscentry (1 of 4)

I can mention one of my teachers. My History teacher in High School, Mr. Jesus Ortiz, who taught us about history and our history.  He taught us how maturity would hit us, how we are going to mature and how we were going to deal with life, once we were in college.

Maybe, maybe not these examples made me the person that I'm today....

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.....John Lennon.

Wk4 Reading: The Art of Possibility: Keep the Fire Burnin'

Hi my fellow cohorts and professor:

Yes, I put or should I say quote REO Speedwagon on my title, but that's how I looked at this week reading.  Chapters 9-12 explain so much about opening the world of possibilities to those who share this world around us. How we can motivate, engage, inspire students, friends, co-workers, to approach problems, obstacles or difficulties with a different view, taking advantage of having a difficult situation to a positive, productive moment.

I believe that this week's reading sums up what we can do to work with "our board", our lives.  It teaches us that this world is a community, not a race that we had to win.  We must deal as "we" and not as "I". I was impressed how Ben storm into Cora's coaching and how sarcastic he was when speaking to her as missing the rehearsal. He forgot Rule No.6 and it cost, not him, but the orchestra the resignation of Cora.  After admitting his mistake, he did what he taught to his students. He wrote a letter to Cora, giving himself an A. This humble act of reflection improved and strengthen his relationship with Cora.  He lit the spark himself, looked at his board and approach the situation as a "we" instead of "I"...

How fascinating!!!!


* photo by James Hall Robinson. Creative Commons

Wk3 Classmate Commet: Amanda Rhymer

Amanda's Original Post;

MAC Week Three: The Way Things Are, and don't forget Rule No. 6!

As I read the next four chapters in The Art of Possibility this week, I couldn't help but reflect upon the discussion board topic that we were also give for this week.  I'm pretty sure Dr. Joe knew what he was doing this week.  Our discussion this week had to do with the barriers to integrating technology in the classroom.  We were supposed to discuss, from our experience, what it is that keeps teachers from embracing new technology.  Our answers varied from time commitment to fear of failure, lack of PD to lack of support from Admin. Since most of us are classroom teachers, we hit probably the top ten roadblocks, easily.  But after the reading this week, my eyes are open to some new possibilities!

In the chapter, The Way Things Are, the authors discuss our tendency to see the negative in a bad situation, instead of seeing it for what it really is...just another situation.  They also discuss the tendency to express problems as a downward spiral, I hear this all the time in the Teacher's Lounge!!  The same teachers who balk at integrating new technology are typically the same people who express their frustration with "these" students, who are always the worst students ever, and Oh! Just wait! The class coming up is the worst EVER!! It's so frustrating, and disheartening, if you buy into all that talk.  Why would anyone ever want to dedicate their lives to teaching? It's much more encouraging to think of these kids as being different from previous generations, not better or worse, and to think of ways to reach them that weren't available in previous generations.

Where are you speaking from:

And finally, lest we all forget, remember Rule No. 6!!

{Not to give it away if you haven't read the book, but Rule No. 6 simply states: Don't take yourself so goddamn seriously!}
{PS: There are NO other rules!}

My Comments;

Hi Amanda;

I've seen and heard those type of teachers or should i meant, professors at the university. They are always complaining during the trimester about this group of students or that group of students. They always had a group who are good and a delight to teach and other groups that are a nightmare to teach. They don't look at what can they do to make that nightmarish group a good group. They don't look for ways or alternatives to motivate them to assist to class or to motivate them to study.

I think that in last week's discussion board or one of the comments that I made was from one of the professors that didn't want to teach the basic literature class because the students don't like reading. I told her why she didn't chose another type of literature, one they would like, for example comic books, magazines. She told me that it was ridiculous to have them reading comic books. I told her not the Archie or Mickey Mouse type of comic books, but graphic novels, where there are more mature themes or issues. She kept complaining and not look at the possibility to adapt or to try, at least, the alternative that I was given her.

Wk3 Classmate Comments: Dara Easterling.

Dara's original post;

enable, engage, equality

From this week's reading, especially in Chapter 5, I gleamed the importance of enabling through the process whether in an orchestra, business, or educational setting.  I am sure most of us have seen those tyrannical bosses that want things one way and don't want any feedback or opinions about what is going on.  But by offering them ways in which to communicate and be involved and be the leader in some cases they gain more from their contributions to the cause.  

Another thing that I can take away from the readings is how they all tie into engagement (collaboration, teamwork, having fun and not being serious, and acceptance.  The stool that I learned about previously was the first thing that came to mind when just looking at the titles to each chapter but as I read through it all tied together and made sense.  Each factor shows that there is a need for the support whether it is done on a personal level, material level (i.e. the white paper), or using technology (a video or blog).

I know that this response seems a little off the beaten track but in terms of making meaning this is how I made meaning out of the reading.

Source:

image- engaging in conversation. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/?CTT=97

My comments;

Hi Dara;

As I was reading chapters 5-8 I began to remember some of my "tyrannical" bosses. These type of boss always take too much seriousness on their work and they don't even let other ideas flow or contribute to the workplace. They feel the own everything and if you don't do your work the way they want, you're out.

Wk3 Leadership Blog Post: Leadership Project Hub

Good afternoon everybody;

For this week's post, I would like to think of the choice I made to present my Leadership Project.  I chose my AR project title: "Connecting Teachers using Virtual Resources".  Although I believe that the topic of motivating teachers to use technology has been used a lot, we still see that there's still a resistant of teachers or professors, especially in High Education to incorporate technology in their classrooms or to work in an online environment.

I chose to present, because I felt that there could be more educators that had faced the same problems and could bring good suggestions to begin changing or shifting paradigms on those teachers/professors who resist using technology on their classroom.

I chose the FETC conference that will take place in Orlando on January 2013 and the GaETC - Georgia Educational Technology Conference, which will take place in November, this year.  For me, it will be a great experience as a person and as a future educator to share with other educators what have I learned during my AR project.

Leadership Project - as of May 18, 2012 (Draft)


Wk1 Leadership Blog Post- Published May 5, 2012


Wk2 Leadership Blog Post - Published May 12, 2012