Tribes-Seth Godin

Visitors and Residents

Watch the following video: Visitors and Residents by Dr. White (Linked below) and then write a blog post reflecting on where you are in this continuum and how you see your future on the Internet. Please share on Twitter with the appropriate hashtag(s) and comment on your peers' posts as well.

 http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2009/10/14/visitors-residents-the-video/

After watching this video, I would have to consider myself a resident of the internet when it comes to my personal life. For example, I have a Facebook, Pintrest, and Instagram account.  I tend to check these on a daily basis to communicate with friends and keep up to date with the social aspects going on. Very rarely do I use it for professional growth. However, when I consider the Internet as a professional tool, I would have to say I am a visitor. I do have an Edmodo and Weebly blog but I only use it for homework assignments. For example, I only make a blog post when I am given a prompt for school. At this moment, I still consider myself at the beginning stages of my educational career and a private person. Thus, posting my thoughts about education, or anything in general, is a new experience that I am still trying to get use to. I know there can be many benefits from interacting with other educators online but I think it is going to take some time to know what online tools best help my PLN.

I have recently created a Twitter account and started “following” people. I have looked at some of the things they have posted and can say that I have found great resources. As a future math educator, I am really interested seeing what kind of resources I can find on the Internet to better help my students understand math. I am aware that this is one of the areas that students struggle with the most. Thus, I am willing to put in the work outside of class to make a better learning environment and experience. I hope to do this too with my Blogger account.

Overall, the Internet is something that I am still learning about. I plan to keep my personal life as a visitor and my professional life on the resident side. Though it might take me time to find Internet tools that work for me and my areas of interest, I plan to make this a great learning process. 

Passions

In a blog post, tell me what you are passionate about in terms of education future goals. . .What do you hope to do with this passion (or what are you already doing with this passion?) If you had to narrow down your passion to one specific aspect in terms of your future research, what would it be?

A career is not simply a job; rather it is a life commitment to one’s passion. Since I was young, teaching has always interested me as a career option. Becoming a teacher has been my goal for a long time. As a high school teacher, I hope to build relationships with students to help them with their personal and educational problems. For me, it is not as pleasing to do something for a living, as it is to serve others. Now that I am about to accomplish this goal of becoming a teacher, new ideas have come to mind.

Through out my academic career I have been fortunate to have counselors and teachers that take me as more than a student and not just a name on their roster. They have shown their concern for my well being in and out of school by getting to know me. Like them, I hope to motivate students to want more for themselves in regards to education and life. Motivating students is an easier said than done. Every class and every student have different needs, thus my interest for future research would have to be in motivating students in academia. In particular, I am interested in researching what are the things that prevent a student from preforming at their potential. Is it their prior knowledge? Do they not see the worth in having a good education? Are there family constrains?

Another area that highly interests me is character education. Character education is something I believe schools are paying more attention to now. For instance, there are rubrics on what a students citizenship grade should be. I am interested in looking into the things that I can do within my classroom to help create a better learning environment. My goal is to make all my students feel like my classroom is a safe place to voice their opinions and thoughts. Thus, I am interested in looking into collaborative and independent work, bullying, and character development. 

A Whole New Mind Part 1 Reflection

1.     L-Directed thinking as described by Pink, “is a form of thing and an attitude of like that is characteristic of the left hemisphere of the brain—sequential, literal, functional, textual and analytic”. (pg 26) Where as R-Directed thinking is a “form of thinking and an attitude to life that is characteristic of the right hemisphere of the brain—simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, contextual, and synthetic”. (pg 26) Historically speaking my content area (mathematics), has been predominantly L-Directed thinking. With test such as the SAT’s and CAHSEE, and value placed on the content standards, schools placed a strong focus on procedural work. However, now that the common core is coming into the school system, it seems that the R-Directed thinking approach is being valued more. Its emphasis is on having students be more holistic learners.

2.     Abundance, Asia and Automation are all reducing the importance of L-Directed thinking in business and schools. Abundance in todays society has hindered one to stand out from the rest. With so many similar products out in the market that perform the same task, there need to be something unique that sets it apart from everything else. That is where R-Directed thinking comes in—creativity, aesthetics, and beauty give the product more meaning. Asia is a country that has been known for producing individuals with great L-Directed thinking. They succeed in subjects such as computer programing and mathematics. Thus, businesses have found outsourcing jobs to countries such as Japan or India more beneficial and cost effective. In result, diminishing the need of L-Directed thinkers in our own country. In other words, to have a successful career in this country one needs to have more than just L-Directed thinking skills.

3.     High concept, as described by Pink, is ”the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patters and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel invention”. High touch is “the ability to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in ones self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian, in pursuit of purpose and meaning” (pg 52). High concept and high touch influence my teaching in that I want to create meaningful learning experiences for my students. In mathematics, it is true that mathematics has been thought in a rote kind of way but I believe that there also needs to be an element of collaborative work to discover mathematical ideas. This way they discover math instead of me telling them what to know about math.

4.     The flaws of the education system that only values IQ is that it is very limited as to what it can tell you about a person. For instance, it can tell us what profession one may work best in but it does tell us success we will have in it. Although IQ scores allow comparison between individuals more easily than other tests, it is this strong value of IQ that has driven school to be so standards based and leave out the high concept and high touch out of the school system. The focus has shifted from the students well being to making sure we perform better than another school. AS for EQ, I believe it does have a place in education. However, the documentation and assessment process is what I believe will be the most difficult for schools. Since EQ can be measure in a number of distinct ways, it will vary form content areas. 

Communities of Practice Reflection

Communities of practice as described by Etienne Wegner “are groups of people who share a concern or a passion from something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”. It is through things such as discussion, collaborative work, and interactive activities that these communities develop an understanding. However, although a community may come together because they all share a common point of interest, it does not mean that they want to learn something while being in the community. Communities of practice can be a place where people can just come together to share their views for something. Thus, it is important to understand what are the characteristics of a community of practice. Domain, community, and practice are the three essential components. Domain refers to the main interest for which the community needs to come together for. Community refers to the relationships that are formed within the community that allow the member to learn from one another. Lastly, practice refers to the development of “shared repertoire of resources” . That is, by sharing experiences, stories, tools, etc, with others, we can them use them in our own practice.

In my experience thus far I feel I have seen communities of practice at work but have never given them that specific title. For me they were just a community with a shared interest and didn’t think much of it beyond that. However, after considering Lave and Wegner’s theory, I can definitely see there is more than just getting together to talk about a common interest. For instance, the relationships that are built in the communities don’t just occur because you have a common interest; they occur because of the level of engagement and discussions they have with one another.

In this class I believe the domain is our interest for using technology as an academic resource and tool. I feel as if we are all interested in knowing how to use online tools and electronic gadgets to make learning more meaningful and engaging for students. Since technology seems to be improving day-by-day, students interest in technology is increasing. Thus, we need to know how to appropriately use it in our classroom. The community in our class can be described as the students in our class but also the faculty, cooperating teachers, and the people we follow who are also interested in our domain. Although we may not interact with them constantly, we are learning from one another. The practice component will then be when we apply what we learn, see or hear from our other community members.

The source I found that disagreed with communities of practice was Internet and Higher education by C.M Johnson. In this article he argued that although virtual communities are groups with a shred interest they are not a community of practice. First because a “virtual community does not guarantee that a community of practice will arise because an underlying task-based learning need must exist”. Secondly, in order for members of the community to communicate and collaborate, knowledge of technology may pose a challenge for some of the members. Lastly, since this virtual community does not have ace to face contact “cultural differences, superficial discussion content” and timely responding pose a challenge to enhance community development.