Michael's+Personal+Learning+Journal

Personal Learning Journal, EDFL 675B - Fall 2008

Emphasis this past several weeks has been on the final project. My mind is filled with ideas about Schultze and Critical thinking, also the use I am losing (thankfully) my cynicism about some technology. In fact I am getting down right excited. Major material has been added to the IPR and the project page. It has been a busy term, put far too many things on my plate this term. Hard to say no...so much to explore...I need to find a mentor to help with my discipline and deal with my passion (addiction?) to learn and explore. Feeling a bit pressed now. My family is coming in one-by-one for Christmas and I am focused on papers projects, many of which are not directly linked to deliverables. Advent is going by too fast...I need to slow and remember the love of Christ and focus less on "my" needs. There will come a time I will die and this will just pass into history and memory. It has been too long since posting. My grandson (who lives with us) came down with a cold. That unto itself is not a reason to post, but being the caring and **sharing** family that we are I have been doing my best just to active enough to teach my classes. However, on the upside it gave me the chance to do some deep reading and P and E would say. It came to me this past week on a significant and meaningful use of a WIKI for the winter term of MGT505 Critical Thinking, and MGT530 Ethical Decision Making. MGT505 I am going to do as a hybrid class and MGT 530 is online.
 * **December 14, 2008**
 * **November 21, 2008**

My "thinking: if you will is truly embracing what both Paul and Elder as well Gerald Nosich discuss as Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum. In other words, learning to think things through. These authors note that often a good way to begin the process of thinking critically about a subject is to do some conscious thinking BEFORE one does any reading or listening to any presentations on the subject.

In my case, if a student is going to study critical thinking and/or ethics a good way to begin is by writing down some of the main ideas one already has about critical thinking or ethics (or any subject), BEFORE on does any reading or listening to lectures. These folks argue that this allows the student to become an active listener rather than a passive recipient of information. It helps the student to become aware of ones assumptions about the subject so that one can assess them more accurately in light of what they will later read and hear.

I have touched lightly on this in my online ethics class, in that I have the student write a brief "layperson" definition of ethics before the start of the class (online version). Then assign the first reading, and at the end of the week ask them to compare and contrast their original answer to what they have learned.

Here is my "new" thinking. This would make use of a WIKI journal format such as this one.

The student would be directed as we did here to set up a journal in WIKI. The following is the first posted assignment.

//Even before you start reading your text, begin by examining your own concept of (critical thinking or ethics. Note: I will use this in both classes.//) //Before you start reading your text, respond to the following in a paragraph or two.//

//1. What is your concept of (critical thinking / ethics)? You can respond to question (1) by giving a description. An alternative way to address it, through, is to use examples.

2. Describe a situation in which you thought through something (critically or ethically).

3. Describe a situation in which you did not think through something (critically or ethically).

Then write a paragraph describing how, in your best judgement, (critical thinking or ehtics) is necessary within an area of your MBA program or your current profession or career.//

__Up to this point, this could be done in any medium including a submitted paper. Here is where I think the WIKI journal would be perfect.__


 * //Revise your concept of (critical thinking or ethics)//** //**over the course of the term. Reformulate it (maybe scrapping it entirely and starting over) so that it accords with your deepening grasp of what (critical thinking or ethics) is.**//

This format would allow other tracking the evolution of the students "deepening" thinking and allow others to make comments etc.

Scot and follow colleagues...any thoughts? Do you see any holes in this, or can you offer up some suggestion for firming this up if needed? Has it meet the standard of critical thinking...clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, logic, breadth, fair-mindedness, and significance?


 * **November 10, 2008**

For this next session this might be a useful link or at least a spring board to more substantial information. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Over the past several days the connection to GFU has been down, or working slow. The topic between Scot and myself shifted a bit from Schultze on to intellectual standards and measures for grading and self-evaluation. A topic that I have great passion for. The value here is applying these standards to Schultze's writing. The other element to know work with is reasoning. Attached is a chart I try to follow as I reason my way through an issue.
 * **November 7, 2008**



Below is a link to an article on why teachers and students do not reason well.

[|Why Students and Teacher Do Not Reason Well]

Next week I begin my class to become certified to teach in the Marylhust "accelerated" online program. I will be interesting to see if there is any connections between the online philosophies and Schultze.

I was rightly reminded that there is benefit of keeping a more permanent journal of important topics. I continue to develop my thoughts on Schulutze and the work of Paul and Elder on Intellectual Humility. This is not at the expense of the other traits. I an continuing to play that out in my mind.
 * **November 5, 2008**

In a post from Scot, the issue of measurement and self-evaluation was raised. Attached is a copy of P and E's "College Wide Grading Standards." I am working with these in regard to my own classes.



The original source is: [|Link to Paul and Elder Grade Standards] Just came across three articles on internet addition. There might be a tie-in with the Schultze concept on the morality issues with the internet. Might be a stretch...also might make the required posting too long. Very interesting material.
 * **October 30, 2008**

Hi Michael: I found three articles also and they are somewhat of a stretch, but definitely deal with what Schultze is talking about. Time has run out for the assignment as it took a while to read the articles and do the writing. I could write pages on Schultze and the articles, but kept it to about 900 words. Thanks, Jimmy

Craving your next Web fix.(Internet addiction)(Brief Article).Dori Jones Yang. U.S. News & World Report 128.2 (Jan 17, 2000): p.41. (656 words) From General OneFile.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 U.S. News and World Report, Inc.

"Five years ago, poking fun at his profession, psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg coined the term "Internet addiction disorder" as a joke. No one is laughing anymore. Though still ill-defined and poorly researched, Internet addiction has emerged as a serious--and growing--problem."

"Internet-addiction centers are popping up across the country to help bored housewives obsessed with chat rooms, husbands having cyberaffairs, students hooked on online games, and day traders turning violent when their losses mount. "People say, 'I used to do drugs in high school. Now I don't need it. I've got the Internet,' " says Maressa Hecht Orzack, who founded Computer Addiction Services at Boston's McLean Hospital in 1996."

This sessions assignment and an article from the 10/27/2008 Oregonian. It stuck me yesterday after finishing my first draft of the assignment for this third session that I will compare and contrast Schultz's "humility" against one of the intellectual traits of Paul and Elder...Intellectual humility. P and E write: Schultz uses the word connected with humor. A person follows a course of action that leads to ends that appear foolish and thus one becomes "humbled." I believe that there is a connection here. We proceed down some paths because we can function egocentrically and function and make decisions in the arena of self-deception and maybe a limited viewpoint.
 * **October 29, 2008**
 * **Intellectual Humility**: Having a consciousness of the limits of one's knowledge, including a sensitivity to circumstances in which one's native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively; sensitivity to bias, prejudice and limitations of one's viewpoint. Intellectual humility depends on recognizing that one should not claim more than one actually knows. It does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies the lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one's beliefs.

If time and space permitted it would be fun to expand this with two other P and E traits, Intellectual Courage and Faith in Reason.
 * **Intellectual Courage**: Having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs or viewpoints toward which we have strong negative emotions and to which we have not given a serious hearing. This courage is connected with the recognition that ideas considered dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part) and that conclusions and beliefs inculcated in us are sometimes false or misleading. To determine for ourselves which is which, we must not passively and uncritically "accept" what we have "learned." Intellectual courage comes into play here, because inevitably we will come to see some truth in some ideas considered dangerous and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held in our social group. We need courage to be true to our own thinking in such circumstances. The penalties for non-conformity can be severe.
 * **Faith In Reason**: Confidence that, in the long run, one's own higher interests and those of humankind at large will be best served by giving the freest play to reason, by encouraging people to come to their own conclusions by developing their own rational faculties; faith that, with proper encouragement and cultivation, people can learn to think for themselves, to form rational viewpoints, draw reasonable conclusions, think coherently and logically, persuade each other by reason and become reasonable persons, despite the deep-seated obstacles in the native character of the human mind and in society as we know it.

Intellectual Courage for me as I face some issues about technology that might be giving a "fair hearing." Truth as one author I read said "is discovered." I wish I could remember who. The other is Faith in Reason. Working with the concept that in the long run "humankind at large will be best served by giving the freest play to reason." That people can learn to think for themselves, form rational viewpoints and reach reasonable conclusions. What am I learning at GFU...only one thing...THINKING...cheap at twice the price.

Second item. There appeared in the 10/28/08 edition of The Oregonian an article titled "[|Jury finds man guilty in rape of 2 women from online ads.]" This article may be relevant to the discussion.

It has been far too long since the last posting and the thought of my negligence to this has been on my mind. I was up until midnight last night grading papers and upon retiring for the night I was awake thinking about this project and why I am not more diligent to the task. The same thought kept coming back...I am not relating to this as a learning tool, but more as a course requirement that simply must be done. So two issues are running around in my head.
 * **October 17, 2008**

First, who might be a responsible party to make learning "relevant" to a student. One of the items that keeps coming up is that in adult learning the material needs to be relevant. I have issues with that on some occasions. Sometimes we get the required course, such as this one. It is one of the hoops we need to go through to finish. On the other hand, as a person who loves discovering new things this course is great fun and feeds my addiction for learning for the sake of learning. I have heard it said that teachers become teachers because they love to learn and we learn by teaching. My problem is that I am not finding relevance in the WIKI. Right now it is one more project on my plate that seems more a required task than a academic journey. More technology on my plate that I am not convinced I need or is adding value to my life. On a side note: I was organizing my wood shop last weekend after doing Katie's crib. I noticed I have an number to tools I purchased that I have never used. They just seemed "important" at the time. I have a 3 year old biscuit cutter that has never been out of the box. I used my router table for this. More technology I don't use...??  ===**What is a biscuit cutter????? (it is a tool that makes a cut in a opposing pieces of wood large enough to insert a wood biscuit, or wafer. You apply glue and connect the two pieces. The wood biscuit swells a bit due to the glue and holds the two pieces together. Similar to doweling, but provides a stronger joint.  ** ===

Back to the question. Who is responsible to making learning relevant. Is the teacher or the student. On one hand we say that a student should take ownership of their learning. So that might indicate it is my responsibility. Figure something out. However, that conflicts with my personal belief that I have a responsibility to my students to make my subject (most of which are required courses) relevant to their lives. Much of this is to my own personal gain and ego. I love reading student review that tell me what a great job I did making a course that a student initially thought was going to be deadly, a delight. So, like many adult learners, I need to find relevance somewhere. I will work on that, for right now, this is more a "must do to pass the course" than an "hay this is really great, can I do more." (Example. In my current ethics course I choose to address "situational ethics." Due to my love of this subject, rather than just follow the text, I actually check out and read Fletcher's book "Situational Ethics" to get first hand knowledge rather than a textbook rehash.)

Second item, an issue with on-line classes and "relevance." I am most frustrated by this course. The topic is great, but I feel it is more like a self-study course with the inconvenience mass posting dumps. At the end of the required week all but two (sometimes three) dump their thoughts about one hour before the deadline. My desire to develop dialog is lost in massive overload of information. Schultze discusses this. So, to "pass" the course you pick someone who wrote something of some interest and toss a reply back. So much different than my conversation yesterday with Greg with went on just under an hour and we dug deep into the course content. Also enjoy human-to-human contact and coffee. I felt emotion and passion as we moved from topic to topic. Not to say you can't get emotion in writing, but some people (Churchhill for example) are bit better at than I. As such I feel a superficiality about this experience. Funny, I have purchased three additional copies of the text and have given them to away to people who I know will gain from reading the text.

This must be my "dump" posting as I struggle with frustration with the "why" of the WIKI and "why" of some technology and who is responsible to make it relevant in a learning environment. Who is responsible to start the fire. Right now I am thinking I have responded to only two others and the week is coming to a close. Soooo...might be time to find someone to respond to to meet course requirements. The meeting with Greg was the best in this three week period, but it is old technology that is...not relevant in our modern age? Now I will use the old technology of post it notes to remind me to do this ore often...I could use one of the tools in my computers calendar, but the post-it not is always there with it happy yellow color. I do feel better now. Not that anyone will ever see this, but it was good to vent and it meets a course requirement.

SIDE NOTE: After I hit save, I received a nice notice for the WIKI server...a previous version of this draft was recovered, do you want to save it. I said yes...Not all my work was saved. I am now frustrated again.

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<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">**//Michael: Thank-you for sharing your heart with us. I too have felt a bit the same way. However ,now I have learned how to resize pictures and how to add color to my responses. So, all is not lost. I also am conversing with folks who I never would in real life because I don't have a chance to see them. By the way, have you considered taking a night time cold capsule so that your not up with the owls posting? Dia//**    ===== Hay Dia, thanks for stopping by...I figured no one ever reads these beside me. I feel awkward touching another persons work, but now that you stopped by I am feeling a bit more open about it. My issue is not so much taking something to help me sleep, it learning how not to put so much on my plate. I am little like Michael Kane the actor who is reported to never turning down a role. I find it almost impossible to turn down a teaching job, so I end up with so much to do and only 24 hours in a day. My pastor and I are working on this. No success so far, but trying.

Chapters two and three of the course text are most profound. The ever increasing information flow that Schultze speaks of is almost debilitating. It is so easy to forward trash and just and it flows unabated. Even as technology finds ways to stop it, technology finds ways around the fix. It is concerning how much time one spends "communicating." Forwarding bad jokes and tasteless pictures. This is not to say there is not great information out there. If one looks at the data bases as a repository of information it is in my aspects not much different than the brick and mortor library. There is in my thinking a very postive element to digial storage. Example: My mentor and friend Richard Purvis has composed volumes of wonderful organ music. However, organ based worship and organ music in general is not as popular as it once was. As such publishers are chosing not to print his (and others) music. A few publishers are now making music available "on demand." That is to say, it is stored as a digital file and can be purchased as needed. For me this is sound thinking. No need to "guess" on future demand and then apply ink to paper and inventory.
 * **<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">October 5, 2008 **

On the the other side the ease of publishing does allow considerable amounts of poor material to get passed around. My other concern is how young people are falling into what I call a "recognize me" trap. That is putting up spaces that are almost pornographic in nature if not so. Is there such a need for recognition that is not being meet personally. I struggle with sites like 2nd life. I have not been on them, but where is the human side of this. Where is seeing the joy, pain, love, passion in a persons eyes when we carry on face-to-face conversations. When there is just time to look into the mind and enjoy a world together in quiet togetherness.

In Chapter three Schultze wrote about the word religious...to rebind. It added a new meaning for me to the sacred folk tune: Bind us together, Lord, bind us together, with cords that cannot be broken. Bind us together with love. My objective for this day is to connect with a member of my church who uses an email prayer list. Currently 235 members. I hope to get insight from her regarding her views on our course topic. I am hoping that she might allow a short video interview that will become part of the course project.
 * **September 30, 2008**

As posted on this date by Christianity Today. I heard the sound bit for this on the way home today. A quick internet search...I see some irony here...found a number of articles on the topic. This one by Christianity Today is concise and to the point. I think here is much to consider here regarding the topic of this course, especially commandment 1.
 * **September 29, 2008**

==

=Evangelicals publish 10 commandments of blogging= Posted: Monday, September 29, 2008, 12:20 (BST) Ten cyberspace commandments are to be posted online to give bloggers a moral edge in a virtual age.

Article from Christian Today: http://www.christiantoday.com/article/evangelicals.publish.10.commandments.of.blogging/21538.htm

Based loosely on the real Ten Commandments from the Old Testament, the revamped version for guidance in online communication emerged from an event reflecting on the ethics of today’s most popular form of public comment.

The commandments are intended to cause bloggers to consider the social impact of their blogging, and include not making an idol of their blog and not stealing another person's content.

Godblogs, a gathering held by the Evangelical Alliance on 23 September, was designed to give Christian bloggers an opportunity to network face-to-face and think through a Christian approach to blogging. The group, aged from 18 to 87, reflected on how to honour God with their blogs and in their relationships online.

Dr Krish Kandiah, Churches in Mission Executive Director at the EA, said: “During the Godblogs event, we discussed ideas about how to communicate a code of best practice to evangelical bloggers.

“Unlike the original, these commandments are virtual rather than set in stone, but are offered to the blogging community as a way to link the Ten Commandments with the art of blogging.

“In the ever-changing information age, what we need is wisdom for life, and God communicates wisdom to our culture through the Bible on every issue from social justice to social networking.”

He added that the Alliance is inviting bloggers to feed back on the commandments, which are on the Alliance website, www.eauk.org, and make suggestions for improvement.

Rev Mark Meynell, Senior Associate Minister for All Souls Church, Langham Place said: “The internet is merely the latest step in the evolution of human communication - and so like any other new medium, it presents us with huge opportunities as well as challenges.

“It is essential that Christians make the most of it, not least because we believe we have good news that is as relevant to those in cyberspace as it is for those in real space.”

Rev Meynell began the day by taking the bloggers through a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Christian blogosphere, followed by talks about relationships in invisible communities by lead elder at North Shrewsbury Community Church, Phil Whittal and Web 2.0 and the Bible by Peter Sanlon, an Anglican Ordinand from Cambridge.

A Blogging Relationship Commitment for Christians has also been produced as a result of the day to encourage Christians to think through how they can communicate in cyberspace in a Christ-like way and promote good relationships between Christians.

//The ten cyberspace commandments are as follows:

You shall not put your blog before your integrity.

You shall not make an idol of your blog.

You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin.

Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.

Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.

You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings.

You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.

You shall not steal another person’s content.

You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.

You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content.//

Meet with Greg at GFU to begin exploring our course project. Knowing several people who use various digital systems to share prayer requests, evangelize, and support others, we are considering exploring this under course objective #2.
 * **September 28, 2008**