Wk4 Reading: Find your Fuel for the Spark

In this month’s reading I am brought back to week two when we were introduced to the two weary shoe salesmen in Africa. One salesman saw that the occupants of that land had no shoes and was convinced he could not do his job in that land and left. The other salesman saw that lands residence had no shoes and believed that they had not yet been given the opportunity to test out the benefits shoes would have for them. He believed that the African people had a spark in them which needed to be let out, and he was the one to free it. This is a perception that all performers, lecturers, and teachers should have when it comes time to connect with an audience. You have to believe that the spark you carry is going to be able to catch fire with the audience in which you are presenting to. This is the practice I believe in and has fueled my fire in an ever growing board classroom. I cannot blame the student for being board; rather I have to blame myself for not using the correct combination of ingredients to spread my spark to the interests of my students. Just like fire needs, fuel, oxygen and heat to create a spark, a teacher needs to test out many different combinations of ingredients to catch the interest of their students. This is what we must understand as we are creating our leadership presentations; it may not work on the first try. If you truly want to become a great presenter you must be willing to fail, before you succeed. Michael Jordan said it best “…I have failed many times in my past; this is why I succeed today.” Find your spark and find away to spread it across the globe.

Leadership Wk3:Project Hub

For my Leadership presentation I will focus on my perfect cycle three project I created in Month 10, utilizing the tools I have learned throughout the course of my EMDT journey to help educate our educators on the emergent technologies available to us today. In my Presentation titled “Easy Tools for Easy Teaching” I will present a variety of tools which are free and easy to use which will help promote the engagement and motivation of their students. Through this one hour presentation, teachers will be exposed to a variety of techniques I have used and successfully implemented in my class during the course of my Action Research project. Focusing on examples I have created for my class and feedback from students, my audience will leave with a renewed sense of direction technology can take place in their classroom. 

Week 1 Post:

http://joemarquez70.blogspot.com/2012/05/leadership-week-1-presentation.html

Week 2 Post:

http://joemarquez70.blogspot.com/2012/05/leadership-wk2-location.html

Speaker Notes on Google Docs for Prezi Presentation:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fbZkwiqdNo37Ut3jSTnEAsxkPMxvlj2f-9Rf92WIanA/edit

Prezi Presentation: Easy Tools 4 Easy Teaching:
http://prezi.com/q6jqxwbimilt/try/

Supplemental Link to my presentation website:

https://sites.google.com/site/easytoolsforeasyteaching/

WK 3 Reading: Who Invented Rule Number 6?

All of my life I have been told to take things seriously. Statements like Double check your work, pay attention, no mistakes, work harder, or life is a competition have all been feed to me every day as I was growing up. It came to a point in which I though anything less than an A was unacceptable, no matter how much time and effort I have put into it. Conversely, also as I was growing up, I was inspired by my Grandpa, a Vice President of the largest Winery in the United States, who was constantly happy and always had a smile on his face. When I would visit him at work, his employees always greeted him joy and gratitude, and not the false kind of smiles employees normally give their boss. Later on in life after college and struggling to find my place in the world, I asked my then retired grandpa how he did it. How did he become so successful, run such a great operation, and have hundreds of loyal employees. My Grandpa told me he was just happy to have made it as far as he did, he would say “A man with only a 5^th grade education had no right to make it as far as he did.” He told me that you have to be the kind of boss who knows he does not know everything. You have to be the kind of boss who takes chances, not only on ideas but also on people. If you surround yourself with people you trust and who conversely love you, you will be successful in anything you do. 

In this week’s reading I could not help but think back to the advice my grandpa gave me over the years and smile. Rule number 6 was my grandpa’s number one rule, don’t take anything too seriously and know that any mistake can be corrected, so one should not dwell on those mistakes. For someone to be a successful leader he must lead by example and believe in the people they work with. My grandpa would never hire from outside of his plant, he would only promote those who proved themselves with hard work and effort. His bosses would always ask him to hire emerging college graduates, but my grandfather thought it was better to hire a high school educated worker who would put himself on the line for his boss, rather than fresh out of school student who had not yet proved himself. In over 42 years of being in charge of two of the largest wineries in the world, he had the best running and most highly skilled workforce in all of the company. Yes my grandpa Led by example, put his trust and reputation in many “unqualified” workers, and always had a smile on his face. Yes I believe he invented Rule number 6.

My Grandfather died with me holding his hand on Mothers Day morning Sunday May 13th 2012. He will always be my hero, my inspiration, my spark and my best friend. The world seems a little less bright without him, but he will always be in my heart, my soul and my smile. I love you pop.

 

Leadership Wk2: Location

For the location of my presentation I have chosen the California League of School Annual Southern Conference in San Diego California on Saturday October 27th 2012. I have already applied to speak at this conference, but if another venue is needed as a backup, I am also available to speak at the California League of Schools Annual Northern Conference in Sacramento California on March 2, 2013. I have chosen to speak at this conference because in the past, when I have attended this conference, I have found a lack of sessions containing adequate instruction on how to successfully implement new and emergent technologies into the classroom environments. My Presentation focuses on the success of my AR research project and instructs other teachers how to correctly implement technology so that it encourages engagement and motivation of students within the classroom environment.

Wk 2 Reading: Re-Inventing the Idea of Ideas

The statement which Benjamin Zander states at the beginning of The Art of Possibility he talks about two salesmen going off to sell shoes in Africa, this is a fantastic example of how teachers should think of their teaching opportunities. You see, in his story he states that one of the salesmen sent word back home that the idea of shoes is hopeless because no one there wears shoes, but the other salesman sent a more optimistic letter back full of hope stating that he has the opportunity to get people to start wearing shoes. In the classroom we have to think the same way about our students. We should not focus on the fact that we have a large group of students who do not want to learn; rather we should focus on the possibility of finding new ways to get the students more excited about learning. This is what the EMDT program has taught me over the past 11 months. We have been given the tools to sell shoes to the shoeless, an amazing opportunity to teach those who have not yet discovered the joy of learning. 

In the book a statement is made eluding to the idea that it’s (everything is) all invented. This idea details how humans perceive thoughts and ideas and relate them to the world in which they know around them. Some people take the world for what it is and say that everything is invented so let's just make what we know better. Others see the world differently and use new facts and ideas to build new and exciting constructs in the world around us. We should be reminded that humanity is continuously working to become greater than the previous generation, and that no human in the history of the world has thought that everything that can be invented has already been invented. It has evidently come to our attention that the quote most commonly used to test our willingness to invent comes from (but actually never did come from) the 1899 patent office clerk Charles H. Duell stating that "Everything that can be invented has been invented." It has been proven that this is one of those myths that’s gets passed around as fact from generation to generation, eventually being passed off as truth along the way.  It can be clearly seen that all aspect of the world can be improved upon by thinking outside the normal realm of logic and incorporating the new and exciting truths learned in your generation. By exploring the new and exciting ideas brought about by the EMDT program I know I create a classroom environment full of new and exciting ideas and learning styles.

Mechanix Illustrated, December 1958, Pg82

Leadership Wk 1: Presentation

I am going to be presenting my information at a conference to allow my fellow educators to hear about the research I am doing in my class and give the audience the chance to ask me questions based upon my best practices. I am very comfortable being in front of a crowd as I am already the chosen presenter for my school at the California League of School (CLS) conference during the fall semester. My presentation will focus on the motivation and engagement of students using various tools and techniques outlined in my AR project. I believe that teachers teaching other teachers is the only way to promote new and innovative ways to bring the modern classroom into the digital age.

Wk 1 Reading: We Can Copy, Right?

I graduated High School in 1999 and was starting my freshmen year of college when the mp3 boom began. I had just moved out of my parents house and moved into my first apartment with my friend Mike. We were the type of guys who loved to be on the forefront of everything especially the internet. My buddy Mike got a Job working for the cable company, who at the time were rolling out lightning fast (slow by today's comparison) cable modems. These modems were to replace the old dial-up connection that many of us first encountered in the old AOL days of the internet. Little did we know that this modem would open up a whole new world to us and put us on a path to total local celebrity status. We first entered a chat room in using a little known program called My Internet Relay Chat or Mirc for short. Here we found a whole community of collectors of a small music file known as an mp3. The first songs that we downloaded were the classics like The Beastie Boys Fight for your right (to party), or Ozzy Osborn's Crazy Train. Soon we discovered a new program making its way around the channels known as Napster. This was a revolution in the Person to Person, or P2P file transfer protocol that we were using in Mirc. The only difference was that you did not need to ask people if they had the file, here all you had to do was type in the name in their search engine and you were shown multiple hits of the file, and which location had the fastest connection to retrieve it. It was an amazing concept that me and my friend Mike wished we had come up with.

Soon we were having people come over challenging them to find the most rare songs they could think of, like Bob Marley's Guava Jelly or Slick Rick's original Ladi Dodi. With all these fiends coming over to complete their searches we amassed a large library of songs, and soon became the go to apartment for parties and music lounging sessions. Many people would ask where the music was coming from and I would reply "From my computer." No one believed me so I would always give them a tour and show them my setup and my playlist on the original mp3 computer program WinAmp. They were amazed, but many of my friends believed this was a fad and would soon go away like 8-tracks. I was so sure this was not a fad that I used the topic of mp3s and the future of music as my final persuasive argument in my public speaking class.It was a great time of my life broadening my love for music and making my first few year of college completely worth while.

Why did I start this blog off with this story? Because even though I believe an artist has the right to protect his work, I also believe that the trading of mp3's is not the nail in the coffin that record industry makes it out to be. I remember when I was about 4 or 5 years old hearing how the VCR was going to kill movies and ruin the art of cinema being seen on the big screen. The industry soon found out that the proliferation of home media not only helped the industry, but added on a whole new consumer base that they had never thought possible. I believe the same can be said for the mp3's. The proliferation of the mp3 only adds to the appreciation of music thus raising music to a new and higher standard than ever before. Before mp3's I lead a sheltered life, only buying the occasional CD for bands that the radio told me were popular. After I started downloading mp3's my musical education grew, exposing me to the rich sounds of reggae, the unique rhymes of rappers like Biggie and Tupac, and the eclectic sounds like radiohead. Mp3's forced me to broaden my horizons, listen to new bands on a whim, and go to more live shows and concerts than ever before. The mp3 was a game changer for many young people back in the early 2000's and I believe it still is for many youths today. The fact is, I spent more money on music after the mp3 age than I did before.

Sure there are those that abuse the system and take take take, but don't forget about those how give back. Today we see a plethora of  musicians trying to make a mark in today's industry who may not have ever had a chance before. Take Justin Bieber (no really take him, haha), he got his start by posting videos of his talents on YouTube, a video site with its roots stemming from the mp3 sub-culture of the early 2000's. With this new medium many more artist can fill the world with their talents, or lack there of, allowing the American culture to determine who is worthy of praise and who is not. This I believe is what the recording industry is afraid of, we the people now have the power to determine who is popular, not the gigantic spin machine that we call the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA now in today's world seems insignificant, the power is now placed into the peoples internet. Artists now see that they can produce and market their art on their own with only a simple $1000 computer and an internet connection. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame found this out when he released his own album off the internet all on his own and asked for donations instead of a set price. It are these situations that the big corporate giants hate because there is no need for a middle man any more.

The creation of the Creative Commons is the next evolutionary step of the P2P transfer protocol, that was so famously smashed with the demise of napster, bearshare, and limewire. This new P2P system places artist right directly on the property the individuals wish to use or listen to from their own computer. By placing the option of fair use back into the hands of the creator we limit the corporate stranglehold our ideas and though have been suffocating from for so long. Creative commons is a breath of fresh air for the little man who normal stands beneath the shadows of the corporate giants.