Three-year-old Howard Wong rocks out on the drums and has a good time at it. Fun. I bet the Asian characters in the title are saying something rude about stupid monolingual americans. jbb

        

I just finished updating the reading part of my course and I somehow ended up telling my own story of Possibility. At this point in the course my students have read the first nine chapters of the Art of Possibility and are finishing up their final week in my course. They are just about to begin their last month in Full Sail’s emdtms program. Thus, the following is a glimpse of what my students suffer through. Don’t feel sorry for them. I’m the one who has to read (and grade) their blogs. Ack. Actually that is one of the best parts of this job, it’s reading the great things they share in their blogs… oh yeah, I usually share such things right here in this blog. Duh. Enjoy

:: Description
You will read the Art of Possibility chapters 10 -12 and post one entry (or more) into your blog.

:: Rationale

pacbell by joe bustillos

Ah, but the story continues from there. Truth be told, being a teacher was somewhat akin to being a phone company drone in that the highest form of praise tended to be that one always showed up for work on time and never did anything that made work for others. Yeah, I somehow ended up in another world of "lifers." Of course, I didn’t know any better so I kept doing things like teaching my students video journalism to help with their literacy and brought computers from home into my classroom. I guess I became a bit more entrepreneurial because I’d get involved in creating some new tech/ed/media program on campus, we’d have great success and then after a couple of years the funding would go away and I’d find myself working for another school/district, bringing tech/media to the natives. While getting a master’s degree and time spent working on a doctorate I continued the "create a tech program/find success/lose funding/change jobs" cycle three times. Alas, the doctorate program ran aground (twice), but I was lucky enough to work with Dr. Ludgate and somehow found a home on the opposite end of the country working for Full Sail. I am not the poster child for the Art of Possibility. But I am kind of stubborn as far as expecting a lot from myself because I’ve already been given so much. And if I can influence someone to not settle for the status quo, to push the technology, to enable their students, well then, that’s a damn good day.

The following video features someone who found amazing success, in many ways, through equally amazing failures. Having witnessed three of his incredible keynote speeches, this is not one of his better speeches. But the message is all the more real given the speech’s lack of polish. Enjoy.

:: Resources

The Practices
This books is less of a “study” book, where you try to analyze every sentence and paragraph and more a book that you want to move through and try to focus on the over-arching concepts presented. At the end of each chapter are some questions that form the “practices” part of the book. Use the questions to prompt your book notes that you will post in your blog. Feel free to answer the following study questions, or comment on the practices at the end of each chapter, or write about whatever moves you most (that’s directly related to the reading). Your choice.

Chapter 10. Being the Board: It’s not them. It’s not the circumstances. It’s me. It’s my choices. Now what do I do?

Chapter 11. Creating Frameworks for Possibility: How do I take this flash of insight and make it into daily thing? And how do I share this with others?

Chapter 12. Telling the WE Story: I told you it wasn’t about you. Have you been able to tap into the power of combining your expertise and passions with someone equally gifted? Have you had the pleasure of lifting a teammate, student, stranger up enabling them to realize their dreams and exceed anything that you could have imagined?

Coda: Now what do we do?

Sources:
Image: Pop!Tech 2008 – Benjamin Zander by Pop!Tech, http://www.flickr.com/photos/poptech2006/2968249798/ retrieved on 11/12/2009
image: pacbell01.jpg by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/pacbell01.jpg retrieved on 11/12/2009
image: jbb & zander by Joe Bustillos, http://web.me.com/edm613/media/jbbnbzander.jpg retrieved on 11/12/2009
YouTube: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 posted by peestandingup, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA, retrieved on 11/12/2009.

        

CNET’s Technically Incorrect blog, asked the question about whether makers of the following public service announcement (PSA) went too far depicting the dangers of texting while driving. If one views the video on a “surface” level, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been shown on most American televisions. My guess is that the uproar is this video presents its brief horrific narrative with no villain to blame and no happy ending. The video is disturbing. My fear is that it’s intended audience has already been desensitized to the message and those of us past our middle years, who recognize the preciousness of life, are the ones most likely to get rattled.

Sources:
blog: Is PSA on texting and driving too shocking? Technically Incorrect blog by Chris Matyszczyk. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10318015-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 retrieved on 9/9/2009

YouTube video: Graphic Crash, UK, Dangers of texting while driving PSA by Peter Watkins-Hughes and the Gwent, Wales police department, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdvFh95Yg6M retrieved on 9/9/2009

        

Part of my course at Full Sail is about media issues, you know, stuff like Copyright, Fair Use and Creative Commons. The “M” in our program title (EMDT) is Media and my students, who are in their ninth month of a year long Masters degree program, are expected to stare down this huge subject and come up with a reasonable approach to something that I tell them occupies the life’s work of an army of lawyers, policymakers and troublemakers. As I lay down guiding principles to understanding the moving target that is Copyright/Fair Use/Creative Commons the discussions tend to be quite lively and informative for all participants. One thing that I’ve never fully appreciated is how difficult and expensive it can be for teachers who want to follow copyright law who teach band, or theater or any of the other arts.

One teacher wrote in her class blog:

Seriously, the whole copyrighting thing….I get it. I understand why things are copyrighted. I just think it gets taken to an extreme and so many people suffer from it. I’m sorry, but this recording: (insert, mp3 of me playing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony with one hand on the piano but I couldn’t get to work properly) just doesn’t cut it when I’m teaching my kids about Beethoven. I know I am guilty of a lot of music copyrighting issues. I have gotten a lot better about it since I began teaching (that also comes with the experience and learning more and more about copyrighting). Music teachers have it tough – we aren’t allowed to photocopy music. No matter that it costs an average of $2-$5 per student copy (multiply by 25 students and you’re talking $50-$100 for ONE song). It’s simply unrealistic to think that any school can afford 10-15 songs PER CONCERT. I end up using a lot of the textbook series songs, which in it’s own right is probably not allowed either because it’s being performed live (but not broadcast). And of course, when you’re teaching the classics and the composers who wrote them, and they are not all in the series, you bring in your own music. How can a music teacher teach music without playing music?!??!? - “Alison Van”

Understanding the overwhelming power of motivated students (especially those under the age of 17), my first thought was that we needed to harness their creativity to come up with the music and art that we needed in the classroom to teach those just beginning to learn their craft. Then another student reminded me the role copying has always had in inspiring beginning artists. Oh yeah…

I think everyone uses something they’ve seen, heard, or read in a book or movie as inspiration. Using sports as an example, every kid with a basketball tries to imitate Michael Jordan’s moves on the court… Jenkins (Convergence Culture, 2008) makes this correlation with fledgling writers. By imitating or using the J.K. Rowling’s books as a starting point beginning writers understand good structure, character development, and how to tell a story. By using Jordan’s moves you understand how to attack the rim, how to play tenacious defense, and how to find openings. In both cases you aren’t trying to invent the wheel just make it better. Jenkins cites the fact that using someone else’s characters gives writers distance and takes the pressure off of drawing from one’s own experiences. - Jay Hom

This got me thinking. Clearly something is really messed up here. I mean, when it comes to students learning how to write and posting things in an educational or non-profit environment it’s pretty clear that there should be a special license for this, recognizing that beginning writers/artists always begin by copying the masters who came before them. From before the beginning of recorded history, persons wanting to learn a craft became apprentices in the service of a master, and what was their first job? Generally they spent years copying the works of the master until they proved themselves to be creative and skilled enough to be permitted to work on their own works. No one starts from scratch. This is where the media business and commerce has failed to recognize how humans, by nature, do things. Where would today’s artists be if it weren’t for an art teacher, a music teacher, a drama teacher or an English teacher? Even if the teacher’s influence was negative, inspiring the young artist to prove them wrong, the inspiration brought them that much closer to their dream. And who did the artists copy when they were learning how to draw, to play an instrument, to write, to imagine?

Let me put it this way, there’s something wrong in requiring the teacher to pay the student. In educational/non-profit situations teachers should have a special license to use the copyrighted works that they need to use in order to train the next generation of artists. This license should either be free or extremely inexpensive and any payment should be made directly to the composer/artist/writer and not to a publishing house or agency. If this seems to unreasonable to the media industry let’s use the same tactic used by the industry and begin by assuming that behind every artist, agency or media business was an educator and/or educational institution that got the artist, agency or business started. And so for every media property licensed, every paycheck generated from a piece of media, every negotiation related to any piece of art, music, literature, videos, any creative work, 10 percent of the gross must be paid to the educational institution or educator(s) who had a hand in beginning and/or nurturing the artist’s career. And given the media industry’s proven track record for creative accounting, artists/agencies/businesses unable to do the math will have a minimum of 10 percent deducted from their pre-tax gross income. This seems fair given the number of years educators and educational institutions devote to developing these artists. Or maybe a special educational use license (something like the creative commons license) could be employed. Either way, the business of taxing teachers and educational institutions in the business of producing the next generation of artists is just another example of how out of control and greedy the industry is willing to be. Getting back to my first notion, there is a lot of talent in the high school and college music programs that should be harnessed to create “Creative Commons” pieces that could be freely used in educational teaching and performances and the whole educational system should turn their backs on an industry that forgets that their “artists” first learned their love of their craft via the efforts of an underpaid classroom teacher.

In a blog that featured the opening video of PS22′s chorus singing the Fleetwood Mac song “Landslide” there were a few comments about what a beautiful performance it was but how pissed the RIAA was going to be. The blogger wrote, “Just got word from Stevie Nicks’ tour manager that she was completely blown away by the PS22 Chorus rendition of her song “Landslide!” He said she asked him to replay two times afterward, crying each time she watched! Talk about humbling!! And the kicker?? She invited the PS22 Chorus to sing the song at Madison Square Garden for the upcoming June 11th Fleetwood Mac show!! Holy cow!!!”

It’s been my experience that when the artist, the actual person responsible for the creative work, is brought into the picture they recognize the power of hearing or seeing their work re-imaged by the generation of artists coming up. And in the age of the Internet and email we educators are only one contact away from securing the releases that respect copyright while supporting the need to train and teach the next generation of artists. When Neil Finn, Crowded House lead singer, heard PS22 perform one of his tunes he said that it was “the most hopeful sound on earth.” Amen, Neil.

Crowded House & PS22 Chorus PRIVATE UNIVERSE live!

Sources:
* “Why Publish Student Work on the Web: PS22 Chorus Perform ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac” on Open Thinking blog at http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/1603, retrieved 5/29/2009
* http://alisonvan.blogspot.com/2009/03/week-3-wimba-session-2-for-real.html retrieved 3/29/2009
* http://web.me.com/jayhom/MAC/Jay_Hom_Blog/Entries/2009/4/19_Week_2_-_Chapter_5_-_Fan_Inspiration.html# retrieved 4/21/2009
* “Augusta Savage, artist – 1930s film” (video) posted by Bob Bobster at http://www.flickr.com/photos/32912172@N00/3240099122/in/set-72157608250741007/ retrieved on 5/30/2009
* PS22 Chorus PRIVATE UNIVERSE opening for CROWDED HOUSE at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5-FViUB490 retrieved on 5/30/2009
* Crowded House & PS22 Chorus PRIVATE UNIVERSE live! at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQniDM38450 retrieved on 5/30/2009

        

Around this time last year I was very excited to receive my OLPC (One Laptop per Child), called the XO-1. Having drunk the Negroponte gatorade I was endlessly frustrated with Dvorak and other tech journalists who kept their criticism of the XO-1 focused on either Negroponte’s eccentricities or the fact that the creators made it specifically to not be a Windows PC. The concept, begun at MIT’s Media Lab, that technology in education is not about training students to be little MS Office drones but to use computers to teach programming in order to teach thinking and communication seemed to waft past the XO-1′s dissenters. Leo Laporte and David Pogue got that the little green XO-1 wasn’t about attacking an untapped technology market, but was an humanitarian cause to bring the gift of technology to Third World classrooms.

In the ISTE Keynote address that I heard Negroponte introduce the XO-1 he quipped that they must be doing something right to have raised the ire of Intel and Bill Gates. Alas, maybe the joke in the end was on Negroponte when Intel promised to play fair but couldn’t resist the temptation to undercut Negroponte’s “humanitarian cause” and sell their competing kid-size ultra-light laptop, the Classmate, to the same countries Negroponte was trying to reach. So the Gospel according to Negroponte fell on deaf ears because the Win/Tel hegemony couldn’t hear the words for the vastness, opportunities and profits presented in possibility of harvesting the Third World educational/government technology nickel.

This holiday season the OLPC foundation is repeating their give one/get one campaign that I participated in last year to get my own XO-1, only this time they’re working with Amazon.com to get the word out and do the distribution. The commercials are very cute. My own XO-1 sits on a top shelf in my bedroom, part of my shrine to sentimental technology I’ve previously invested in (I really wish I had kept one of my old Kaypros to put in the shrine). I hate to think that Dvorak and the others might have been right after all.

The humanitarian cause and hardware rational was sound. But I was hoping to use my XO-1 as some kind of netbook or ultra-light laptop. After a year I found the Sugar interface confusing and the hardware just too underpowered. Click, wait, find a webpage, click, wait, how the hell do I switch back and forth between pages? Seriously. Right size, great battery life, indestructible, a little weak with the tiny keyboard (kid-sized, right?). I really wish Apple would come out with a netbook/ultra-portable jbb

        

Yeah, that was the subject line I found in my Full Sail account this morning. I was scared and decided to not read the message until I got a few things done… Turned out that the writer for Full Sail Online is working on an article designed to “encourage people to keep an engaging daily blog.” She heard about my blog from my boss’ girlfriend and was looking for tips. Wow, from panic to being flattered. So I wrote back the following response:

Ashley,

Greetings. First off, I’m guessing that you don’t know how scary it is to get an email on the corporate account with the subject line: “About your blog…” Yikes. I’m so happy to help out in any way that I can (and not be in trouble!). My first thought is something the rock-star Sting said about how he believed that one has to write everyday if one expects to write well. That is, that one shouldn’t expect to write…

a great song or poem or anything if one doesn’t take the time to do it every day. That’s a bit old school, but it’s true that we need to do the things that are important to us daily. The other thing, that is so true today and wasn’t back when I started writing, is that blogging isn’t just about writing but also about sharing pictures, ideas or even the line of a great song. It’s about finding something that makes you stop and think and then sharing that with someone else. A lot of the stuff that I blog about often comes from podcasts I listen to or something that I found on the web. I’ll post the original video and just add my two-cent reflection.

Blogging is a big part of the course I’m teaching here at Full Sail (Media Asset Creation). And the funny thing is that, because most grad students are a bit grade-focused, they usually have a hard time with the idea that I just want them to use their blog to think out loud about their experiences in my course and experiences at Full Sail in general. Ironically, now that they probably have the language skills to express themselves and have the experience of the world to have something meaningful to say, they generally don’t want to say something “stupid” or “wrong.” Whereas when they were nine you probably couldn’t get them to shut up about the moths that their little brother thought were weird looking butterflies, for example. And teenagers, I worked with middle school kids before coming here and I still get messages from them on my MySpace where they can’t be bothered to put anything in the subject line and the whole post is “s’up.” Anyway, I’m hopeful that over the course of the short month I have my students I’ll get something more expressive than “s’up” and less rambling than stories about weekends working with dad in the backyard. Oh yeah, it does help to encourage them to look for a graphic to include with their post… that sometimes inspires the ones of few words and breaks the concentration of those too in love with the flow of their own rambling thoughts. Works for me… usually. I hope that this helps Ashley. Just let me know if you need anything else.

jbb

Music: “Re: Your Brains” by Jonathan Coulton on the “Thing a Week Two“ CD.

        

When I read about the techniques Chinese bloggers were using to get the word out, I was reminded of my middle school students dying to listen to their music or get to their myspace page from behind the district’s firewall. District official’s no doubt would bristle at the analogy, but I’m sure that the Chinese officials also believe that they are justified using their firewall to protect their users from the great harm of an unregulated Internet. And legally speaking Public Ed is required to take whatever measures necessary to protect minors from exposure to potentially harmful material. Question is, when dealing with middle and high school students specifically, whether any firewall is strong enough and whether there are much more meaningful, inexpensive way to protect students from inappropriate content and the network infrastructure from attack and abuse. Included in my TCO (total cost of operation) analysis is the expense of not using the energy, ingenuity and genius of these students and the cost of keeping the disenfranchised disenfranchised.

Technorati Tags: blogs, community, gaming, internet, kids, media, china, teaching, thesystem, work

Then again, when I think of it, I was the one to use the same “text stored as a graphic” technique used by the dissidents, but with my middle school students when I wanted to give them something to type and yet prevent them from just copying and pasting the text. “JPG” text FTW. Of course some of the kids figured out that all they needed to do was to strike a deal with one of their more-keyboard savvy classmates to give them a copy of the completed assignment. Damn tricky students. But the assignment really wasn’t worth me investing any greater effort to thwart their work-around. I doubt the district or Chinese officials would come to the same conclusions. jbb

Music/Podcast: Systm – Build Your Own NAS from the album “Systm (Small Quicktime)” by Revision3

        

After an incredible 31-hours on the road straight from Prescott AZ, Matt & I arrived in Baton Rouge this afternoon. You can follow along on our journey at http://twitter.com/jbb where I post little 140-character snippets of what’s going on from my phone and where we are at. You can also view posted photos from the trip here at my flickr account.

Thanks for your good thoughts, prayers and continued support. jbb

Technorati Tags: california, comedy, family, iPhone, kids, longbeach, travel, twitter

        

Lot’s of pix, lots of memories. I had some very cool kids this year. Gonna miss ‘em.

Music: Buffalo Soldier from the album “Legend” by Bob Marley & The Wailers

Technorati Tags: friends, kids, longbeach, teaching, work

        

* “Welcome 2 the Real World” was a music video inspired by the 80s jane child song by the same name. Students wrote a paragraph about what the word “Real World” mean to their parents and I recorded them reading their essays and added that to footage I’d shot in Downtown Long Beach.

* “Welcome to the Real World” performed & written
by jane child, off the 1989 “Jane Child” CD available at Amazon and

Technorati Tags: kids, longbeach, musicvideo, teaching, video, writing, youtube