For your last blog for this class and this quarter, please share your feedback on the course. Here are some questions for you to consider:
Overall, was the class worthwhile to you? Why? What (happily) surprised you?
What are some recommendations you have for improving any of the three major assignments: Gen Ed Best Practice, Exit Plan, or This I Believe?
What did you think of doing the weekly blog? I know that Blogger sometimes didn't work for some of you. Do you think, for example, a discussion board in eCompanion would work as well?
What were some of the other in-class activities you found most useful and/or enjoyable (personality type card game and groups, writer's notebook, class discussions, etc.)
What other recommendations do you have for improving the class?
The following statement is not intended to influence your response, but only to reflect on my own experience with you:
It's been a pleasure working with you all. I admire how willing you were, as seniors, to devote the time and energy to this class when your program classes are also so demanding. I know that many of you came to this class unaware of what to expect, and am grateful you kept open minds to the activities we did and the work I asked of you. I think we developed a fine learning community that crossed all the majors represented. I will be proud to show off your work next week to our guests.
I never really had a favorite color, until a few years ago. Now, it is teal. I wear it in a scarf, a t-shirt, a bracelet, and a pin. But it’s not a fashion choice. Teal is a statement.
Teal is the color of the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance. In August 2009, this silent killer took my mother-in-law, Dorothy Higgs Wright, from us. She was diagnosed only a month earlier, although she’d been filling ill for more than a year. The doctors ran many tests. They did lots of blood work. There were scans and many, many office visits.
Meanwhile, Mom was in pain, especially in her abdomen and sometimes in her pelvis. Although weighing less than 100 pounds and in her early 70s, Dottie developed a bloat in her belly. She patted it, laughing, “Maybe I’m just pregnant.”
She would feel full after eating only a few bites, but had to urinate frequently. This meant she didn’t get much rest, and neither did my father-in-law. Her son and I lived about three hours away, but we started visiting every weekend, gathering with his siblings and their families for church and Sunday dinners.
We all wore the same worried looks and spoke in whispers around Dottie and my father-in-law. We shared the same thought: Mom seemed to be shrinking before our eyes.
Finally, the doctors recommended exploratory surgery. The night before the operation, my husband and I arrived to her room late, after everyone else left. Dottie wore her hospital gown like a blanket, with just her little face and slim fingers poking out from its folds. She looked like a frail baby bird in a snowy nest, her pale face crowned with soft white curls. My husband held her hand, with its paper-thin skin, and told the sleeping figure we’d see her in the morning.
Her doctor said the surgery could take a couple of hours, but we were called into the family room after only 30 minutes. It was ovarian cancer – a diagnosis that had not been discussed – and it was malignant and had metastasized to fill her abdomen. They closed her up and told us we had a month left with her.
I don’t mean to sound bitter. Dottie wouldn’t have it. She was grateful for the time she had with her family and friends, before and after the diagnosis. There was an unceasing trail of people who made the pilgrimage to visit her one last time: family, neighbors, and friends; people who had enjoyed her organ music in church for 35 years; administrators, teachers and students from the elementary school where she was secretary for decades. And many people whose lives she touched at the Indiana Soldiers and Sailors Childrens Home in Knightstown, Indiana.
I don’t know what my mother-in-law’s favorite color was. Knowing Dottie, she wouldn’t pick one for fear of offending the other colors. But I wear teal in her honor. Because I know she would want me to do everything I can to keep others from going through what she and we endured.
Ovarian cancer is a silent killer because its symptoms are easily confused with other conditions, and there is no reliable screening test for it. This makes it the deadliest of gynecologic cancers, occurring in about one of every 72 women. Striking at any age.
September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. You may see teal ribbons, fundraising walks, and awareness fairs. Most important, be aware of its symptoms: bloating, pain in the abdomen or pelvis, urinary difficulties, and trouble eating or fullness.
I believe in the power of teal. I believe we can save lives with it.
Your prompt this week is to pick an image(s) and music you are considering for your final "This I Believe" project. If you are pretty tech-savvy, this will not be a challenge, but if you're still a novice, showing us music you are interested in might be a little tricky...so read on.
We talked in class about using royalty-free music that you can access through the library link (bottom of your MyAiCampus portal) at Firstcom.com. The study group this week suggest starting at the "themed playlist" to search. You can also put in some keywords to see if a composer titled a song using them.
Since you are signing on with the library's username and password, we can all listen to each others' choices if you put your selection in the Project folder named GE490. Then just tell us in your blog which song is yours. For example, in that project folder is a song I found today by searching "life" and "balance." It is called "Your Very Life Hangs in the Balance" and you'll hear that it is very dramatic.
As you are searching through Firstcom.com, you can listen to snippets by clicking on the title. If you click on the download arrow, it will put the MP3 file on your computer. I suggest you also save it in the GE490 Project folder in case you'd like to access it from another computer.
If you have a YouTube account, an easy way to share your image and music is to upload it to YouTube and then link the URL to your blog. I have a PC and WindowsMovieMaker is very easy to use. Here are the steps:
1. Open WindowsMovieMaker. In the upper bar, click "Add video or photos" and upload an image or images from your computer.
2. Next to that button is one that says "Add Music" and when you click it you can pick a file from your computer.
3. Click on "Fit to Music" and the image(s) will repeat the length of the song.
4. Save it as a standard version to your computer. Some versions of MovieMaker offer you the option of uploading straight to YouTube, but how well it works depends on the speed of your Internet connection and your computer.
5. Upload to your YouTube site and imbed the URL in your blog. You can also upload the video you created on your computer directly to your blog, but this sometimes gets a little glitchy.
This long weekend might also be a good time to experiment with Audacity, the freeware we talked about in class that can be used to record your TIB in your own voice and then combined with the image and music. The Audacity Wiki is very useful.
Mac users have iMovie and other choices. There are even some apps available for iPhones and Droids.
If you have additional tips you'd like to share with us, please include those in your blog.
This is one of the weeks when I'd like everyone to respond to the same prompt and it is centered on the IDEA objectives I've chosen for the General Education Capstone.
As I discussed in class, the IDEA is the bubble survey you've filled out in many classes during your time at Ai Indy. You may have thought you were filling out the same survey for each class, but the IDEA is a national survey program that is designed to allow each class to be customized by the faculty member. In Week 7, each faculty members is given a bubble sheet for one of their classes that will be surveyed. The instructor picks three to five objectives from the 12 available -- selecting only the ones that related closest to the competencies of the course.
Then, in Week 9, when you fill out the bubbles, you are asked to rate your progress on all 12 objectives. Some, you will see, relate closer to the course than others. Those are most likely the ones that will "count" the most when the statistics are computed. An instructor cannot announce which objectives "count" during Week 9, because it might influence how you score them. We want you to understand which ones fit with each class and how you think you are progressing on meeting them.
There is a lot more information available on the survey and these strategies at the IDEA Center website. But, for the purposes of our class and this blog, I want you to consider how these three objectives relate to our course and how you are progressing in meeting those objectives. If you have some recommendations for improvement or questions, those would be helpful too. Your feedback can change what happens the next month in our class.
IDEA Objective 3: “Learning to Apply Course Material (to improve thinking, problem solving, and decisions). This objective is picked as important by many instructors because it is at the heart of teaching, especially in a college like Ai Indy. Back in the 1900s, John Dewey, one of the pioneers in higher education stated that learning is greatly facilitated when students are shown how new information applies to their lives. This application to life increases a student's motivation, use of critical thinking, and recall. Basically, every activity we do in the Gen Ed capstone is designed one way or another to address this objective.
IDEA Objective 8: “Developing skill in expressing myself orally or in writing.” This objective connects directly to Competency D of the course: Ask students to think, discuss, and write -- very intentionally -- about the issues listed in Competencies A-C. Addressing this competency and objective is why you write so much and in so many different ways inside and outside class, and why we discuss your ideas in class, and you present your ideas from your assignments.
IDEA Objective 10: “Developing a clearer understanding of, and commitment to, personal values." One of the idea purposes of a bachelor's degree education is to educate the whole person, not just in the skills needed for a specific job, but in the understanding, experiences, and critical thinking skills needed to participate actively in adult life. To be wholly education, then, a student must define, understand, refine and commit to personal values that will serve that person in the future. All three assignments have elements of this objective, but the "This I Believe" essay is built solidly around this objective.
What I'd like to hear from you this week in your blog is, what do you think of these objectives? To they seem to fit with what you expected and/or are experiencing in class so far? Do you think you are making progress toward achieving these objectives in this class and/or in others? Do you have any recommendations for the last four weeks of class?
For this week's blog, please go to the This I Believe website and find an essay that you recommend to the rest of the class. Include the URL of the essay and tell us a little about why you think it's a good example and/or other reasons you think it's useful to us.
My recommendation is an essay called Books at All Costs by educator Kristen Kelly. Her essay on reading hard-bound books during her lifetime reminded me a little of my experience of going back to graduate school and how I needed a dictionary to understand many of the books I was assigned during my first year. She also incorporates a lovely narrative about her father. I was impressed with how she weaves her own story with her father's and even into a future story her children might tell about her.
[Please read the blog below this one, too. I really want your feedback on it.]
One of the articles on Indiana Career Connect, entitled "10 Steps," includes some helpful ideas on finding and being successful at a job. One of the most overlooked areas of preparation is references. The article talks about how to select references and how to ask for letters of reference. As an instructor, I am often asked for the latter from students. Here are my tips when asking for this type of reference:
Including a little reminder to the instructor can be helpful, even for a general letter of reference. Consider the types of behavior and accomplishments in which a potential employer might be interested and translate that into activities you did in class. For example, you might ask an instructor to speak directly to a particular project you worked on in class, or how involved you were in group projects or discussions.
Remind the instructor what class you took with him/her and when. Even at Ai, where instructors get to know students very well, we can sometimes forget which classes you took with us. While we can look this up, it's not the same as you providing a few reminders of the experience to refresh our memories.
Tell the instructor if the letter of reference is for a specific position and provide the contact information and address so that it can be included in the letter. If it is a general letter of reference, it can be addressed: To whom it may concern.
Ask for these letters of reference BEFORE you leave school, while the memories of your faculty are fresh with their experience with you.
The article ends with "#10 So now you've got the job," which I think is a key point that is often overlooked in a job search. Essentially, you are still trying to create a good impression your first few weeks at a new job. You've heard the old adage about how first impressions are lasting ones, but it is especially true at a new job or when you take on a new position at an existing job. Consider the kind of reputation you want to establish for yourself and specifically how that reputation can be established and reinforced.
You might want to consider that last question in your Assignment B. What do you want your reputation to be? What kinds of behaviors, characteristics, projects do you want associated with your name? In other words, how will you brand yourself? Build that into your plan of action.
