Week 2-Comment

Here is my comment to Sheri's blog:

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Wk 2 Reading

Image by Sheri Brinkerhoff

All of the structure and ideals we use to bind ourselves into our lives are invented.  Only looking beyond the proverbial box can help us see beyond our immediate world.  I have often thought about how we create our own world based on our experiences. “The Art of Possibility” by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander is one of the most amazing book I have ever read. Unleashing the possibilities within should be the goal of every person.  It really is all invented.  Someone created the ideas we use to guide our lives.  What could we accomplish if we did not know fear?  Assumptions are the biggest hindrance for me in opening up to the realm of possibility.  It is so easy to make a judgment about someone or a situation.   

During the last week, I have focused on trying to stop making assumptions about situations.  I find that when I do this I have an easier time giving someone an ”A.” I have found that I have more patience with people because I try not to make assumptions or judgments about behaviors and actions.  It helps to think about how you are contributing on a daily basis.  I loved that the idea of being a contribution releases one from the cycle of success versus failure.  The chapter where the author describes his class after giving everyone an “A” is very intriguing.  I have toyed with the notion of presenting this idea to my students.  Though I do not think my administration would be receptive to the idea, I like the affect on the students.  It releases them from the cycle of success versus failure and brings them to a place where they can focus on their personal journey.   

An excellent education teaches students how to live beyond the course material.  This class is an excellent example of the concept.  Though the course is titled “Media Asset Creation,” I feel as though I have learned more about how I want to live my life.  Lessons taken from this week’s reading have affected my personal thinking in ways that will extend beyond the course itself.

 

2 comments:

Marcos Alvarez said...

First of all I want to say that that picture you took is beautiful. Assumptions truly can hinder a person and it can even make them prejudice. When I was doing my practice in education I was warned by a couple of “professionals” to be careful because the school that I was going to was right between two residential housings for underprivileged people. They would have comments like, “you know how those people are with their addictions” or “keep your wallet close at all times” and “you can never be too careful around those people”. Once I got there I found that those kids were the most loving and kindhearted kids I had ever met. They would spend there lunch hour with me and tell me all sorts of stories. Sometimes we are too quick to judge and never really give the others an opportunity.

August 10, 2011 6:59 PM

Cheryl McGovern-BookWorm said...

Sheri: I agree with you that a teacher takes their students beyond classroom learning. I can also see where administration would frown upon giving all students an "A" to start out with! Could you just see their faces, and the faces of parents? If you could film those reactions, you could make millions off of that video! Creating our own lives through experiences would really put a new perspective on things for many people. I have long believed that life is what we make of it! Cheryl

August 10, 2011 7:13 PM

Week 2- Comment

Here is my comment to Richard's post:

My thoughts on the book The Art of Possibility/ Week 2 reading

The Art of Possibility  a nice book by Rosamund Zander and Benjamin Zander.

 I love the fact that this is not a how-to book or a happy feel-good book. The book is a little difficult to describe but I believe the author puts it best by saying; “…the object of this book is to provide the reader the means to lift off from the world of struggle and sail into a vast universe of possibility.”

I also love the fact that this book is written by the perspective of two different people, one a music conductor and the other a therapist. The conductor makes it great point about practice. In today’s society we do not need to practice much of anything anymore. Everything today is almost instantaneous, if you need to look something up you go to the web. Besides, music, dance, sports, and theater we as a society do not practice much of anything before we go out and do it. Here is another excerpt from the book that explains practicing. “ What? You been practicing it for 3 minutes, and you still can’t play it? Our practices will take a good deal more than 3 minutes to master.” This is a great rule of thumb, life and goals require little more than 3 min. a day of practice before we can master them and put them into our repertoire.

 The therapist also makes some great points, I love her analogy of “ out of the boat”.

“ Out of the boat could refer to something as simple as losing all memory of ever having been on exercise program, or could referred to floundering in the wake of a management shakeup.” It also refers to not only being off-track, but it means you don’t know where the track is any more. The therapist goes on to say that you’ll need to call on something that has been established in advance, like in oar, friends, or catchphrase, like “toes to nose”. I believe the idea is twofold, we all need help once in a while and that we all need to step back her once in a while to regain our point of reference.

 The next several chapters go on to discuss how her brain works and how people can view the same situation totally different. They discuss the shoe salesman’s in Africa which is a cute story. They also discuss the 9 dot puzzle which I had forgotten about as a child. The highlight for me was an old quote from one of my favorite artists Pablo Picasso. “Recognizing Pablo Picasso and a train compartment, a man inquired of the artist why he did not paint people the way they really are. Picasso asked what he meant by that expression. The man opened up his wallet and took out a snapshot of his wife, saying, that’s my wife. Picasso responded, isn’t she rather small and flat?”

I love this picture. It is a picture my wife took of my youngest son Nealon and I found it to be a great example of what the authors were talking about in The Art of Possibility. Some find the picture disgusting and ask, why would we let him put a frog on his face? Others thought what a great picture of Nealon having fun with nature.

 I hope you enjoyed the first five chapters as much as I have. Let’s hope that the rest of the book is as much fun as the first chapters. I look forward to next week discussion.

1 comments:

Cheryl McGovern-BookWorm said...

Richard: You took some great parts of the reading to write on! I love the fall out of the boat part also. Especially because I tend to fall out of the boat frequently! (eating chocolate, buying fabric and books, procrastinating cleaning for computer Solitaire) I also like the 3 minutes. There is no way that anyone can master something in 3 minutes, but as a whole we are training children that they don't have to wait for anything! I liked the picture of your son. I think he is totally brave, as I can't even begin to think about a frog on my face! I would totally flip out!

Week 2-Reading

This picture depicts this weeks reading exactly as I interpret it.  Life is what we make of it.  We choose the direction.  There were many things in the reading that I enjoyed.  I loved how the author described success and failure as a two sided coin, but if we choose contribution instead, it is a one sided coin and therefore a win-win situation for all.  I also loved the wording well heeled and down at the heel. I had never heard that before.  It must be the way that other countries describe the highs and lows of life.  Something else that would do us all good to remember is to "engage people in your passion for life", and "don't speak to cynicism, but to passion" (Art of Possibility).  I try to envision a world where there was no cynicism, only passion for life, and it is definitely a mind blower! The thought of giving all students an A the first day of class was awesome! Can you even begin to imagine the look on a bunch of kids faces the first day you handed out all A's? Talk about a jaw dropping experience! The thought of throwing your arms up in the air and exclaiming "how fascinating" when you make a mistake is also cute.  All in all, I think that this weeks reading had the intended effect on me.  It got me thinking, and at just the right time. School is beginning and this was a great reminder that life is all a story, and it is all in the way we choose to tell it! Have a great day!

Week 1-Free post

I want to comment on this assignment.  I have had to comment on blog posts before, but I think they were the same ones every time.  This time I am going to select them at random each week.  I really enjoyed getting some new information on some of my classmates.  A good example of this was Missy Cooper's blog post.  I visited her blog this week, and what an awesome picture she had on there.  As I read her blog, she mentioned that she is an artist.  If I hadn't read her blog, I may have gone through this entire year long program without knowing this about my classmate.  I am looking forward to reading the different ones now and seeing what I can learn!

Week 1-Comment

This was the post and comment I left for Missy Cooper.

Wk1 reading: Copyright issues

Via flickr



Copyright basics have always made enough sense to me to understand. Especially being an artist, I can see why when you create something, you want to protect it, and get recognition from it. But the legal jargon and the extent of it have always confused me until my readings/ videos for this week in MAC/FSO. All the complexities associated with it, for example fair use, baffled me when I noticed how others used other’s works. Mayer & Bettle adorably explained it as well as the producers behind Creative Commons (which can be found in the links below).

Inspiration comes from all over and sometimes ideas need to be tweaked, copied, and remixed to get creativity flowing or to learn the necessary techniques to eventually develop your own style. All art was influenced by another idea so I can see how copyright issues and personal censorship of one’s material can hinder creativity and the progression of our culture as a whole. The videos have shined a new light on how difficult it is for certain material to be continuously publicized to newer generations if the funds are not there; which was a sad result. That’s like your parents telling you to learn from their mistakes but never telling you what their mistakes were.

Creative Commons have made this whole issue, especially in the digital age, with fair use easier for artist/creators of all types. It’s brought back a willingness to contribute freely to each other. It is something I constantly use & highly grateful for when it comes to looking for inspiration and reference photos effortlessly.

If copyright laws are too strict on top of our art & music already being written off as insignificant and disposable in our educational system, our students’ creativity is doomed. If you have the time and need a better grasp of the copyright issues and fair use, I highly suggest these links as well.

Ttyl - Missy

Readings/Video Links:
http://web.me.com/edm613/m11/wk1-reading1.html
http://web.me.com/edm613/m11/wk1-reading2.html
http://web.me.com/edm613/m11/wk1-reading3.html
Courtesy of Prof. Bustillos

1 comments:

Cheryl McGovern-BookWorm said...

Missy: The creative commons information was really great. I can see how you would find all of the copyright information useful with you being an artist. It is something that teachers tend to "not think" about frequently as they "borrow" a lot of material and creative commons will definitely help with this.

August 4, 2011 3:28 PM

Week 1-Comment

Wk 1 Reading-Copyright- Sheri Brinkerhoff

One of the ideas that stands out to me during Larry Lessig’s Talk about Remix Culture is that we live in an ‘Age of Prohibitions” where we live life ‘against the law. ‘  He discussed the message we send our children by pushing the remix of our culture underground.  The use of digital media created by or culture has changed the way we view ourselves and copyright issues.  The biggest problem is the mixed messages in our society.  A good example is the remixing of famous music by Girl Talk and the Techno Bregga movement discussed in the movie, “Good Copy/Bad Copy.”  How much of an original work can be reproduced and considered original?  Previously, I would have guessed that both examples would be a clear copyright violation.  However, the albums are released and sold for profit affecting the commercialization of the product.  It could be considered a positive benefit or free publicity but who decides?  Even though it only a small amount of the original music that is recreated, the original artist is clearly identified.  There are no predefined terms of time limit and copyright varies by county.  I whole-heartedly believe an artist has the right to his creation.  Does this include the corporation who represents the artist? Who has the right to make this decision?  I believe we are on the verge of a revolution in the copyright industry.  When the young people of this generation become the leaders of our country there will most definitely be changes.

-TED Talk video: ReMix Culture by Larry Lessig, retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187 on 8/3/11

-Blip.tv video: Good Copy, Bad Copy Directed by ANDREAS JOHNSEN, RALF CHRISTENSEN, HENRIK MOLTKE (http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/), http://www.blip.tv/file/359180/ retrieved on 8/1/2011

-Copyright Image

 http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=copyright#ai:MC900282170|mt:0|

1 comments:

Cheryl McGovern-BookWorm said...

Sheri: I liked that you caught the phrase "age of prohibition". This makes me think of American history when I hear it, which is in total agreement with your theory that the generation coming up will bring us change! They are the tech generation and we are bound to see some major changes!

August 4, 2011 6:17 PM

Week 1 - Reading

This weeks reading assignment was very much on target for me.  I am in the library, and am asked copyright questions all the time.  This was very helpful.  I was amazed at the fact that copyright lasts a lifetime plus 70 years! WOW! That is one long time! It is a good thing that someone came up with fair use! Teachers would be in so much trouble if fair use was not around! Another thing that I thought was that those rappers with all the profanity and sexual innuendos throughout their music should be glad that someone would even consider using any of it.  I won't even subject myself to listening to that in the first place, let alone "borrowing" any of it! I am really behind in the times, as I have never heard of Danger Mouse and the album "Grey". I also did not realize that Nigeria was so involved in the music industry.  I really liked the "Fairy Tale" using the Disney characters! That was my favorite part.