Personal Learning Network Summary

My presentation was made in a Prezi, using a template of a guy looking at the topic, with is my Personal Learning Network

My first side introduced an outline of what we were going to discus, so that is why I called it as you see below.

The Bigger Picture

Understanding “myself” in four dimensions:

Personal self

Professional self

Organizational Self

Social Self

I talked through each of these topics with a few comments that personalized each point. 

I’ve often heard that you should not read what is on a slide, verbatim, so it is better to make comments about what those in the briefing are looking at, so that is what I did.  I did emphasis that of all the things listed below, I’m a Christian and it is from that base in my life that I attempt to make all of my decisions and hope in the process that I can bring some glory to my Lord Jesus.  The basic outline is below:

Personal Self

Baby Boomer, born in the 50s

Traveled the World, done lots of cool things

Retired Military

Husband, Father, Friend,

Have had some wonderful experiences, but then I’ve suffered too

My filter of life, I’m Christian and believe that all things work

For the Good for those who love Him.  

Professional Self

Of all of the topics I discussed, my education is the greatest thing that has brought me so many opportunities in life that I never expected.   It all started from me with wanting to better understand the words that I was reading in my Bible.   Fortunately, a friend provided by the Lord help me recognize that my sliding through all my 12 years of schooling left me a little on the short side of things in life, so I started attending a night school to make up for lost ground.  As I grew and got a better understanding of learning, I found that I could only be satisfied when I could do more than was assigned, and that gave me motivation to do it well too.

From there, I address the following:

I’m a teacher, I love digging into the details and explaining it

Did I say I retired military?

I have chased my dream and feel fulfilled in teaching

My education has been a long journey, but it’s been somewhat easy

Years ago, in my wildest dreams, where I am today wasn’t even a thought

My future, using my skills, and working with English Language Learners and

Doing some mission work in a foreign country, two weeks, two months, or two years?

Never stop learning

Organizational Self

I really appreciate the assignments that we have been tasked with to become better connected with the current technology.  I have grown in this process and will use it to be better connected in the future. 

These are the topics we talked through:

Being connected, both through professional relationship and technology

to the world of information that is available at the touch of our fingers:

Internet, Professional organizations that advance education, global connections through blogs, twitter, RSS and web sites that advance educational efforts.

Social Self

I added another section of understanding the self that is there and got this from the topics that are introduced in FLOW.  I found that book to be very meaningful and fully intent to go back and read the whole things from cover to cover some day, instead of getting through the part that I had to doing a posting on.  I did enjoy reading the post for the other people in the class and found them very insightful.

I spent more time talking about these, because they offer a different view of self. 

Understanding Self 

Being alone and in relationships with others

Accountability, to self, others, and the Lord

Friends

Fun

As I finished my discussion I mentioned that we still have to allow ourselves some fun in this world, so I displayed the following picture of me and my wife on my Goldwing, taken last summer while we were on a trip out west.

Then I read to the following to the class:

Learning is a never ending process of growth and expansion.  To grow personally, professional an in a social context, it’s all about relationships, being connected and accountability to self and to others.

And follow it up with a tuxedo montage with the comment that if anyone missed anything that we had discussed in my presentation, they could read it all again with this:

From there, my Prezi move to where I had stated Thank You!

It has been meaning to grow with everone and I hope to see you again.

They clapped, and I smiled.

Personal Learning Journey

Personal Learning Objective from the beginning of class until the end:

1.  Learn new ways of stretching to prevent pain in my lower back and neck.  Over the course of the last few weeks I have found that I am going to have to learn to live with some amount of pain in my world when it comes to my neck.   I am not sure what occurred or how I injured my neck that resulted in so much discomfort, but it occurred.  My visit to the chiropractor helped matters and brought me some degree of normalcy, but I am not sure that it will ever be back to that if felt before.  Unfortunately, I have a degenerative issue that is common of people with some age in their world and so I believe that is part of the problem.  As I evaluate things in light of my learning objective journey, the learning part is dealing with new issue of pain and how to work with them.    On a brighter note, now that I am using a pillow-pedic orthopedic pillow, I have noticed that I’m having less paresthesia my fingers during the night.  I don’t know that it is related, but I find it interesting that now that I’m using a different pillow for my neck and as a result, I don’t wake up with my fingers tingling.   I know this sounds like old folk stuff to most of those who are bothering to read this posting, but as I look back at things in light of this assignment, it is what we are supposed to do.

2.  Identify personal elements of my learning world and how I interact with expanded knowledge about myself in the education world.  As this semester has come to an end, I’m finding that I’m a little frustrated in the lack of assistance I have had from the education department from Belmont.  Although I’ve met some really fantastic professors, overall I would rate the Grade Education program with a D.  I should have asked for an advisor to work with me from day one, but I thought that someone was basically looking over my records and assuring that I was tracking correctly through the course work and how I was doing.  I was wrong.   I feel like my progression through the program has been done without a lot of guidance and that in a manner of speaking, I’ve wasted some time. My thesis has been very difficult for me, English Language Learning, and fortunately I stumbled upon it from my involvement with subbing for MNPS.  I do believe that my Thesis advisor has been helpful where she could be, but in light of the value of ELL in Education today, Belmont has missed the boat when it comes to preparing grad students for the requirements that awaits them when they will try and get a job, unless they are certified in ELL.   

3.  Complete my thesis about ELLs in public education today by the end of May.  I’m still cranking away on the thesis and have about 30 days to go.  I’ve finished chapters 1 through 3, of 5, but I’ve got to work with my advisor a little more closely and assure that I’m hitting the milestones that are important to her. It has been a difficult process for me.  I did enjoy the time Dr. Kimmons spent covering the major points of working through the thesis process on the last day of class.  Although I’m working a different format for getting it completed, it has given me direction to know where to turn to get myself out of the hole I have found myself in.      

4.  Study for taking the ELL praxis, for teacher certification and take it before the end of May.   After attending a job fair, I found out that taking this test is going to be one of my top priorities and my goal will now be to fully focus on studying for it and getting it behind me.

This course has been helpful in helping me to understand myself in a different light and to better appreciate the opportunities that being a grad degree program have offered me.   I also feel better prepared to use technology to build my education program around when I finally get in a classroom with students.  I fully plan to connect with other professional in the field of ELL and general education so as to have a good pool of resources to use and to offer lessons learned to others that are going through the same purpose. 

Teaching interview during a job fair

PLN for ITP:  Attended a job fair on Saturday for Metro Nashville Schools.  In one of the interviews I was given the principal ask me about my Information Technology background.    It seems as though he taught himself a lot about the subject and so he wants his future staff members to be connected as part of their teaching strategy.  When I mentioned my PLN plan for using the internet to connect to other teaching professionals and to use it as a resource for my students, he soon started to smile.  He seem to really like the idea of tying other teaching professionals, students and parents on a blog site for advanced learning the opportunity to be connected outside of the classroom.  The interview went well, so I hope to get an offer from him to be a 4^th grade teacher for him, soon.

Teaching ELL, Thesis

PLN for my Theses:  I’ve managed to edit through chapter three of the thesis.  It was a struggle, but after 11 pages and hours of time, I’ve got a have way decent product prepared to submit.  I’m going to change the name of the chapter to, speaking, reading, writing and comprehending the English language.  Of course that means that I’ve got some editing to do from what I last shared, but in the end I believe it will be more beneficial. For those of you who are fortunate enough to be thinking about your thesis before taking all of your core elements of the curriculum, I’d advise you to pick a topic and start writing now.  I’ve got too many other things going on in my life to just stop and work on my thesis like I would like to.  If I could really do it like I would like to, I’d spend five days a week, eight to ten hours a day and not do anything else.   Fortunately, my wife is a proofreader and so having someone to catch my verb ending problems and missed words, is really nice.  (Incidentally, she will proofread for you as well, very reasonably too.  She is a trained court reporter and has done proofreading for over 30 years….and if you are wondering, no I do not get her to proof these post)

pass the pain

PLN in regards to my neck concern:     My orthopedic pillow seems to be working well for my neck concerns.   I’ve found it necessary to sleep on my side, which is a position that I used anyway, but the pillow is way too stiff for me to be comfortable sleeping on my back.  I’ve yet to really get into stretching, but I know that it would help me also, but I just got to many things happening when my feet hit the ground in the morning to take the time to sit down and practice what I know to be good for me.   Thanks for the advise that a few of you have shared with your experiences, but for now, I’m hoping to get on with life as usual.  Now it seems the pain has moved down into my lower back, hopefully it soon will pass.

Pain in the neck

Neck Pain:

You may not realize it now, considering that most of you are young enough to be my kids, but at some point down the road you are likely going to have neck or back trouble.  For me, I had too many years of running for the Army and doing all of that great exercise that is so good for you, until your clock tic-tocks by the big FIVE OH, 50.  So, with all of the degenerative disease and the cartilage between my vertebrae being squeezed, the nerves aint liking what was done to them and now they are hooked on feelings that I’m reminded of quite often.  After 500 bucks worth of adjustment from my chiropractor, (although he would have loved for me to spend a lot more) I walked out of his office with an orthopedic pillow, all for an additional 40 bucks.  I could have returned it with no problems after using it, as long as it was still in its plastic bag and had the big card-board advertisement with pictures and diagrams of the neck bones and how it was supposed to help me sleep more correctly, in side. Sleeping on a plastic bag aint my thing, so out it came and there went my hopes of returning it too. After the second night, I wanted to burn it.  One of these days when my thesis is done, I may have a real large marsh-mellow to throw on the pile.   I’m back to my feather pillow, and feeling pretty good.  

ELL Thesis Progress, what seems to be working for me?

ELL Thesis Progress, what seems to be working for me? 

          It amazes me that I can spend so much time writing with this thesis.  It is always on my mind and in my subconscious, wishing I were done with it.  I can spend hours working on a paragraph, just looking for a statement of fact that says what I thinking, but based from the work of someone else, that has a PhD or has written a book about the subject.  Fortunately, through the Lila D. Bunch library, I can access a world of scholarly journal articles, which is easily done from my home computer and my Belmont CUB account.  Going thru Academic Search or JSTOR Arts and Science, I type in a potential idea that revolves around ELL.  

        So far I have around 40 scholarly articles that I have used, where I find what someone else has stated, in a scholarly way, and then paraphrase their idea into what I want to say.  Of course “you must give credit where credit is do”, and site their name as a reference.  (I don’t think anyone knows who originally said that, so perhaps it would just be best to say ….unknown)  

         For me, burning the article on my printer so I have a hard copy works best.  When I finish, I'm also looking forward to burning all of my articles in a bon-fire, and singing cum-bi-ya, while eating a somorras. 

          In an article that I read about writing a thesis and using other peoples material, it stated that if you use more than three words from something that was mentioned in a publish article, you have to site it.  Of course you can’t copy verbatim, unless you quote them.  But, your advisors are typically going to advise you to limit your quotes, unless it something that can’t be said any better way, or it relates to a significant piece of work or a finding that has a specific bearing on your topic.  When you do quote, you should limit your quotes to two or three times in a chapter, but don't quote me on this. If you do, I deny that I ever knew you.

          If anyone who happens to read this posting has some ideas to share, let’s hear them.   Somewhere in the future I’ll post something about doing research through Google....dot com!