ordinary guy who is extraordinarily curious about our world. born in hawaii, military family, loves beach, nature, and people. technogeek,altruist,and surfer
// January 14th, 2007 // Comments Off // Everything Else
the above video is a brief intro to the beach in Salter Path, NC
In the above video, we discuss a few animals found in Bogue Sound, NC
This above video talks about a native plant that can be made into tea called, Illex Vomitoria (Yaupon Holly)
// November 10th, 2006 // Comments Off // Everything Else
so yeah, im taking the GRE….Graduate Record Examination…tomorrow and I feel oddly relaxed. I’ve studied my butt off and taken a few test practices, but I feel like I should be a little nervous, but the fact is that things are okay; things are good.
What do you say when you have a group of outstanding coworkers and children/teacher/chaperones? I say you live it up! Although busy, this past week has been very good for me in the fact that I am more confident in my teaching, not to mention that I was evaluated by my bosses last week…which went super great. I feel validated and also like my work has been paying off! This time last year, I would not consider myself a competent teacher.
I think a lot of people should consider teaching and it’s rewards, especially those who might be a little timid, but where do I want to go???!!! In my life, that is….
Well the other night i was talking to one of my friends/coworkers (thanks Cheryl) on things I could do in the future and she thought I should be a professor!! It’s kinda funny she said that because I actually have never entertained that idea before, but it makes sense. I will be around a bunch of idealistic people, be able to talk all of the time, while doing research on cool things, and also being able to write grants and help others! Who could ask for more, right? Well, I definitely feel like I am moving and starting to shake the coconuts out of the tree.
The GRE will be a great starting point for me to align myself and think about 4 to 10 more years of education. Phew….could I overcome that hurdle? I get distracted by so many different areas of knowledge.
times are busy: this weekend I will be taking the GRE, then next weekend I will be in cambridge, ma for a job interview, then the following weekend I will be turning 27 along with some turkey lovin.
times fly by!
// September 15th, 2006 // Comments Off // Everything Else
Well, the debut of podcasting for reflection in my classes has finally arrived!!!
I am sooo excited about continuing to do this!
We recently had a wonderful school who was in full support of interviewing their children!
The two podcasts focus on pollution and sea turtles. It was pretty fluid using conservation as the theme, and I was very delighted on how the kids focused on the issues and not the fact that they were talking into a microphone.
I am using wordpress 2.0 which runs great natively for podcasting…to which there are some pretty stable plugins.
In other news, I am testing out the uses of Moodle to run in an outdoor education environment. I am not sure if it will be suited for our type of curriculum, and might pose to be too much work for us to keep up with. The whole idea of having the site is to extend the learning after the students who experience our program continue to utilize our knowledgebase and for teachers to use the site as a ‘hand-off’ for when they are back in the classroom.
Moodle is an awesomely extensible platform with many modules for gradebooks, theme customization, and very easy visual installation.
Both Wordpress and Moodle took about 30 minutes to completely install, minus ftp’ing the files to the server.
// February 17th, 2006 // Comments Off // Everything Else
Adhered to emotion and assimilated through a cumulating framework of skill, motivation,learning, service, adversity, and failure, this past week has been a keystone reflection for my ‘Service-Learning’ experience during my term with NC Campus Compact. I feel accomodated in that I have gained an invaluable perspective on my career path as well as definitive insight on how a pedagogy of service learning can have profound impact in higher education, across all disciplines.
It has been a great year of service and learning. Being provided with challenging work, professional training, valued friends & colleagues, and meaningful rewards, I could not ask for a better year of ‘education.’
Imagine how coincidental that, in these last few days of my service, I get to attend a conference of specialists in educating, evaluating, and motivating the leaders of tomorrow? There is so much energy and inspiration! I want to be permanently involved with these people.
At the conference:
Robert Sigmon spoke briefly about his experience in Service Learning. He is truely an inspirational person who has greatly given credence in the Academy to the field.
Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity change both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.
His typology:
service-LEARNING: learning goals primary, service outcomes secondary
SERVICE-learning: service outcomes primary, learning goals secondary
service learning: service and learning goals completely separate
SERVICE-LEARNING: service and learning goals of equal weight and each
enhances the other for all participants
I also attended a sessions talking about:
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration and Service Learning
and
NC Campus Compact Research and Scholarship Initiative: Pitfalls and Possibilities in Statewide Collaboration on Service Learning Scholarship
Both of these workshops provide me a solid platform to think about how we unite efforts at different institutions as well as to gain buy-in to service learning. I’ve heard by some that there are ‘academic fads’ that come and go, but I truely see this (service learning) becoming a mainstay in education and a change agent in tomorrow’s society, not to mention how it already affects people nationwide.
The ‘Cross Discipline Collaboration and Service Learning’ workshop was presented by the APPLES program at UNC Chapel Hill, with presenters Jenny Huq, Martha Arnold, and Janaka Lagoo.
Through their workshop, they highlighted how they interest faculty in service learning and how they collaborate with their Center for Teaching and Learning. What I gained most from their presentation was how they draw resources from different parts of campus (Center for Teaching and Learing, Research and Assessment) and really push students in the forefront (APPLES was started by students)…as well as truely seek community collaboration and feedback.
The ‘NC Campus Compact Research and Scholarship Initiative’ was also very informative. Although initial phases are still underway, the presenters: Patti Clayton, Cathy Hamilton, Jenny Huq, Lynne Bercaw, Beth Warner, and Vicki Stocking provided a clear itinerary on how they are gaining ground for a statewide network of collaborators to refine the scholary pursuits around civic engagement and service learning. I hope to become involved in this effort.
I think I could go on for days on how these sessions have been refreshing to experience! I am definitely going to try and write more about my interest in service learning.
It’s hard to believe that this year in service has passed so quickly, when I have only begun to scratch the surface….but I’m not done yet!
