Shakespeare was pretty smart, so I decided to try it...twice.
(This is really three posts combined. I have included my two first failings, however, if you would like to read the official start of my 20% project- skip down to "Creating historical meaning for my students and the Camera".)
First path: Computer Coding
Recently I had read an article about a guy, a programer making a bunch of money, who had struck up a relationship with a homeless guy that hung about the outside of his offices a lot. This programer wanted to do something for his friend and decided to offer to teach him how to code so that he too could make some money. At about the same time another story came out about 12 year old kid who made some millions by inventing and creating an app. "Huh", I thought. I vaguely remember having a lot of fun doing some sort of programing, creating a worm of some sort, on ancient Apple computers when I was in elementary school. Maybe I will try that as my 20%. It's tech and this is a tech class, it has been bouncing around my head for a while and on the upside I could make billions of dollars. I have this idea that I call whatspp and maybe I can create it assuming no one gets their first.
I reached out to a number of friends in the tech industry and, oddly, the first two people responded with a question. "Do you have OCD? No? Skip it, coming up wit h an idea is one thing, coding another". Ok, so no help there. I did get a tip that there were PLENTY of free sites where I could learn it on my own. I actually found this pretty neat site called code.org that not only had "try and hour of coding" but also had educational tools for how to bring it into the classroom.
So...to make a short story even shorter; it took me just a tad under than thirty minutes for me to realize that I had, in fact, been told the truth and that this was definitely not going to be something I would enjoy doing. Further, as it was for a class project, I wasn't sure if anyone else would be interested in anything but the final project. The small things I did learn made me realize that for me to do something as substantial as I would like, I would end up sitting inside working on the computer for hours upon hours, days upon days, over weeks upon weeks. And right when Spring was starting. No thanks.
Second path: The Accordion!
So, my father is French. Like FRENCH French and as such he does what every Frenchman is supposed to do; sing, play the acoustic guitar, and play the accordion like Georges Moustaki (VIDEO BELOW). Its is almost a fact that this is true. Oddly, he does look a lot like him minus the hair and facial hair. He ended up moving back to Nice and I have had his accordion for almost ten years. When I was little he used to play for us rasping out old fold songs about, of course, how great poetic the French are, and I had always wanted, wanting to be a proper Frenchman, to learn how to play. Plus, I had been in talks with one of my fellow students about starting, or getting in on a band. I would have that going for me. I even live right next to Balboa Park and envisioned myself on the main strip playing for the public with my old fedora, the one I stopped using when Timberlake brought the style back, in front of me, making mounds of change for us to do laundry with. Yeah, everyone who moves to California has a dream; this could be mine.
My first step was to haul it out and randomly start pressing a lot of keys in no particular order while I pretended I was already an ace. My fiancee was very moved and loved it so much she asked to go ahead and get started with my idea of playing in the park, immediately, though she phrased it a little differently. I even thought about recording this as my 'before' song. Yes, it sounded horrible. This particular accordion is big and old, very old, and on one side has a piano type section while on the other has an enumerable set of round buttons. Many of these buttons, as I found out, could be turned into a haunting song by simply pressing them together without even knowing how to play. So I was done with the project I thought. Now what?
In seriousness, I had located a site that gave a pretty thorough explanation, with 24 videos of lessons in all, of the beginnings of play (nowcast.org). The problem, I realized was that because this accordion was so old it was quite a bit different that the ones I was seeing and the accordion itself seemed to be in need of repair before it could be employed in making sweet, sweet music. At the tail end of three years of grad school and now working odd jobs to keep up the house and family until Fall, getting it fixed was low on my financial priority level. This will have to be my next, own, 20 percent project some where on down the road. In a year or so, look for me in Balboa and buy my CD, "I'm just like Mustaki but with a fedora".
So, my father is French. Like FRENCH French and as such he does what every Frenchman is supposed to do; sing, play the acoustic guitar, and play the accordion like Georges Moustaki (VIDEO BELOW). Its is almost a fact that this is true. Oddly, he does look a lot like him minus the hair and facial hair. He ended up moving back to Nice and I have had his accordion for almost ten years. When I was little he used to play for us rasping out old fold songs about, of course, how great poetic the French are, and I had always wanted, wanting to be a proper Frenchman, to learn how to play. Plus, I had been in talks with one of my fellow students about starting, or getting in on a band. I would have that going for me. I even live right next to Balboa Park and envisioned myself on the main strip playing for the public with my old fedora, the one I stopped using when Timberlake brought the style back, in front of me, making mounds of change for us to do laundry with. Yeah, everyone who moves to California has a dream; this could be mine.
My first step was to haul it out and randomly start pressing a lot of keys in no particular order while I pretended I was already an ace. My fiancee was very moved and loved it so much she asked to go ahead and get started with my idea of playing in the park, immediately, though she phrased it a little differently. I even thought about recording this as my 'before' song. Yes, it sounded horrible. This particular accordion is big and old, very old, and on one side has a piano type section while on the other has an enumerable set of round buttons. Many of these buttons, as I found out, could be turned into a haunting song by simply pressing them together without even knowing how to play. So I was done with the project I thought. Now what?
In seriousness, I had located a site that gave a pretty thorough explanation, with 24 videos of lessons in all, of the beginnings of play (nowcast.org). The problem, I realized was that because this accordion was so old it was quite a bit different that the ones I was seeing and the accordion itself seemed to be in need of repair before it could be employed in making sweet, sweet music. At the tail end of three years of grad school and now working odd jobs to keep up the house and family until Fall, getting it fixed was low on my financial priority level. This will have to be my next, own, 20 percent project some where on down the road. In a year or so, look for me in Balboa and buy my CD, "I'm just like Mustaki but with a fedora".
Creating historical meaning for my students and the Camera:
So, I kept thinking about this project and letting what it really meant sink in. Really sink in. Here we have a project where we can take on the task of learning anything we want. Could be something on our bucket lists or a fleeting fancy, big or small, education oriented or not. The more I thought about it the more I realized just how great this really was. Talk about extreme intrinsic motivation! We get to pick what we learn, and many of us from what I have seen, have picked things we are passionate about or have wanted to learn, we get to pick how we learn it, as long as we use internet tech, and how we present it through our community PLNs. This baby is ours in every way.
After I took the not-me road, then the couldn't-work road, I sat down and wrote a list of what I wanted to get out of this project. Word for word:
1. Learn something that I have always wanted to know how to do.
2. Create a larger something for the presentation itself- not just a how I learned it but a product of some sort.
3. Do something that can directly relate to helping my future students in some way.
4. Pick a task that will get me out into the San Diego Spring weather.
5. Find a something that I can share with my fiancee limited time. Something she can learn along with me.
6. Think about a project that I may be able to offer my own students as a modified 20% project.
The day I wrote this list down and right after our 578 class I rushed off to Old Town to meet with Glenn, a fellow Cohort student and my old supervisor, for dinner. It was a great night and Glenn and I stayed a bit after talking but he had to leave within the hour. I actually stayed longer and walked through the area looking at how beautiful all of the old buildings were in the light of the lanterns and lights. So much history here, I thought, and thought back to when I was student teaching a middle school class in Chula Vista and how when I tried to open a discussion about the Hispanic history, attempting to give my 99% hispanic class a local connection to history, of San Diego they were stumped as to any contextual history of the area, including their own. During the time that I was with them we went on one field trip and that was to see a play in Horton Plaza, and I can still vividly remember the shock I had when learning through talking to them on our tram ride there that almost none of them had been there, seen a play, been to a museum, or even been to Balboa Park and Old town. I remember being pretty bummed thinking about how many wasted opportunities to use our awesome local history there might have been and lost.
As I was walking through the Old Town area I kept trying to take pictures on my little crappy phone and wished I knew how to use the practically professional SLR camera I had been given as a gift a couple of years earlier. Photography had been an early passion in my youth and my family, who always liked my photographs, purchased a high end camera for me so that I could take photography to the next level. Well, I then started grad school and time became more precious leaving me to put it on the back burner. I have tried using the automatic settings but the images are always inferior to what I see from my phone. The key to a camera like that is truly knowing how to finesse the shutter speeds, aperture openings and a host of other things I don't really know anything about. So, the camera generally sits on the shelf and comes with me traveling to be used in poor shots. Needing to know how to use it really hit home over the last two years where I have been to Kenya (with SOLES), Peru and the Amazon, and Europe, and feel like I lost out on amazing subjects by not knowing how to use the camera.
Anyway, I digress. The night I finally realized what I wanted to do. Sort of. I wanted to first, learn how to use this camera by the online resources I could find, improving with the tutorials and communities that exist. Secondly I want to incorporate online tools, like the "National Geographic puts over 500 maps on Google!" article I submitted through twitter, and other informational sources to research the historic areas of San Diego to, thirdly, combine these two into a photographic and informational online book of some sort that my students could use and interact with as a guide of local historic information and, more importantly, to possibly starting their own project like it. One of the things that I wish I saw more in history classes is the connection and use of the history that surrounds the students in both area and culture. Most of my students are vaguely aware of these things and yet while we have amazing opportunities use these tools to get them excited and interested, I am not sure they are used much. We have the ability to show them how history works through using our local history making enabling some serious meaning for them.
So far, that is where I am heading. I want the project to be organic and change as necessary. I could envision using portraits of people along with their stories, pictures of historic interest within our city along with information, and a great deal of other things, but I will see how it plays out. Two things that I do want to try and do are to relate my different blogs in as many interesting tech ways as possible. There are just to many different things we can use. Storify, for example- or putting the blog into an animation, to even video (what I probably would like least lol) to even using a map maker.
So:
1. Learning the camera and starting to do the research.
2. Getting out and about in the town and taking photographs to practice and improve while learning more about our city.
3. Organizing a digital presentation fo work and information.
4. Creating the basics of a project for my students that have them working towards integrating their own histories.
Finally, if you have a chance, check out the video below! Ma Solitude strictly means my solitude but generally means my loneliness. My loneliness sounds depressing but he actually speaks- Je ne sus jaime soul, avec ma solitude- about how he is never along because he has his solitude. Glass half full!
So, I kept thinking about this project and letting what it really meant sink in. Really sink in. Here we have a project where we can take on the task of learning anything we want. Could be something on our bucket lists or a fleeting fancy, big or small, education oriented or not. The more I thought about it the more I realized just how great this really was. Talk about extreme intrinsic motivation! We get to pick what we learn, and many of us from what I have seen, have picked things we are passionate about or have wanted to learn, we get to pick how we learn it, as long as we use internet tech, and how we present it through our community PLNs. This baby is ours in every way.
After I took the not-me road, then the couldn't-work road, I sat down and wrote a list of what I wanted to get out of this project. Word for word:
1. Learn something that I have always wanted to know how to do.
2. Create a larger something for the presentation itself- not just a how I learned it but a product of some sort.
3. Do something that can directly relate to helping my future students in some way.
4. Pick a task that will get me out into the San Diego Spring weather.
5. Find a something that I can share with my fiancee limited time. Something she can learn along with me.
6. Think about a project that I may be able to offer my own students as a modified 20% project.
The day I wrote this list down and right after our 578 class I rushed off to Old Town to meet with Glenn, a fellow Cohort student and my old supervisor, for dinner. It was a great night and Glenn and I stayed a bit after talking but he had to leave within the hour. I actually stayed longer and walked through the area looking at how beautiful all of the old buildings were in the light of the lanterns and lights. So much history here, I thought, and thought back to when I was student teaching a middle school class in Chula Vista and how when I tried to open a discussion about the Hispanic history, attempting to give my 99% hispanic class a local connection to history, of San Diego they were stumped as to any contextual history of the area, including their own. During the time that I was with them we went on one field trip and that was to see a play in Horton Plaza, and I can still vividly remember the shock I had when learning through talking to them on our tram ride there that almost none of them had been there, seen a play, been to a museum, or even been to Balboa Park and Old town. I remember being pretty bummed thinking about how many wasted opportunities to use our awesome local history there might have been and lost.
As I was walking through the Old Town area I kept trying to take pictures on my little crappy phone and wished I knew how to use the practically professional SLR camera I had been given as a gift a couple of years earlier. Photography had been an early passion in my youth and my family, who always liked my photographs, purchased a high end camera for me so that I could take photography to the next level. Well, I then started grad school and time became more precious leaving me to put it on the back burner. I have tried using the automatic settings but the images are always inferior to what I see from my phone. The key to a camera like that is truly knowing how to finesse the shutter speeds, aperture openings and a host of other things I don't really know anything about. So, the camera generally sits on the shelf and comes with me traveling to be used in poor shots. Needing to know how to use it really hit home over the last two years where I have been to Kenya (with SOLES), Peru and the Amazon, and Europe, and feel like I lost out on amazing subjects by not knowing how to use the camera.
Anyway, I digress. The night I finally realized what I wanted to do. Sort of. I wanted to first, learn how to use this camera by the online resources I could find, improving with the tutorials and communities that exist. Secondly I want to incorporate online tools, like the "National Geographic puts over 500 maps on Google!" article I submitted through twitter, and other informational sources to research the historic areas of San Diego to, thirdly, combine these two into a photographic and informational online book of some sort that my students could use and interact with as a guide of local historic information and, more importantly, to possibly starting their own project like it. One of the things that I wish I saw more in history classes is the connection and use of the history that surrounds the students in both area and culture. Most of my students are vaguely aware of these things and yet while we have amazing opportunities use these tools to get them excited and interested, I am not sure they are used much. We have the ability to show them how history works through using our local history making enabling some serious meaning for them.
So far, that is where I am heading. I want the project to be organic and change as necessary. I could envision using portraits of people along with their stories, pictures of historic interest within our city along with information, and a great deal of other things, but I will see how it plays out. Two things that I do want to try and do are to relate my different blogs in as many interesting tech ways as possible. There are just to many different things we can use. Storify, for example- or putting the blog into an animation, to even video (what I probably would like least lol) to even using a map maker.
So:
1. Learning the camera and starting to do the research.
2. Getting out and about in the town and taking photographs to practice and improve while learning more about our city.
3. Organizing a digital presentation fo work and information.
4. Creating the basics of a project for my students that have them working towards integrating their own histories.
Finally, if you have a chance, check out the video below! Ma Solitude strictly means my solitude but generally means my loneliness. My loneliness sounds depressing but he actually speaks- Je ne sus jaime soul, avec ma solitude- about how he is never along because he has his solitude. Glass half full!