The Freedom Trail

Yesterday David and I took the dogs out to explore the Freedom Trail. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to bring the dogs. We didn’t realize much of the trail went through the city. There were tons of people and our dogs were getting overwhelmed.

(Side note: If you ever see a dog and you want to pet it, you shouldn’t reach out to pet it, even if it looks friendly. You should first ask the owners if he or she is friendly, and then put your hand out so the dog can smell you. Some dogs, especially rescue dogs, are a little weary of human contact and might react aggressively (barking or growling) if you just bring your hand toward them. Just thought I put it out there as this is something I noticed on our journey today – people just reaching out to try and pet our dogs.)

We didn’t end up doing the whole trail – we went up to the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground and turned around. We were exhausted, and so were the pups.

It was still a fun experience. It was great to see how Boston has built itself around these important historical sites. I’m also happy we’re getting to know our surroundings, little by little. We will definitely be exploring the other parts of the trail soon.

The leaves changing on some trees at Boston Common!

Massachusetts State House

Park Street Church

Granary Burying Ground

Samuel Adams Gravestone

A memorial dedicated to Benjamin Franklin’s family

A memorial dedicated to John Hancock

Granary Burying Ground

Paul Revere’s tomb

King’s Chapel

King’s Chapel Burying Ground

King’s Chapel

Outside of the City Hall

The Old City Hall

Old South Meeting House

Old State House

Site of the Boston Massacre

Old State House

Faneuil Hall

Paul Revere’s House

Paul Revere’s House

I thought this was so funny!

A statue of Paul Revere

Old North Church

Copp’s Hill Burying Ground

Copp’s Hill Burying Ground

Started from the Bottom and Now I’m Here

This past Friday classes were canceled for a HGSE event: Critical Conversations and Bold Ideas.

The event kicked off HGSE’s new fundraising campaign. There were many speakers and panels on key topics in education. The U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke, as well as Geoffrey Canada, founder and president of Harlem Children’s Zone. The event culminated with a performance by Yo-Yo Ma and then there was a block party with free food and drinks.

All in all, the event was quite inspiring, overwhelming, and amazing. It was great to be immersed in an environment where everyone was clearly passionate about education, and people were coming together to share their ideas on how to address the problems the field is experiencing.

All throughout the event, I kept thinking how surreal it is that I’m here. Sometimes I worry about how people might perceive me when they see that I go to Harvard, or that all the universities I’ve been to are private, or that I have been a part of TFA. I worry that they might think that I come from a privileged background and make assumptions about me, when in fact, my story is quite different. I think about my identity and the circumstances I’ve been in, and how incredible it is that I’m here.

My First Scratch Project!

One of my assignments was to create an interactive Scratch project. Here’s my first stab at it.

Sometimes it’s intimidating because I see all these projects on the website that are amazing, but then I have to remind myself that these kids spent a lot of time revising their projects. I’m sure that the more I play around with Scratch, the more I will learn about it.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/27115073/

Deschool the System

I find myself being exposed to so many different learning theories and am trying so hard to make sense of how they all fit together.

I recently read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society, which I found to be intriguing. Illich points out the problems with traditional, institutionalized education – it’s ineffectual, inequitable, and socially polarizing. He argues that we should do away with schools entirely, instead creating a society where children can engage in self-directed and informal learning based on their interests, and connect with mentors who can guide them through the process. He also argues that technology can be used to create a good educational system, which he defines below:

A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. – Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

T509: Participation Rubric Draft

T509- Massive: Online Network Participation Rubric

(Draft: Sept 17; Revision: October 8)

Personal Compass: I would like to learn how to evaluate MOOCs and other large-scale learning environments, and identify the characteristics that make those spaces successful. I would like to build my skills in constructing content/design for these spaces.

Participation Commitments:

• I will explore and share 1 interesting massive space a week via Twitter.
• I will write 2 blog posts a month sharing my exploration of one of the course themes

Participation Rubric

Describe a few criteria that you’d like to evaluate yourself on, and be evaluated on by the instructional team. Define what it would look like if you met your personal expectations, if you fell short, and if you did totally awesome. While some of these metrics may be quantitative (I will do X at least Y times), most should qualitatively describe your desired learning and impact. (While there are 5 rows and 3 columns below, feel free to modify this general outline to suit your purposes.)

Criteria	Exceeds Expectation	Meets Expectation	Underperforms Expectation
1 weekly tweet about a massive space	Tweet link to space + short explanation of what it is/why it’s neat	Tweet the link to space with no explanation about it	No tweets
2 monthly blog posts about course themes (e.g. blended learning, connectivism, MOOCs)	2+ very detailed posts with multimedia that explain my experience with the theme/space	2 personal posts that explain my process/exploration of each theme/space	No blogging

Tinkering and Things

I find myself falling into a manageable routine now. I’m so happy and proud of myself for keeping up with readings, projects, and also going to the gym. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve actually got a handle on things. It’s a great feeling.

Today I started my new internship, and so far I really love the environment I’m in. It’s a really collaborative and creative space, and my colleagues are awesome. I also like that I’m getting to see the iterative process in action. There are some upcoming revisions in Scratch, and it’s great to see what goes on behind the scenes and the design thinking that goes into these revisions.

One of my first projects is to help standardize the current system and update existing content on the Scratch website. Once it is standardized, I will be creating new content for the website.

In my Designing for Learning by creating class, we’ve been creating design journals and physical models of constructionism. It was an interesting project assignment because our professor gave us intentionally vague instructions. The only instructions were to make visible the elements of constructionism. In some way, I feel the assignment was given so that we could engage in constructionism ourselves. We are each creating our own model of a constructionist learning environment based on our own ideas. I created tangible colored shapes out of cardboard and duct tape. To me, constructionism is all about creative experimentation. I remembered playing with colored blocks as a kid and building various things. There weren’t any instructions, and that was okay. I learned by experimenting with the different shapes.  Tomorrow we’re going to be able to explore each others’ models, and I’m interested to see how people will interpret mine.

I just found out that I will be paired up with EdTechTeacher for my partner project in my Massive course. I’m not sure of the specifics yet, but according to the original description, I will be working with other students to create a structured self-paced online learning experience about technology for educators. Tomorrow I’m going to find out more details. I’m excited!

In my other classes, I’ve been learning how to create wire frames, prototypes, and social graphs. I don’t know if I will become a master of all of these applications by the end of this year, but I will at least have familiarity and be comfortable with using a wide range of tools. One thing I’m wondering throughout this experience is whether it’s better to specialize in one or two things, or if I am better off doing what I’m doing – learning the basics of many things, and then building specific expertise as needed.

In other news, the weather here is starting to get colder, and I’m realizing I need to shop for winter weather clothes sooner rather than later…

T509: Personal Learning Compass

Write a statement describing your personal compass for this course [T509: Massive]. What are you trying to accomplish? How will you do it? How will you know that you have succeeded?

I am taking this course with the goal of developing a deeper understanding of massive online open environments, blended learning, and intelligent tutors. I am very interested in learning what roles these spaces have in education. Specifically, I would like to learn how to evaluate these tools and develop a criteria of what makes a successful massive learning platform. I am hoping to take what I learn from this course and apply it to my future work as an educator, whether it is creating content for widespread users or identifying useful resources for others.

I am really looking forward to the partner projects. I feel that working side-by-side with current professionals in the field will give me the hands-on experience I need to continue developing understanding of these spaces. Additionally, by keeping up with the course readings and engaging in discussions with others, I will continue to push my learning in this area.

I will know I have succeeded when I can critically critique different massive platforms, and be able to back up my assertions with research. Additionally, I hope to develop (or find) some kind of rubric to evaluate these spaces, and plan out my own ideas for a space where I can effectively distribute content on a massive scale. Lastly, I’d also like to be able to engage in a conversation with people who may not be familiar with these topics, and be able to explain them thoroughly.

It’s only week 2?!

Time seems to be flying by so quickly. It’s only my second week of classes and I already feel like I’m entrenched so deeply into various projects.

The first exciting piece of news is that I got the internship I wanted! I’m going to be a Learning Resources Developer for the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab! I will be developing and designing online resources and tutorials for Scratch. I am insanely excited about this! The other great thing is that in addition to getting school credit, I will also be getting paid!

On Monday I went to my data science class, which I absolutely loved! Data visualization is an area I had always been intrigued by but had never really ventured in. I am starting to get a better idea of what this field is, and how it can be applied to various disciplines, education included. The class was very hands-on, and we used Tableau to visualize some data. It’s this learning analytic software that will take your existing spreadsheets, and then you can use various tools to visualize it – graphs, maps, bubbles etc. It was so awesome. It really has me thinking about data/information in new ways. I’m really excited about that class.

Every week is truly an adventure here. I cannot stress enough how much I absolutely LOVE my classes. I feel appropriately challenged and engaged. I also love the general HGSE community. I feel like we are a huge family that takes care of each other. On one occasion I mentioned my worry that I didn’t pack a snack to hold me over, and one of my classmates handed me two granola bars. When I mentioned I had a headache, another had Advil available. It’s just an amazing feeling to be part of such a caring cohort.

I’m doing my best to take advantage of the time I have here. When I first applied to this program, I was like, “Wow, it’s only a year – that’s awesome!” Now, I feel myself wishing I could be here longer. But who knows, I might feel differently during the winter or as projects pile on.

I just feel so incredibly happy to be here right now.

 

 

I’ve Survived my First Week!

One thing I have heard from many alums is how fast this year will go by. I see what they mean. I can’t believe I’ve finished my first week here, and already so much work is underway.

The only class I haven’t been to is my Data Science class, since it was Labor Day that day. I’m looking forward to it!

The classes I have been to so far are amazing. I know it’s only week 1, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling about them. The course readings are very interesting, and it’s great that we’re actually discussing them in class. It’s very engaging, and I’m enjoying getting to meet so many awesome people. In my Innovation by Design course, I’m in a team and we’re already getting the foundation of our project ready.

One thing that I have found interesting about my classes here is the completely different atmosphere from those in my undergrad career. This is probably due to the difference in majors. In my journalism courses, the emphasis was on striving to get things right the first time. There was an intense pressure to be the best at everything, and to be perfect in everything. It was extremely stressful because you knew if you made a mistake somewhere, your grades would suffer.

I know it will probably get stressful at times here, but, I feel much more reassured here. There is much more of a collaborative spirit than a competitive one. I think it’s partly because as educators, we recognize we will be able to better solve problems by working together. 

Additionally, every professor has emphasized how much they care about the process rather than the end product/projects. They’ve talked about how too often they see students “play it safe” and hold back from taking risks because they are worried about their grades. One of my professors said something along the lines of that she would rather see us take a huge intellectual risk and flame out rather than do something we already know how to do. Many of my professors have also remarked how they find many Harvard students are uncomfortable with the idea of failure because they’ve never failed at anything, and how it can be jarring to take these courses where failure is a part of the learning process. They’ve also made the point about how if we’re too scared to take risks, how are we going to be innovators? If we’re paying all this money just to take courses and choose projects we already know a lot about, what’s the point? Aren’t we here to learn new things?

This is very refreshing and authentic to me. I’m also thankful that I taught before coming to grad school. I had always been afraid to fail, and teaching was the first time I failed – a lot. I could spend hours trying to create the perfect lesson plan, only to have it thrown off by a fire drill or a student having a bad day. I tried new approaches, and they didn’t always work. There was a lot of struggle before I saw any signs of achievement or growth in my students. I feel this experience was the perfect preparation for what I’m about to do this year – try new things that may not turn out exactly as planned, but in the end, I will be a better person from the experience

In other news, I’ve had two internship interviews, and I think they went fairly well. I heard back from the first and was offered the internship, but I am waiting to hear back from the other as that one is more aligned to my interests.

I also bought a membership at the gym, and have actually been going. In the past, I’ve made up excuses about not having time and being really busy – but now I’m actually scheduling it in, and am falling into a routine. I’m also walking to and from school everyday, which adds up to about to a little over 2 miles.

One thing that I’ve found to help keep track of all these things is my planner. I also make sure to start on assignments right away, rather than waiting until the last minute. I set realistic goals about how many tasks I can complete per day, so I don’t get overwhelmed. I will set aside specific time on the weekends to get work done, but try to spend most of that time relaxing and rejuvenating. I wonder how/if this will change as my work load changes, but overall I’m feeling positive about managing it all.