Interview with Dr. Randy Jones of MCTC

I was sent this conversation with Dr. Jones of Marshall Community and Technical College via email and he agreed to extend it a little with me and allow me to share it on this blog. The conversation is about his impressions of the first semester with the Globaloria game development curriculum. Dr. Jones team-taught the course this past semester, here is the wiki.

What do you feel you've learned about 21st Century teaching?

o Faculty role is more of facilitator verses disseminator of information.

o Much of the learning takes place on-line through an interactive process.

What benefits are you seeing in your students?

o Students are more interested in learning if they have more control over the learning process.

o Student interaction among their peers also allows for more learning to take place.

o Students within broad boundaries are able to move at their own pace. The final learning objective bar is a minimum. The maximums are limited only by the student.

What is fun?

o From a personal perspective, I get a great deal of satisfaction from learning new things, developing new programs, and pushing the envelope on technology.

What is challenging?

o Note above: learning new things, developing new programs, and pushing the envelope on technology.

What more do you need, by way of support from Globaloria, to help you do your best work?

o A complement, everyone has been quick to respond to any issues related to the program.

o A complement, everyone has been focused on the student's future marketability. I appreciate a willingness to support our Internship requirement for our students.

o A comment, at some point a PR campaign that would highlight the program and our college which is somewhat hidden in the shadows of the University.

o A comment, our college has been very supportive of the partnership we are establishing. All basic adobe software has been made available through MCTC. Additional tutorial software has been purchased to support this program. Additional screen-capture and presentation software is also being purchased to support remote training. If we needed additional resources that could not be supplied by existing means, it would be nice to know we could apply to an alternate source for consideration.

How might you plan to approach anything differently in the New Year?

o Each cycle of courses to be taught in the future will be over a full semester (15 weeks).

o Dual-credit remote link to a high school program.

o Implementation of pre-requisite courses in future cycles might be suggested. A key component in the initial courses is a basic knowledge of the flash interface. Programming concepts would also be beneficial.

Additional Comments: We are planning on offering the cycle of classes in the Summer of 08. It would be a good thing if we could work with the University, offer graduate credit for the courses, and encourage future teachers to sign up for the classes. This would give them the background they need to teach the courses and would also meet their continuing education requirements.

You can check out more from Dr. Jones and his co-teacher Patrick Smith on YouTube.

How to turn Frustration into Action: Search, Blog, Reflect, Repeat

One of the primary skills that we are trying teach as part of the MyGLife project, is to express yourself online. There are times when we all encounter frustration with our activities, including working with technology. If you don't have a lot of experience with using software or hardware then you might allow smaller obstacles to create a lot of frustration for you. In my early visits to our schools, I have had both students and educators tell me that they are frustrated about something on the MyGLife platform. Maybe it was the software installation, maybe it was the assignment, maybe it was the way the wiki platform makes you spell all the words in your file correctly. :)

Frustration happens. What do you do?

Old School Approach:
Wait for someone else to come and show us how to fix the problem or worse actually fix the problem for us. (Worse of course because next time you will need them to fix the problem again... the whole "teach them to fish for life thingy.")

New School Approach:
A new strategy to address this issue, we might even call it a 21st Century Strategy because we like buzz words, might be Search, Blog, Reflect, and Repeat.

Search
If you have spent anytime at all on the web, you have learned this first step. GOOGLE IT! Right? Go on the web and look it up. Here at MyGLife we also have the option to search our wiki or other schools wikis that might have encountered the exact same problem. You could also search their blogs, because they might have reflected on this same issue you are having. This takes a little time of course and isn't a guarantee. But you have a fairly good chance that you will find your answer.

Blog
This might be a new step for you. If you don't find the answer you are looking for by searching the web or the MyGLife platform, then you can blog about your frustration. Put it out there, let people know... I hear you saying, "But Lee blogging is for geeks and besides if I blog about my problems then everyone will know I am an incompetent (student/educator) when it comes to technology!" And of course the answer to that is get over it, you are engaged in an awesome program to build games based on Flash. You are not incompetent and by blogging about the problem you are trying to overcome, you just made yourself an "advanced user of technologies" and the fact is... blogging is easier then email, but don't tell anyone, we geeks like to make it sound impressive.

So what will happen when I blog about my frustrations? You have now provided an opportunity for a whole lot of really smart people to help you out. Try it.

Reflect
So this next step is one that gets overlooked or forgotten. It would be incredibly powerful if we would all reflect on our activities and solutions after resolution or even if they don't get to resolution. Reflection is a powerful tool for learning and by reflecting through your blog, you empower those who follow your path a possible quicker road to resolution. It also important to understand that you don't have to be exact or even thorough, although it helps. Just get your thoughts and ideas out there. Make it part of the conversation.

Repeat
Finally, repeat. Do it often. The more you implement this strategy, the more you will learn and others around you will learn.