This is a draft I wrote up yesterday, attempting to link backstory to the online courses I'm taking, and some TED and other videos. One of my challenges is that at times I'm inspired to write, or speak, or create associative layouts, but they tend to be nonlinear, and I'm still trying to figure out an effective format for others to read and watch.
It's a process of learning how to learn, and learning how to show my work to others in a way that optimizes their use of time. I may go back and edit this later, or pull sections out to expand upon them. I also recorded a long video yesterday where I talked through the ideas I hit on in this email. Ultimately, I'm looking to develop a better life workflow process, and adapt this approach into an immersive experience for others -- Screenstorming.
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I'm currently taking three MOOCs -- massively open online courses:
https://www.coursera.org/#course/gamification
https://www.coursera.org/#course/modelthinking
http://101.edstartup.net/
And, I just found this fascinating article on the topic: The Rise Of The Star Professor http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2012/08/07/the-coming-age-of-the-teaching-megastar/ which hits on some thoughts I've had myself, going back over a decade.
I have a tendency not to complete courses, and one of my core interests is in developing an approach to learning -- and living -- that frames life as an actively unfolding story with an ongoing motivational context. Often, the term "story" has connotations of either fantasy, or lies, but there's much to be said for the concept, as Robert McKee makes a great case for in this video:
Story is also applicable to education. People attend school, or take classes, based on an implied story, as Ken Robinson discusses in his Changing Educational Paradigms video. As he explains, many people growing up today don't believe the traditional story of "go to college, have a good career." My own experience, as a disengaged student whose college professor father and stepfather both complained about their own disengaged students, I've long known there was something wrong with how teaching and learning tend to work -- certainly in my case.
My mind works in a very non-linear manner -- for example, in watching the first videos for the Model Thinking course, I have a lot of associations with concepts like "mental models" and the general way in which people conceptualize the world, whether formal or informal. One approach to mental models is that of tropes, as catalogued on http://tvtropes.org
And with that, I'm going to flash back to a few years ago, and explain some of what has unfolded since then. In early 2009, I found tvtropes, as part of a burst of inspiration about creating a web series or tv show that hit on making sense of life, a goal I've had at various points in my life. Yet, I've often been torn over whether to take a documentary or fictional approach, and I've never really known where to begin. I've had some character ideas -- based on my own experience as a student who was disengaged in school and life, but I didn't know how to proceed with the story. And, I wanted to create something more interactive, and even "useful," than a traditional show or game.
In summer of 2009, I met up with a friend of mine, Nick B, and we brainstormed ideas for a web tech startup, oriented around personal learning profiles and some kind of online courses. Later in 2009, Nick approached me with a project from a charter school, to create a school information system that would bring all kinds of data into one place. We met with the school, and the idea evolved into a statement of work for a "student information system with analytics" in early 2010. Nick coded an attendance module, while I researched business questions, web hosting, and the competitive space of learning management systems and student information systems.
It wasn't until late May of 2010 that we really got the go-ahead on the project, and by then there were only 3 months until the school was set to open. We were asked to prioritize the development of a lesson plan feature that included differentiated lesson plans -- so that each student, or subgroups of students, within each class could be given different assignments and activities. This request turned out to be monumentally complicated to code, and by the end of the summer, I had to put together a much simpler version of the lesson planning feature, and other parts of the system were delayed, as the complex lesson plans took up most of Nick's time.
In late August, the school handed off the project to an established consultancy, but more work needed to be done that could be afforded at their rates, given our project budget. In September, I spent quite a while attempting to write emails that explained our standpoint -- that as two people, we were overwhelmed with all we were expected to do. I put an ad out for help, and heard from Keith, a college professor with project management expertise, who offered to review the project.
Suffice it to say, the project had major problems, including being enormously complex and having a very small budget. Yet, we struggled to deliver the functionality that the school needed, as weeks and months continued to go by. At the end of 2010, I took some time to reflect back on my life, and picked up my interest in neuroscience of cognition, and tvtropes. Meanwhile, I had two simultaneous projects I had taken on -- another web site, and work with a third client -- and my mom, living alone in Florida, was struggling with extreme memory problems and her own financial problems.
By February of 2011, I hit a point where my commitments and liabilities went from overwhelming to impossible. While struggling one evening to complete coding tasks for one client, took a break and wrote up a series of pages in an unusual "flow state" -- in which I referenced a number of concepts, as well as the concept of patterns and http://tvtropes.org As spring proceeded, I continued to struggle with how to deal with the situation, and exchanged a series of emails with my dad, trying to explain things, while also seeking help from him. Two key elements of his response were papers he wrote, on "Radical Hope and Heroic Chaos," and on Participant-Observation as a tourist in Tibet.
I felt like I was a participant-observer of a strange place myself. Not even a culture -- but a situation. I didn't know how to find a way forward. I brainstormed, and came up with a concept for a youtube presence, and sought a way to transition out of doing coding and web tasks, and into creating an online presence, acting as a consultant, and finally creating some kind of show. I just had to figure out how to brand myself... which is a task I've made much progress on, but it's still a work in progress.
I began digging through my books and papers, and past writings, as well as web content, and began to think about how to transform all this information into a format others could find useful. I tried linking to and explaining some of what I had in mind in emails -- including referencing Dan Siegel's discussion of interpersonal neurobiology, and my own experiences as a disengaged student at various points in school. Nobody in my life seemed to see that as relevant to this student information system project, but I saw the need to step back and reconceptualize the whole thing, and certainly my whole life.
I begin photographing layouts of items, and then making screencap-based digital layouts. I also began recording some video, and doing a lot of freewriting of words and phrases onto paper, and sending off emails to people in my life that referenced some of what I was finding and creating, in an effort to spur discussion of my situation.
That strategy didn't work out so well, but in the process, I found a wide range of content that I'm trying to figure out how to bring together into a sort of participatory course. I've found many things that would have been useful to me earlier on. So, what is the best format to present what I've found, and my ongoing attempts to put things in a manner others can find useful?
I have an idea for a combination between a transmedia show and a MOOC, that pulls participants in sort of like how people sign up to games like World of Warcraft or Second Life, but which is based on the reality of participants' lives, mixed with a big picture and story-driven take on life.
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