Three years since last post / New life new out-look

It has been about three years since I last blogged on this site and all I can say is that I have been on an incredible life awakening journey. Nothing like going through rough times to make you a stronger person. I have been busy writing songs and build my company, well enriching the company's goals to a bigger international humanitarian project oriented company.

I have finally linked my life events (good and bad), since childhood and all those places I've seen, people I have met and experiences I have had to my purpose in life. Grant-it it has taken a half century of training to finally figure out what I want to be when I grow up, but oh it is so well worth the struggles I have endured to get to where I am today and in the near future.

All I can really say at this point is that Love heals all things, and Peace enables abundant Joy. Well let me clarify. The peace that passes all understanding enables me to live daily in abundant joy! What a wonderful perspective of life to be living! The more I overcome adversity the more I become a conqueror.

Until next time blogging community!

Hoa Binh Orphanage Vietnam 1968 Project PEACEFUL

Hoa Binh Orphanage Vietnam 1968 Project PEACEFUL

Year End Reflection

As this year nears the end I can only say that 2012 brought me many unexpected events. Then I reflect upon the past years events globally and I can see that change is in the air for everyone. You probably just thought how common and obvious the above statement is in retrospect to the end of the year, but in my mind the change I am referring to being those of attitude and innovation.

Within the half century of my life I’ve seen wars, Peace Time, disasters, governments come and go, joys and woes. But the thing that gets me perplexed this year are the periods of calmness, where nothing significant happens, as you move forward doors of opportunity seem to close, ideas that are created have to be shelved for a later time, there’s no major crisis that needs to be attended too, and your mind is so conditioned to solving something or creating solutions it just won’t shut down during these times of calmness.

So how does an active person deal with these times of calmness? It’s called REST! A word I had forgotten to use in my everyday life. No wonder these times of calm, quiet serenity seem so strange to me. It wasn’t long ago that I had on my Wish list for an extra day and more time. It took a teenager to remind me that I got my wish with the leap year. Then she asked what did I do with it. “I think I was working”, I replied.

Now I cherish these moments of calmness and spend it with those I love. 2013 starts a new year and a new attitude for me and I hope others like myself will remember to stop and smell the roses, say thank you more often and make an effort to lift and encourage more people than you did in 2012.

Week4-Blog Post#8- Reflection on Blogging

The Web 2.0 tool that I have found appealing and particle to me are collaborative writing tools like Buzzword and Google docs. I like Google sketch as well. Second life will take a little more getting use to familiarizing myself with how to function in the virtual world.

Now for blogging and twittering, I still don’t get it. I must be so old school that it hinders me from accepting these means as communication. I need feedback to communicate and not just writing out my ideas into space is difficult for me to handle.  I remember phrases I grew up like “Loose Lips Sink Ships” and “Keep your opinions to yourself less ye be a subject of ridicule or scrutiny”. The other day T sent a message to my niece on private twitter message and she replied, “What’s up?” and it came over my phone. So I thought she was text messaging me. Later it I found out that I shared personal things for all to read on twitter. I found this out from my mother.  So now I am more timid and reserve than I have ever been.

I am looking forward to tools that will help me develop interactive lesson plans, and I can see many tools as a good source for educational purposes.  WebQuest,  can be used by teachers regularly, and I hope to spread the word around our school District. I am looking forward to exploring the Quest Atlantis, program especially it’s use here in Alaska.

My over all opinion of this course was that it was filled with a lot of useful information, but skipping around the EMDT program I had established many new friendship until I joined this class. Joining a group in the fourth month is difficult because they all have established their tight knit collaborative groups. Or maybe I’m not as sociable as I thought I was.

Week 4- Blog Post#7-Second Life

What an adventure, with every visit to a number of locations in Second Life, I rarely saw anyone. Now, I must log in at varying times and days of the week, but I find myself visiting empty buildings. I continue to struggle maneuvering my Avatar around, and I can’t seem to open up any boxes. My Avatar is either wearing a box on her head or around her waist. If that’s not bad enough, I found in my inventory something called angel blades and thinking they were wings I pressed the apply button. (Lol) I discovered it to be a huge arrow with the point mounted on my Avatar’s head and the shaft through the body protruding out my backside. Tragic!

            Managing to drum up enough courage and return to an area called Multiple Intelligence, http://slurl.com/secondlife/koru/58/212/0   I wanted to create something with the blocks, but I had no idea how to move them.  Somehow, to play the drums in the music area made me so proud of my Avatar. But then I realized, that if she were asked to repeat her musical ability, she would find it difficult.

            I visited the headquarters for ISTI, http://www.iste.org/content/navigationmenu/membershi_member_networking/iste_second_life.html the Teacher’s Blogging Hut, several art galleries, Blackwater Art Gallery (one of my favorite places), a SL Film school, and a Gaming building, which had several board games available to play. But sadly nobody was present. I did sign up for several groups, but I haven’t seen anyone. Once I was so excited when I transported myself to (who knows where) and saw an Avatar. She looked at me and said, “Can you talk?” Well, I fumbled around looking for the talk button to greet her, but she gave up a started to walk away saying, “You obviously you don’t know what the… you are doing”. Oh, and after she walked away I found the text box and wrote, “Hi!” (To nobody) and concluded writing “Well, I blew that!” Texting to myself I guess, is like, virtually talking to ones’ self. Boy, do I feel foolish.

            Accessing where my biggest hurtles are in the SL world, I would have to admit not being able to effectively maneuvering my Avatar hinders me from freely exploring all that SL has to offer. Therefore, I purchased a book, ”Scripting your world: the official guide to second life scripting” by Dana Moore, Michael Thome, and Dr. Karen Zita Haigh (2008) The book was written for the new generation of software developers…” in mind as well as the common Second Life resident.”(p.iii) Joe Miller, the Vice President of Technology and Platform Development Linden Labs, had this to say about the book. “We at Linden Labs believe this book serves as an educational travel companion for exploration of the innovative, virtual world.” (p.iii) I hope this book helps me overcome many obstacles I face every time I enter the virtual world.  All I can remember about programming is the term binomials, having key cards to enter into a main frame and creating a silhouette of a mouse on paper with xxxx000xxxx0000 patterns. I know, totally the dark ages.

  

Reference

            Moore Dana, Thome Michael, Zia Haigh Karen Dr, “scripting your world: the official guide to second life scripting, 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana

Week3 Blog Posting#6 - Communities of Practice

When I started this program at Full Sail,  I had no idea how far and fast the development of the internet had come through the years.  When my school district began this atomic learning direction, I became intrigued and excited thinking that our district is on the cutting edge of technology. To my dismay, I came to the realization that our school district with all its web 2.0 tools and applications are extremely behind the rest of the country and world. To make things worse, I have discovered that Rural Alaska’s education surpasses our metropolitan community in technology.

Here I had planned to brag that our school district could be a role model for communities of practice, because students, staff, administration (at all levels), support staff, and parents are all tied together through the internet using a program that links us all together. Parents can know instantly if their kids are ditching class, in trouble, has slipping grades, even what the kids are eating at lunch. Newsletters for each school, the district or a single classroom can be accessed from the websites.. As I learn more about communities of practice from the book “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky (2008,p.101) I desired to search further through the internet and discovered that there were thousands of these communities.  Shockingly my best friend and her husband belonged such a community in the gamming cluster.

This was a big disappointment, I did not expect that educational communities and gamming communities could mingle with each other, which they do indirectly through cluster sharing, an area I’m just learning about.  To make sense of this all, I had to purchase an additional book called,” A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and tools for succeeding in the Social Web” by Deltina Hay.  I figured that I needed all the help I can, so that I could be more useful in supporting my school district through its growth in this technical age.

To clarify where I’m coming from as a former teacher now subbing, I recall how just a few years ago I was a stay at home mom, involved in the many mom and tot programs, and gathering with other mothers in support of each other. The stay at home mothers were known for the practice of community and would now be considered as, ”The old school of Community.” Lost in the Utopia of motherhood, my undergraduate studies seemed to be obsolete.  So I mustarded up enough courage to return to school only to discover that the world has passed me bye. What’s worse is that my 80 year old, mother is more tech savvy than I. What kind of 80 year old waits on Twitters’ doorstep for her kids to register? I still haven’t gotten over that event.