100th Post

Wow. How appropriate that this be my 100th post on this blog site. After almost a year after starting it, I find myself coming almost full circle. What once started off as a driving stimulus to get my butt out the door and outside for invigorating exercise and mental contemplation about the world around me, and my life without work, slowly blurred into a blog about my life of work. I looked around and what I saw was more opportunities for sharing lessons with my students and before I knew it I had delved into a year of sabbatical work just as hard if not harder than before I had been on sabbatical. And what a year it has been.

I attended 5 state and national teaching and learning conferences:
1) D2L (Desire2Learn) National 2008 Fusion Conference in Memphis, TN (OMG what a blast--it will go down in history as probably the most memorable conference I will have ever attended--and I know this to be true)
2) CTAM State Conference in Alexandria where my speech and theatre colleagues are able to get together to talk about communication and theatre arts, to collaborate and foster relationships between the high schools and the post-secondary colleges, and between the two-year colleges and the transfer colleges and universities. What a great time to talk shop and learn and grow our fabulous discipline. There's never a dull moment when you bring a bunch of communication and theatre majors together!
3) ITC (Instructional Technology Council) National eLearning Conference in Portland, Oregon. Great practical tips and tools. Blogged my way through the whole conference (see my blog "What I Learned on Sabbatical" also hosted at blogger.com)
4) I also attended my first "unconference" which was held on edemocracy and sponsored in part by the Blandin Foundation. It was here that I got reaquainted with classmate and friend Heidi Holtan who works for KAXE. Soon after this I was writing news articles for the Northern Community Internet Project--An online community journalism publication. I think I have since written 7 articles for them and developed a curriculum unit so that my mass communication students could have an opportunity to have their news article published through NCI. (8 student pieces were forwarded to the managing editor of the project). It was also here that I conducted my first two mass communication interviews with my flip camera: Heidi of KAXE and Pam Colby, Executive Director of the Minneapolis Television Network. This helped confirm the value of adding real local voices from the mass communication field to my class curriculum. I later would go on to interview: Jodi Schwen, Editor-in-chief of Lake Country Journal magazine; Mike Lundeby, CEO of CRC Marketing Solutions, Inc.; and Matt Perkins, reporter and "Twitter editor" at the Morrison County Record. I also incorporated my blog entries from local MN author, Will Weaver who gave several presentations at Central Lakes College one day this past winter. So I'm grateful for the wealth of opportunities that snowballed from attending that unconference.
5) Full circle again--the fifth conference was the D2L Fusion 2009 National Conference right here in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

As you can see, alot of time was spent developing learning artifacts and objectives for my new Mass Communication's class (a class that had just been switched over to the speech department). But also during this year I designed and developed 2 other new courses for the speech department. "Social Networking" and "Blogging and Vlogging" both were brought forward to and passed by AASC in the spring as part of the New Emerging Digital Technologies Certificate that the college is starting. So that was unexpected work not originally in my sabbatical plan.

Also not part of the plan was all my blogging. I started two new blogs, this one and the one mentioned above. I also had a blog on my Egypt trip that I had started in March of 2008 that I was able to elaborate. At the end of July, between the 3 blogs I had posted 461 blog entries (just within this past year). Of those, 196 entries were on my Egypt trip blog site. Why so many? Because I had created 196 videos from my 14 hours of live footage I came home with on mini dvds. Turning that 14 hours (along with material from my trips to Norway, Guatemala and Thailand) took up the majority of my winter.

I now have a GREAT respect for movie editors. It is amazing how much time you can spend converting, downloading, transferring, editing, researching, enhancing, re-converting, uploading and managing video!! There were numerous 16 hour or more days! (Literally staying up til 3 am and back working in the morning). I had to do this because I was working on my friend's apple computer. Without Deb's assistance and generosity to let me tie up so much time on her computer, I would never have gotten through those videos. I will now think twice about what type of video recorder I ever purchase in the future. The technical difficulties encountered hindered the fun I was expecting to have going through travel footage. But once I got going--there was no way I was going to stop until they were all done! So because of that determination and the support of family and friends, I finished editing the video into manageable units and then uploaded each as a separate blog entry for my use or the use of others.

You see all together I've created over 300 videos this year. That's kinda crazy! Besides the Egypt videos I created compilation summary videos Egypt and Guatemala. I created two fun music videos (one from Guatemala and one from Thailand) to go along with the Windows and Mirros theory I use in many of my classes. I also created a Window and Mirrors video on "A Wedding in Norway" which I actually used this summer for the first time in my Intercultural Communication class. On top of the travel videos, and the local Mass Communication videos, I made a few podcasts on chapter concepts and "living notes". Again, most of these are public videos, a few I put just on my blog for the comfort of those I was interviewing, but the rest are housed on youtube. Although the majority of my videos were not up until after January, I had over 6,000 hits by the end of July.

I spent alot of time cleaning up computer files and trying to make them more manageable. In one case I went from over 1500 files on the front page to 55. I condensed content files and expanded question libraries in my online courses. I made new quizzes and improved old ones. I sorted thousands and thousands of photos. I even created an electonic portfolio for myself that reflected the 2 inch 3-ring binder portfolio I was asked to created as part of being selected for the Outstanding Educator Award from the MnSCU board of Trustees. What a great honor that was--but again, alot of work!

I also devised a series of tiered assessments for both my Inercultural Communication class and my Mass Communication class. I created learning objectives on each assignment and assessed them with each weekly assignment schedule. Because it was new and needed to be done with each and every assignment, it was quite extensive, thereby requiring alot of time on the computer. I also added new assignment that needed new quizzes and assessment. For example, I visited the Hindu Temple of Maple Grove, one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States. It was amazing and when I heard the story about how they handled convicted vandals of their Temple, I knew it was a story that had to be used in my Intercultural Class on World Religions. Again, adding the local perspective I hoped would make the material more real, more interesting. But I needed something tangible--so we found a video and I created quiz questions for it. Again, just something else that kept me tied to my computer.

I mentored two new adjuncts for our speech department--doing much of it online. And I continued to serve on the online education subcommittee and the international education committee. I still had 30 some email a day to go through--and more once summer school started and I added in the discussion board posts that needed to be read.

So what I'm getting at, is that it has been a long year filled with lots of exciting discoveries, but also a year much more tied to the computer and to technology than I would ever have imagined going into this. So when I started this blog in order to get out of the house and discover my world, I didn't realize how soon that outdoor world would be replaced with a digital one. I almost feel like I've had a virtual life this past year--all technology, too much time wired in and "online". I was so busy, even my online social networking world was affected.

My facebook status (once updated a 3-4 times a week) went blank from not being current because I was too busy with other online obligations and classwork. When I did get in (one week before summer session ended, my status line read: "Summer school almost kicked my butt this year") That's really no exaggeration. Working 60, 70, sometimes even 80 hours a week, took it's toll on me. I was sick much of the summer...tired and stressed. Most of all, I had given up taking time for myself, to blog about anything other than work related items. And my body was paying for it. Besides gaining 15 pounds (would have been more but there were times when I didn't eat because I was working and suddenly it would be 4 pm and I'd realize I hadn't had breakfast or lunch) I became out of shape. Gone were the days of walking, gone were the days of running 4 miles a day, gone were the days of biking 50 miles in one day! Where was that person? or worse yet...who had I become?

Unfortunately, I couldn't allow myself the time to figure it out. I had to stay plugged in. I had to get my work done. I had to stay true to what I had committed myself to accomplish. And so it went for June and July. And then, summer school ended. I love teaching, but I could not deny that it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I could breathe again. I entered my final grades Friday afternoon, wrote my sabbatical report Saturday--vowing to get it done before I left town, and with the help of a friend who helped my photo copy and paperclip my appendices together--we got it done and turned in Saturday night.

And so...I woke up this morning...the Monday after summer school and afer completing my sabbatical report...and I...well, I woke up again. I realized that I didn't have to work my life away in order to still be dedicated to my life's work. This I think is easier said than done however. But it all starts one step at a time. And so I woke up this morning and decided to get back in the saddle--to say, so what if I'm out of shape now and can't run 4 miles or bike 50. I can start where I'm at and at least start. I can get out and be in the sunshine (something I only did about 5 days this past summer).

So I got on my bike. I left my itouch at home and I rode 11 miles. Not shabby. Then after I got home and realized I still needed to go to the grocery store, so I took my shower and when I went to grab a t-shirt, a little fate came into play. There it was...staring me in the face--my "life is good" shirt, the one that said, "log on, crash, reboot". That's exactly what I needed after a year of being attached to my computer. I threw on the shirt and resisted temptation to take my Jeep the 1.25 miles, instead I grabbed my backpack and got back on the bike. Afterall, that's life. Sometimes you do just have to "get back on" even when you've fallen off. The bike ride felt great. The sunshine felt amazing. I felt awake again and as I rode I thought to myself, "I should blog about this when I get back." I guess I've really come full circle as once again I feel compelled to write about my reality--the one, that for now at least, is not all about work and technology. I need to write about the other aspects of my life and I need to take care of the other aspects of my life--both now and in the future, because like the shirt says..."Life is good!"

Oh yeah...it's been so long, I forgot...B: 14 miles