Brian Lamb: Open Education

His presentation was terrific. The whole concept that we have students do authentic work is for some reason seen as cutting edge. This is true in one sense, but most people learned this way in the past. They learned by doing work!

One of the items that I thought was really good was the analogy. We fear often that if we send students to post on the internet that legions of Sexual Predators will creep out of their basements and descend on the students. The reality is that the people who creep out of their basements are more likely to be people who really love copy editing, formatting bibliographies or formatting tables and graphs. The point: For the Most part online interactions are positive.

One thing I wonder about with this whole idea though. Brian Lamb encourage adoption of open architecture. Things like blogs, youtube, iTunes University, and others. The challenge becomes for me is on the users end. As a participant it is a frustration to have to learn new sets of tools for every course. My wife is taking a course right now that is a mashup of three different online curriculum tools. It becomes extremely frustrating to have this course with due dates listed inconsistently, with multiple logins and with a f2f component that each sends a different message.

Course management software has it's downsides but there are advantages to it because it provides a consistent interaction for a student in a specific institution. The challenge will be watching students bringing courses from multiple institutions together to create their own learning.

A weekend with the Family

Memorial day weekend was an important milestone in my family. Dad turned 80. This is a particularly big milestone because all during my growing up years, my Dad swore, he would never reach this age. In fact he often expressed sincere and heartfelt desire to be dead before 75. Views on death are a little complicated in our family.

Well, with his birthday coming up my eldest sister decided we should get together in Idaho where Dad and Mom had lived most of their adult lives. That didn't work out. Most of my other siblings couldn't make it at that time and my Dad simply set in his heels and refused to go up there. So, my Sister decided to get herself and her now grown children together and come visit us in Utah. She told my mom to expect her at 10:00 am. Now as far as I know my sister has never arrived anywhere by 10:00 am. I can speak with some certainty that she has rarely ever arrived at a family function on time. She surprised me to no end by arriving right on time with two of her four children. We actually had a really great time. My sister has been much more attentive and respectful of me as an adult in the last couple of years. It really means a lot to me. It has been difficult for me to be the youngest in the family by 8 years. All of my siblings were out of the house by the time I was 11 and frankly, I don't feel like they know me all that well especially as an adult. I bear the blame in that because I haven't done enough to stay in contact with them.

Two important things that came out of this visit. First, my nephew who is only a few months younger than I am was a Marine, and not just any Marine, but a frontline, special forces grunt. He has some crazy stories to tell. He told us about one. He was on road block duty and following all the protocols. They were instructed that if a vehicle approaches to follow these steps:

1. Flag the vehicle and try to get their attention
2. Assertively flag the vehicle and warn the drivers
3. If the vehicle continues to approach fire a warning shot
4. If the vehicle continues to approach fire a second warning shot into the ground in front of the vehicle
5. If the vehicle refuses to slow down or stop fire on the vehicle.

Well, during this particular event a vehicle was approaching at high speed. My nephew didn't have much time and the first 3 steps happened in rapid succession with the result that my nephew fired a shot in front of the vehicle that ricocheted off the ground and bounced through the bottom of the fast moving vehicle and clipped the passenger in the @$$. The passenger was an older gentleman and once he had been shot the driver stopped the car and this older (mid seventies) man jumped out of the car and was dancing around from the pain in his derriere. It was a lot more humorous to see my Marine Nephew acting out both sides of this exchange, but I thought I ought to share. By the way, my older son thought it was the funniest thing in the world to pester and annoy the guy we kept reminding him probably knew at least 5 ways to leave him maimed or dead. Kids are stubborn.

The second and probably more important bit of information I gained from this exchange was the knowledge that I live in the heart of the Jello Belt, which extends along 1-15 from Rexburg, Idaho in the north to St. George, Utah in the south. Never heard that term but I suppose it is accurate.



View The Jello Belt in a larger map

Tithing a principle with Promise

Yesterday in Sunday School we were discussing the importance of Tithing and Fasting. I heard the greatest story about tithing I have heard in a long tme.

One of the men in our Ward told us of a time when he just didn't have enough money to pay his tithing. He knew that if he paid his tithing then there wouldn't be enough for the bills and food. He decided to show his faith anyway, and he prepared his Tithing envelope, filled out the tithing donation slip, sealed up the envelope and handed it to the Bishop. Later in the week he decided to attend the Temple and as he was coming out of the temple he reached into to pocket of his slacks and found $100.00 the exact amount of his tithing. He was immediately grateful for the blessings of Tithing and of attending the temple. He used the money to take care of his bills. On Sunday at church his Bishop came up to him and said,"Thank you so much for your tithing, everything was fine except you forgot to put the money in the envelope!"

My wife pointed out during Sunday School that we all have miracles in our lives but that we forget them and forget the Lord. It's imotant to remember the lord and that all we have comes from him. He just asks that to show our devotion we give back 10% to build up his kingdom here on earth.