PLN at KIS

This revolutionary course that I took this semester, revolutionalized me as a person.

I certainly became a better writer that cares. Through my project, I had real audience. In order to succeed, I had to have a good writing that catches people. I’ve learned to make the title catching, and I’ve learned to make sure the audience wanted to read. To do that, I had to think about the sentence styles, order of what I write about, and maybe throwing some nice metaphors. I’m starting to care about what I write a lot. And one can observe my improvement in writing if one reads my own blog.

As a thinker, I’ve learned to think. After doing a project about something I’m interested in, I’ve learned to think in my own way, that things  I like can turn into something like this. After realizing this, I’ve learned to write about things that I like. And to me, writing is just like thinking. When I write about something I like, then I feel good. I’ve learned that ultimately, I would want to please the audience, but it all starts from pleasing myself with my own thoughts.

As a producer, I’ve learned that I’m a producer now.  I produce things. I’ve produced my website, I’ve produced the interviews, and I’ve produced the productivity. I never turned in anything. Everything I did in this class, was what I produced. I’ve learned that by producing, I can learn more.

As a networker, I’m not a big user of twitter. But using our connection, we’ve reached three big-time interviewees. One of the tools that helped us was facebook. There are many “non-educational’ ways to use facebook, but it still keeps people in touch. It’s easy to contact people, and it’s easy to expand my network by becoming friends with my friends’ friends. This method led us to interview three big basketball figures in Asia. Connection is important, because with one, you can have a million.

As a problem-solver, I’ve learned to consider everything possible. One of the problems we had in our project was the contact with Graham Bensinger. It was great that we got into cantact with him, but we just couldn’t arrange the time for our interview. We’ve exchanged tons of emails trying to figure out the time. When we finally did, about 6 hours before the time arranged to interview, the time difference between Korea and US changed because USA just entered the spring time. So we could never do our interview. The problem was the time difference. But I’ve failed to consider USA entering the spring time. After that, we fortunately got new interviews, so we never contacted Graham anymore. Mr. Burell did suggest some video chats that we could do regardless of the time difference, but interviews are live, and I wanted to do it live. For the next interviews, I made sure the time difference didn’t change. So maybe it’s not as a problem solver, but I’ve learned to learn from the mistakes.

Again, I thank Mr. Burell for this revolutionary class. It was the only real experience I had at school.

I failed, which ironically in English Seminar class is a good thing. I haven’t made the videos yet ( I fixed iMovie, turns out my audio input was too low), yet I think I made up for that by doing research, networking, and organizing my new blog. I found out how to get featured on YouTube. I also found some videos that is somewhat of a tutorial of how to get famous. My goal from now is to be consistent, making a script and a video every week (which is easier said than done).

While I am frustrated by lack of progress, I have nowhere to go now but up. As I mentioned before, I fixed iMovie so I’m filming today and hopefully get some editing done. I set up a comedian YouTube account (username: ajummas) and my number one goal is to get some subscribers. By simply doing I will have a fan base, which I ultimately hope will grow. For those of you who don’t know, by subscribing to a channel one is able to be notified when their channel is updated with new videos. If you took the liberty of checking how videos get featured above, it would say if emails were sent to the YouTube admin. That information is crucial and that’s where twitter comes into my plan. I don’t expect myself to get famous overnight, it’s going to be a long, hard, grueling process, but through time, effort, and a dash of luck Impossible is Nothing. According to the YouTube website, it states that if there are incoming email/demands/threats that a video is good, it gets thrown into the pool of consideration. I was planning on enlisting help from Twitter to do that.

I filmed all of the first script and I plan on posting it up today. I also subscribed to YouTube under the name “Ajummas” and as a comedians (I think that one of the advantages of that are like more disk space, exposure, better quality etc.). One of the issues I have though is my second script, which I feel in a sense is somewhat a big pile of jokes and makes little sense. Really. I think that the jokes are funny, no doubt about that, yet I think a little revising would do no harm.

Lastly, I have a confession/dilemma to shout out to the WWW. I’m applying to boarding school. I don’t mean to be a drama king (not queen people ;-), but I’ve been placed on the waiting list for a Harvard-like school I would very much like to go. I’m sending a video to the admission officials for them to get a taste of my medicine. I think with a little international help, that opening spot is mine.

The amazing thing about networks is that they cannot be predicted.  People appear out of nowhere, offering to connect, collaborate, create.

The frustrating thing for me as a teacher is that I can’t know what new developments are coming along in your projects - unless you tell me (and the other groups).

So here’s my solution:  an open thread.  “Open Threads” means “open, ongoing comments” from readers about a question.

Here’s the question: what connections have you made with people in your network?  What concrete results have come from it?

Answer below. The answers are interesting.  Share what’s happening so we can be interested too. (And notice “Open Thread” is now a category in the sidebar. You can always click on that category link to find it and leave new comments.)

• I had watched some political comedy show (Bush vs Kerry). Some other funny videos about 2008 Presidential Election Satires through Youtube. I will watch some more.
• What I’ve done so far is just making a podcast of my previous plan because I’ve just changed it and they are to make the election a little bit more funny with some props onto the announcers’ heads. They have to talk very funny.
• I have not used any tools yet so far except the youtube and podcast. I just watched over the some video clips in the site and explained through the podcast what is my project.
• My question is ‘Who am I able to ask to be another MC besides me? One of teachers or students?’
• Confusion is that if I ask a student but they answer ‘yes’ and later on there is no time for them, a confusion will happen.
• Doubt is how can I make my satire funny?
• I can use some props from the theater warehouse behind Mr. Hadley’s office possibly instead of links.

A weekly plan of February

1st week:  Write a script from Feb. 2nd until seventh because it takes a time and make an appointment with who will be another MC.

2nd week: Filmmaking on the weekend.
3rd week: Edit and update.

4th week: Make a promotion of the film.

5th week: Submit and start to make another one.

Download link

Here’s another Skype conference call, “quick-in, quick-out,” with people who simply answered a Twitter invitation from me here in Seoul, Korea, to discuss ways to make my Personal Learning Network / Communication Arts English Seminar better. Most of the conversation is with Corrie Bergeron of Cleveland, Ohio - “educator, husband, father, musician, aviation nut” - and a very smart man, with whom I’ve never spoken before submitting a one-line tweet to my Twitter network. He’s interested in this class, and took 40 minutes to discuss it with me instantly.

Other people in my Twitter network came in later: George Mayo of Maryland, USA; Jabiz Raisdana, an international school teacher in Doha, Qatar; and Madeline Brownstone, a teacher and New York City National Writing Project advisor. I’ve talked to George a couple of times, but this was the first voice-to-voice with Jabiz and Madeline.

Let me spell a couple things out: Twitter, Skype, and this blog have very quickly combined into an instant-meeting medium for me to learn from people around the world who are interested in helping me succeed at what I’m trying to do in my own project-based learning - which just happens to be about using the new tools to allow students to learn in new ways. This podcast is at once a datum of and a discussion about Personal Learning Networks.

I want to get this podcast posted quickly so I can refer the curious parent of a student in the class to listen to it. So right now I’ll say, stay tuned: I’ll be posting links to the class wiki and blog, in order for people in my network around the world to come in and offer their help - and their own networks - in helping these students learn how to learn.

A big thanks to all who volunteered their time!