Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Giving Grad School Your All

When you're a graduate student, success is measured a little differently than when you're in undergrad.  It's not just about completing the work and showing up in class.  As a grad student you have to really focus on developing your professional life, networking intensively, and finding ways to make a name for yourself.  Furthermore, an assignment is no longer just an assignment, and class is no longer just a class.  They are all experiences that you should try hard to get the most out of.  Sure, you can get an "A" in a course, but did you try your best to really get something valuable out of the class?

Are you giving it your all in class?

This has probably been one of the biggest realizations I've had since joining Penn GSE.  Each class, assignment, paper, meeting, conference, and the like is one part of a larger body of work toward success.  Everything should work together as I continue to develop myself as a scholar, academic, and professional.  Thankfully, the faculty in GSE have been very supportive in helping me along the way.

As I get closer to the end of my journey to the Master's Degree, I can't help but stop and think about how much I've grown over the years.  Penn GSE has truly empowered me to take the knowledge I have gained and use it productively, towards a larger body of work and personal development. 

I still have a few more months left before graduation, so let's see how much further I can go.

Photo from: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/why-do-state-school-parents-want-to-go-private-20110916-1kdth.html

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The Joy of... the Master's Paper?!

One of our requirements as we head to graduation is our capstone Master's Paper.  This paper is not a dissertation or anything like that, but it's still quite a large task that requires a lot of reading, research, writing and rewriting.  Currently, we take a course that helps us along the way, at least to the point of getting a first draft completed.  But until this paper is handed in this Spring, we will be working on it nonstop.  The library, Google Scholar, and probably coffee will be our best friends.



Thankfully, the Master's Paper doesn't have to be this long.


This is the first time I've had to complete an academic paper of this magnitude.  The thought of working on this for months on end is sometimes a bit scary, to say the least.  But thankfully, the course we are in is helping to make sure that we have the tools necessary to make this a fulfilling writing experience.  We've gotten chances to work with our classmates (future colleagues!), we've been given great insight from our instruction team, and for me personally, I've already learned a lot about myself as a researcher and writer.

So as I said in my last post about "stopping to smell the roses," I am doing my best to make sure that I actually enjoy the day-to-day process of writing this Master's Paper.  Completing this paper will not be easy (of course!), but in the end it will all be worth it.


*Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Stopping to Smell the Roses

My first post for GSE admissions last year was "Plight of the Part-Time Student."  Now that I'm in my final year at GSE a a part-timer, I'm hoping to take in more of what Penn has to offer. It's really easy to get caught up in work-school-go home mode.  So now I'm trying to stop and smell the roses a little!

Ahhhhh....

One of the ways I'm trying to do this is to slow down and get to know people at Penn a little more.  Which leads me to give a shout out right now to my LST's, the students in the Learning Science and Technologies program. As the old-timer in the program (I can't believe I'm saying that) I feel a sense of duty to try to share as much from my experiences as an LST student as I can. I have been taking the time to STOP and chat with them so far this semester and they are all very motivated to do some great things this year. Our LST program is small, but powerful. 

So that's my goal this year.  Besides the whole finish my Master's Paper, get a Degree, and all that life-changing stuff, I want to smell the roses.   Even as the part-time student, full-time employee, and all-the-time husband, I think I'll be able to pull it off.


Photo from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Small_Red_Rose.JPG

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

In Memory

I'd like to use my first post in this academic year to honor one of our own who passed away on August 19th. 

Wendy Shung was a student here at GSE who was studying for a Master of Philosophy in education, with a major in professional counseling.  As I've come to found out, she was incredibly involved, including serving as the president of GSE's student government organization and a graduate assistant at Hill College House.

I only knew Wendy Shung for one semester.  But one encounter, let alone one semester, is enough time for someone to have an impact in another person’s life.

Wendy and I sat next to each other in the Developmental Theories and Applications with Young Adults course in Summer Session 2.  This, unfortunately, turned out to be her last course.  It saddens me to hear of her passing.  She was, as has been described by many, a very intelligent, genuine soul.  Most of all, she was kind.  My biggest memory of her will be how we gave encouraging words to one another, not about the course, but rather about life in general.  She was that genuine, to even connect in such a way with a relative stranger within a short period of time.

To her parents and family, I especially give them my prayers. To everyone who knew her, even for a short amount of time like myself, let us take this time to continue to remember her for the bright spirit she brought to this world.  

Wendy will truly be missed.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Interview with Penn GSE Dean, Andrew Porter

In August 2007, Dr. Andrew Porter became Dean of Penn's Graduate School of Education, bringing in over 40 years of experience working in higher education.  As Dean and the George & Diane Weiss Professor of Education, Dr. Porter continues to serve not just as a pillar of GSE, but also as a beacon in the field of education. 

I recently had a chance to catch up with the Dean to ask him about his time at GSE, the growth and future of the school, and some of his thoughts on the current state of education:


MTW: You are finishing up your sixth year as dean. How has GSE grown since you first came on board? 

AP: During my five and a half years as dean, we have seen the biggest growth in our Master’s student programs. The quantity, quality, and diversity of our Master’s student body have increased. In terms of numbers, the growth is roughly 50%. In terms of quality, one indicator is GREs, and the average GRE score of Master’s students at GSE is up by more than 100 points. In terms of diversity, GSE has always been strong, but today roughly a third of our students are international. Of our domestic students, roughly a third are persons of color.


MTW: What are the biggest changes in education you’ve seen during this time? 

AP: Tough question. One thing that comes immediately to mind is the increased emphasis on online learning at both the higher education and the K-12 levels. Another challenge is the growing focus on teacher accountability—in other words, making teachers accountable for their students’ achievement as measured on state tests. Yet a third area concerns the Common Core State Standards in Reading and Mathematics. Until now, each state has had its own content standards for K-12 education. Now, well over half of the states have signed on to the new standards. At the same time, the government has funded two multi-state consortia to build tests that are aligned to the standards. At least in theory, this should create much greater efficiencies and much better standards and tests. Of course, implementing the standards will be a huge challenge.


MTW: What are the strengths of GSE now, and what do you foresee as the strengths going forward?

AP: The greatest strength of GSE is that it has a great faculty and a fabulous student body. The students at GSE at all levels are bright, articulate, passionate, and deeply engaged in their studies. GSE is part of a truly world class university. Not only that, but the University of Pennsylvania values the practical, just as its founding father, Benjamin Franklin, did. Other adjectives that come to mind in thinking about GSE’s strengths are nimble, entrepreneurial, urban, and international.

We have moved up consistently in the U.S. News and World Report rankings of education graduate schools, a sign of the increasing strength of our programs. Generally, when you’re on your way up, rankings trail behind by a couple of years, so we hope to continue to our ascent.


MTW: GSE is helping to groom the educational leaders of tomorrow. What challenges do future educators and educational leaders face? 

AP: There’s always an under-supply of quality leaders. GSE strives to be the place that produces the leaders of leaders in education. At the same time, GSE strives to be the place that people around the world look to for innovative solutions to our most pressing educational problems.


MTW: A major current discussion in education is how open learning, with innovations like MOOCs, will affect education. What should future educators and educational leaders keep in mind as open learning continues to gain prominence? 

AP: Through the leadership of Provost Vince Price, Penn is rapidly positioning itself as the leader among institutions of higher education in open learning and distance education. Provost Price has asked GSE to play a leadership role in research and development to identify the characteristics of excellence in teaching of MOOCs. We have enthusiastically accepted that challenge.

***

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Interview with Daphne Koller, Co-Founder of Coursera

On Friday, April 5th, Penn will host the Silfen University Forum, which will discuss "Open Learning and the Future of Higher Education."  An acclaimed group of panelists will discuss this important topic, as Penn President Amy Gutmann moderates.  One of the scheduled participants of this forum is one of the most well-known advocates of open learning: Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller.
Koller, the award-winning Rajeev Motwani Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, co-founded Coursera with Andrew Ng (Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and Associate Professor of Computer Science).  The massive open online course platform, of which Penn has partnered with, officially launched in April 2012 and has given learners across the world access to high quality college courses for free through the internet.  While some have proclaimed this to be the ultimate disruption of higher education, others claim that the classroom experience cannot be replicated or surpassed by a digital platform such as this one.  What are Koller's thoughts on the matter?

I had a chance to catch up with the Coursera co-founder in anticipation of the Silfen University Forum to get some of her thoughts on open learning and the future of higher (and to a further extent, general) education:


MTW: As open learning becomes more prominent in education, what role do you see future educators fulfilling in the classroom?

DK: I think most educators will move to a role in which they interact much more closely and directly with their students.  Rather than spending most of their time on content preparation & dissemination, and on grading of homework, they will be guides, tutors, coaches.  They will also curate content and contextualize it, and make it directly relevant to their students' needs.

MTW: What things should a professor who is thinking of teaching a MOOC for Coursera keep in mind about the thousands of potential learners that may take their course?

DK: That they come from very diverse backgrounds: geographical, socio-economic, educational, ethnic.  Therefore, one needs to teach in a way that is more inclusive, and very sensitive to students' different needs and expectations.
   
MTW: Where would you like to see Coursera and open learning in 5-10 years?

DK: We believe in learning without limits.  I would love to be able to connect anyone, anywhere to the best education in any topic.

MTW: What is the biggest misconception you’ve seen or heard regarding Coursera and MOOCs?

DK: That they are non-interactive and non-social.

MTW: What is the most important thing that you hope everyone recognizes about the possibilities of open learning?

DK: That nothing empowers like knowledge, and that making education a basic human right can help move us closer to solving many other of the world's problems.

***

For more thoughts from Daphne Koller about open learning and the future of higher education in anticipation of her appearance at the Silfen University Forum, see her Ted Talk below from June 2012 (published August 2012):




*Although tickets are no longer available for the Silfen University Forum, you can still view the webcast of the event by going to this link on Friday, April 5th 2013 at 12pm: http://www.upenn.edu/silfenforum/webcast.html*


Sunday, March 24, 2013

MOOCs: 2 Questions We Need to Consider

The biggest buzz-term in higher education right now is "MOOC."  A MOOC (massive open online course) has the potential to give thousands of students from all over the globe free access to high quality education from top professors completely through the internet.  Penn has thrown their hat in this ring, supporting one of the big platforms for MOOCs called Coursera (Penn Coursera courses are here) and there will be a forum at Penn on April 5th discussing open learning, the principal that sets the foundation for MOOCs.

The question that everyone is attempting to answer: Are MOOCs the future of higher education? Will they continue to disrupt higher education by granting widespread free access to knowledge that previous generations have paid thousands of dollars for?  Will they unite people all over the globe as these people pursue the quest for high level knowledge?  Will they level the playing field for citizens everywhere?

I do not have the answer, however, I am optimistic.  I am a big fan of open learning and utilizing technologies in innovative ways to maximize learning. In this case, MOOCs have the potential to be amazing fixtures in education.

Because I often look at learning environment design and the intricacies that create a space that maximizes learning for the learner, there are 2 design questions that I feel are important as we figure out the future of MOOCs:

First, how should we design MOOCs to keep the learner motivated?  The foundation of a MOOC relies heavily on the self-motivational capacity of the learner. There are a lot of articles that state that many people who start a MOOC do not finish.  I am not sure that we can interpret the MOOC stats correctly as of yet (remember, stats don't always tell the whole story).  So rather than focusing on that, I'd like to focus on motivation as a whole. How can we make sure that the learner stays motivated when there's no one forcing him or her to keep going?

Second, what is the best way to design a MOOC for maximum learning?  The main issue here is even if we can motivate the learner to keep participating in a MOOC through its design, he or she may not get the most out of the learning experience that they can. If they are motivated to finish a MOOC, but learn less than or even the same as what they would have learned in the classroom, isn't that a missed opportunity given how boundless a digital environment can be?

If we simply transfer the classroom experience to an online space (by say, turning the lectures into video lectures, and then tacking on a discussion forum), I do not think this will result in the maximum amount of learning that could occur from a MOOC.  Going back to my previous post that discussed why we must learn from learners, it is important that we get an understanding of how learning currently takes place in digital environments like virtual worlds, video games, and participatory media from the perspective of those who are actually learning in those environments.  An understanding of this will help as we design any digital environment for learning, including MOOCs.

These are just 2 of many, many thoughts I have about MOOCs and their future.  I believe it is a bright future and that right now educators and researchers are working out the kinks.  We have only begun to experience what a MOOC can do and what it can consist of.  Beyond the hype, this really is a very important development in higher education and perhaps one day, in all of education.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Why We Must Learn from the Learners

This is an interesting time to be in the field of education.  I follow the stories, the trends, and the developments, and it seems like there are nearly a million ideas about where we should take education.  From new technologies in the classroom, to the rise of MOOCS (massive open online courses), education is in an exciting, yet somewhat volatile place right now.  For everyone in support of one way of forming or reforming current education (whether PreK-12 or Higher Ed), there is another person or group that is in support of a completely opposite direction.

This is not new.  In our studies at GSE, we have learned that theories of education have always had opposition.  There never seems to be a time where there is one absolute truth.  Some may say that this is the beauty of education - that there is no absolute truth.  We're dealing with human beings, and because no two human beings are exactly alike, there's no way that a one-size-fits-all education can work.  Therefore, there has to be different theories and different approaches.  The major concern, however, is whether we as educators and administrators are so focused on the possible theories, angles, and perspectives of education, that we are not concentrating enough on the learner and the learning that takes place within education.

Learning is a phenomenon that is exclusive of education.  Education is a social structure meant to foster and facilitate learning.  When we hear stories of students who are having trouble learning (or trouble proving that they've learned something), I believe we are too quick to think about the problems with education.  Perhaps the problem is not so much that we need, let's say, to turn a public school into a charter school, but rather that we have to reflect on whether our methods of connecting with the learners of today actually connects.  Are we doing our best to really understand how today's student (digital natives as they are labeled, since they have grown up using the technology that is prominent today) receives and interprets information and knowledge?  Are we talking to the digital natives to get an understanding of why they are so interested in that cell phone that we think is a distraction in the classroom?  The answer may be deeper and more complex than "Oh they just like to be on that silly Facebook."

More than ever, this is a time where we as educators and administrators need to get to know the students of today. All of the technology that has exploded onto the educational scene is fairly recent.   It is possible that the students of today "know" as much or even more about how that technology should be used to teach them than we do, even with our extensive research backgrounds and educational experience.  I believe it's important that, as we shape the world of education for the students of today and tomorrow, we consider these students almost like co-researchers and learn with them and from them about what works best to help them learn.   Paulo Freire wrote a chapter in his book, Pedagogy of Freedom, titled, "There is No Teaching Without Learning."  Are we spending enough time learning about - and from - our students of today so that we can put them in the best position to receive the knowledge we are trying to teach them?

Monday, February 25, 2013

Brendon Jobs Interview: How to be an Unofficial Teacher Leader

Last week in my Leadership in Educational Institutions course, we discussed teacher leaders and the roles they play in schools.  We looked at teacher leaders in the appointed sense, where a principal may assign a teacher to be in charge of training the other teachers in certain skills due to his or her expertise.  We learned that the implementation of the teacher leader concept is one that at times faces challenges due to the lack of clarity of the role.  This could lead to various levels of success or failure.  But what happens when someone assumes the responsibility of a teacher leader, without being appointed to a teacher leader position?  Can it be successful?  Are there challenges?


Enter Brendon Jobs, a Penn GSE Alum ('11), who teaches at the Philadelphia High School for Girls.  Assuming the teacher leader role without being officially assigned to the position, Jobs gave me a first-hand account of his success and challenges as he tries to "unofficially" lead his colleagues.


MTW: How did you become a teacher leader? 

BJ: You can either be selected or self-appointed.  I’m one of the self-appointed teacher leaders.  We came up with this organization called Revamp Girls High School, and it ended up being a voluntary [teacher-led] school improvement group.  We would kind of map out the vision of what a Girls High School girl is and should be, and also think about different functions within the school.  There were points where people could come to share ideas about what they wanted and expected from the school.  The environment we constructed through Revamp Girls High School made me feel like a teacher leader. 


Brendon goes on to describe some of his success in this unofficial teacher leader role:

BJ: I had a great administrator.  She let us publicize and get [Revamp] together. And slowly but surely I feel like people [at Girls High] were more open and candid in conversations.  I think Revamp made it so that there was a better sense of relational trust between the administration and the faculty, and the students as well. 

I also started giving periodical professional development sessions, and that’s not something that faculty members generally step up to do.  Teacher leaders operate within the school building.  You have to think of yourself as a member of the faculty, not just a teacher in a classroom.   

I try to bring some of the professional development stuff I've done in Philadelphia back to my department.   [For example], we don’t get professional development on issues of gender.  I was able to share the studies I did at Penn on that topic.  I don’t know how to measure whether or not it’s doing anything.  That can be something that’s difficult about teacher leadership.  But I think it definitely contributed to the school environment. 


MTW: What are some of the challenges you've encountered as a teacher leader?

BJ: The union fought [Revamp] really hard.  I feel like a lot of people, more of the senior faculty, were suspicious of the group.  There was a lot of push back and apathy.

There’s always going to be that resistance to change, unless that change is mandated from above.  I don’t think superintendents and school reform commissions really run what we do.  I feel like as an educator, as a professional, I have a say of how I conduct my classroom environment and school environment.  


MTW: Are there any interpersonal strategies you developed to overcome these challenges? 

BJ: In general when you’re respectful and thoughtful and engaging with faculty or children, they respond to that.  I was told by a friend of mine on the staff that sometimes I seem unapproachable.  I think I’m unapproachable to the right people.  If you’re going to come over here and complain, I’m not the one to talk to.  But if you want to develop yourself, or talk about awesome things that are happening with our girls, or in your class, then I love talking about that.   


MTW: What advice do you have for current education students who may want to be a teacher leader one day? 

Wherever you are, wherever you end up, get out of your classroom and use your summers to develop yourself and to greet people outside of your school building and district.  There are teachers all over the country that do amazing things.  Every summer I come back energized because I interact with people who are energizing and have amazing ideas.  Make sure you don’t stay in your box.  Try your best to not operate from a "place of protection." Your new and young, so experiment and have fun.

Brendon Jobs' official website: https://sites.google.com/site/brendonjobs/







Friday, February 22, 2013

CAMRA Interview: What will Define Success for the Screening Scholarship Media Festival?



This is the final part of the interview with four Penn Doctoral students who contribute to the Media Pedagogy Lab, CAMRA.  They are preparing for the First Annual Screening Scholarship Series Festival this Sunday, an event that CAMRA is co-sponsoring.  

Part 1 of the interview is here.

Part 2 of the interview is here.


MTW: The upcoming Screening Scholarship Media Festival is the inaugural
event of its kind at Penn.  In what ways, if any, do you measure the
success and effectiveness of the festival?

Matthew Tarditi (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education): For me, the sheer nature of the process is a measure of success for me.  Truly collaborative, creative, supportive and facilitated by technology, the organization of the festival modeled the guiding principles of CAMRA and the essential elements for building partnership and community among our members and affiliates.  

Even so, it would be dishonest of me to say that I am not concerned with attendance and basic efficiency and smoothness of operations as two main measures of success/effectiveness; however, the quality of the experience and not the quantity of the attendees is my main concern.  That being said, we want SSMF to be a forum for sharing, collaborating, questioning and exploring, and based on the characteristics of the participants and attendees, as well as my own penchant for community building, I am confident that the festival will leave me satisfied with the experience yet hungry for more of its kind.  

Leya Matthew (Education): That’s a good question.  On a personal level, as a researcher, it will be on the basis of questions and discussions that bear directly on the issues I struggle with as I use video/audio as a research method.  In that sense it is a way to plug into a larger community that is invested in the questions I struggle with. 

At an institutional level it is one step in legitimization; at recognizing non-textual works as scholarship, which is why it is a hybrid between a Media Festival and a conference. That is a very conscious and strategic space we are trying to define, where a peer-reviewed screening will be treated with the same seriousness as a conference presentation or an academic paper. 

Sofia Chaparro (Educational Linguistics): The fact that we've been able to organize the festival at all, that we've received institutional support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the Annenberg School for Communication, and the Graduate School of Education, as well as student organizations such as GAPSA, and most importantly the excitement of those who hear about it, to me already makes it a successful endeavor. 

The goal really is to bring together a community of students, scholars and media-makers who are concerned with innovating the way we do research in the academy through the use of diverse media and technologies, and thinking about the implications that such innovations bring for the process of knowledge production itself and the wider impact of our work.

Arjun Shankar (Anthropology and Education): I think the success of the festival will be measured by the types of dialogue that go on in each of the sessions.  If audience members and presenters are able to collectively and openly think about ethical and theoretical issues, then I think we would have met the festivals goals.  

What I am most afraid of is outright dismissal of particular products or points of view because of a dogmatic stance regarding what research should be, etc.  That is precisely what we aren't about.  I am hoping that the first assumptions of everyone present is that there are valuable leanings to be had, and to really spend the time to understand how to incorporate these leanings into their own practice within and outside of the academy.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Interview with CAMRA, Part 2 of a 3 Part series


This is part 2 of the interview with four Penn Doctoral students who contribute to the Media Pedagogy Lab, CAMRA.  They are preparing for the First Annual Screening Scholarship Series Festival this Sunday, an event that CAMRA is co-sponsoring.  

For part 1 of the interview, click here.


MTW: One of the results of creating new ways to present research is that you can establish new ways to set the tone of the learning environment.  As visual and digital research representation becomes more prevalent, what aspects of the learning environment - and the students and scholars in those environments - must researchers be aware of?

Matthew Tarditi (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education): Pedagogy is at the heart of CAMRA and most of us in the organization who are educators and/or educational scholars are keenly aware of the relation between research, knowledge production and issues of representation on one hand and teaching and learning on the other.  

Audio-visual and digital technologies pervade all facets of our lives, not only as learners and teachers, but also as social beings acting and interacting with one another through these media.  Therefore, researchers must continue to be aware of the ways technology mediates and influences the complex array of individuals, knowledges, relationships, contexts and learning environments, among other variables, in order to explore, account for and ultimately incorporate these media (existing and new) into pedagogical approaches.  

Lastly, for researchers, the issues of ethics and participation are important themes warranting thoughtful consideration and awareness as we continue to experiment with multimedia technologies in educational environments.  


Sofia Chaparro (Educational Linguistics): First, we must address the media literacies we come with as audiences for digital/visual/auditory representations of research. How do we interpret what we see and hear? What literacies are already in place that frame what we see in particular ways?

Secondly, we must address the issue of legitimization of this type of genre in the academy. How do evaluate such work? Is there a way to “peer review” and “publish” digital/visual/aural works? What criteria do we use? Part of the project of CAMRA is engaging the academic community in this discussion so that we may begin to articulate frameworks that will allow this work to “count” just as much as written papers and publications do.

Finally, as Matt mentioned above, issues of ethics and representation come to the forefront whenever you use visual media as a methodology in social scientific research, particularly ethnography. To me, it means that fostering critical literacies in students is paramount as a goal of education at all levels. 

Arjun Shankar (Anthropology and Education): This is a great question and one I have been thinking about a lot.  The first is that technologies (film, multimedia) are not some magic bullet.  We have all been in classrooms already in which professors put on films expecting that the film will somehow do all the teaching for them.  In reality, these forms of media have to be thought of with a pedagogical lens in mind.  What types of power differentials and inequalities might the film be propagating?  What are the major questions which a professor needs to be ready to address and critique when students integrate these new forms into their learning environments?  These are really important ethical questions which cannot be swept away.  

The second part of this is that we cannot expect students to be able to utilize these tools in self-conscious ways just because they are immersed in digitality in their everyday life.  To use these tools effectively, professors have to begin allowing students to experiment with production, and help students see how their own biases come out in what and how they produce these digital products.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Interview with Students from CAMRA, a 3-part series


This Sunday, CAMRA (a Media Pedagogy Lab at Penn) GSE, and the Annenberg School for Communication will co-sponsor the First Annual Screening Scholarship Media Festival at Penn.  The festival will run for most of the day, and will allow attendees to explore how, as the website says, "diverse and creative uses of multimedia are changing knowledge production and the research imagination."

I had a chance to catch up with a few of the Penn student contributors of  CAMRA to find out a little more about the lab and the upcoming festival.  

The four students I interviewed are all in Ph.D programs: Matthew Tarditi (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education), Leya Matthew (Education), Sofia Chaparro (Educational Linguistics) and Arjun Shanker (Anthropology and Education).

This is Part 1 of 3.  Part 2 will be posted Wednesday, and Part 3 will be posted Thursday.


MTW: CAMRA has an ambitious mission.  What does this mission and the goals of the group mean to you personally?


Matt: There are many aspects of CAMRA's mission that speak to me.  The creative, artistic and rigorous incorporation of multimedia technologies, specifically film for me, in all stages of the research process and the overall academic project are both exciting and necessary as the world becomes increasingly digital and audio-visual.  Multimedia not only speaks to a larger audience, but more importantly, it affords researchers like myself boundless possibilities for representing research, producing knowledge, and collaborating with partners, communities and research participants.  Relatedly, there are exciting pedagogical openings and opportunities enriched by technology broadly, and multimedia technology more specifically.  

It is because of these rich opportunities associated by multimedia technologies that I am drawn to CAMRA.  Most personally of these are the artistic/creative and collaborative affordances.  In sum, informed and guided by a strong collaborative orientation, the mission of CAMRA is also my personal mission as a practitioner, researcher and being in the world.  

Leya: I think CAMRA is on one level an acknowledgment of the growing diversity of the academic population.  As people from other knowledge traditions like filmmaking bring diverse ways of knowing the world into the academy, epistemological and ontological disorientations are bound to creep up. It becomes necessary that positions taken for granted be taken up for scrutiny yet again, be it who has claims for knowledge production or even what scholarship looks like.  In one way, I find it astounding that knowledge claims have succeeded, for so long, to retain the supremacy of one specific medium - text. At the same time, I also see a tendency to translate textual scholarship into film, maybe too literally. Nevertheless, it is exciting to build this community here at Penn, to re-imagine scholarship in ways that make research exciting, and anxious in some ways. I say anxious because new techniques also raise up questions of ethics in urgent ways. This is not new, anthropologists have been struggling with these questions for a very long time, which is probably why we trace our intellectual debts to anthropology in many ways.

Sofia:  I was initially very drawn to the use of film and visual media in research for its potential in reaching wider audiences, something particularly important for me as a former teacher and educational researcher.  At the same time, using film in my field site last year made me realize that it impacts every step of the process, not just the dissemination stage. So that film becomes as much a product as a process that will impact the research relationships I develop with my participants, the interpretations and analysis that I gather from my data, and the ethical questions I must address in the process of representation.

ArjunFor me, CAMRA represents a changing way of thinking about knowledge production in the university.  Firstly, and this is really important, it means including voices in the conversation which have previously been marginalized or excluded completely.  I have been thinking a lot about participatory methods, which necessarily mean deciding who has access to and can disseminate research - whether it's filmmakers, teachers, students, etc.  An academy which takes these voices seriously will not only be a more ethical place, but also a much more lively intellectual community.  For me, it also means a new way to think creatively about research; what technology has done is force me to critique textual practice itself.  For example, if we can begin exploring fictional methods in film then why not in text as well?  What artistic openings are we afforded?   


Part 2 will be posted Wednesday.



Monday, February 18, 2013

Finish that Application!


The deadline for Penn GSE's Higher Education Master's program is March 1st.  I am wondering how many people out there are considering applying but have not completed their profile for fear that grad school may not be the right choice.  We have more news articles every day that tell us how graduates are struggling to get jobs in this (slowly improving) economy, even those with Master's and PhD's.  The threat of being burdened with further student loan debt may make Grad school look like it's not worth it anymore to a potential applicant.

But if you're thinking about applying, and you're checking out Penn GSE's website, and you're looking at the Admissions Blog, and you stumbled on to this blog (thanks for visiting!), I have to ask... why not apply?

We never know what's in store for us unless we take that good ol' leap of faith, if you will.  If you have begun an application (for any of the programs at GSE whose deadline has not passed or is based on rolling admission), you should go ahead and finish and give yourself a chance to be accepted at this great institution.  All of the worries of the world, and whether Grad School is worth it nowadays, doesn't really matter.  What matters is taking a chance and giving yourself as many possibilities and opportunities as possible.  The worse that can happen is you get rejected.  Getting rejected should not be looked at as a definitive reflection of self, I feel that it's more of a sign that the circumstance you want to put yourself in does not quite align with the timing you try to put yourself in it.

The best that can happen is you get accepted.  Then you can weigh the pros and cons of whether grad school would be worth it to you.  But at least give yourself that chance first.

So go ahead, finish that application.  You'll feel better once you do.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Interview with Brendesha Tynes, Part 2


This is Part 2 of the interview with Brendesha Tynes, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the USC Rossier School of Education.  She will present a lecture at Penn as part of the Visiting Faculty Scholars of Color program on Feb. 5th.  Part 1 of the interview is here.








Part 2:

MTW: What experiences have you had or what have you seen that influenced you to take the research path you chose?

BT: I’ve had a number of experiences but I’ll mention the first.

I wanted to be a biomedical engineer when I was a sophomore and junior in high school.  The University of Michigan had a program where they brought aspiring engineers to the campus.  At some point during the program,  I was walking down the street, and a car full of white guys drove by and they said, “Go home ‘N-word’” [They said the actual word].  I lost my desire to go to Michigan and to be an engineer shortly afterwards.

Fast forward to undergrad and graduate school and many of my research questions have centered around African American self-perceptions, dealing with discrimination and how it affects their development.  My life could have been very different. I could be creating prosthetic devices, but my experience at Michigan changed that.  I want to do my part to figure out the impact these experiences have on others.


MTW: Where do you see your research, and the field, in 10-15 years?
BT: This is the absolute best time to study race online.  This historical moment is the absolute best time to do this research.  You have people thinking about race in really sophisticated ways. At the same time you have a retreat to pre-Civil Rights era race relations.

In the future you’re going to see more research on intergroup relations and intergroup learning online. Researchers will also try to better understand how the internet can be used as a tool to promote more positive race relations.


MTW: What advice do you give to the aspiring scholar who wants to do similar research?

BT: My work covers at least three disciplines: Developmental Psychology, New Media Studies, and Black Studies.  When you want to do interdisciplinary work it takes a lot more time.  For each discipline, it will take a year and a half of reading and coursework.  I  would also suggest connecting with faculty who are doing similar work.


Friday, February 1, 2013

Interview with Visiting Faculty Scholar of Color, Brendesha Tynes

On Tuesday February 5th, GSE’s Visiting Faculty Scholars of Color program will present Brendesha Tynes, the Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the USC Rossier School of Education.  Professor Tynes will present a talk titled, Online Racial Discrimination and Mental Health Outcomes among a Diverse, School-based Sample of Adolescents.  I had a chance to talk to Professor Tynes about her research in this emerging field, her inspiration, and advice she has for scholars who want to do similar research.



This is Part 1 of the interview.  Part 2 will be posted on Monday.

MTW: Please tell us a little about your upcoming talk at Penn and what you hope to accomplish with it.

BT: I’m going to be presenting the results from an NICHD-funded, longitudinal study of the risk and protective factors associated with online victimization.  My research team is beginning to analyze data from Wave 1 of the project. I will be presenting these results, focusing on online racial discrimination and how it relates to mental health outcomes.  Also, we’re looking at group differences in those outcomes.

There’s been a rise in online hate activity since the 2008 election of President Obama.  While we hear a ton about cyberbullying, we don’t hear about the race-related experiences that our teens are having.  I’d like to change that a bit.  I also want to show how these experiences relate to our teens’ everyday schooling experiences.


MTW: Can you tell us about some of the ways that racial discrimination online affects an adolescent differently than racial discrimination in a classroom?

BT: We are trying to figure that out.  Thus far we know that discrimination online has a unique impact on mental health, including depressive symptoms and anxiety over and above discrimination offline.  We also believe that the duration of victimization online may have a unique impact on development. The discriminatory text or image  online becomes a permanent reminder and victims may repeatedly experience an incident... on Facebook, for example where offensive language is not removed from a person’s wall. Individuals also know that a particular hate site with extreme language exists once they have either stumbled upon or deliberately viewed the site. Its permanence and the fact that it is legitimated or viewed by a wide audience may have a particularly detrimental impact on adolescent adjustment.


MTW: Who has the greatest opportunity to protect adolescents from the negative repercussions of online discrimination? Parents? Teachers? Other adolescents?

We’re beginning to see that everyone can play a role.  For example, peers and family can be buffers in the association between online victimization and depressive symptoms. [The adolescents] have fewer depressive symptoms when they have peer and family support.  When they have teacher support they have fewer rule-breaking and aggressive behaviors.


MTW: In a blended learning environment, how should an educator balance the attention they pay to the impact of virtual elements and the impact of real-life elements on the development of the students?

BT: This is the interesting thing…the line between the virtual and reality is really blurring. The virtual is real. A lot of what happens in school gets extended into online worlds.  Our teens see each other all day and then connect on sites like Facebook in the evening. 

I plan to talk about the focus of my next study, a blended learning environment where they manage to do a good job of balancing the two. 


*Part 2 of the Interview will be Posted Monday.*

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Designing for the Digital-Savvy Student

I just learned the other day that an education workshop I proposed regarding Learning Environment Design has been approved, and is being marked for late March / early April.  That is wonderful!  I think that there is not enough conversation and attention given to learning environment design.  I think this area will be very important in any school reform.  Students are wired differently than they were 10-15 years ago.  Because of this, we must create learning environments that mesh with how they learn in order to maximize the educational experience.  While I often see literature that discusses how students are wired differently and are more digital savvy than ever before, I have not seen much literature that talks about how to design learning environments that take advantage of this.

One of my favorite books that touches on this is Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology by Richard Halverson and Allan Collins.  They talk about how technology has forced us to a point where we have to seriously look at what education was, and what it needs to become, in order to help students of today learn.  I recommend this book for everyone who is interested in looking more into the phenomenon of student learning in an increasingly digital world.

This interview from one of the authors, Richard Halverson, expands on the subject below.  He makes some good points and brings up important issues that those of us interested in learning environment design need to be aware of.  Enjoy:




Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Back from Winter Vacation




Today I return to class after having a few weeks off due to the Winter break.  It has been a great few weeks to regroup, refresh, and regain perspective on a lot of things.  Important perspective.

I remember a conversation I participated in with other part-time students before the break.  This was during a Part-Time Student Association lunch.  There weren’t a lot of students there, but a nice group nonetheless.  We kind of came to a revelation that because we’ll be in GSE longer than a good amount of the other GSE students (some of whom will only be in it for 1 year!), we have an opportunity to be a great resource for the school and the students.  I hope to take advantage of that a little more this semester by focusing more on the people of GSE and not so much the work I receive from my GSE class.  I will still work hard, but will try to stress less!

The time off was important.  Between your own life and what’s happening in the lives of others (even those who are hundreds of miles away from you), you realize that there’s more to life than that 25 page paper you stressed over toward the end of the semester.  It’s also about those other students who stressed over the 25 page paper as well!  It’s about the experiences, learning from each other, helping each other, and not taking a day for granted. 

In the midst of trying to complete one assignment to the next, or completing one reading after another, I think I let the entire Fall semester whiz by me.  I didn’t stop to really soak in just how beautiful it was that a group of students from all over the world could gather together in one classroom (or Blackboard, or Canvas) and freely expand on or create knowledge. 

So this semester, I hope I can slow down and soak it in.  I’ve been blessed with a longer amount of time to soak it in than some students get.  I’ve already heard several 1-year GSE students say that their year went by so fast.  For me, it will take longer, but it will still be done before I know it.  And if I continue to let it whiz by me, I will look back one day and think, “I wish I would have just stopped and, I don’t know…learned a little bit more about my classmates.”  So I hope I can stick to this for the semester.  

The even greater part is, I think it will help me overall as I continue to balance part-time school with the other responsibilities in my life.  So we’ll see.  Here’s to a great Spring semester, and a great 2013 as well.


*Comic: Ph.D Comics by Jorge Chan: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php