D-Day

It's funny, when I think of "defense" I have connotations of basketball drills, and running, and chants from the crowd. But this week I went through a different kind of defense, and academic one. It has been a long time coming, and I'm still not quite there, but it has been quite an experience.

I first started grad school in 1999, right after my undergrad, but we moved soon after and my life took another path for awhile. When I moved back to Raleigh, the opportunity to work at NC State came up. It was a perfect fit (I like to think for both of us), and I really started to not only see, but value what a graduate degree could be for me. I began taking classes again in the Fall of 2004 and it has taken me 5 years to complete my Masters! (I had no idea it was that long - I had to look it up). Now, primarily what added to this duration was my desire to do a thesis. I work with so many researchers, I really wanted to understand what they were talking about (my vocabulary has improved exponentially here) as well as take the steps to maybe, someday, be a professor myself.

My initial plan was to do research in the eye-tracking lab I managed. I wanted to look at the over-use of animations, words, clip art etc. in PowerPoint design. I really wanted to build on Richard Mayer's work and apply it to teachers. However, when the time came, I had switched jobs and discovered Presentation Zen - what would my study add? So, call me crazy, and many people did, I wrote an entirely differet proposal about Social networking using Ning.

Luckily, my committee was willing (espcialy since nothing had really be put in writing about it), to let me change and really supported me. I have to admit, although it was hard, it was the best decision I could have made. It allowed me to pursue something I was extensively interested in. I am also fortunate to work at a place that values my education (its good to know the College of Ed stand behind that :) and were willing to work with me on what I need to do to accomplish my goal. Not many employers would feel the same. The support of my family and friends as been exponential. When they say it takes a village to raise a child, I believe it takes a city to support a graduate degree. And now I'm hoping to give a bit more time back to the community, both on and offline, that have supportd me for so long.

So thank you all, my next few posts will be all about my COMPLETED research!

Why did I go to grad school?

Technorati Tags: graduateschool highereducation

a follow up from - Why did I become a teacher?

Most of my life has been about plans and list making (I blame my mother). I made this list when I was 16:

-Go to college (Check)
-Find Husband in college (Check)
-Get Married (Check)
-Become successful engineer/archaeologist living in Africa (this is where it starts to get fuzzy - as well as way to influenced by my love of Indiana Jones)

So when I made the decision to become a teacher (see previous post) I made this list (and it is sequential)
-Graduate (Check)
-Get Married (Check)
-Teach school (Check)
-Have kids before 30 (Ummm...)
-Stay at home with kids (gulp)
-Go to grad school before reentering the workforce (Ummm...gulp..)

So as you can see my "list" did not exactly pan out. Now I have thrown out my timeline lists and discovered that life just kind of works itself out. I intended to make teaching high school my career (unless George Lucas called asking for my input on a script) I intended to have kids and stay-at-home. I intended to have the house with the white picket fence. Yet, deep down I knew that I would never be happy with a cookie cutter life (and luckily I married someone of the same mind). So when life changed - I change and I enjoyed the ride.

OK, so back to my current timeline....

When we moved back to NC from Maryland - I really wanted to get back into education and find the perfect job. When the position at NC State came up and I got it - grad school was not on my mind. But suddenly I was emersed in the world of academia and I needed to be in grad school just to catch up (hell I just needed to understand what they were saying!) I waffled between Tech Ed, Training & Development, & what I finally settled on, Instructional technology.

I love my college, I love my program, but I also began to love the learning process of graduate school. The dialog, the discussions (Which is probably why I like blogging) and in all honesty it was harder, but better than undergrad. It took everything I had to finish my coursework while I was pregnant (2 semesters of 2 course while working full time) and then 2 courses last semester when I returned from work from maternity leave.

Yet, I found myself stuck. The proposal I had written for my research no longer inspired me. It was antiquated in my mind (the subject was PowerPoint and How much was too much info to put on a slide) and no longer thrilled me. So what did I do - I ignored it. Like all good procrastinators I let it slide and then fester in the back of my mind. So what do you do? Stick with what is already there? and uninspiring? or start from scratch? and do something passionate?

I hope to be passionate and start in a new direction. We'll see how it works out....

1:1 Podcast

I have created a brief 1:1 podcast for my 21st Century Skills Class. It is a bit over 1min in length and I am testing Bloggers ability to syndicate podcasts. You should also be able to click on the title and navigate to the webpage.

How do we define learning in the 21st Century

This question was posed in my grad class this week. My answer was:

I believe your question on "How do we define learning?" in 21st Century Skills is a huge issue. We are surrounded by such an evaluation (and blame) based society. Last year I worked on a project that was very standards based and trying to find evidence to back those standards. It was one of the most difficult projects I've ever dealt with, because defining learning can no longer be a letter grade. Yet, we are so stuck in one grade or one score telling everything we know about a topic. I have just seen the new Professional Teaching Standards for North Carolina, and it should be interesting to see how they get evaluated now.

Defining Clutter

As part of my Master's Thesis - which I will I am sure post on about more in the future. I am trying to define visual clutter on a PowerPoint slide. My hope is to be able to make recommendations on how much information is too much to have on a slide. So how blown away was I when on BoingBoing I see that someone at MIT has defined clutter!!!

I hope to use the Eyetracking Lab at the Friday Inst that I use to work on as part of my data gathering. I start my research hours this semester - wish me luck!