25 Things Every Young Professional Should Know by Age 25

I love this list of 25 Things Every Young Professional Should Know by Age 25. My favorite is #20

The days of a college syllabus are long gone. If you’re waiting for someone to give you direction, have a seat. You’ll be there a while.

I am often frustrated by the attitude that my students can’t accomplish anything on their own without clear and explicit directions. Maybe it is simply my own inability to articulate precisely what it is that I want, and maybe it is that I simply want to prepare you for the real world by leaving some things ambiguous. In any case, it is good practice for what lies ahead. In the mean time, I will continue honing my explaining skills to try to meet you in the middle.

Dear TechIntersect…

A student seeking advice writes:

Dear TechIntersect,

Have any of you ever hit a block in your schooling career and are no longer happy with the degree you were once striving to get? What did you all do in order to remedy that? Did you simply change degrees? Go to a different school? Drop out? How did you learn what was right for you that would make you happy in the world of academics?

- Looking For My Place

Dear Looking,

I know this place you are in well. I have changed career paths and college majors many times. It is a frustrating and often soul-crushing experience to have the feeling that you should be doing something else. Indeed, it is the condition that Henry David Thoreau describes:

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

The last thing I want for you dear Looking is for you to complete your college experience having your song still left inside of you begging to get out. God has placed within you certain talents and abilities in a unique combination that no other person in the past, present or future will ever have. You were put here for a purpose and it is up to you to explore and develop these gifts by becoming the best version of yourself.

Let’s keep something important in mind here. It’s college. Yes, it is your life right now so you should try to make the best of it while you are in it, but at some point in your life, college will become a distant memory. College is meant to be a formative experience in which you develop new attitudes and insights that will serve you well for the rest of your life.

Some people have the idea that college is where you will learn all of the things you will need to know in your future career. College is a place to learn and grow as a person, but it is only a beginning not an end. Surprisingly, to many employers it doesn’t matter what you major in if you have the right skills and attitudes. The subject matter content learned is less relevant than the foundational concepts you master and carry forward. This requires having an attitude of being a life-long learner. An attitude that no matter what comes my way, I am competent and capable of solving problems that I don’t necessarily know the answer to. That point is the key to your dilemma, Looking. Whatever your major is, if done right, it will expect you to solve problems that you don’t know the answer to when you start. To me, that is the very purpose of attending college, developing that attitude.

Many people wind up doing work outside of their college major. Often this is because they majored in something they love, only to find that the job market has few opportunities available in that particular area. According to a recent Forbes article, most of the college majors that are least likely to have jobs available are found squarely in the arts and humanities. This stands in stark contrast to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math degrees, which are booming.

So what are creative people to do? You are visiting with someone who has always loved the arts, particularly music, theater and the visual arts like drawing and painting. But according to the advisors of my youth, it is very difficult to make a living doing those things, so I chose to train for something more practical, computers. The amazing thing is that the practical thing I do – computers – in recent years has converged with the artistic things I love. Finally, I get to do both and I couldn’t be happier.

I have always advised my students to marry whatever it is they love with computer technology and you can’t go wrong. That technology expertise acts as an insurance policy that insures you will never go hungry. But when the conditions are favorable, you get to do what you love as well. That, in a nutshell, is why I helped to develop the Digital Media Technology degree at Kansas State University – Salina. Now I get to do what I love, and as the program grows I envision that I will be joined by other creative faculty members who will help us to expand in directions we could never imagine.

So back to your original questions about being happy with your major & your life. Happiness comes from attitudes inside of you. Take it from someone who has spent years trying to rearrange external things to be happy; if you depend upon external circumstances to be happy, you will be continually discouraged. There are four levels of happiness, and it is the lowest level that depends on things outside of yourself. The rest come from within. I wrote more about finding happiness a few months ago and I encourage you to take a look at that as well.

My best wishes to you, Looking. I know there is a song inside of you begging to get out. The question is whether or not you will find ways to let it out where you are, or if you will keep looking for better and better places to have that happen.

Thunder Rolls Literal Music Video

My former student Trista Bieberle made this parody music video of The Thunder Rolls as a digital media project. She posted it to YouTube and it amassed over 45,000 views before it was administratively removed. I am not a copyright attorney, but it was my understanding that parody is a protected form of free speech. However, YouTube tends to err in favor of copyright owners, not pranksters trying to have some fun at the copyright owner’s or original artist’s expense. So she uploaded it to Vimeo and shared it tonight, and I am pleased to see it online again. Someday, I will explore further the issues related to Fair Use and Copyright on this blog, but for now why not just enjoy Trista’s fun video and read about how she made it?

The Thunder Rolls – Literal Video from Trista Bieberle on Vimeo.

About the time this video was made, I had come to the realization that I once enjoyed singing, but I rarely sang anymore. So I collaborated with her by singing the vocals. It was fun for me and a wonderful digital media project for her to work on. She had plenty of technical challenges to overcome like removing the original vocals from the music track and mixing my voice into the new song. Then she had to get the sound synched up with the video, and add the subtitles in. But she was up to the task.

It all began with a research assignment I like to call “Working Digitally.” Students are to find a type of work that was not possible to do before computers and the Internet. Trista decided to explore the Literal Music Videos phenomenon. One of the most famous from the genre is a spoof on Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. (Note, the link doesn’t go to the original video on YouTube, but to a mirror site as this video was also yanked from YouTube.)

Trista decided to try to contact David A Scott, the creator of Total Eclipse Literal Version that was even featured on CNN by making this video:

In a tremendous act of generosity, he kindly responded and answered her questions:


She was then able to put together her questions and his answers into her Working Digitally video project that explains what the heck a literal music video is:


Isn’t that great?

I would suggest that this project represents some of my best teaching work, except all I really do is provide an environment where greatness can happen. You can see some of the other Working Digitally videos on this playlist.

 

Superhero Proportions

A couple of years ago, an amazing friend from my PLN, Malyn Mawby wrote about her fun Math assignment on the topic of ratios/percentages/fractions using DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. Her assignment reminded me of what I had learned in art class about drawing people 6 or 7 heads high. Back then, I also learned that comic book heroes are drawn with bodies 8 or even 9 heads high, to make their physique appear more massive.

I left a comment on her original post about this, with a link on Scribd to a page from Christopher Hart’s How to Draw Comic Book Heroes and Villains that describes this concept. Unfortunately, the book was removed for copyright reasons, so I ordered myself an inexpensive used copy of the book, and scanned the pages in myself. (The copy I received appears to be brand-new, and the book itself is really awesome!)

human proportions
human proportions

For example, consider the Incredible Hulk (as opposed to the Credible Hulk, which is a topic of discussion for another day.)

Hulk stands six heads tall, but he is always hunched over. If he would just stand upright, he could easily add a seventh head to his height. But alas, it isn’t easy carting all of that bulk around, fighting against gravity all of the time.

Spiderman & Superman are both seven heads tall.
And this drawing of Batman shows him nearly 8 heads tall.
And look, even Wonder Woman is 8 heads tall. I guess the standard holds for female superheroes as well.

I think this would be a really fun assignment in a math class. Get pictures of superheroes. Measure the hero’s head, and find out what percentage of the whole body is the head. What is the ratio of head to entire body? Which heroes have the most exaggerated proportions? It might even be fun to send kids home to take pictures of the adults they live with to see how their head to body proportions measure up with the superheroes.

The Art of the Video Reply

Two years ago, when I began searching for students and classrooms on YouTube, I was amazed at the amount of sharing that was happening, often times without any adult knowledge or assistance. Even more amazing to me are the teachers who do make videos inside their classrooms and share with the world. Taking risks in education in the current climate is typically frowned upon, and in the most drastic situations can even result in teachers who do so losing their jobs.

But I think that teachers who are working on digital literacies with kids should be recognized and applauded. It is not easy putting yourself out there. Every once in a while I like to connect with these kids who are engaged and learning about life in the digital age. One group of kids I can always count on for having something fun and interesting to watch is the students of Linda Yollis, and this past week they did not disappoint. Have a look at their fun Valentine’s Day video:

Teachers who do projects like this despite the risks know what is good for their students, and they know what they are doing. The best ones secure buy-in from administrators and parents before proceeding. Better to educate and inform all of the stakeholders ahead of time than to try to explain or even apologize after doing something with kids online.

I was a little disappointed that comments were disabled on Mrs Yollis’ classroom video, but I completely understand that as a management decision. I would never recommend letting comments to a classroom YouTube channel belonging to children appear unmoderated. However, with comments disabled, it is not possible to do a video reply directly through YouTube, so I had to tweet a link to this video to Mrs Yollis, hoping she’ll see it and share it with her students if she sees fit to do so.

I think the video reply is an important and somewhat little-known aspect of internet video culture. The conversation proceeds along these lines. Someone has something to say and posts it on YouTube. Someone else sees the original video, and rather than leaving a text based comment, they reply using the same medium of internet video. Because this reply is left as a comment, the original video maker will be immediately notified, and others watching the conversation can see it play out as well.

One of my all time favorite video replies was made by YouTube user Mikeleh in response to a very popular video in education circles called An Open Letter to Educators. If you’ve not seen it before, it is worth a look…

It is an interesting perspective, and I sometimes share it with my own college students as a conversation starter about their own educational experience. But more interesting to me was the funny and wise reply by Mikeleh. In it he dismantles several of the original author’s statements, and gives us a very astute explanation of some of the changes occurring in the digital age.

I think the video reply is so important I suggested it as a DS106 Daily Create assignment that appeared yesterday. There were only a few takers on this particular Daily Create challenge, but I’m glad it made it in the cycle. If you don’t know what Daily Create is, it is a daily challenge that exercises your creativity.

If you do YouTube for yourself, or with students, you might consider the possibilities of the Art of the Video Reply.

 

Networks Have Layers

I redid the sound track on this scene from Shrek, to have Shrek explain the OSI model to Donkey. Networks are like onions – they have layers.

I enjoy doing voice work like this. I would like to do a whole series of scenes that could be used in a technology class, but I’ve never given this much thought. I should brainstorm about it.

Do you have any ideas of scenes I could do in computer and technology classes?

Too Cool For School: A Memoir

I was really pleased to learn about the forthcoming release of Elizabeth Collins’ new book Too Cool For School: A Memoir. Living in the bookstore-deprived area that I do, I purchased her e-Book through Amazon, which means I can read it a few weeks before the print book will be released, and I downloaded it as soon as I learned it was availabile. Talk about instant gratification!

Book:Too Cool For School

I first learned about Collins in 2010 when a Philadelphia news story came out about her dismissal for blogging while teaching, which is evidently a fireable offense in some locales. Collins & I became acquainted through social media after I mentioned her story in another blog post about a separate blogging teacher incident. Collins rightly points out that the details of these two stories I discuss are miles apart, with the only similarities being that a teacher was dismissed for something written on a blog. (These stories were starting to appear on my radar some years ago, but they are becoming so frequent nowadays that when a new Google alert appears in my inbox, I don’t always bother to click on it.)

In the memoir, Collins asks, “Will any online presence ultimately damn a teacher?” It is a question that all teachers need to consider. I think mileage will vary, and that much depends on where and who you are teaching. For example, I have noticed that many college educators are actually advancing careers through blogs and other online media. But college students are adults, and this is a key factor. We still have a boogie man mentality when it comes to discussing or involving minor kids online. Apparently some people are afraid that kids will be kidnapped by Bulgarians if their likeness appears on a website, but the research does not bear this out. But we still have the mentality and look with deep suspicion upon any teacher of kids who shares “too much” in online spaces. I agree with Collins when she says, “I believe this is the pivotal moment when things can either get worse or get better for teachers who blog, tweet or even post on Facebook.

Let’s show them why this is an important issue. Teachers who blog are actively working on improving their practice, and teachers who blog with their students are teaching them to be citizens in a digital world. There are a lot of amazing opportunities being missed because of the fear mentality associated with teaching, blogs, kids and the internet.

In my own case, a blog led to a collaboration with someone I have never met before, and having my thoughts being published in her book. I can only assume that, although it was only a small contribution, having my ideas in print would have some benefit to my career as a college educator. This couldn’t ever have happened without my blog.

One more recent, and fun example. Teacher Kathy Cassidy tweets that her 1st graders are doing a “snow clothes challenge” with a video showing how quickly they can don their winter gear for recess. They did it in around 1.5 minutes.

I saw the tweet a few minutes after the video was posted, and my schedule permitted me to make a video reply for them to watch, on the same day! Mrs. Cassidy reported that the kids really enjoyed it, so I showed my own students who also agreed to do the challenge.

Both groups of students benefited from this interaction. The children reached out beyond their classroom and felt important that people were replying to their message. The college students took a few moments of their time to create what amounts to an act of generosity. Both learned something about digital citizenship that day. This is not possible in a climate that views blogging and internet interactions with suspicion. It is past time to wake up and see the enormous potential benefits that are possible when teachers go online to interact with other educators and with other classrooms.

Thank you Kathy Cassidy for including my students and me in your lives and in your learning. Thank you also to Elizabeth Collins for thinking that what I wrote about was relevant enough to repeat in your book. I am humbled to know such people.