On Merrill + Wilson, Blue Beanies, and Wiley

I guess I have some sort of built-in bias, because when I read the "debate" between Merrill and Wilson, I sided with Merrill. Maybe the bias is that I naturally want to side with someone who I've seen speak before, and someone who's well-respected in BYU's IPT department—or maybe I just agree that there ought to be standardization in our field (maybe we could have...ORANGE beanies!). I think Merrill's "proper study of instructional design" is very interesting. The same way web developers and computer science people have now made it so that anyone can publish a website, or even build their own computer programs, Merrill says that instructional designers should be building similar tools and frameworks to empower others to teach better. Now that would be open education, eh, Dr. Wiley?

In other news, Merrill may have given me guidance on what kind of project I could do for my Master's Degree. And in a way, it's kinda cool that many corporate instructional design jobs overlap heavily with project management and business stuff. Maybe I'd enjoy that?

Skinner and Khan

For those of you who don't know a thing about B.F. Skinner's teaching machines, click to learn more. For those of you that don't know about Khan Academy, click to learn more.

For those of you that, through whatever means, do know about Skinner and Khan, aren't the parallels crazy? Very structured presentation, order and hierarchy of knowledge, teachers acting as facilitators and oversight instead of being in the trenches. Pandemonium.

I'm a Hypocrite — or I'm gonna be one....

So after just finishing reading Wineburg's (2004) comment about 10 rules for presenting (to make it palatable), I realize that I'm gonna eventually break some of those rules. In two of my classes this semester, we end with a big group presentation, using (you guessed it) Powerpoint. I tried to convince my group members to at least use Prezi, and in one case I succeeded! But I know that with the other ones, and probably with Prezi too, I'm gonna end up reading off the screen, giving way too much detail and not having enough time for questions. Although, I do admit I'm not eager to hear questions about our projects, since they're already flimsy enough without giving an audience of 30+ people the time to find and/or poke holes in our work.
So I guess I'm glad there won't be much time for questions, but I still feel bad about the rest of the presentation. It's like I have some sort of "conscience of craft" (Osguthorpe, 2003) or something. Weird.

Oops!

Okay, that didn't work the way I thought it would.  Nevermind!  Disregard last transmission!

Testing, Testing

Hi All!  Michael here, just testing to see if the people I've chosen will get e-mails when I publish this posting.  More importantly, if you don't want to receive an e-mail every time I post, comment on this post and ask to be taken off.  Some people prefer to check whenever they're online, and don't want to be heckled.  That's cool, let me know if you're one of them!  Mucho danke!

P.S. - Happy Belated Valentine's Day! (aka Singles Awareness Day)

"Where is you been all my life?"

It's been a long time since I've blogged, and I apologize to my readers.  You may have been wondering, "What has Michael been up to all this time that he hasn't been blogging?"  I'll tell you...

School.

But not just any schooling—finally doing actual Psychology classes at BYU during the day, instead of generals by evening.  And boy howdy, let me tell you about these Psyc classes—they are like the kind of schooling Ben went through.  They are, surprisingly, some of the most spiritually uplifting classes I've ever taken.  Philosophically engaging, high-scholarship, and LDS-faith-promoting!


To explain what I mean, or to give examples, will take time, because the things I'm being taught are big concepts that take some time to wrap one's head around.  I will say, for now, how blessed and grateful I feel, for being able to study Psychology at BYU.  I have heard one-too-many stories about someone who went to college, took a Psychology class, and grew disillusioned with the Church as a result of what they learned in that class.  I wish every LDS person could learn some of these basic things I'm learning now.


So you know, the Psyc classes I'm taking right now are "History of Psychology" (a basic course), and "LDS Perspectives on Psychology" (a more advanced course).  My professors are cool, but mostly it's the material that I love.  Both profs, though teaching very different subjects, are covering almost all the same things.


In both classes, we've covered philosophical disagreements between the Western Intellectual Tradition and what we know to be true through the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It has been so fascinating to me to see how like-a-Greek I sometimes think, as well as to see how a non-Greek worldview (like a Hebrew one), is actually closer to the reality we know as human beings (vs numbers to be crunched or objects to be acted upon).


"It's all a bit technical, but the important thing is", I'm having a great time learning these things.  My faith is being confirmed and validated and given a strength and reality it's never had before.

On a completely different note, this past week Katherine and I have been feeling very ill.  We both have thrown up and have a hard time processing food—mostly it just runs right through us.  Prayers would be appreciated!

Thanks for tuning in again, and we'll see what I can attempt to explain next time!


P.S. - Check out this cool technology that I was just introduced to (in person) yesterday!

Musings from the Book of Revelation

So I just finished a New Testament class, and we got a great article given to us to help us understand the book of Revelation.  I've been very interested in the book and would love to understand it better.  In particular, there is a beast mentioned in one of the chapters that has a bunch of heads, and is really terrible.  The beast, representing an anti-christ, is "wounded unto death", but then returns later on, having recovered from his mortal wound.  Here's an artist's rendition of the beast:

Religious scholars have discussed and wondered aloud concerning the identity of this beast for longer than any of us need to know.  While some people think that our current president is this beast, other propositions are more credible, and therefore intriguing.  I've heard it suggested that the beast is communism—seemingly wounded to death at the end of the Cold War, but apparently will be revived.  I don't know how that will happen or if it will happen, but after reading the article we received in class, I got some additional insights into this possibility.

Roman Emperor Nero (ruled from A.D. 54-68) began the first persecutions against Christians, and they were horrible.  Nero was paranoid, murderous, capricious, and utterly selfish.  Christians feared Nero and the persecutions and killings he had sanctioned.  When Nero committed suicide, many Christians felt they could breathe a sigh of relief.  However, many feared that Nero, or a personality like Nero, would rise in the future, and would commit again all the same atrocities Nero had, or worse.

Domitian (Nero Redivivus), "Nero Revived"

Unfortunately for the Christians, such an emperor did arise—Domitian ruled from A.D. 81-96, which was about the time the Apostle John received and wrote down his Revelation.  Domitian was worse than Nero, bringing back all the old persecutions, and instituting a form of Emperor worship.  He too was cruel, murderous, and believed he was divine.  Anyone found resisting the state religion of emperor-worship would be accused of treason and blasphemy, and put to death.  Clearly, Nero and Domitian fit the description of the beast who was, then died, then came back again.

But we have a modern parallel to these Roman emperors, although I hope not too close a parallel, in North Korea.  Kim Jong-il is the ruler there, and he is often referred to as "Our Glorious Leader"  or the "Supreme Leader".  He apparently is eccentric, conspiring, and demanding of his people.  There are claims of human rights abuses and all kinds of economic and social deprivation occurring regularly throughout the country.  Instead of emperor worship, we have a personality cult around Jong-il, with his birthday being the biggest holiday in North Korea.

Now even though North Korea would be a great candidate for an explanation of the beast from Revelation, I'm not saying that Kim Jong-il is the anti-christ.  I don't know nearly enough about anything, I haven't studied the books, learned the history, or received any revelations.  We know that there's not necessarily any one personification of the anti-christ—there can be many groups, organizations, or people that all fall into that category.  All I want to do with this post is point out the similarities between the ancient Roman Empire and modern-day North Korea, and explain what I learned from reading that cool article.