Recently, The Art Institute had it’s first Carnival! Student Affairs worked hard to create a fun little break for students right before finals week.

Face Painting

The college also invited folks from the community to join in the festivities. I was impressed by the student participation and how many stuck around throughout the evening. It wasn’t a real carnival (with rides) but there were lots of fun things to do.

Like face painting! I was surprised at how many students (and younger kids) wanted their cheeks covered in stars, peace signs, hearts, and arrows (I guess like the Airbender cartoon?). The booth was run by C.H.A.T. (Celebrating Hispanic Arts and Traditions), a club I am an adviser for). I think Alex and Cristina did a great job face painting, and Alex did a great job with the sign. Hm, I must post a picture of it soon…it’s coolio.

Bungee Run

Also, they had an awesome bungee run! This was sort of off to the side of the carnival due to space. I bet had it been a bit more visible, students (and instructors) would have been all over it. Did I do it? Nah. But I would have, if I had a good adversary that matched my speed and cat like reflexes. I saw those little kids fly back as they try to reach the goal (they had to stick a flag thingy to the end). It was pretty funny, but at times looked a little painful. Maybe next time.

Jalapeno Eating Contest

C.H.A.T. also put on a Jalapeno Eating Contest! At first, no one wanted to sign up, but soon they had about 9 people total. Students had to race to eat the most jalapenos. Okay, so they didn’t know how many would try, so it ended up that whoever ate 8 whole jalapenos first would win. Milk was provided just in case things got too hot. The contest was over in less than a minute! Sadly, I didn’t get to take a photo of the winner. One of my previous students, a female no less, won! These weren’t the small jalapenos, they were big and pickled. Yuck! She, and the runner up, won a free flash drive from the college. I forgot to ask her if she had any “issues” later that night!

Photo Ops

Students served up everything from popcorn and cotton candy to snow cones and hot dogs with fortunes (or misfortunes). The Dean opened hers up to find: “A giant spit wad is heading towards Austin right now!”. Don’t worry, the fortunes were in an attached stick thingy and not in the hot dog. The audio production classes provided the sound for the live music. I wanted to mention “Tejanosarous Rex” mainly because I think their band name is so funny. They are still a new band looking for a label and management and fans…but they got the name down alright.

I got to hang with other instructors, like Julie, an audio instructor.

Gina and Julie

She’s cool and I didn’t notice till we took the photo that we kinda match. I guess she got the memo. In the photo we kinda look alike, except I’m bigger, browner and…..curlier? Why does my head look twice the size of hers?!

I’m glad I didn’t have to teach that night, because I know a lot of students were missing class to chill outside and enjoy the great weather and carnival.

Within my career in education, I have been employed at a community college, an elementary school, and most recently, at a for-profit college. I probably could add my time in grad school as also being a part of a large university as well.

Looking at all the experiences I have had in education, I can narrow down over-arching themes I pulled from working in the different realms.
Let’s start with my first educational job at a community college.

I was hired in 2000 by a community college in Austin. I was very excited to get a job in education for several reasons. One, education is a stable career (usually) and two, I liked being part of something that’s sole purpose is to help educate people. A large portion of my job was to record and edit the Board of Trustee meetings. Afterwords I would compress and stream the video on the web, as well as maintain several web pages. I must admit, I was at times bored with the meetings. Lots of talk about grants, raises and building a new campus or two. It wasn’t till I had been there a while that I really started to listen to what was going on. When they talked about grants and donations, it was all to benefit the students. When they talked about raises, they talked about how to help employees without cutting the needs of the students (a very hard task when working in a non-profit). When they talked about new buildings, they were looking for locations with the furthest reach, they wanted affordable education not only for the people of Austin, but also the surrounding cities and towns. Their purpose was to educate people who didn’t think college was right for them. To educate people who couldn’t pay by offering affordable classes and scholarships. So many people diss community colleges, but they truly do provide an important service. Not everyone gets their education given to them on a silver platter (even if they worked hard for it). Also, along with Associate’s programs, they have technical training, so if the regular classroom isn’t right for you, you can get your degree in auto maintenance or air conditioning repair, etc… May sound dull, but a local AC guy came to our house and made $73 on telling us we need insulation! Obviously there is a need for AC fixers and people are willing to pay. I will always push and tell you how important a community college is, partly because I am a community college graduate. I attended Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and received my AA in Radio/TV.

Sidenote: In high school I was told I should just apply there…and I did. Later I came to resent my counselor. I was not offered any other choices because she thought I couldn’t pay for it/do well/have support, who knows why else. I thought it was my only option. I still resent her, but I am proud I went there and am where I am today because of it. You could try and blame my parents for not pushing, but honestly, they didn’t have the opportunities we did and they just didn’t know what was out there.

The over-arching theme I have learned from my experience and employment at a community college:“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free“! Fighting the good fight, educating the masses…
All this of course, is dependent on the integrity of the college and the board who runs it.

Next, my time at a University. I attended two of varying sizes. The first was Texas A&M Corpus Christi for my BA in TV/Film and the second was The University of Texas at Austin for my MA in Instructional Technology. While I was not employed there, themes still stood out. The culture they create is one of strength and empowerment. We were often told (mainly in grad school) that we were lucky to be there, that we were a select few who made it among many who did not. We were told if you didn’t want to be there, to leave, that there were many waiting to take your place. Students felt like they had to take responsibility of their education and do the best they could with the opportunities they were given. I must admit, it was very stressful, but it pushed me to do well. I wanted to earn the right to graduate, proud that I did my best. And I think I did. The cost was much higher (thankfully I received a few scholarships and then a Fellowship for grad school). But with the cost came many more resources, libraries, museums and academic as well as student support. I don’t have the experience of working at such large institutes, but from the student side, the overarching themes were clear.
The over-arching theme I have learned from my experience at a large University: You were specifically selected, we have a lot riding on you, you have a lot riding on you, don’t let us or yourself down. Oh and “ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free!”

In my next post, I will continue my thoughts on over-arching themes that I have observed while working at a public elementary school and at a non-profit college. The differences are very interesting!

Lately I’ve been having a few issues with two of my classes.

XHTML/CSS

The first is my Intro to Scripting class. In the past, my web design classes were very small, just a handful of students. If one started getting behind, I could work individually with them while the others moved on. In such a small class it’s pretty easy to keep everyone moving forward. Interruptions are fewer and everyone is focused. This quarter I have a class of 16 (I told you my other classes were small, between 3 – 5 people!). It’s much harder to help students when they get lost. What happens is the leaders finish early and the slower learners get so far behind. I have been lucky to have very awesome students who offer to help each other if someone is having trouble (not all students are so kind). We are a week behind on what I want to cover in the class and I’m not 100% sure students feel comfortable with what they have learned. The content is pretty straight forward. I’m teaching xhtml, CSS and JavaScript coding, I’m not even sure if we’ll get to JavaScript at the rate we are going.

I feel I need to revamp my curriculum for larger classes, but how can I do it half way through the semester? Are some students so far behind they will never catch up?

Part of the problem is that I have web majors mixed in with other majors. So I want to go in-depth for that group, but does the other group really need to know the in’s and out’s of code? I can’t just split the class in half and give more work to some. Hm, I’m just not sure how to handle the situation with such a large gap. Also, there are one or two students who are web majors who are having problems too. I have offered tutoring but no one has reserved time.

Part of me wonders if perhaps instead of hand coding everything, I should have started on Dreamweaver (I normally reserve it for Intermediate Scripting). Coding by hand is tedious, but you really do learn a lot about the code. And from my other students who have gone through the class, they like that because Dreamweaver was a snap to learn since they knew what everything already meant. But like I said, with non-majors, do they really need to know it that well? Perhaps if I used a different editor (currently using TextEdit) to write code. There are some free editors that show color coding which I know would help. I could ask our IT about putting that in our mac lab. It is already week 6 (out of 11 weeks), I hope things start coming together!

Photoshop Icon

My other class, Digital Imaging I, focuses on teaching Photoshop as a design tool. I have the same problem between super technology savvy  students and ones who barely know how to open a file. Problems that should be easy to solve by now, are still giving students issues (like making a gradient). How do I backtrack while still moving forward? I have the problem of bored students and the ones who get annoyed at not being able to “get it”.

This is the first quarter that I have had such a big gap. So my classes, which I thought were designed pretty okay, need a lot of revising…but I’m not sure how to keep all students learning (and happy).

Now time for one whine. How can students forget their flash drives (so often)?! Sitting in a 4 hour class and not being able to save anything…especially when doing all this code or digital editing?!

The Summer quarter at the Art Institute is starting on Monday. What classes am I teaching?

• Portfolio I – working 1 on 1 with a student on her porfolio. She is about to get her AAS in Web Design & Interactive Media and we need her to be ready for the world!
• Intro to Scripting – xHTML, CSS and JavaScript
  • For some reason my last class got to JS but didnt’ go as for as I’d like to go. I need to manage my teaching better. I need to be better at JS and by teaching it, I really get a much better grasp on it.
  • I feel much better about this class, this will be my 3rd time teaching it and I each quarter I keep finding more interesting projects to try and incorporate.
• Intermediate Scripting – Dreamweaver
  • Last quarter I brought in an actual client, and students created a website for her. The each designed a mock site, and the client chose the ones she liked best.  The client was “The Suzy Guides”, the author creates walking travel books. It guides your through several big cities around the world. What’s awesome is that she gets to do these walks as her job! The audience for these books are people who have already seen the big monuments and are looking for something more in-depth about the city. Right now she has Beijing and Paris, but is adding NYC and London. Anyway, this is the site the client chose. Right now it is on my webspace from school. Once I have the store open I can move it over to her host. While I would have done things differently, the client loves it and so that makes me really happy. She is also hiring the designer to continue to work on the site, which I also love. I do think they did a pretty good job for just learning Dreamwewaver. Don’t worry, you don’t have to point mistake (like the thumbnails and large image, I know).
• Digital Imaging – Photoshop
  • I really love this class. I love Photoshop, it’s so fun to use (at least to me). And I hope my passion for it is spread to the students. Last quarter we had a great class. Students were great and we brought in a local band to be the client. Students created posters for the band and really created some awesome projects. I saw some work students from other classes did (with no client) and I must admit, my class surpassed them! (Okay, so I may be biased!)
  • Right now I have 3 big projects that they must complete throughout the 11 weeks (we move in quarters).
    1. The first is to create an original movie poster. So they have to think of a movie concept and then create the poster to sell it. Students seem to enjoy this one (especially when it’s their movie idea).
    2. The second project is to create a book cover for their favorite book. This one doesn’t go so well. Apparently most students don’t like to read. For the students who love to read I get excited grins and excellent work, but everyone else is kinda blah about it. I really want to think of some other project. Any ideas?
    3. The final project is bringing in a client – a local band usually. The client will decide on what they want, perhaps a poster for a specific gig or a generic poster for use at any show. Students seem to really dig this and the two bands I’ve used so far have gotten them really excited. I really like this one too.
  • Things I don’t really want to do for a project are like CD covers, or DVD covers. Other classes do this and while I don’t think students mind, I do want to make them think of other things. I wouldn’t do magazine layouts or packaging since that should really be done in Illustrator. Someone suggested doing treasure maps. That’s an interesting idea, but not really popping in my mind. If you have any suggestions, let me know!
• Usability Testing(?)
  • I didn’t really want to teach this class, but due to interviewees not showing up, I think I may have to. I took a whole class on Usability Testing in grad school and that is what I plan to teach. I read a lot of Jakob Nielson and his usability testing and findings. There were others, but he really sticks out in my brain to look to, so I purchased an updated version of one of the books I have. I remember hating Usability Testing. The thing is, it’s one of the higher paying jobs in web, people don’t want to spend time doing it, and when their site isn’t up to par, they have to hire someone to go back and figure out what is wrong – that’s where the big bucks comes in. I disliked it but now I kind of enjoy it. It just saves so much wasted time when problems are found before a site is coded. It’s really the smart thing to do. Anyway, I was hoping to find someone who actually did more than my beginning usability testing for my sites and for my past employers, but that doesn’t look like it will happen. Even this guy from Dell says he can’t do it…and I think he kind of part of his job! But come on, class starts on Tuesday and there is no syllabus for it, yeah I am not eager to try and throw the first day together either. We’ll see if I teach it or not (although I am planning to prepare, just in case).

So those are the course I will be teaching, my plate will be full. I must admit, I have some great co-workers who I have just really enjoy being around. Okay, not all are great, but the ones who are, are supa great

"Herzog" - Saul Bellow

Currently, the Faculty Book Club is ready “Herzog” by Saul Bellow. Sadly, I am way behind. I am only about 1/3 of the way through. What’s funny is that I talked to two of my coworkers…and they haven’t finished it either. Our meeting is on Sunday! Oh well, it is an interesting book, I guess. I think I haven’t read to the more action part. Right now he is sort of a loser. It is an easy read though, just if you have time to site and read it.

I recently met a professor at my school who is doing a research study on young Hispanic males  (for his PhD). Why “young Hispanic males” you ask? This is the group with the highest drop out rate. He has done a lot of research and conducted his own trials in trying to find a way to help this group literally beat the odds. He said he has tried to figure out what would work, crack the code of why less than half will graduate. After school programs, intervention programs, anything to help this group finish high school. He said the only thing that is proven over and over again, and the only thing he can find to help this group is so basic. Reading to your kids. Period. That’s it. That is the only magic he has found. It doesn’t matter what you read, just read. Part of it, he felt, that by reading to your kids, you teach them that you can learn new things from books. If you need to know more about something, you can read. If you want to read better, you can listen and follow along as someone else reads. If you want to get out of the place you are stuck in, then just read. That has the biggest impact on a child’s life (or so his findings tell him). He also said, even if there is only one parent around…READ to your kids!

Ah, now time for bed and for me to read a little.