My Mantra

I have been thinking recently that I should share this and so here it is: my mantra.

What's a mantra, you may ask?

Well I'm not going the wikipedia route here, though you certainly may, if you wish, to check my definition. Here's the story. I was first introduced to the concept in 1970 when the University of Tennessee campus was visited by a representative from the Maharishi Mahish Yogi. I was with my first wife then, having been hitched up at the age of 19, and after purifying our bodies of alcohol, drugs, and other contaminants for two weeks, we met this person at a hotel in downtown Knoxville, presented a handkerchief and a fruit offering according to instructions, and spent, individually, an hour or so being introduced to the practice of Transcendental Meditation. I practiced this for a year or so until I left it off in the pursuit of other enlightenments. I think, actually, that it was becoming socially difficult for me to remain pure in that way, and perhaps that I was afraid of becoming just as "realized" as I felt I was becoming. It scared me.

Anyway, during that initiation, I was given my very first mantra, an utterable sound that I was told was mine and mine alone. I was cautioned that I should never share it with anyone and led in a very very practiced way to take it from audibly perceivable to internally mine. Here it is: "aieng." I can still see that wizened, long gray bearded, dark-skinned guru as he spoke it, and I repeated it, and he repeated me repeating it, and so on, as he guided it with repetition of diminishing volume and emphasis until I was repeating it silently within my mind. At some point he gently guided me out of my silent self-immersion and back into the world. My mantra had been planted. My wife was next, and I sat peacefully in the front room of the small hotel suite knowing she was receiving her own mantra from this learned, wise, and graceful guru in the back room, just as I had.

Years later, after she had left me for a bank vice president and I revisited the house that we had bought in Knoxville, Tennessee for what remained of my possessions, we mentioned that time and spoke aloud our mantras. Hers was, in retrospect not surprisingly, identical to mine.

That her mantra was also mine did not contaminate my mantra for me. It has come in handy many times, and when I could not sleep or felt unsettled in the world, I have oftened returned to meditation and to that mantra. I have also done some reading about different forms of meditation, and understanding that mantras could be real, actual words led me to create a new mantra. It is this one that I want to share with you today.

These days, when I find myself distracted by grief over lost ones, or worried about young ones, or somehow I feel I just need to find my lost center, I repeat, inside, never aloud, my new mantra. It's simple:

I am good I am well I am happy I am healthy I am whole

over and over again until I find myself--well, feeling more good, well, happy, healthy, and whole.

It works for me. Maybe it will for you. I share it for that reason. You can read more about Transcendental Meditation at tm.org. And that wikipedia article I promised not to cite is really a pretty good read. I lied. Namaste.

MNPS Principals' Retreat Virtual School Sharing

We had an experience yesterday that I want to share here, and I hope that if there are any who were present in the audience who might have taken pictures or who have thoughts they would like to share will do just that--share them.

Our school district, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, like I'm sure is the practice in many others, holds an annual Principals' Retreat to reset focus for those school leaders who are dispersed across the geographical district. It's one of the very few times these folks are all in one room. In our district, which serves nearly 80,000 students preK-12 and a growing population of adult learners, that means that around 140 school Principals meet to network, learn, and share.

This year the Retreat is held over three days, including Saturday I might add, at the Martin Professional Development Center, where my "small but powerful" team spent its first year implementing an on-the-fly Virtual Learning Program whose highlight was the graduation of seven seniors at the end of May 2010. I remember being up on that graduation stage as our little cadre of graduates was introduced by Middle College High School Principal Rod Manuel, and looking out into dead center of the audience of parents, grandparents, and family assembled as Mr. Manuel stated that he was "elated to host this innovative program in his school, where seven seniors who are graduating with a high school diploma today completed all of their schoolwork completely online" to see one small, thin, grandmother with tightly pursed lips slowly and solemnly shaking her head side to side in a gesture of firm disapproval. I'll never forget that moment.

That was when I became convinced that it would be an absolutely essential part of my work to help "sell" K12 online learning to the world. If people do not see how it really works, how much good it does for how many students, presently and in the future; if people do not understand not only how many ways the burgeoning educational practices of online learning challenge the way "we've always done it," and should; if people don't understand how this new way of facilitating learning is both rigorous and in many ways more, not less, subject to accountability for students, teachers, and administrators; we who understand those things will not have done our job.

In our little closing 30 minutes of the first day of the retreat, we shared and shared effectively. Here's my Facebook status post from 30 minutes after the event, when I opened my laptop on my family room table:

Just did 5 minutes to close a great share in front of 140 Principals, and our share included a Director of High Schools, two of our Adjunct Teachers (one present and one via Skype), two students (one present and one via Google Chat Video), and moi, the "student support guy." I'm beaming, and so proud of our "small but powerful team" as I put it. MNPS Virtual School Metro Nashville Public Schools

Tiona Horton demonstrates Discussion Based Assessment

 Much thanks to Dr. Michelle Wilcox, the Executive Director of High Schools who oversees our high school and its growth and who designed the presentation, to my colleague and "Coordinator/Interim Principal" Barbra Thoeming, who was an audience member at this "show" but who drives the school bus for us all (that's a virtual but very real school bus, ya'll), Dr. Kecia Ray for putting together this "small but powerful" team in the first place, Adjunct Teachers Fiona Horton and Alton Knight for their brilliant and lucid   demonstrations of how this all works, student Carrie Daniel for her onsite explanation of why online learning worked for her and helped allow her "time to work and help support her family of seven" and student Maggie Alexander for her amazing Google Chat performance simulating a Discussion Based Assessment gone awry (Maggie, you really helped Ms. Horton demonstrate how online teachers can clearly see if a student is not doing the work they claim to be doing--the DBA). Thanks also to Kelly Brown, our amazing School Counselor, Michael Terry, our erstwhile an creative Registrar/SupportPerson/DataMan, and to Sherry Hill, our amazing Senior Secretary. I will close this shameless Oscar-esque display of gratitude by thanking the parents and teachers and students who are taking these unprecedented baby steps with us, steps which I predict will take us to the firm establishment of this very new way of teaching and learning within an immense system (the MNPS School District) which, as I said at closing, "was not designed to host it." Wait, I should also include the people at the top, who are our trusting but vigilant enablers: Jay Steele, MNPS Associate Superintendent, and Dr. Jesse Register, Superintendent of Metro Nashville Public Schools. Principals, I thanked you in person yesterday.

In the spirit of "selling the concept," please enjoy this 90 second video of student responses about...

The 3rd Issue of Virtual Environments Journal is HERE!

A beautiful new issuu (sic) of SIGVE's Virtual Education Journal? With two articles by moi and 60 pages of some of the most engaging introductions to what's happening in 3D worlds learning and teaching ever shared with the public?

Bring it on!!!

And thanks, Rosie and Bob Vojtek. FYI, both of those fine folks, who produce VEJ as a labor of love, are vibrant educational community leaders, public school administrators in their "real" lives and active volunteers for educational innovation on an international scale. See what they and many other innovators are up to in virtual worlds. You'll be amazed and impressed, I warrant.

Open publication - Free publishing

Please share profusely. And do visit ISTE Island in Second Life before  it moves to a new, smaller (but most likely more robust) space. You'll want to build a few virtual memories from the heyday of our tribe, now, wontcha?

Cross-posted (and elaborated upon) from Oh!VirtualLearning!

Groupshots

For better or for worse, I often consider myself a solitary fellow. I have my tight knit little group at MNPS Virtual School with whom I work, often in isolation (but not far from community) in my beautiful corner office on the top floor of an historical building in the Cohn Adult Learning Center in Nashville, Tennessee. But it has been a core assumption of my own self-image that I'm sort of a loner. Teachers everywhere might identify with this--typically isolated in a classroom with no other adult to share their best moments with, teachers have often cited isolation as a basic descriptor of their work environment.

Having moved into our new school and into my new office in a bit of a rush in August of last year, I recently came into a newly donated desk, which stimulated a sort of remodel of my office. The whole process left me with a new space on a wall directly across from my desk. I'm not one to leave an empty wall, so I brought in a wonderful Red Grooms silkscreen (see this version online) that had been languishing in my attic.

It was too wide for the space. That was okay, since we had a wall in what I call our "Great Room," which is a repurposed band practice room, a wall that needed that drawing. In fact, two nails were already set in perfect positions in the exact space for it. The Great Room, too, is shaping up

What to do with the space in my office?

Inspiration: When I crawled up the pull down ladder to grab the Grooms, I noticed a multi-snapshot frame on the attic floor. I intend to climb back up in a few minutes, when the family is all awake and before going in to my Friday (news flash, MNPS just called to say school is closed for snow! Yay!, er, I mean, awwwww), to snag that. It will host a sort of "Where's Waldo" (substitute "Scott" for "Waldo") set of pictures from past events that put my "solitary fellow" self-image to the lie. I thought it might be fun to put them here in order to share with whomever it is who actually reads this half-decade long memoir/op-ed thing called scottmerrickdotnet.

The first one that came to mind is what I lovingly called "the moneyshot" from NECC08. Taken at the conclusion of our jam-packed "SLedupotential" event, it features a group of human beings all of whom had met as avatars in Second Life, collaborating in an extraordinarily robust community of educators to mine virtual worlds for their potentials for learning and teaching:

Next, the group photo from NECC09's ISTE SIGVE "Birds of a Feather" meeting. This one was in Washington, DC, and we actually had some ISTE-provided refreshments for a get-together of the humans behind the innovator-avatars:

Then the "moneyshot" from ISTE 2010's Virtual Environments Playground, three days of back to back presentations highlighting where things had gone in that broad arena of education (a very narrow one in some  opinions, but only because those are not informed by virtual realities). Come to think of it, this event was also blessed by refreshments--frozen confections, yummy!:

From Edublogger Con (the "unconference" from ISTE's NECC08 in San Antonio, Texas, this is the most challenging picture for "Where's Scott!" Hint: at the core...

And finally, I found this one, a favorite of mine of our still tightly-knit group, the MNPS Virtual School team, my family away from family. Wait, who's that interloper? Oh, yes, Mayor Karl Dean of our fair Metropolitan city, Nashville, Tennessee! I believe this one may need its own frame since I think the one in the attic only has spaces for four pictures. I think I'll print this one BIG: 

Thank you for listening/reading/watching, and may you enjoy your own "'Way Back Machine" when you redecorate your own office! Hopefully, as it has for me, the process will help you feel less alone as you perform your own good work for our community members of the future, our students. I guess I'm not such a loner. Cheers!

Happy 2012, ya'll, and welcome to a new year of renewed dedication to blogging my head off. 


I've recently begun working on a piece of writing to document my work in K12 distance learning and I'm working-titling it 

The Necessaries: Essential Components for Best Practices in Online K12 Education

In doing so, I realize that I need to write both universally and specifically, but my overriding goal is to create something both personal and professional, sort of like this blog, that will help others emulate and improve upon our efforts here in Nashville, Tennessee. I won't be sharing the text itself as I work, but I will be pulling out snippets to share as I progress. My rough draft begins with a set of numbered (though not necessarily sequentially) bullets:

1. Humanware
2. Vision
3. Funding
4. Cooperation/Interfunctionality with Existing Systems
5. Learning Management System
6. Monitoring and Support Procedures
7. Marketing
8. Facilities
9. Hardware

I'll be adding to these and possibly merging some of them into headings, but call the alarm, I'm getting started. Wish me luck.

See our work at http://vlearn.mnps.org, a website I created, maintain, and continue to improve (hopefully) as we proceed.

Happy Holidays from Scottmerrick Oh and his Human, Scott Merrick

Happy Holidays!

Announcing the 2011 Winners – Congrats to All!

Announcing the 2011 Winners – Congrats to All!

You Are Invited to Virtual Worlds

Feeling adventurous? Discover worlds of creativity, collaboration, and wonder by joining thousands of educators all across the globe who are exploring the values 3 dimensional "virtual worlds" can bring to learning and teaching. If you're feeling a little under the educational weather, this will help rejuvenate you, I can all but promise.-  scottmerrick Oct 8, 2011 8:15 am

I am working on a 3D Virtual World meeting and collaboration space for our school. Projected rollout of this powerful tool for use by our teachers and students is not until the 2012-13 school year, but you can learn more right now about 3D Virtual Worlds at a wiki I help maintain for the International Society for Technology in Education's Special Interest Group for Virtual Environments:http://sigve.iste.wikispaces.net . Spend a little time there then check out my Oh! Virtual Learning! blog.

When you feel like you want to actually explore virtual worlds for yourself, you can easily get yourself an avatar by clicking "Register" a thttp://reactiongrid.com and then downloading the Hippo viewer for your computer. Install that and fire it up using the avatar name and password you set up (and the settings information here) and go explore our 3D space in Reaction Grid (on the login screen, find "Places" and click that, then scroll down to MNPSVirtualLearning. Explore as much as you will and/or set up an appointment with me at the School or over Skype (my username is cleverly disguised: "scottmerrick") and we'll go in together. Tapping into my years of exploring the metaverse, I'll jumpstart you.

Some pictures might help:

Long view of landing area

Presentation space

Long View of Presentation Space

Finally, the other effort I'm making, a 3 month trial, is to create a web-based Virtual World for MNPS Virtual School at http://jibemicro2.reactiongrid.com/MNPSVS/ -- this requires no software downloads (other than a one-time browser plug-in) and can be visited right now without any hesitation. Just visit the link and go explore. Check back often to see what's been added. This platform runs on Android right now and will be on iPhones in the near future! Here's a pic of that:

and here's a video so you can see a bit about how easy Jibe is to visit:

Prisoners of Time

I submit this for your morning/afternoon/evening read: 

Have we learned nothing? In 1994, The National Education Commission on Learning and Time published

PRISONERS OF TIME

To quote from its introduction:

"Learning in America is a prisoner of time. For the past 150 years, American public schools have held time constant and let learning vary. The rule, only rarely voiced, is simple: learn what you can in the time we make available. It should surprise no one that some bright, hard-working students do reasonably well. Everyone else-from the typical student to the dropout- runs into trouble.

Time is learning's warden. Our time-bound mentality has fooled us all into believing that schools can educate all of the people all of the time in a school year of 180 six-hour days. The consequence of our self-deception has been to ask the impossible of our students. We expect them to learn as much as their counterparts abroad in only half the time.

 As Oliver Hazard Perry said in a famous dispatch from the War of 1812: "We have met the enemy and they are [h]ours."

If experience, research, and common sense teach nothing else, they confirm the truism that people learn at different rates, and in different ways with different subjects. But we have put the cart before the horse: our schools and the people involved with them-students, parents, teachers, administrators, and staff-are captives of clock and calendar. The boundaries of student growth are defined by schedules for bells, buses, and vacations instead of standards for students and learning."

National Education Commission on Time and Learning
1255 22nd Street, NW
Washington, DC 20202-7591
(202) 653-5019
Read the whole report at http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/PrisonersOfTime/index.html

Comments, anyone?

On April 9th, a Poem

I was squeezing honey into my coffee from its honeybear this morning, counting "one-and-a-two-and-a-three-and-a" as the thin stream poured, a habit anytime I pour anything, established from five-plus years bartending for a living, decades ago. This caused me to reflect how any process, repeated enough (how many times did I tip up a pour-spout bottle and count in my head like that?), internalizes into subconscious habit. Mindfulness should be as lucky in my own internal habit mechanisms. Perhaps with a little more practice.

My brother died early this year, leaving my older brother and me as the remaining Merrick patriarchs, the last of our nuclear family, as it were. Ed texted me a week or so ago wondering if we should do something to honor Bill on his upcoming birthday. On Tuesday he would have been 59 years old. Alcohol, combined with some other habits of mind and body that he had allowed, perhaps encouraged, to gain control of his life, took him away in a last, violent, motorcycle moment.

Maybe it's no coincidence: While cleaning out my home office recently I came across a thin three-ring binder of poems written during a semester of Vanderbilt University writing classes with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet-in-residence Philip Levine (he received the news of that award the evening before a class session). There are a few unpublished poems in binder, ones not in my little book of poetry that has languished at Lulu.com, a victim of my congenital lack of fiscal motivation, for years. If you want to take a look at that it's at http://lulu.com/scottmerrick. You can get a .pdf download for like a buck and a quarter.

 That semester with Levine is a story unto itself, one which I may write someday, but not here.

One of those poems was written the week of April 9th, 1995, on the anniversary of our loss of our father, Edwin Augustus Merrick III, who had died in 1985. At the risk of being accused of double-dipping my grief, I submit it here to mark the passing of William Claude Merrick (November 22, 1952-January 20, 2011). I will note Levine's hand-written comment on the faded paper: "Don't abandon this -- much of the writing is potent; there is true candor here."

May Bill, my much missed little brother, rest in peace. And I mean it. As with all my poems, I feel it's best read aloud, if under your breath. Please accept...

On April 9th 

The first year, on this day, my mood was maudlin.
Those who knew me knew the reason why:
Between me and the world there hung a coffin
suspended in the air. Although I'd try
to focus past it to the tasks at hand,
nothing I could do or say sufficed.
Later on, my anger at the man
and sorrow (over having lost him, twice)
as if bound by blood oath, would contrive
most painful ways to show the day was coming.
These past few years, the ache, alive,
less violent, has assumed a soft, incessant drumming.
Today I had not marked the day at all
until my hand picked up a telephone, to call.

MNPSVS in Jibe

Just a quick intro into Jibe/ReactionGrid at MNPSVS:

This is a project I'm funding and supporting mostly with work done at home. I envision it to be a a fun gathering space/meeting space for our faculty and students as well as an enrichment option for our Computer Science learners. Feel free to visit--there's more there almost daily. If you have any suggestions for additions to the content, feel free to comment 'em here!

Direct link is http://jibemicro2.reactiongrid.com/mnpsvs/