"Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice."

Next week, we will continue the discussions of motivation and mindset that we started this week. We are reading a new book which will bring a fresh perspective to the conversation. Also, the first video projects will be behind you and we can talk about what motivated you to make the choices you made in your project.

For blogging next week, the first post should be your actual video either embedded or linked to in your post along with some reflection on how it turned out. How well did you manage your time and how did that correspond to the quality of the finished product? How well did you achieve the goals of making your video informative, entertaining, and (technologically) polished? How well did you balance the material you gained in interviews with your own voice introducing the topic and drawing conclusions from your research? (This post is not due until Oct 2 since that is the technical due date for the video itself.)

In the second post, I'd like you to respond to the Mindset book (what do you think of the main argument of the book so far?) and connect it to the recent things we have been reading about and discussing in regard to the topic of motivation.

If you want to learn more about the Marshmallow experiment, there are lots of articles that talk about it. This one, for example, talks about how the SAT scores of someone who could wait the full 15 minutes were "two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds."

This article, "The Secret of Self-Control" from The New Yorker has a much more extensive discussion of the experiment if you are interested.

And here is an interesting article critiquing the whole concept called "Just Let Them Eat The Marshmallow."

Enjoy!

Some sample midterm videos from last year's INQ classes

Here are a few videos that I thought you might benefit from looking over. Last year's classes had a slightly different assignment than you, so the topic is different from what you are working on. These videos are not at all perfect, but they all have some strengths and they all are different and therefore represent a range of what you might do with your own videos.

The first is done using iMovie which makes it flow nicely. She has too many words on some slides and some of her interviewees don't always know what to say, but it shows you some of the things you can do with iMovie:

"Critical Thinking in College"

The second uses Windows Movie Maker. This one does a great job with Movie Maker even though it doesn't have a pre-formatted template to plug into like in iMovie. Some parts are hard to hear, though:

"The Art of Critical Thinking"

This one is different because it doesn't use music. Notice the different feel to it (she wanted it to be less chaotic, more formal and informative) and think about the feel/tone you want your video to have:

"Midterm Project"

This last one makes a point of being funny, and the video maker also draws some of his own comics and includes them in the video, so it's very creative. In some places the audio is hard to hear, but he does a nice job of supplying text (like subtitles) to help us along):

"INQ 101 Critical Thinking Video"

Enjoy!!

"It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?" -- Henry David Thoreau

For the past week, everyone was working on their Self-Study for Time and Time management. Please bring that work to class on Tuesday so we can talk about the results.

For next week's blog posts, the first post should be about the study and what you found out. Reflect on what the study taught you about how you spend your time. Discuss how many hours you spent on doing school work versus how many hours doing other things. Also, what sucked up a lot more time than you expected? What did you procrastinate on and how (if you did)? How do you want to plan out your week in order to do a better job at time management? What can you take away from the study and apply to the rest of the semester to come?

The second post is related to your video projects and how you are structuring it. What topic are you choosing for your video and why? What questions are you going to find answers to? Why are those questions important to first-year students? How are you going to use those questions to make an interesting video?

As I mentioned in class, the video project will help teach you about 1) putting together information to present to others, 2) organizing ideas with a clear beginning, middle and end, 3) using video-making technology...but it will also help you practice the time management skills we have been talking about, specifically planning ahead, tackling a large project in small chunks, and giving yourself enough time for the various stages of brainstorming to researching to learning the technology to crafting the project to proofing and troubleshooting. Get started on it right away so you give yourself all the time you need!

"Frequently Asked Questions" -- Interview Video Assignment

Frequently Asked Questions

Your first video assignment is to create a 5-minute video that is both informative and interesting/entertaining. You will use interviewing as a form of research in order to gain material for your video.

Choosing a Topic

All first year students on a college campus have a lot of questions. Think about how we, as a class, can create a resource for students built around the concept of "FAQ." The first step is to brainstorm good questions. What questions do you hear asked over and over by your peers? What questions do you seek answers to? Narrow your topic down to a set of 3 or 4 related questions. (You may not end up using all of the questions in your final video, but it is better to have more material to work with at the start of this project.)

Interviewing Around Campus

Next, you will need to go out onto the campus and do some on-the-ground research. You will need to interview at least 2 faculty or staff members, at least 3 first-year students, and at least 2 older students and/or role models (a CC, a team captain, student leader of a club or organization, an OA or peer mentor, etc.). Ask all of the people you interview a short series of questions centering around your topic and take notes, audio and/or video footage for use in the final video project. Again, all of what you record may not make it into your final project. However, you must include something from each interview (even one quote) although it can be presented as video, audio, or written text in your project.

Creating a Video

The final step involves interpreting the findings and crafting them into an informative and interesting video project. Be creative! It can be crafted as a news report or talk show or any other format that makes it engaging. It can include music or pictures to break up the question and answer pattern. Don't forget to add an original title.

The project should have a clear beginning, middle, and end that moves through the following elements:

1) framing the question and providing some context for the project,

2) exploring answers to your question from multiple perspectives,

3) providing some closure from your perspective, some “so what?” or “what have we learned?” to leave the viewer with at the end of the video.

This project requires you to create a short video, not a set of PowerPoint slides. It is not a presentation project; your video needs to stand alone and run on its own. It is possible to create such a digital project using PowerPoint, but it is much easier and more professional if done in iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or other video creation software. In past experience, iMovie has provided the best results and is available in any Mac Lab on campus. The final video should be about 5 minutes long and needs to be uploaded to your blog; it can be first uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo and linked to on your blog. Be sure to test out that it works. Also, include a works cited listing all of the people you interviewed and their titles, if appropriate.

Due: Oct 2

This I Believe

For Thursday, I have assigned a reading/re-reading/reviewing of our Common Read book, This I Believe. You should have read some or all of it over the summer already. For class on Thursday, bring a list of your top 5 entries in the book: your 5 favorite or 5 most interesting or 5 best written (you decide how you select the 5 and on what criteria). Write out a list of the 5 titles, their page numbers, and briefly why you chose each one or why it stands out to you.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” -- Aristotle

As we mentioned in class, the college semester is short. It is important to try to get into a good routine for all of your classes early on in the semester and get a little ahead rather than being in a position where you have to catch up after you get your midterm grades. The readings from this past week speak to the development of good academic habits and ways to become a solid student in the classroom. But don't be satisfied with "good student" -- always push yourself to set your own challenges: cover new ground, think a little differently, stretch your vision of who you can be.

Blogging Assignments for Next Week: 1) What tips and information has resonated with you the most in the past few weeks? What elements will you actually implement into your schedule/habits as a college student? What aspects are not as useful? How will you make sure you are fulfilling your potential as a student and meeting your personal goals? 2) Read through a number of student blogs (listed on the sidebar of this blog). Find one or two which you feel represent an "A" level grade and explain why. If you can't find any blogs that meet high enough standards to warrant an "A" overall, then find one that reaches excellence in critical thinking, one in creativity, etc. Be specific when discussing the strengths of these blogs and what makes them excellent.

10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice

The article and graphic we were looking at in class is from National Geographic. You can link to it here if you'd like to get some more information.

10,000 hours

Fyi: If the link for the article on the 10,000 hours isn't working, just google Malcolm Gladwell and his theory of taking 10,000 hours to master something.

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."

Reflections: The first full week of INQ has passed, and students seem to be settling into the campus, classes, and their routines well. Now is the time to figure out how you're going to work on meeting your personal goals and how you're going to strech and challenge yourself as you move forward in the semester. Here is an image I wanted to pass along for you to think about in considering what to work on in the weeks ahead:

Blogging: In writing your blogs, just like any other writing that happens in a college classroom, be sure to work on cultivating the craft of writing. Here are a few tips: 1) Develop an interesting and distinctive writing voice (work on not just sounding like everyone else.) 2) Be sure your blog has a flow, progresses through paragraphs, tells a story -- in other words, make sure it has a clear beginning, middle, and end. 3) Use rich language that is a pleasure to read and makes your readers see from your unique perspective. 4) Include some inquiry questions that make your readers think differently. 5) An engaging photo, video, or link breaks up the text and adds creativity to the post. Next Week: For the next week's readings, continue to read and take notes and bring them to class. Also, think of discussion questions (inquiry questions) because I will ask students to lead discussion more next week, practicing agency, taking action, being leaders. Next Week's blogging assignments are the following: 1) Take notes on readings and synthesize those notes with class notes/discussion. Choose one theme from those and write about it. Start with recapping what you read, what was said...but move the discussion further: what more do you have to say about this topic? what else do you see when you look at these various ideas side-by-side? how can you push our thinking on these dieas beyond what we covered in class and what was in the readings. (Be sure to include some direct quotes from readings in this post.) 2) Write about something difficult you have faced in your life and how you overcame it. Reflect on that experience. What did you learn from that? How can you apply that to the difficulties that you will face in college? You can choose to do these posts in any order, one due Mon. and one due Wed. Between now and Tuesday, also consider the question raised briefly in my second class (but one which we will return to as the semester progresses): "Why are you here?"

“I believe the term “blog” means more than an online journal. I believe a blog is a conversation. People go to blogs to read AND write, not just consume.” -- Michael Arrington

Dear INQ students, Welcome to Blogging! I am collecting all of the student blogs in a list on the righthand sidebar of this page. Check out some of the ones listed there already to see how people are organizing them. What blog titles make you want to click on them and read more? (Remember, that you can edit your format and change your title, layout, colors, etc. at any time.) I look forward to having a full list of 44 blogs of diverse styles and voices. If you are having trouble, you can 1) look at the provided tutorials, 2) search google for help, 3) comment on this post with questions I can try to answer, 4) ask a classmate for help, 5) email me for help, 6) come to my office for help, 7) go to a computer lab on campus and see if one of the technicians there might have time to help you. Don't just "do nothing" though; take initiative to problem solve (AGENCY)! Also, I just sent out an email because the first book we're reading is not yet in the bookstore, so I've tweaked the reading schedule for Tuesday to account for this. If you don't get that email, please let me know.