Quotes

Quotes from: The Long Haul, by Myles Horton

“I was working on the idea that you learn what you do, and not what you talk about.”

“It also became clear that there had to be a place where people could learn how to make decisions by actually making real decisions. That's how you learn – by doing it. I believed then and still believe that you learn from your experience of doing something and from your analysis of that experience.”

“We had to set ourselves a goal, but we didn't have the slightest idea of how to achieve it.”

I chose these quotes because I feel like they relate to me the most. I feel like these three quotes are closely linked to each other. With the first quote, I feel this is very true and realized this with myself recently. It is easy to have a lot of ideas and talk about them, but the only way to really get a good understanding of what it takes to do something, or to show people that you are serious about something is by actually doing it. I have talked probably since I was a teenager about wanting to own my own business and wouldn't it be great, etc. etc. But, I never did anything about it, I just had ideas and thoughts. Now, with where I am in my life, I am just now staring to go through the process of making this a reality. I still don't have anything to show that I am doing it, but I know for myself, that I am serious and taking it a lot more serious than I did in the past.

The second quote goes hand-in-hand wit the first one for me. I am gong through the learning process now at College Unbound. It is a project for me, but a very real one. If the project doesn't go as I want it to, it may not be a problem from the CU point of view because it is all a learning experience for me. It is something that I have ever done before, but am going though the process so I can learn for myslef what it is like. Hopefully it works out, but if it doesn't, I can look back on it and see where I should make changes or do things differently, and then try again.

And, the third quote goes right along with the previous two for me. I have no idea how I am going to achieve my goal, but I know that I am not going to be able to achieve anything if I don't have a goal to begin with. Right now, I have a broad goal and as this semester goes on, I am going to narrow it down in to a defined goal. In the past years, when I simply thought about owning my own business, I didn't really have a goal in mind, or wasn't working towards anything because I always had a job and it wasn't like I needed to do it now, I could put it on the back burner for a while. Now it is right up in my face and I know I need a goal in order to achieve anything.

Disruptive Innovation

These articles about disruptive innovation were very interesting to me. One little idea could change the future for another company and millions of people. Someone who just wanted to improve on another idea ended up turning it's world upside down. Blockbuster seemed like it was a strong business, then Netflix came out and they went bankrupt. It's scary that with the rate that technology is improving these days, that can happen, and it can happen fast. Who knows what company or business will be next to be Netflixed, right now it looks like college is about to be Netflixed.

With the way that colleges insist on staying in their old fashion ways and with the prices as high as they are, I'm sure it is only a matter of time before people start revolting and going to more unconventional schools and taking online classes. These schools refuse to change and that was the mistake that blockbuster made. They thought Netflix was only going to be a niche market, but it ended up taking over the entire market. There's a saying that goes, “If you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards.” There is no remaining idle anymore. Either advance yourself or your company, or get run over by someone who wants to advance.

When I think about staring a business, I am thinking about businesses that people are going to need in the future, not just something that is a fad right now. I am thinking about things that will always be around, or at least in the foreseeable future. I think there are very few things that are always going to be around; we will always need food and water, shelter, and clothes on our back. These are the things that I think about when I think about starting a business. I don't want to be able to get Netflixed out of what I am doing. I want it to be stable and I want it to be able to grow and prosper. Disruptive innovation can be a great thing for some, but can also be deadly to others. I want to make sure that I am on the right side of it when it comes to effecting me and what I do.

Disrupting Ourselves

The article Disrupting Ourselves, by Randy Bass relates to what we are doing at College Unbound in a few ways.  It talks about how there have been a lot of innovative changes to the ways we learn, but the ways of teaching haven’t kept pace.  Teaching has stayed the same as was a hundred years ago.  In the article, it talks about the most powerful learning outcomes from a student’s perspective.  The students said that the most powerful learning experiences that they had in college were from common intellectual experiences, learning communities, collaborative assignments and projects, service learning and community based learning and internships, among a few others.  I mention these because I believe these are all things that we do at CU.

The article also talks about how the practice of high-impact learning could only be done through small classrooms, but now, with the use of technology, it can be done at a larger scale and have a better effect.  This can be made possible through the use of ePortfolio’s.  This is the same thing that we are doing at CU.  All of our work gets posted online so you can see a running timeline of work that has been done.  You can see the progress that is being made in the projects we are doing and the improvement in the work that we are doing.  You can go back and look at where we were, and look at the more recent posts and see where we are today.  In the article, Bass quotes Bret Eynin saying, “Drawing on the power of multimedia and personal narrative, recursive use of ePortfolio prompts students to expand their focus from individual courses to a broader educational process.”  This is what we do at CU.

Bass goes on to talk about bridging the classroom with experiential Learning.  He talks about paying attention to elements like prior learning, experiential knowledge, program-wide learning goals and the long view of expert practice.  These are all things that we do at CU to maximize the learning outcome.  We look at our past experiences and see how we can relate them to our current situations, or maybe even someone else’s situation that is in our cohort.  We set program-wide learning goals and work towards achieving those.  We have an end goal of what we are trying to achieve; for the semester and for the year.  We are able took past the short term and see our long term goal.

In this article, Bass also talks about how college students with the traditional learning style dont necessarily feel a sense of community, sense of mentorship, sense of collective investment and a sense that what they are creating matter.  At CU, we have all these things.  We have the mentorship from the staff at CU and also from our Professional Advisors at our internship.  We have a sense of community because we are interacting with each other, along with each others works that are in the surrounding community.  We also see what is going on in the community, whether it is art shows or plays that are going on and go see them and relate them to our learnings.

I think someone needs to get a hold of Randy Bass and let him know what is going on here in Providence, RI.  We have a lot in common with what it is that he talks about of higher education.  I think he would be presently surprised.