To Marketta Gregory: What Meditation Is, and What it is Not

Every morning while I eat my whole grain flax cereal, I read our local Rochester paper, the Democrat and Chronicle. Mostly my reading is the comics, but occasionally I have a few extra minutes and read something else. Today the column on faith and daily living by Marketta Gregory caught my eye. It was titled On the Road to Meditation and Faith. In her article, Marketta, a Baptist woman, describes her attempt at meditation while driving on the highways of Rochester, NY.

I was really distressed at her description of meditation, which she believes is not a part of her Christian tradition. Apparently Marketta picked up her meditation instruction from Eat Pray Love, a book about Elizabeth Gilbert's experiences. Marketta believes that meditation is has something to do with humming -- being quiet and humming.

Marketta, meditation has a long history in Christianity. It also can be practiced with no religious overtones at all. Even if practiced for a very short time a day, say 10 minutes, you can get the benefit of thinking more clearly. And that helps everyone.

Here are instructions for a simple kind of meditation called "calming the mind". I recommend that you try this for 30 days, and then if you don't notice any benefit, abandon it. For people who currently are doing some sort of spiritual practice such as a daily Bible study, I would suggest you do this immediately before your study time.

1. Find a quite place/time. You need 10 to 15 minutes of relative peace, so do this when the kids are napping, or at school, and turn off the tv and your cell phone. You don't need a dedicated place, but that can be nice. But for heaven's sake, don't create requirements for yourself like, "I'll meditate when I get the spare bedroom cleaned out and made into a meditation room." Starting now is better than starting tomorrow.

2. Sit comfortably with your back straight, your hands resting naturally in your lap. You don't need to sit cross legged on the floor, although many people do assume that posture. Most important is that your back is straight and you are experiencing a minimum of discomfort.

3. Your eyes should be open, focused about 18 inches in fron of you, a little above your nose. I suggest eyes open, with a soft gaze. Your tongue should be resting in your mouth. You are going to breath thru your nose if possible. Your breath should be natural and unforced.

4. Start by considering your motivation. Your meditation will lead to a clearer mind, which will make it possible for you to more effectively carry out whatever you see as your mission in this life. Take a few minutes to think about this and then make a heart-felt aspiration that your meditation will lead to this.

5. Focus your attention on your breath. As thoughts arise in your mind, simply label them as thoughts and redirect your focus to your breath. Don't allow your mind to grasp those thoughts. Just let them go as they arise and continue to bring your mind back to the breath. This is what meditation is, the effort of refocusing your mind on the object of meditation, in this case the breath. Some meditation techniques focus on an object, such as a picture, a rock, a flower, a small statue. Some meditation techniques focus on a sound, a phrase, a word. I have heard that in early Christian times, people focused on the phrase, "Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner." A link to information about this practice can be found here. In the meditation I am telling you about, you focus on the breath.

6. Continue to redirect the mind to the breath for a period of time, maybe 10 - 15 minutes. It is helpful to have a small timer so you don't have to continually distract yourself by checking the time.

7. When the time has ended, take another moment and make a short aspiration prayer that your meditation will lead to you being able to better carry out your mission in this life. This will be different for each person, based on their own faith tradition.

There are some common problems that come up. If you become sleepy, it is suggested that you mediate at a different time of day when you are more alert. Raise your gaze slightly. Also, you could have a cup of coffee or tea before you meditate. If your mind becomes super busy, that is also very normal. it is suggested that you lower your gaze slightly. Also, several shorter sessions might be better to start.

Don't become discouraged, however. No one that I know of meditates without thoughts arising, which is good because it is the practice of controlling your mind when thoughts arise that is true meditation. You will be amazed at the control you can develop during the rest of your day. So, if for example, you have negative thoughts, you will be able to control those thougts with greater ease. You will also find that you can think more clearly when you do your bible study or other spiritual reading.

Good luck, and may all benefit from your fruitful meditation practice!

Winter Rose

IMG_1044, originally uploaded by clare.dygert.

Rochester NY is a sea of gray in the wintertime. The sky is gray, the ground is white, the tree trunks are black with white snow. Usually, by the time we get to February, I have already come home and told J that I MUST MUST MUST get out of here. Now.

But this year I can't get out of here this winter because we are planning a long and expensive trip to Africa. Every vacation day and every penny is being carefully squirreled away.

Last Sunday, to help me make it through the winter, J took me to Arena's Florist, and i bought a bouquet with this beautiful rose. I had a lovely hour shooting pictures. Don't know if this will be enough to get me through, but it sure helped me make it for this week.

Metadata and Video and Why We Should Work With Students in Project Development

One of the puzzles I have been working on this year is how to attach metadata to video. Yes, I understand that I can attach search terms to a chunk of video -- that's not the problem. I also know I can use the captions as search terms. But both of those scenarios are unsatisfactory to me.

If I attach metadata to the entire chunk of video -- a 50 minute video of a professor teaching a math class, for example, it doesn't help the student find that one part where she is talking about how to solve quadratic equations. To find that, the student has to fast forward through the entire 50 minutes, and hopefully will be able to find it on the first pass. What I want is to be able to search for "quadratic equation" and have the video queue up all the places where the professor used that term.

And what if the professor isn't speaking? What if she is signing ASL? I still want to find all the places where she uses that term. And if she fingerspells it one place, and uses a sign somewhere else, I want to find both places.

AND -- here's the hardest part -- I don't want this to require post production work. Because post production means money means we won't be able to do this all of the time. And it has to be screw-up proof too. For the obvious reasons.

So, one day this 4th year RIT illustration student stops by my office. He is working as a note taker, one of the access services we offer to students at NTID (and RIT too.) And he is taking notes for a student who is sighted, but unable to read. So this notetaker, who's name is Ben Rubin, is drawing notes for the student. Here is some of Ben's work. Very cool and very interesting, but it gets better.

Ben go a hold of a of a special pen called Pulse SmartPen. This devise allows Ben to record the spoken words of the professor as he is taking notes and link particular parts of the lecture to particular parts of the notes. In other words, Ben can insert a bookmark on the fly while he is drawing notes. Then he uploads the notes (and the audio file) to a website, and when his student wants to review what the professor was teaching about while Ben was drawing his notes, he just clicks on the website and hears the audio. Which is very cool, if you hear.

So Ben got to thinking about how sometimes there is also an interpreter in the room for the Deaf students. And what if, Ben said to me, we could video tape the interpreter and use the audio track to sync to his notes and make it so you could click on something and instead of hearing the audio, a little window popped up and you saw the interpreter signing what the professor was saying.

What if indeed!

So I told my programmers that I love this idea and I want to include it as a Major Design Project next year. And I met with the head of Access Services to ask him if we could use a couple or three of his notetakers next year. And he said yes. So this isn't really solving the problem of inserting metadata into video, but it is a hack that might work if we can figure it out. More to come!

Aligning Your Passions and Your Company's Values

Is it a cheat to quote someone else's blog in my blog? Maybe. But stick with me. I think the journey will be worth it!

An old friend from Simon School days, Jerri Barret, writes a great blog about her "key learnings on Marketing, Networking and Non Profit Life." (You can read it here. She works for an interesting organization called The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Jerri led me to a really outstanding article on building a leadership brand that your company values, by Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching Inc. Jo presented five steps described by Titina Ott,Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness with a leading global software corporation, and founder of their corporate women’s initiative. These really resonated for me:

"1. Understand your company’s vision, goals, and value proposition. These can be found on your company’s web site.
2. Understand the goals for your line of business, by asking your manager.
3. Understand your team’s goals, objectives and priorities. Ask your manager, as this is a critical part of their role.
4. Take a look at your development plan for the year. It is your responsibility to put this plan together. Map your goals to objectives for the company, your line of business, and your team.
5. Discuss your plan with your and manager, to gain their alignment. Ott states 'A plan is not effective unless your manager knows about it, acknowledges it and assists in providing the opportunities and support to execute against it.'"

The entire article can be found here.

My Trip to Tulum

This is a little video I made using Animoto. The pictures are from a recent trip to Tulum, Mexico with my daughter, Nicole. The music was free on the animoto site.

One Place to Find Me

I just registered on a site called itmyurls. You can find all my links to social networks here.

Instructional Design Model

Today I had the opportunity to meet with a group of researchers at NTID. I didn't end up using my Prezi presentation. The meeting rooms are set up so that you have to get up and leave the table to use the computer -- I hate that! So I just talked.


This is my outline, with the questions I am investigating. I asked the researchers to help me with sources of information on these questions. They immediately brought up some very interesting points that were very helpful.


I am going to generate a sample course outline based on this so they will have a more concrete picture of what I am trying to accomplish. This model would work for any type of content, but my first course will be a soft skills course for Deaf adults who are about 15 years into their careers.


If you have any suggestions or feedback, please don't hesitate to give it to me!


Instructional Design Model

Course Hierarchy

Course (I am too impatient to get this list indented the way I want it! )

• Lesson
• Lesson
• Lesson
• Topic
• Topic
• Topic
• Objective
• Introduction Elements
• Context Statement
• Wiifm (“What’s in it for me”)
• Organizer
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Interactives/Practice
• Graphical Elements
• Summary
• Evaluation

Audience – What are the important questions?
Communication style? How accepting will learners be if information is presented in a style that varies from their own most preferred style?
Experience with distance/e-learning?
Expectations for learning situations – teacher/student behaviorial expectations?
What audience characteristics matter?

Introductions
Should objectives be explicitly stated? In what form?
Can prerequisite knowledge be expected, established?
What is the best way to generate emotional response?
What is the best way to establish context, present wiifm?
Should context statement always be job-based?
Should organizer element use “features” of ASL? General → Specific? Visual organizer? Topic → Comment? Others???

4.Content
Types:
Fact – one of a kind information that student will memorized
Concept – distinguishes if something is a member of a class or not. Requires a definition, distinguishing characteristic, definite characteristics, variable characteristics, example, optional non-example. How best to present each part?

Process – A description of a chain of events with phases or stages. Used especially to teach problem solving. Requires a graphical representation of process, with clearly delineated beginnings and endings to stages. How to best present?

Procedure – A series of steps that if followed renders a consistent result. Procedures may be branching, or have optional steps. Generally follows the pattern of Location – Action – Result. Does this still hold? How best to present?

Principal – Teaches decision making where a judgment is required. Requires a statement of desired outcome, guidelines, example, optional non-example. How best to present?

Mode of presentation:
Which of these are optimally presented as self-paced tutorials? Which are optimally taught by mentor/teacher? Which should be presented as part of a collaborative exploration?
What communication models should be used? How much written English, if any, is acceptable?

Order and chunk size:
What is optimal chunk size? What are the distinguishing characteristics that determine chunk size?
What order? Common skills and knowledge first? Simple to complex? General to specific? Other?
How much repetition is acceptable/optimal?

Interactives/Practice:
What is optimal frequency? Following topic? Content block?
Collaborative or solo? When is either optimal?
Feedback during, after, not at all? From instructor? Peers? What form?
Is “life-like” important?
Use of emotion?

Graphical Elements:
Video or other representations of the instructor teaching are NOT graphical elements. Graphical elements communicate meaning beyond what the bare words would communicate.
Photo-realistic? Or not?
How presented?
When are they required?

Summary:
What elements are required?
What best to present? How?

Evaluation:
How to best evaluate student mastery of objectives?