Daily Archives: September 28, 2006

It’s Here!

adult learning, final cut studio

My new computer was waiting for me when I got home.  I was a little concerned about the big hole in the side of the box but all seems to be fine.  True to all the Macs I’ve ever used, this was easy…got it up and running in just a few minutes.  I’m installing Final Cut Pro right now.  I’m actually working on the second installation since I accidently cut the power during the first installation…oops!

I’ve read through the first chapter of the Getting Started book and I think I have the basic idea of the process of using the program to organize and create video.  Final Cut Pro is part of the post-production process, and the book suggests there is a lot that goes on before you start post-production.  But since I’m working in the cinema verite mode and using already existing footage that was shot without any plan in place, I’m going to go right to the logging/capturing step.

I would really like to do something with the Lewis and Clark footage but it’s analog.  I’m going to start with some digital footage until I get comfortable with the process of logging and capturing clips.  I pulled a few tapes out of the drawer to get me started.  With a 500 gig hard drive just for storage, I have the luxury of grabbing as much tape as I want.  The manual, in fact, suggests that it is more typical for people to simply capture an entire tape because hard drive space has gotten so cheap.  I’ll log after I capture and look for some emergent theme for my first sequence.

I like the Final Cut Pro manual.  Several places they discuss the idea of getting your own workflow together and give several different ways of doing things like logging and capturing.  Software in general is pretty amazing in terms of allowing different users to interact with it in different ways.  And in this case, effective personal use of the software will make the project creation easier and potentially better.

The Mysterious Malcolm Knowles

adult learning

Malcolm Knowles, informal adult education, self-direction and andragogy
“His work was a significant factor in reorienting adult educators from educating people to helping them learn.” Knowles 1950: 6.

I know this makes me a nerd, but when I got home at 9:30, I popped in the third Monterey Pop DVD and my husband and I enjoyed some lovely pinot grigio and played on our computers while reminiscing about the amazing music that surrounded us as we grew up. I had to open Inspiration and start working on my own concept map. It’s an interesting process but I stumbled on a seeming mystery: who is Malcolm Knowles academically? The infed article from which the quote comes (I love the distinction between education and learning) indicates that he went to Harvard and took classes in philosophy, literature, and law. No psychology, no sociology. So, where does he fit? Maybe that’s part of the reason that adult educaton as a theory gets a bad rap: it doesn’t fit into a discipline.

I tried working on the “personal” piece of the learning concept map. Get at the variety of learning experiences we’ve discusssed in class. Knowles ended up in that part of the map. I think part of the struggle in class last night as we tried to work on this map together was the differing perceptions of what it should do. Some wanted to make it a personal learning concept map but I think that leads us to make unsupported statement about learning, trying to suggest that our personal experiences define learning for everyone.

Lots of the words thrown out were, IMHO, more like synonyms than concepts. For instance, what about the proposition that learning is growth? I would argue that not all learning leads to growth. I took an access class some years ago and while I learned to use access, I don’t think I really experienced a whole lot of growth. Growth becomes a concept when it becomes part of a theory. So, Maslow and Rogers provide a conceptual framework that does suggest that learning is growth.

My starting draft is attached. I did use Inspiration because I like its ease of manipulation.

What is Learning?

The Criterion Collection: Monterey Pop

documentary film

The Criterion Collection: Monterey Pop

From the publishers of the Monterey Pop DVD set, an amazing website about the concert including full text versions of articles written about the festival within days of the event.  Lots of interesting stories of who was there and who wasn’t and why…several musicians were having issues with pot charges and draft dodging.  Extensive musician biographies as well.  We’re watching the third DVD of the set which is just outtakes, stuff that didn’t make it into the original documentary.  Great music cut with shots of the audience.  And it really is about the music.

Some of those writing at the time are critical of the organizers for not having more ethnic diversity.  Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix are in the documentary but so far the outtakes have been all nice white boys.  But the comment I found most interesting was Robert Christgau’s suggestion that “real” hippies were gone: “But there are no hippies—they have disappeared in an avalanche of copy. Most of the originals who were living in the Haight in 1966, when the journalists started nosing around, have fled from the bus tour and the LSD-Burgers and the panhandling flower children who will be back in school next semester.”

I can’t help but contrasting these hippies with the members of the Weather Underground.  While the hippies in Monterey might be anti-establishment, the Weathermen were anti-government.  Christgau suggests that there is sort of hippie-mentality that is associated with liberal ideas.  But the Weathermen were actual communists, politically motivated.  Yet, both groups tended to be affluent white kids; they could afford to be bohemians and radicals.