evolution of a troglodyte

It will come to know ones surprise that I felt terriby out of my element during the course.   While the course content and structure were dynamic, the reliance upon 21st century technology was daunting.  It was a relief to be surrounded by so many helpful classmates, individuals who gave selflessly of their time and encouragement to help me out of my cave.
Apart form that personal process I must admit to being unashamedly impressed with the thought that went into the design and evaluation for this program.  To many it may seem obvious that a course that was centered on the Design Process be well designed, unfortunately that has not been my experience.  Like all of you, I have endured a great deal of curriculum programs and PD, all of them espousing one particular strategy or another.  The only thing that all of my previous courses had in common was there obvious inability to instruct or arrange instructional resources in a manner that reflected what we were being taught.  In each case the cynic in me left class after class unconvinced that the strategies taught were any better than the strategies that I had developed in my years of practice.
This class was different, a minimum of class time was used to inform with the majority used to practice skills and competencies.  The assignments (sorry Paul) were well designed and structured to demonstrate the importance of Curriculum Design, exactly what you would hope for.  With an assignment as simple as the Chapter Review and First Design Challenge, we were not only left to be the "experts" we were forced into roles that required us to use the expert knowledge and practice each piece of the Design Process.  I was impressed by this but was even more impressed with the following assignments that allowed an exceptionally diverse group of learners and practitioners to not only meet the same assignment at Differentiated Levels but also moved us through a continuum from comfort to experimentation to excellence ( or my nearest facsimile).
Not to beleaguer the point but in many ways this course has helped to remind me of the very best reasons to take graduate level courses, to be a better educator.

Troglodyte's, Topography and Typography

Well that cleared things up.... For almost an entire week I was confused by how topography was involved with Creative Design.  As the trip to Luckett's Vineyard came closer I realized that Paul had been referring to the grape growing conditions and making some allegory connecting growth and sunlight, increasing the topography obviously meant increasing a student's exposure to creativity.   I wondered if everyone in the class had to think as hard as I to fully understand the discussion.

It really wasn't until the lecture on fonts and the history, meaning and development of fonts that I realized that I may have been a little confused, TYPOGRAPHY is the study of letters....who knew and was there really a study of this, apparently it is a big deal advertising. Was my dependency on Times New Roman a copyright infringement?  Possibly because I am pretty sure Paul said that corporations have copyright protection for specific fonts.

My ignorance came full circle, not only did I decide that a beautiful backdrop confuse the troglodyte theme, I decided that an academic font was a nice contrast to my line sketches.. who new!

Not ready to fully evolve though, this was all "Normal".

Arghg

Possibly not Impossible

Hmmmm I realized that the local mammoth carcass was not really as rotten as I thought so, I have eaten my fill and have an opportunity to consider some of the dialogue ; ) at the watering hole.  Creative Design at first appeared a very daunting approach.  I think I was becoming a bit bogged down by the lexicon, one that was very new to me.  Still not sure of half of what I hear, I haven't unpacked so much since our move from the summer fishing camp.  Luckily there have been some very nice folks.  They seem very comfortable with  this new technology and even translate for me sometimes.  I had better be nice to them!
Once we began our assigned review of "Design" I recognized some similarities with the Inquiry Approach and realized that I may not be as far out of my depth as I had thought.

Now to figure out how to upload this new thing called fire that the locals showed me.