KA SID 12/3/07

On Tues. 11/30/07 we finally met with the PAUSD group College Pathways with Donae Gray, Madallena Fittoria, and Ruth Malen. Robert Hughes and Danny Koba were there from the YMCA. The meeting went really well, except for a few political questions that cropped up, and were dealt with later, but other than that it was exactly what we had hoped for for the collaboration. They have scheduled 2 meetings for Robert to attend and present. One meeting with the high school principals, and one meeting with the ELAC/DELAC (don't know what this stands for but it is the parents of the ELD students) at the JLS middle school. Both meetings are in January. For my survey approval, they sent me off to Dr. Marilyn Cook who is in charge of approving such surveys.

This last week was focused on the IRB. On Weds. I submitted my initial draft to the IRB, and asked for permission from Dr. Marilyn Cook. Over the weekend, I revised my submittal to the IRB for additional forms and a flyer that they wanted also. Today is the deadline at 5:00pm, so I hope I have everything turned in!

I also had an amazing meeting with the De Anza team: President Brian Murphy, VP of Instruction John Swensson, and the CFO Jeanine Hawk. We meet to discuss the joint undergraduate program we have in Psychology, and I ended up talking about my doctoral program (Jeanine was at Fielding and is now at Alliant). Turns out that Carolyn Wilkins-Greene
Dean, Social Sciences & Humanities is implementing many of Claude Steele's concepts also (he told me to read "Thin Ice"), and the entire management team read Lisa Delpit's book Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Updated Edition (Paperback). I ordered the book and will go onto Fielding now to find the article. Brian has offered De Anza for my research in higher education! Brian invited me to spend a 1/2 day with his staff to "get a feel for the place" and find out what they are doing. I'm so excited about the possibilities. I will try to set something up in January.

KA SID 11/27/07

I've finished a lot of documents this week:

1) IRB description of Ventura Center Survey (to be used to fill out the IRB application)
2) Ventura Center Survey (to be input into Survey Monkey)
3) Assent Letter (for parents of minors)

I've also done the following:

a) Ordered 3 books on writing dissertations suggested by Mark Scanlon-Greene at the 11/17/07 cluster meeting
b) Ordered "APA-Style Helper 5.0" suggested by Mark Scanlon-Greene at my urging at the cluster meeting and installed it.
c) Finished my first draft at a meta-map for my overview.



I also read 2 articles:

Steele, C. M. (1997). "A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance." American Psychologist 52(6): 613-29.

Duncan, G. A. (2002). "Critical Race Theory and Method: Rendering Race in Urban Ethnographic Research." Qualitative Inquiry 8(1): 85-104.

- June

KA SID, posting 11/19/07

This week I spent the entire time working on my IRB application and the digital divide survey.

1. IRB information document "Human Protocol for YMCA Ventura Center Survey.doc". There are several areas that I cannot fill in until I speak with the YMCA people to see if I have permission to send out documents to the students in the ELD, and other yet to be named (Focus on Success, AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), others?). This is key, because if I don't get their help/permission, I will have a very small population of kids (less than 25 probably).

2. The survey itself in WORD "YMCA Ventura Center Computer Usage Survey.doc".

3. The sample assent letter for the IRB. I will need to get this translated into Spanish. I have someone who did it last year when our Diversity/International Committee translated our membership, scholarship and other forms into spanish and I think she will help me with this. If not, I may need to hire a Spanish translator and may need your help finding one I can hire (Carla if you know anyone, please let me know). Once you have the form approved, I will ask her.

NEXT DEADLINE FOR THE IRB: Dec. 3, 2007, 5:00pm

My meeting with the College Pathway's team has finally been set!! It is going to be at the Ventura Center on Tuesday 11/27/07 at 11am.

KA SID, posting 11/7/07

It's been a long time since I posted and I'm trying to catch up.

I read a month ago:

Giving kids the business : the commercialization of America's schools by Molnar, Alex

and

Pedagogy of the oppressed by Freire, Paulo



Two weeks ago I read:

Bilingual education : history, politics, theory, and practice, Crawford, James.



I also read Questions of cultural identity by Hall, Stuart and Du Gay, Paul.



this week I read, Education and inequality : the roots and results of stratification in America's schools by Persell, Caroline Hodges. I think it is a very good explanation of the theories and had very good charts explaining how the theories and ideologies fit together.



I've also read Tsikalas, K., Gross, E. F., & Stock, E. Applying a Youth Psychology Lens to the Digital Divide: How Low-Income, Minority Adolescents Appropriate Home Computers To Meet Their Needs for Autonomy, Belonging, and Competence, and How This Affects Their Academic and Future Prospects.

And I read Timmerman, A. Introduction to the Application of Web-Based Surveys. Access ERIC: FullText. 2002-00-00o. Document Number)

Both were very helpful in understanding what kind of survey I could do.

I also read the "The Art and Science of revising Your Writing" by Mark Scanlon-Green, Ph.D. from my cluster and order 2 books he recommended on writing dissertations.

- June

KA SID, posting 9/18/07

It's been a very busy two weeks for meetings not related to work or school (directly that is). We had the YMCA Garden Party where they introduce the new board members and the new chair, and also present the Andrew Carpendale International Award, which I was the recipient of this year. The next day we then had our Taiwan Camp celebration where all the kids and their parents and the YMCA board members on the diversity committee came to dinner at the YMCA and we played the 20 minute iMovie I made of the trip. They gave Tiffany and Rolf a beautiful picture signed by the kids and me a generous gift to Stanford Shopping center. Then a few days later we had our first YMCA board meeting of the year and again we showed a shorter version if the iMovie. I also had coffee with 2 people on our board the day before who are on our Human Relations Committee for the city of Palo Alto, to discuss diversity and the committee structure. It was a very interesting chat about their concerns, which I brought up at the end of the YMCA meeting the next day. Then on Sat. we had our first cluster meeting with Lee Mahon and Nickola Smith. A board member, Margarita Rosenthal also attended, along with several people from Southern California that are now working with Lee. It was almost 4 hours long and was a wonderful chance to meet people - several people are doing work in my area or are interested in what I am doing.

And then there were the political campaigns...my friend asked my son to play music at her kickoff for school board and that was a project - renting the electronic keyboard, then setting up 3 hours early and then playing for 2 hours. Plus 2 other events, and another one for the Foundation for a College Education tonight. Meetings should be over this week!!!

I am also reading Molnar, A. (1996). Giving kids the business : the commercialization of America's schools. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, and I plan to read Crawford, J. (1995). Bilingual education : history, politics, theory, and practice (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Educational Services.

I also plan to apply to the Human Relations Commission (HRC) for the City of Palo Alto. I will try to get out of other commitments to make room for this.

- June

KA SID, posting 9/2/07

This week I focused on the digital divide in preparation for my meeting with Dr. Burton Cohen on Tues. 9/4.

11.1 Dowling, Meredith. (2001). Mapping a Future for Digital Connections: a Study of the Digital Divide in San Diego County, San Diego Regional Technology Alliance























11.2 Seung-soo, H. (2002). Summary by President of General Assembly at Concluding Plenary Meeting. Paper presented at the General Assembly Meeting on Information and Communication Technologies.

11.3 Osunkunle, O. O. (2006). Bridging the Digital Divide and the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in South African Universities: a Comparison Study among Selected Historically Black UniversitiesWhite Universities (HWUs). US-China Education Review, 3(3), 6. (HBUs) and Historically





11.4 Spanning the Digital Divide: Understanding and Tackling the Issues, editor Madanmohar Rao, Bridges.org, 2001.




















12.1 Johnson, R. B., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come. Educational Researcher v33 n7 p14-26 Oct 2004 (13 pages) Additional Info: American Educational Research, Association(1230 17th St. NW), Washington.

In addition to the reading, I have joined the AERA (American Educational Research Association) and my boss has approved my attendance at next year's conference Monday, March 24 - Friday, March 28. I am very excited about this opportunity.

I also had a conf. call with our reference librarian, Scott Hines, who teaches a class in EndNotes to make sure I was doing my setup correctly. Turns out, because of my background in application systems design and implementation, I have setup Endnotes and my excel spreadsheet in exactly the way he teaches in the class. The only thing I did not know how to do was setup the link to the libraries so I can download the references easily instead of typing them, and also how to download the references from ERIC, etc. We setup the templates in EndNotes for these 3 databases (ERIC, Stanford and UC). He also gave me the password to the PGSP libraries incase we have something at work that isn't on the Fielding website. He told me to always use ERIC from the Fielding website because it will have the "formatting" setup for Endnotes and it will be easier. I learned a lot!

that's it for this week.

KA SID, posting 8/27/07

This week I read Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic landscapes and Cultural Boundaries by David Morley and Kevin Robins. I did a concept map but I think it is too big to upload (it's not letting me do this after many tries and rebooting). So instead, here is my outline and I will show you the map on the conf. call.

What is Global and What is Local?

I. Globalism as Identity Crisis

A. Broadcasting

1. In the past

a. Served the nation

b. Provided Cultural identification

2. Now

a. respond to consumer demand

b. Maximize consumer choice

c. 'driven more by market opportunity than by national identity', Steven Ross.

(1) controlled by small number of global players

(a) Time Warner, Sony, Matsushita, News Corporation, Walt Disney

(b) BSkyB, CNN, MTV, Cartoon Network

(2) New services, new delivery systems, new forms of payment

(3) Vertical integration

(a) programming

(b) distribution

(c) transmission systems

d. Characterized by America Domination

(1) Fordism

(a) regime of accumulation, Billaudo and Gauron, Boyer, Lipietz

i) mass production

ii) mass consumption

e. global markets

f. world assembly line

g. 'war of images' and 'image superpowers' Freches

(1) 'television without frontiers' Commission of the European Communities, 1984

h. New media technologies are creating 'seeming face-to-face relationship' D. Horton and R. Wohl

(1) armchair imperialists

(2) generalised elsewhere and non-local people

(3) media images become the totality of our knowledge

(4) create a sense of reality of events

(a) creation of a Frankenstein monster in Iraq

(b) watching violence while remaining safe

(c) mediated reality becomes real

i. New supra-national regulatory environment meant to eliminate barriers to the buying and selling of programmes and their transmission and reception in the european community

B. Globalisation

1. organisation of production and the exploitation of markets on a world scale

C. Cultural Differences, Localisation

1. What is a community?

a. Electronic global village

(1) cultural tribalism

(2) flexible specialisation

(3) cultural industrial districts

b. to connect family and the nation

c. 'development of national broadcasting systems which provided the people of different regions and provinces with a first daily experience of the nation' Martin-barbero

2. Disorienting experience of global image space

a. 'obscene delirium of communication' and ' ecstasy of communication' Baudrillard

3. Difference as identity

a. Language

(1) 'identity is as much about exclusion as it is about inclusion' Schlesinger

b. Fear

(1) nationalism, racism, superiority of one group over another

(2) unity against an alien culture

(a) 'Islamic threat'

(3)

c. Natives

(1) homogeneous, authentic, indigenous culture

d. Can a community acknowledge difference (and simply diversity)?

4. Politics

a. objective of politicians and bureaucrats

(1) project public service broadcasting onto a European level to project an integrated, homogenizing force

b. a new global system of authority where transnational communications companies now bypass traditional forms of national political authority

c. transnational corporate culture becomes a central force - who has control of the sources of information?

5. Europe

a. How has Europe changed over time?

b. Europe vs. others

(1) Cultural paranoia: Japan and the orient

(2) Post modernism could be defined as a 'set of responses to the decentring of Europe - of living in a world that no longer rests upon European hegemony which began in 1492' Cornell West.

(3) Identity crisis

(a) failed to develop an adequate political culture for 'european citizenship'

(b) geography

i) new global network and matrix of unevenly developed regions, cities and localities across space and time

ii) international restructuring of capitalist economies

iii) emergence of a new global-local nexus

(1) 'placeless' geography of image and simulation

(2) world of instantaneity and depthlessness

(3) space of lows, an electronic space with permeable boundaries

(4) flexible specialisation

(c) ethnicity

i) Differences

(1) disavowed?

(2) repressed?

(3) accepted?

(d) religion

(e) Change is seen as problematic

i) cultural erosion and even extinction

ii) state of "homelessness"

iii) struggle for place

(f) Diversity of climate, countryside, architecture, language, beliefs, artistic style

i) must be protected not diluted

(g) Culture is being transformed

i) Mass immigration

ii) Displaced persons, refugees

iii) migrant and immigrant workers

(4) imagined communities of nationalism

(a) a common market

(b) citizens Europe

(c) Europe of Culture

c. BBC vs. Dallas

(1) American products

(a) streamlined

(b) plastic

(c) glamorous

(d) fake

(2) BBC was forced to look at its marketplace and adapt

d. The end of history

(1) was a community of nations characterized by inherited civilisation

(a) Judaeo-Christion relgion

(b) Hellenistic ideas o givernment, philosopy, arts and science

(c) Roman view concerning law

(2) incoherence of the contemporary world

(a) the past is the fiction of the present, Certeau

i) Same questions about cultural imperialism

ii) who has the right or the power to tell the story of contemporary events?

6. Japan Fear

a. Exotic culture

(1) Zen, kabuki, tea-ceremonies, geishas

(2) dehumanised martial culture

(a) kamikaze, ninjutsu, samurai

b. Technological superiority

(1) technology has become "japanised"

(2) cold, impersonal, and machine-like

c. the "future"

d. Seen as ethnic purity and homogeneity

(1) consensus and conformist

e. Takeover of Hollywood

f. Occidentalism, R. Robertson

(1) racial purity

g. Fear

(1) american resent the ambiguous nature of Japanese culture

(2) Japan is the "other" to the American "us"

I also listened to an audiobook entitled: Communist Manifesto and Social Contract (Knowledge Products) (Unabridged) by Ralph Raico. Communist Manifesto examines the theory and goals expounded by Karl Marx. Marx argues that history flows inevitably toward a social revolution, which will result in a society without economic classes. The influence on Marx of Hegel, Feuerbach, and other philosophers is examined, as is his friendship and collaboration with Engels. Social Contract, by Rousseau, argues that people secure their liberty by entering into an implied contract with government. Rather than being protected by natural rights, their liberty is secured by the "general will", one of the most famous and troublesome ideas in political theory. This presentation explores Rousseau's concept of social order and its implications for individual freedom and the good of society.

May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883

I did not realize that Karl Marx was Jewish (his grandfather was a Rabbi) and then converted to Lutheranism. He got his PhD in philosophy in Berlin, and then went to Paris to be with the french revolution philosophers. His greatest work is Das Kapital but the Communist manifesto has been printed more times than Das Kapital. Marx's theories said that capitalism created a wealthy class and a poor class, and thus was not ideal. He also believed that capitalism lead to alienation of human work and a commodity fetish. He did not like the cycles of growth and collapse and he believed that if the proletariat were to seize the means of production, they would encourage a system that would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to periodic crises.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778)

Rousseau believed that a government can only be legitimate if it has been sanctioned by the people, controlled by the "general will" of its populace. Without this input from the people, there can be no legitimate government.

KA SID, posting 8/17/07

Well, I'm finally over jet lag. Since I returned from vacation, I've finished reading two books and put them into Inspiration. I've exported the concept maps and outlines and added the notes to Endnotes.

The first concept map is for Carol Gilligan's, "In a different voice".












The second concept map is for Erving Goffman's "Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity".

What I did on my vacation (July 21 - August 4)

On my vacation, I spoke with various people I met about their experience with Chinese Universities and how they can help me.

Tristan Yuan (english name), Nephew of a friend, just graduated from a university in china, and works for the TV channel #4 (couldn't understand the chinese name) in Beijing. He was hired based on his blog, "sinablog" (search for YuanLenshui, www.onyoyo.com) where he posted his novel. The TV station liked his style of writing and called him up. He said that is a very typical way of getting a job in China - create a blog or website and post your vita. He is going to school next year in Japan to get a master's in Mass Communication. His friend Sarah (english name) is going also to work at a Chinese startup located in Tokyo. She is a programmer in ARM. I told Tristan about my interest in doing research in China and he said he would help and we would keep in touch.

Dr. Peter Yang, Ed.D., is a board member of the Taichung YMCA and the Director, Continuing Education Center, and Associate Professor, School of Recreational Sport Management at the National Taiwan College of Physical Education in Taichung, Taiwan. He hosted 2 of our young campers. His kids in middle school have attended school in the US while he got his Ed.D in Southern California. He was at Stanford recently and they wanted to send one of their students as an intern to his school. That student is there now. I asked him if he could assist me with my research and he said he would be happy to help. He may come over next year to host some students from Taiwan in Palo Alto. If so, I will have a chance to play host to him and his family and also to discuss my research more.

Before I left, I had a great training session with Marcy Bowen, Librarian, Virtual Reference Assistant, Fielding Graduate University. She trained me on exactly how to search for articles, how to see if they are available in the discounted University of Michigan library (Michigan Information Transfer Source). She sent me an email with instructions and showed me the FAQ page which is the most helpful - has a step by step set of instructions for finding articles. It was very helpful and I now feel I can find all the articles and books I need.

That's it! Too tired to read much on the trip. Kids are a lot of work so I tried to sleep on the plane. Also finished listening to Harry Potter #7. Very well done.

KA SID, posting 7/16/07

This week I did the following:

- Set up Reading List and sources tracking system
- Researched all items and having a hard time finding articles in the Fielding library
- Will set up a conf. call with the Librarian to learn how to find a few specific articles on the KA list from Fielding
- Set up End Notes as a database using KA and dissertation as structure.
- Scanned in my notes (PDF) for first reference, "In a Different Voice" by Carol Gilligan
- Ordered 5 books from Amazon to arrive this week.

- June

Today we learned how to use Skype conferencing and WebEx tools. Next week I will load EndNotes, SPSS, and Inspiration and also continue to read the Gilligan book.

- June

KA SID, posting 7/9/07

July 9, 2007

I already have 2 books that I bought but have not read and are on my KA contract (the second one I forgot to add - I can add this to the contract later):

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gardner, H. (1991) The unschooled mind: How children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic.

I have started the Gilligan book and I am about 1/2 way through it. I have not started taking notes yet as I do not have the software I want to use loaded.

This week I plan to load EndNotes and SPSS software on my computer, and I have ordered Inspiration.

I have also been thinking about how to setup my paper and note/references filing system with some help from Jenny Edwards and Yolanda. I'll let you know later what I end up with after I learn EndNotes.

- June

First Posting

Hi Carla and Yolanda!

This blog is my first blog ever...for the dissertation and should contain learning gains and concept maps on weekly basis.

- June