Saturday we all slept in, then ran around a little… grocery store, etc.
And played Risk in between trips – it seemed every time I came back into the living room,
there they were – my teens, sitting at the Risk board… waiting for me.
and telling me “It’s your turn mom!”
In between laundry washing, dinner cooking, movie watching…. school work
“It’s your turn mom!”
Saturday came and went.

And then Sunday, there was the early service at church.
Then re-cooking leftovers, and then school work
“It’s your turn mom!”
After youth it was roasted chicken and fixings… and after dinner,
in the living room
laptop on my lap – reading the PDFs of my assigned weekly school readings….
“It’s your turn mom!”
Well, today is Tuesday – the game is still on the coffee table…
I’ve tried to loose – and I’m not loosing – although my son is certainly in a world domination role right now.
When I walk in from work it will be… “It’s your turn mom!”
and I suppose, again, after dinner it will be some more… “Its your turn mom!”

I am trying to be happy about this – it’s a good thing – my kids – who I think are wonderful…
must like me too!

The story as her daddy told it at her memorial service.

Suzanne’s fight. . . . . . .. that others may live.

Words cannot express the deep sorrow when a beloved daughter is tragically taken from this world. We know without a shadow of a doubt that Suzanne — did not take her own life – the devil stole it. He stole it from her, from her daughter Megan, from her fiancé Scott, from her Mom and Dad, from her brothers and sister, from grandpa, from her friends and extended family.

Suzanne had been prescribed by her dermatologist a prescription which had side effects of depression and anxiety. It gave her horrendous headaches and loss of appetite as well. When she contacted her parents about the depression she was advised by them that if it makes you feel bad stop taking it. Practical advice any parent would give their child.

The acne problem she was battling was important to her to have cleared up so to fight the depression (most likely caused by the medication) she went to her family physician and was prescribed two additional medications. Both Klonapin and Cymbalta were prescribed. The side effects from the prescriptions drugs Suzanne was taking became increasingly unbearable.

Note that the warning on the literature of Cymbalta states:

These medications can help prevent suicidal thoughts/attempts, however, studies have shown that in a small number of people (especially in females ages 18 to 25) who take antidepressants for any condition may experience worsening depression other mental/mood disorders or suicidal thoughts or attempts.

The FDA has recently issued a new warning about the potential for suicidal thinking in adults taking antidepressants, but the agency specifically singled out Cymbalta (generic: duloxetine) because of a

higher than expected rate of suicide attempts in recent studies. The warning comes after a review of Cymbalta by Eli Lilly. It found that 11 of nearly 9,000 women taking it for urinary incontinence tried to commit suicide. The fact that these patients were suffering from urinary incontinence and not depression is significant because the drug companies have long argued that antidepressants are used by depressed people who have a higher likelihood of committing suicide.

One of the Klonapin warnings is that it could strongly enhance the effects of any other antidepressant when taken together. Another side effect was confusion – Suzanne’s brother Pat, the last person to talk to Suzanne, said that she was crying hysterically. Pat kept asking “Where are you”; and she kept saying, “I don’t know, I don’t know”. That was at 10:02 a.m. Monday morning, Sept 8th, 2008.

This was the last time anyone on earth heard her precious sweet voice.

Note the short chronology of this horrible tragedy. On Wednesday, September 4, 2008, Suzanne began taking Cymbalta in addition to the Klonpin. By 10 p.m. Sunday night on Sept 7, she had become extremely suicidal. And on Monday morning September 8, 2008, under the influence of these two antidepressants, Satan stole her from us.

Do not let this happen to anyone you know; we beseech you to warn your loved ones of the dangers of Cymbalta. This drug is put in the hands of family physicians; Suzanne was given handfuls of free samples. A drug that changes the chemistry of your brain should only be prescribed by those ualified to do so, with the patient under very careful observation.

Why are we telling you this heart wrenching story? One reason and one reason only – that God would use this precious life to save others. And we know He will ……..in fact he already has

]]> http://ladyonaquest.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/cymbalta-and-an-untimely-end/feed/ 1 Lady on a Quest http://ladyonaquest.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/b-and-b/ http://ladyonaquest.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/b-and-b/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:19:27 +0000 ladyonaquest http://ladyonaquest.wordpress.com/?p=43 ]]>

What a pretty log cabin bed

& breakfast!!!

We stayed here recently while looking at land in Tennessee. Lovely weekend. Lovely land. It would be a wonderful place to retire, but, then on second thought, so is North Carolina, my adopted home state.

What brought us to Tennessee? A mailer. We responded to an ad about lake front lots for sale, called Jason and made our reservation for as early as possible, 3PM. The cheap lots (waterfront and beautiful for $29k) were all sold at 9AM. Our appointment was for 3PM… by then the only lots available were so tilted I wouldn’t want to build on them – and I’d be afraid to walk on them!!! One mis-step and you’d roll down the hill into the water!!!

Actually, there were 110 lots total, by 3PM, there were 80 sold. Many of the lots remaining were over $100k, one with spectacular views of both the lake and the Great Smoky Mountains – was listed for a mere $400k.

We had a great time though. The log cabin B&B was great, breakfast was delicious each morning. Sunday morning we met a Polish lady who happened to have that very B&B listed in her Polish travel guide! As our conversation continued I discovered that she is a travel journalist for National Geographic’s Traveler magazine (Polish version). What a GREAT job!

I got ate up by chiggers our last day in TN. Maybe I sat on a “nest” of the newly hatched critters. A short time later, the backs of my knees began to itch. I mean really itch. Much worse than a mosquito bite. By mid-morning I had about 25 to 30 bites between my knees and hips, with 8 to 10 behind each knee.
Needless to say, I took my pants off in the car because it seemed I was continuing to be bit, even when I couldn’t see what was biting me! Later that evening, and all the next day the itching was unbearable. And, the backs of my knees were so swollen I could not stoop or squat.

Monday evening I went to the walk in-clinic, and before leaving I got a steroid shot… it helped a lot!!! It’s 10 days later, and they’re mostly healed now, but still get itchy sometimes.

Look them up online – nasty critters – larvae state of a mite – related to scorpions and spiders. They bite like a tick, their spit liquifies your cells, which they slurp up, the body fights it by creating a tube called a stylostome around the liquified cells. The reaction to the stylostome is what causes itching. You never feel the bites, only the itch, and that starts only after many minutes of “slurping.” yuck!!!

“It may give you some consolation to know that when a chigger is removed before it has fully engorged, it cannot bite again and will eventually die. Seems only just, doesn’t it?” (Taken from the Missouri Department of Conservation site, link provided above.)

For those of you who are tech savvy, and able to use the photo to get the name of the B&B we enjoyed so thoroughily, PLEASE KNOW THAT I HAVE NO REASON TO ASSOCIATE THOSE NASTY CHIGGERS WITH THE WONDERFUL B&B EXPERIENCE WE HAD. Most likely the chiggers who dined on me were picked up while tramping through lake front lots, pasture land, and woodlands searching for the perfect lot on which to build a retirement home. I absolutely, in a heartbeat, would return to the B&B for the great company, food, and scenery. And my husband agrees! : )

Let’s take a peek and see how it’s going.

This week’s topic:

There are three foundational elements that make up the assessment triangle. What roles do these three elements play in effective assessment? Are they related? If Yes, how and why? How important is the relationship of these three elements to effective assessment?

My response:

The three foundational elements of the assessment triangle are observation, interpretation, and cognition. Effective assessment in corporate training involves a blending of these elements with consideration for how adults learn rather then the focus on learning in childhood presented in the text.

The elements are related in that observation (of a service technician completing a task) is not possible until the service technician has successfully mastered the prerequisite knowledge upon which the skill rests (cognition). The trainer’s interpretation of the task success is the final leg of the assessment process.

Both formative assessment, evaluation as the course proceeds; and summative assessment, final exam confirming mastery of the topics presented; are critical to a successful delivery of a technical training program.

So, I guess I’ve addressed the topic, however I failed to do so with all the proper educator terminology. So, when I read a very well written, and as far as I can tell, accurate response which was full of the terminology I still wrestle with, I was obligated to post this response:

“…but sometimes, since I’m not educated as an educator, I have to stop and think about what each word means. When I do that, usually it means I have to read it through a few times. So I have, but then, it seems to me that anyone who was concerned about doing a good job teaching someone; anyone who wanted to be sure their student had ‘caught’ it, wouldn’t they do these things naturally?

“Wouldn’t they check for understanding (cognition) by asking if the student understands? And, upon receipt of an affirmative answer, ask a more probing question? And then for the observation, maybe after completing a show, and a do-it-together, having the student do it alone. Now, you’ve talked with the student (or done a paper test) and watched the student perform, so you ponder what you’ve seen, and decide how to adjust your teaching. That’s the intrepretation part.

“Am I missing something, or have I over simplified?”

I’d love to hear the viewpoint of other educators!!!

The group met at Lodestone‘s NYC office that evening for introductions prior to beginning our journey of Captivate discovery.

We depart, to various locals over the next several hours, wiser, and with our brains stretched a bit. I suppose, when the last one of us strolls out the door, the Lodestone staff will sink into a comfortable chair and nod off, they’ve worked so hard to ensure each of us had a captivating experience, I suspect exhaustion is setting in.

But, in between Sunday and now, we’ve studied the mysteries and marvels of Captivate 3, and enjoyed a special visit from Captain Captivate to share the upcoming features and benefits of Captivate 4, shared the experience of Hairspray at the Neil Simon theater, and partied through several hours of open bar at the Havana Room.

So, as elearning developers, are we geeks? Nerds? Programmer wanna-bes? It is interesting to me that each person in the room is in the mid-career age-group. Apparently elearning developers as a whole have assorted life experiences before finding themselves in the field of elearning development. Industries represented range from retail sporting goods, government IT security, tax accounting, manufacturing and more. Some of us develop for internal (employee) groups, some for external (customer) groups.

I’m not sure, but several of us have found new friendships – and elearning development type peers to share our issues, and triumphs with. The future is captivating!

Captivate crew in the Havana Room

She won’t do her business in our yard – even though we prepared a place for her – her own sand box so to speak. But, that’s fine – it just means slightly longer walks. Unfortunately for her, we picked her up about 11 AM and she never went to the bathroom until about 8 PM that evening – when I took her for a walk around the block instead of out to her specially prepared area.
She’s loving her food and I think could easily eat, oh, 2 or 3 times what we’ve been feeding – 2 cups of Pro Plan for active dogs, 2x a day. Hopefully she’ll gain the 6 or so pounds she needs quickly. Everyone comments on how thin she is… so for now we say she’s underweight.

The first day we had an old blanket down on the floor for her in the family room – she seemed to know it was for her. That evening we set up a crate in my son’s room… she joyously went in and out, and then back in for the night. There was a little whimpering, but Matthew shushed her and it didn’t last long.

Last night, we had company until 11:30PM…around 11 I despaired of their ever leaving, and took Lily upstairs to bed. She had been trying to sleep downstairs – but there was music and dancing, and conversations – rather a bit of commotion for such a newbie. I put her in the crate in Matthew’s room again, but Sunday night, she did not want to go in. Anyway, she wined and even quietly barked a few times… each time the noise from downstairs reached a crescendo. Once everyone left, the house was quiet, she wined just a few more times and then slept through the night.

She is still rather focused on my every movement – and each time anyone leaves the room she follows them. I’ve been amazed that she hasn’t begged for food while we’re eating, or shown a tremendous interest in our food – although she could lick it right off our plates. At dinner time she just sorta sighs a heavy sigh and lies down in the immediate vicinity of the table.

We’ve got a neighbor and my inlaws interested in rescuing greys now, so we’ll see what happens there.

That night at dinner I mentioned the experience to my family. My husband commented that greyhounds are one of the few dog breeds he might be prevailed upon to have as a pet. After dinner was cleaned up the laptops came out onto the kitchen table, and the web-surfing began. We read stories about adopted greyhounds, greys as affectionate owners call them. Looked up information about a grey’s racing life, general disposition, retirement activities, health, and life expectancy. We liked what we saw.

The next night we looked them up some more. Hubby found a dog who’s litter mates had gnawed off it’s tail, and told me about her. Sight unseen she tugged on my heart-strings.

The next morning I returned to a relatively local retired greyhound adoption site, and completed an application form. It was Friday.

Saturday morning, we got out of the car and stood around the parking lot waiting for 11:00AM opening time at Project Racing Home. We went inside where a volunteer’s pet greyhound was “draped” on the couch, dogs were completing their grooming in the back, and the old mommas were running in the pen just outside. Immediately I noticed that it didn’t stink like wet dogs – but there were several there. And, for the number of dogs present, they were quiet and well behaved.

We explained that we have no cats, our kids are teens, our yard is not fenced, and we have no other pets (Well, we do have gold fish, but figured the greys wouldn’t care about them!). So, a short list of greys was provided, and we headed back to the kennel area to look at them in their crates. Then we selected a few lucky ones to come outside and play with us. Ultimately we took two greys for a walk, they were great on a leash, and after a relatively short walk were glad to return to the kennel for a chance to cool off and have a drink.

We selected Lily, but could not take her home yet, as she must be spayed and have her vet visit first. Project Racing Home has a forum, I went to the forum and asked questions about greys, and within 12 hours had several reassuring replies, one from the farm where Lily had been most recently. On Saturday, when we pick her up we’ll receive her complete medical history – as well as her complete racing history. How exciting!
Tomorrow is the big day – we can’t wait! Will post again soon!

How do mandated standards differ from place to place?  Should there be wide differences in standards?  Do you favor mandated standards or do you think each school and locality should be allowed to set its own standards?

My background is in the military and manufacturing, I am not educated as a teacher, so, I may be off base a bit – if so, please correct me! My understanding from the text is that we have national, state and local standards. In some cases there is general overlap of standards, and in some topic areas the standards may be weak or lacking. Based on what the text has said, it seems that all public school teachers are required to teach to meet a standard, and yet they’re not usually provided lesson plans. This could be cause for concern as an experienced teacher will have had time and experience to develop (good) plans, whereas a teacher straight from college will (likely) have lesser quality plans.

My experience has been when we moved to a neighboring county that the third graders were about 4 months ahead of my son, who freaked out the first day in his new school to discover they were already doing division, and he had just begun multiplication. Did it reflect on the younger teacher in his previous school, and the older more experienced teacher in the new one? Or, was it, as the new principle stated, a matter of demographics – we moved to an area of college educated parents who were more involved in their children’s education from a rural, farming area where many parents were not involved.

I think that standards serve a purpose in unifying education across our country. It makes sense to me that as a country we would seek certain goals to be attained through education, and thus the resulting standards. If localities had complete freedom to set their standards it could make the value of diplomas questionable. It could result in areas of the country developing significant changes in demographics and employment opportunities due to the available workforce. As a previous homeschooling mom I must comment that to a point homeschoolers operate outside the mandated standards, and I have seen some disastrous results – there are also some spectacular results.

…………………………………

Let’s confound the question with an issue currently being hotly debated in the Charlotte / Mecklenberg school system – separating schools by sex…

We already know that many girls – by mid-elementary school think that “girls can’t do math” and other such silly thoughts. What would happen if we forceably segragate by sexes in our schools?  for example, would girls loose the opportunity for ROTC, shop, metal working; and would guys loose the opportunity for home economics, and clerical training?

The rationale I’ve heard so far is it would enable students to focus on their schoolwork. Maybe. But would they be getting the “right” schoolwork? I’m glad my kids are not in that school district!

…………………………………..

Another thing. What about the varying needs for types of education in different areas of the country. For example, one region is very “high tech” and requires workers with a specific skill set, a different region is primarily agricultural and teaching students high tech stuff would be a “waste of time,” and a third region is very heavily skewed toward medicine and medical research and pharmaceutical development, yet another skill/knowledge set – provision must be made to adjust for the needs of society in educating the workers of tomorrow.

Recently there was a multitude of plant closings – leaving hundreds of people with low education and low skills unemployed. Everyone “celebrated” when a decision was made to locate a medical research facility on the grounds of the former mill. Who will work there? Not the high school drop-outs who make up a majority of the mill’s working population. New workers will have to be “imported” to the area to fill those positions. I believe local schools should have started a year ago adding to the curricula to enable local people to fill those positions, and that requires flexability which mandated education may not allow.

……………………………………

One final thought. Particularly because this country is a “melting pot” of sorts – and education still serves to some degree as an equalizer. If each area could do as it chose with regard to schooling, it would do little to further the goals of our nation. And, I suspect, federal funding for education would probably be impacted.

A Survey of Educational Application in Second Life’s Virtual World

In a recent keynote address delivered by Joe Miller of Linden Labs, creator of Second Life (SL), the appropriateness of using internet based virtual world environments for education was showcased. Second Life is a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), a virtual world accessible through the internet and free to all “residents.” Within SL a resident is represented by an avatar or 3D customizable character. Everything about the avatar is customizable, from gender and facial characteristics to clothing and accessories. Residents, through their avatar, can interact with others, make purchases, and create items such as clothing, cars, and buildings. Residents can purchase land, on which they can build a permanent presence, sub-letting business space or living quarters to other residents uninterested in purchasing land. As a virtual world SL is very popular, in January 2008 over 925,000 unique residents logged in, during the same period, the highest number of concurrent users was 65,000, for a total month’s usage hours of 28.2 million (Miller, 2008). SL has its own economy, and residents can create items for sale, in fact, in January 2008, there were over 55,000 “profitable” residents (Miller, 2008). In his presentation, Miller stated that there are over 400 universities and colleges holding classes within SL and over 5000 educators are enrolled in the Second Life Educators Directory (SLED) (Miller, 2008).

This paper will address the viability of web 2.0 and, specifically, the 3-D internet (3Di), such as the virtual world Second Life, to provide relevant and successful education. Advocates of virtual worlds cite their successful use as a means of communication and collaboration across the street or across the globe. Within SL users can build, or hire others to build, highly realistic interactive training or experiential activities. Research has proven this type of interaction is effective in the transmission of technical skill building in areas where trainees must be proficient and somewhat experienced before they can be permitted to work live, areas such as air traffic control (Treiber, 1994), medicine, or the nuclear industry for example. Once technical difficulties with bandwidth are addressed and user ability to navigate the interface is developed, a resident can join a group, teleport to a selected location, or even ride a virtual horse with the click of a button. In perusing the site, the largest education sites had traffic of 17,891, and the smallest traffic below 20. Names we would all recognize, such as Harvard, Clemson, University of Idaho, Georgia State, University of Kentucky, and Texas State have a presence within SL. I visited a few of these cyber locations and found myself in various environments with large billboard-like information boards arranged strategically around the teleport arrival zone providing both an introduction and instruction to the visitor. The Texas State location included a sandbox area in which residents and students can attempt to build things. In addition to formal educational institutions, many scientific resources such as NASA have a presence. NASA’s purpose for being on SL is to bring space to people through access to data and information.

What does all this virtual world creativity mean? How can it be used? Over 700 companies provide on-boarding training for new hires within the virtual world of SL (Miller, 2008). IBM, Cisco, and other large technical corporations deliver organization wide communications through SL (Miller, 2008). High tech employers recruit and interview in SL. English, math, history, environmental studies, these topics and others suit themselves well to the vicarious experience one can gain through virtual interactions and collaborative discussions. Universities are using SL for problem-solving and visualization in topics ranging from history to medicine (Hoare, 2007).

An additional boon may be the communication and interactivity which occurs in distance education classes among students assuming a “digital personae” (Foster, 2008). A program called Literature Alive “engages visitors in reading by guiding their avatars on tours of pixilated versions of famous literary spots” (Foster, 2008). It would seem that the result of these virtual experiences and digital personae is greater collaboration. SL provides a social platform for learning to occur across continents and cultures, where avatars provide anonymity and equality to all. Consider how relevant Albert Bandura’s comments relative to social learning theory are in a virtual world classroom, “By manipulating symbols that convey relevant information, one can gain understanding of causal relationships, create new forms of knowledge, solve problems, and deduce consequences without actually performing any activities” (Bandura, 1977).

International educators are calling for governments to get involved in the elearning world primarily through ensuring adequate infrastructure is in place to permit internet access for students. Developing countries particularly are realizing the importance of all forms of distance learning to enable them to participate in the knowledge economy. “Digital literacy is the future” (Aginam, 2007). Any country that fails to provide the necessary infrastructure will be left behind as the world moves into the digital realms. SL is not waiting, within the search engine of SL is a listing for the Academy of Second Learning, who announces their purpose as follows, “Come to school for education: workshops, help sessions, free classes in a university setting to set your creativity loose in SL.” The academy has been visited by at least 6478 residents.

Business has begun to realize the merit of online – and specifically virtual world training programs. Certainly comments within the American Society for Training and Development’s annual report indicate so.

“Another BEST organization used virtual classrooms to train up to 400 people simultaneously, trained their internal managers as trainers, increased the use of mobile learning and gaming, and introduced a new learning management system that provided employees with better access, less downtime, and better consistency. The results of these initiatives were 35,000 employees trained with a learning staff of 14 people and a 54

percent increase in the number of training days provided” (Paradise, 2007).

Near the end of Joe Miller’s Second Life presentation he played a SL video which included comments from people at CoLab, the space science lab. The speaker ended his comments with a simple but thought provoking comment, reminding us that the internet and virtual reality have been created. We can not undo that now. We couldn’t if we tried. So the question to be answered is, “what will we do with it?” In a recent Education Digest article, Terry Beaubois, director of the Montana State University’s Creative Research Lab, recommended that those considering using virtual campuses design them as private, with controlled access, and specific user guidelines. Additionally he recommended a well thought through strategy for use rather than haphazard developments. He urged every group planning to use SL for education to set realistic expectations for what can be accomplished (Bugeja, 2008). Moving a boring, outdated lecture into SL and requiring avatars to sit and listen with no opportunity to interact may not garner any better results than providing the lecture live on campus. Rather than impulsively jump onto the virtual world bandwagon for its hip interactivity and bizarre avatars, Bugeja recommends educators evaluate the appropriateness of the virtual world environment for the topic being taught.

In summary, where virtual worlds can be used to bring people together for collaboration or projects, they seem to provide a great service. Additionally, when training content is of such a nature that real-life practice is dangerous or impractical, virtual worlds may provide an answer. The advent of virtual worlds is still so new to educators that much research remains to be done to assess it’s viability as a mode of instruction. Must pedagogy be changed, if so, in what ways? Are avatars effectively eliminating racial, ethnic, sexist, and social discrimination within virtual worlds? If so, what impact does that have on learning? Can virtual world education create a level of equality in education which traditional classrooms have been unable to attain? Is traditional elearning as successful as virtual world learning in the transmission of information and formation of knowledge? Does each have a niche which we would do well to observe? The questions are many. The MUVE exists, and its application to education is up to us.
References

Aginam, E. (2007) Berlin e-learning conference calls on governments to embrace e-education. All Africa. Retrieved March 9, 2008 from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com

Bandura, Albert (1977) Social learning theory. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Bugeja, M. (2008, February 1) Second life, revisited. The Education Digest. Retrieved March 9, 2008 from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com

Foster, Andrea L (2008, January 1) Using Second Life as a platform for education: professor avatar. The Education Digest. Retrieved March 9, 2008 from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com

Hoare, S. (2007, December 4) Second life: Campus of the future. The Guardian. Retrieved March 9, 2008 from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com

Miller, J. (2008, February 26) Second Life. Lecture presented at the ASTD Tech Knowledge conference.

Paradise, A. (2007) State of the Industry Report. Published by the American Society for Training & Development. Alexandria, VA.

Treiber, K. (1994, December 9-13) Sweaty palms! Virtual reality applied to training. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Vocational Association Convention, Dallas, TX.

As he walked into the room I pondered his lofty position of respect and honor – duly earned in 30+ years in the field of education and training, from the days of mainframes to web 2.0 and interactive elearning.  For just a moment I reflected upon the thought; “Someday, when I grow up, would I aspire to his position?”

Immediately upon pondering the thought, the memory of a recent HPI course and it’s practice and ramifications for operational success crossed my mind.

Ah, no! I thought. I do not want to be a highly revered elearning guru; the author of many books, speaker at multiple conferences, and owner of a highly respected e-learning development company. That wouldn’t contribute to society the way I want to. I want to discover the root causes of business problems, search for answers through mountains of data, and help management identify and implement programs and processes which would effectively address the problems. Why you ask? Because in doing so I would help industry within the US remain strong – and fight the global forces which are eroding  US business profitability and success. It is is perhaps my way of giving back.