This book has been like Batman for me.  In the movie The Dark Knight the Joker tells Batman, "You've changed things.  Forever."  I know this seems like a bit of melodrama, but it really isn't when it comes to Daniel Pink's book, "A Whole New Mind."  This book is in two parts to we'll examine them seperately.
The first part is very scientifically defined.  Daniel has his brain scanned and then discusses the results of the scan and how various partf of the brain work.  We then look at some of the results of the United State's history and the ending of our age of Industry.  Daniel brings in some psychological research to examine various aspects of our need for meaning.
The second part of the book is the truly awesome part.  Daniel breaks down the "new mind" into six categories: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning.  Each of these catagories has its own endeavors, but they are all interconnected.  Therein lies the beauty of his book.  It clearly demonstrated how if we focus on any one of these traits we will inadvertantly touch all six.
As I said, this book has been a game changer.  I've always liked the idea of Story and Play within my classroom.  I want to focus more on them.  If students are having fun, then they will work hard, and not even realize how hard they are working.  We have read in previous books how online gaming is changing how students think and interact.  They will stay up all night in order to figure out how to complete a level, putting in hours of work, because it is fun.
As educators we need to harnass the fun of learning, and make our lessons meaningful.  This will unlock the other traits Pink disucsses.
In my previous post on the book, I was consistently reminded of a book, "Drumming on the Edge of Magic" while reading Pink.  "In the begining, there was noise.  Noise begat rythm, and rythm begat everything else.  We are descendents of the Big Bang, the original downbeat.  We are multi-dimensional rythmis machines, vibrations in the collectice cucles and patterns of the universe.  The first sound in the universe was pure noise: the big bang.  Its reverberations, still ongoing, are the source of cosmic rythm- a dance of particles and atoms spinning out galaxies, stars, and planetary systems-finding its own groove, gradually bringing out order.  That order is harmony, incredibly involved and interdependent, like a heavenly clockwork.  We've always looked up to the sky and wondered what lies beyond."  This is how Drumming on the Edge of Magic begins.  It echos Pink's call for meaning in our lives.  While Magic sticks with music as meaning, Pink allows us to explore more avenues for meaning.


Hart, Mickey, Jay Stevens, and Fredric Lieberman. Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990. Print.

The Story of My LIfe

After viewing the TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a few ideas stuck out at me.  The first idea was the concept of power and American politics.  We are currently within the crazy season of American politics... Presidential Elections.  Donald Trump warns us of the Dangerous illegal immigrants who are coming into the United States via Mexico (internal monologue question.. isn't the very large border with Canada something we should look at as well?).  Marco Rubio is telling us a narrative about how normalizing relations with Cuba will bring untold calamities to the United States.  Who knows WHAT is going on with Hillary Clintons email?

While fun to discuss and create humorous memes to share on twitter and facebook, this political narrative only tells us one small bit of the whole story.  I have friends who are in politics and they say that you have to sum up your stance on an issue in 10-20 words or else the average voter loses interest or can't understand it.  This is dangerous.  How can a voter truly understand what a candidate will do once in office if they don't hear the entire story?

I call this the Disneyland system of politics.  Please don't misunderstand me, I love Disneyland.  I'm all about Mr. Toads Wild Ride, however, it isn't reality.  It's fiction.  The entire park is one large meta-narrative story.  Employees are called, "cast members" because you are in a story, or production while in the park.  You are presented with an idea of what it was like to be within a medieval castle and to roam the forest with dwarfs, or to soar above Victorian London.  Were there castles in Medieval Europe that had turrets, and drawbridges?  Yes.  Does Peter Pan take us on a journey above Victorian London that resebmles what London looked like in the Victorian Era?  Yes.  Do we take the Disney Narrative as fact?  Please don't.

We run into this problem in education.  Our contents are so packed full and with limited time in the school year, we give a Disney-esque version of our content.  In order to get through the entire scope and sequence of European History, for example, I give my students a rough overview and don't go into much depth.  I don't have the time.  But with the rise of available technologies, I belive that teachers now have the ability not only to flip their classrooms, but to spin them and give students access to content that will provide the depth we have wanted to give them.

My instagram story is true and acurate, but it isn't the complete picture.  It is only a sliver of my week.  It can't hope to truly dig deep and discover everything that occured.  That would take a consistent stream of consciousness embedded into youtube.  I think that as educators we need to keep looking for more of the story that is being told in our content areas, and in our students lives.  This is a Hurculean task that will never be complete, our students stories are eternal.

 Adichie, C. (2009, October 7). The Danger of a Single Story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TED Talks. Retrieved August 1, 2015. 

Before I began taking this class, I didn't have much of an online presence.  However, I thought I was doing just fine.  I would tweet now and then.  I emailed, maintained a Google site.  Used GAFE in my classroom.  But that was nothing compared to what I have accomplished thus far in our class.

Why have I not been taking advantage of Social Media?

In the past two months I have more than doubled the number of tweets I have sent.  I have created and maintained a website dedicated to my learning.  I've used tools like Instagram and Google+ that I've never used before.  My online presence has increased logarithmically since May.

Before entering this program I never completely understood why people liked to share everything online.  One of my great friends posts a picture of his dinner every day.  It makes sense why, as he is a chef.  Before I began to post articles, and other educationally slanted material on a regular basis, I thought he was crazy.  I've had a change of heart.  

George Couros wrote an article entitled, "Snapchat and Education."  In this article he mused the possibility of utilizing snapchat in an academic environment.  He believes that snapchat could be used to tell stories.  Students could create a daily story that would disappear after 24 hours, leaving room for a new story to occupy the space.  What schools should keep in mind is that once teachers and adults begin to use Snapchat, it looses its cool with the students.  I believe that if we begin to use snapchat in schools, it will become like Facebook.  Many students have told me that they don't use Facebook anymore because their parents are on it.

Caitlin Tucker, in her article, Instagram Scavenger Hunt, she details a class trip to San Francisco with her students.  During the trip she created a scavenger hunt to more fully engage her students with what they were seeing and experiencing.  This is a photographic cousin to a project that I came up with using audio QR codes to engage students.

We are in the middle of a huge transformation, not only for my cohort-mates and myself, but for the educational community as a whole.  The more we share, the more we feel validated by the response we recieve from the public.  I have made many new connections within the education world by sharing my thoughts in a public forum.  As Alice Keeler tweeted, "I share my stuff because I did not get into teaching to hoard information."

 Blog Categories. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2015.
 Instagram Scavenger Hunt. (2013, February 26). Retrieved July 20, 2015. 
 Snapchat and Education. (2014, October 27). Retrieved July 20, 2015. 
 TeacherShirts.com- Rhinestone & Screen Printed Teacher Shirts & Gifts. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2015. 
 

This video was great!  I love how he has taken control of his education and immersed himself into real world situations in order to learn.  I have a large number of friends who are, as they call themselves, "Un-Schoolders."  They don't like the term, "Homeschoolers" because they are rarely at home.  Like Logan, they are studying physics at places where they can experience inertia, mainly Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.  Or they go to the tidal pools to examine sea life.  I think this type of educational experience is good in a way of learning by doing.  My un-schooling friends and I (some of whom I went to school with long ago) have excellent conversations about pedagogical approaches and truly experiencing education, as opposed to having knowledge crammed into our brains like we suffered through.

One area where we disagree is how to make this type of educational approach available to everyone.  The simple truth is, we can't.  Schools serve two functions: Education and (let's face it) day care.  My family doesn't have the economic wherewithal to have one parent stay home with the kids and educate them in an alternative environment. In California the average annual salary is $51,910, if I were to stay home from work (my wife makes more than me, so the math makes sense for me to stay home) I would remove a significant chunk of funds from our family budget.  It just can't be done.

So the question becomes, how do we change public schools to offer real educational experiences for ALL students?  I like to think that in the two years since this video was made, we have made progress.  The Common Core has definately helped.  In my AP US History class we had an exercise similar to what Logan experienced by participating in a panel discussion pretending to be a person from history and prepared to answer questions the audience can pose.  This coming school year, I am going to gamify my class.  I want students to build the sense of community they feel when playing games such as World of Warcraft.  Our book, A New Culture of Learning, explains that students learn best when they are allowed to solve problems and bounce ideas off of each other, and form a community to help guide and shape their learning.

I just finished reading Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind.  One of the major themes of the book is how we in the United States are on a constant search for meaning.  I think that Logan's spiritual experience with nature echos what Pink was trying to describe.  We need meaning in our lives.  If we have meaning, we will be able to have happiness.  Pink and Logan both leave their audience with a basic idea.  We learn and performe best when we are happy.


 Average California pay is $51,910 - Sacramento Business Journal. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2015. 

Hackschooling makes me happy | Logan LaPlante | TEDxUniversityofNevada. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2015. 


Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Riverhead Books. 


Thomas, D., & Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, Ky.

Empathy:
Quote: "Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in someone else's position and to intuit what that person is feeling."  I choose this quote because I belive that empathy is a skill that is lacking in our society.

Question: As I am writing this post, CNN is on the TV in the background.  I can't write in slience, so I turn on the news.  They are discussing the recent shooting in Chatanooga, TN.  The main topic is the motivation of the shooter and mental health.  On page 164, Pink discusses apps that can detect the presence of emotion, not identify the individual emotion, per se.  In the years since his book was published, the technology has emerged for computers to detect and identify emotion (Dunham 2014).  A friend of mine is a physician, he workes in his office full time, but part time he is an internet based MD, where he video chats with patients and can diagnose certain ailments.  If we were to blend the tech doc with emotion reading software, can we work to detect individuals who may be experiencing a crisis before we learn of it after a shooting, or other instance of mass violence?


Aha:  I clearly saw myself and my wife in this chapter when he discussed Men, Women, and Empathy.  However, my wife is the logical numbers orented analytical mind, she takes the traditional "male" mindset.  I am an abstract emotionally conected funny one.  I have difficulty working with numbers, and she doesn't understand much that exists in an abstract plane.

Play:

Quote: "When you are payful, you are activiating the right side of the brain.  The logical brain is a limited brain.  The right side is unlimited.  You can be anything you want."  I chose this quote because it goes well with my connection and Aha! moment.

Question: If laughter is the best medicine, why are many of today's schools and teacher lounges the complete oposite of Disneyland; they are the grumpiest places on earth?  What is it about the walls of the school that suck the joy out of some teachers?  I like to self motivate.  Whenever I start to feel grumpy, I simply stop being grumpy, and just be Awesome! instead.  It works most of the time.

Aha: I hate flying.  Well, let me take that back, I don't like cramming my six foot four frame into a tiny pressurized tube that is hurling through the sub-stratisphere at mach 5.  What I hate is the possibility that the aforementioned pressurized tube will meet an unexpected and explosive landing.  I really enjoyed the segment about Southwest Airlines culture of play.  I try to exclusivly fly SWA because I am relaxed during the flight.  If the flight attendents are happy and playing around, then I feel much more comfortable and relaxed during my flight.  I even forget that my knees are in my face because of the lack of legroom, they make it a fun flight.

Meaning:
Quote: 1. "...calls this movement the "Fourth Great Awakening." ... "Spiritual (or immaterial) inequity is now as great a problem as material inequity, perhaps even greater."
2. A transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on an historically unprecedented scale - involving hundreds of millions of people - and may eventually be recognized as the prinicpal cultural development of our age."
These were just so good, I had to put them together.


Aha: I had no idea that there was a labrynth outside of my church until now.  I just thought it was a nice design in the floor.  Religion factored heavily for me in this chapter.  Prayer and quiet contemplation always make me feel physicaly better.  I am prone to high stress and as a resul high blood pressure, but time spent in church and other relgious based activities make me feel better, and acording to the free blood pressure checker at CVS, healthier too.  I was able to use my own experience to prove what Daniel Pink was trying to argue in this chapter.

Final Connections:
On page 168 Pink states "EMPATHY... it connects to the three high concept, high touch aptitudes I've already discussed." (Pink, 2006)  I think he is minimizing his argument.  I think that all six of the aptitudes he discusses are interconnected.  If we ignore any of them, we won't experience the totality of letting our right brains steer the ship for a while.  Pink's writing style in this book is incredible.  The chapters are not autonomous, they build on each other as the book progresses.  It is impossible to comment on later chapters, without bringing up information from earlier in the book.

When Pink talks about Play, it's like I wrote in my previous post on the book, it reminded me of the FISH training philosophy.  Play is essential to motivating employees and to keeping customers happy.  I think that play is also essential to motivating students.  If our students are not happy or concerned with things outside of the classroom, they are not going to perform well on their school work.  One of the bect books I've ever read is by Mickey Hart, one of the drummers for the band The Grateful Dead.  It is called, "Drumming at the Edge of Magic."  In it he discusses how drumming and rythm are central to the human experience, and that music gives meaning to life.  I kept writing, "Drumming at the Edge of Magic" in the margin of my book.  This book is connected to all of Pink's argument in part two of A Whole New Mind.  I really want to read more of his books!

Dunham, W. (2014, March 21). A Computer Can Recognize Emotions Better Than Most People. Retrieved July 19, 2015. 

 Hart, M., & Stevens, J. (1990). Drumming at the edge of magic: A journey into the spirit of percussion. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco.

Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Riverhead Books. 
 

So before this video I had the impression that snapchat was just a way for students to send text messages during class that couldn't be recovered.  I've had students shout out, "snapchat" during class letting others know to chech their, I guess, inbox (is that the correct term?).  I had no idea how dynamic snapchat has become.  It seems similar to Vine, except the videos in snapchat disappear after 24 hours.

I like that Snapchat has become a mechanism for students to share stories.  Currently, I am reading Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind.  The chapter on story is one of my favorite thus far.  It demonstrates the importance, and anthropological basis for humans to crave creating and consuming stories.  Students are no different, they are little humans, and want to share their own stories.

I belive that a savvy teacher could potentially use snapchat stories in class.  In history class we discuss the importance of oral traditions in pre literate societies.  Tribal history and culture are passed down through stories.  The older generation teaches the younger generation the stories.  The younger generation must learn the stories verbatum.  If they deviate even one word, the learner must relearn the story.  This way the integrity of the history remains intact.  An interesting exercise would be to have a story shared on Snapchat, students need to memorize it, and then repeat it durnig class, after the 24 hour window has dissappeared.  This way they can experience what it would be like to live in a pre-literate tribe, where memorization of stories was required to maintain a consistent cultural heritage.

One question that came to mind was this:  Are younger people moving away from Facebook because their parents have begun to embrace it?  What will come when older generations begin to utilize snapchat, will it no longer be cool? 

 Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Riverhead Books. 
 Snapchat Murders Facebook. (n.d.). Retrieved July 18, 2015. 

Design: 

Quote: "The democratization of design has altered the competative logic of businesses.  Companies traditionally have competed on price of quality, or some combination of the two.  But today decent quality and reasonable price have become meraly table stakes in the business game- the entry ticket for being allowed into the marketplace.  Once companies satisfy those requirements, they are left to compete less on functional or financial qualities and more in ineffable qualities wuch as whimsy, beauty, and meaning." (Pink, 2013)  This quote sums up not only this particular chapter, but, I think, a major portion of Daniel Pinks argument.  Business needs to re-allign its functional model in order to compete in the US marketplace.

Question: This may be more of an overarching question for the whole book, but I just thought of it during this chapter.  Daniel Pink discusses our quest for meaning in the first part of the book, how much of our actions now to stay relevant are merely stretching for meaning?

Connection: I like the section about the CHAD school.  I want to incroporate an idea discussed about the Roman aqeduct.  I think it would be fun to use google maps to study the topography of an area of the Roman Empire and have students design an aqueduct in that particular region.

Epiphany/Aha: My Aha moment comes on the tails of another quote. "Some pundits might write off these fevelopments as mass manipulation by wily marketers or further proof that well-off Westerners are mesmerized by style over substance.  But that view misreads economic reality and human aspiration.  Ponder that humble toaster.  The typical person uses a toaster at most 15 minutes per day.  The remaining 1,415 minutes of the day the toaster is on display.  In other words, 1% of the toasters time is devoted to utility, while 99% is devoted to significance.  Why shouldn't it be beautiful, especially when you can buy a good-looking one for less than $40?  Ralph Waldo Emerson said that if you built a better mousetrap, the world would beat a path to your door.  But in an age of abundance, nobody will come knocking unless your better mousetrap also appeals to the right side of the brain."  This shows why we moved to the Common Core.  We can no longer merely do the work required.  We need to learn to think critically in order to adapt and think differently about our place in the global community.


Story:
Quote: (Although businesspeople are often suspicious of stories... the fact is that statistics are use to tell lies and damned lies, while accounting reports are often BS in a ball gown... If a businessperson understands that his or her own mind naturally wants to frame experience in a story the key to moving the audience is not to resist this impulse but to embrace it." (Pink, 2013)  I chose this quote because it is familiar to me.  I used to work for a car rental company, writing tickets and selling the supplemental insurance.  When I would try to use logic to sell car rental insurance, it didn't work.  I couldn't sell a bloody thing.  However, once I switched to telling a story working on the emotional appeal, I started selling like no other.  I had one of the top sales numbers in my area, all because I told stories instead of accident statistics.

Question: To be honest, I enjoyed this chapter so much and agreed with pretty much everything in this chapter I can't think of a question.  I teach Social Studies and English, so story has been central to my class for years.

Connection: This chapter, as I stated a second ago, resonated with me and my class.  I think that by using technology my students can create stories throughout the year.  They can use istopmotion app on their ipads to make digital stories about the content.  They can write podcasts and create a class youtube channel.  The possibilities are endless.

Aha: Humans have been telling stories from the dawn of civilization, from the Epic of GIlgamesh to the Epic tale of Harry Potter stories are central to our lives.  As we have moved away from stories being a central point of our lives, to spreadsheets and statistics, there was a huge rise in cinematic productions (my own observation).  Why is this?  Possibly because we NEED story in our lives.


Symphony:
Quote: "The most creative among us see relationships the rest of use never notice.  Such ability is at a premium in a world where specialized knowledge work can quickly become routinized work- and therefore be automated or outsourced away.  'The next 10 years will require people to think and work across boundaries into new zones that are totally different from our areas of expertise.  They will not only have to cross those boundaries, but they will also have to identify opportunities and make connections between them.'" (Pink, 2013)  I like this quote because it reminds us that even those things that seem completely apart, do have a connection, and you sometimes need to dig deep to search for it.

Question:  In relation to my class, how can I incorporate symphone from the begining?  My students need to learn the basics of the material before they can see the connections, is this something that is more geared towards the final project of the year, to let them see the whole thing?

Connection: I like how this chapter is about seeing the relationships between various things.  Especially as I teach students the history of the ancient world they will need to learn to see the connections between the various civilizations.

Aha: My aha moment came when the discussion turned to dyslexia.  I thought it was amazing, and now that Daniel Pink explained it, it makes sense.  Dyslexic people are more right brained than non dyslexic people, so it makes sense that they would be great at seeing the connections between various things.  It makes me wonder if people who are ADHD have the same right brained tendencies than "normal" people?

Chapter 2 Abundance, Asia, and Automation

Quote: "The paradox of prosperity is that while living standards have risen steadily decade after decade, personal, family, and life satisfaction haven't budged.  That's why more people - liberated by prosperity but not fulfiled by it- are resolving the paradox by searching for meaning." Once you reach the peak, you need to find other purpose.  Similar to Inigo Montoya, a character from the movie The Princess Bride.  His whole life was spent on a quest to avenge his fathers death.  Once that was done, he felt empty, like there was nothing left to define him.  As Daniel Pink says later on the same page, "the pursuit of purpose and meaning has become an integral part of our lives."

Question: What happens next?  What happens to us as our lives get clipped by automation and Asia - and reconfigured by abundance? (Pink, 2003, 47) 

Connection: I think this shows why we students are in this particular program.  For too many years education has been dominated by rote memorization high stakes testing.  Our students are tested out.  We have also been producing a generation of workers who can pick the correct answer from a list, not workers who can product the list themselves.

Epiphany/Aha: In my class I make connections to popular cinema whenever I can, it helps me connect with something my students know.  As I was reading this chapter I kept thinking of the Terminator movie.  On page 44, Daniel Pink discusses new technology's future capacity to replace humans, I started to think of Sky Net.  Robots have taken over the world and are starting to wipe out humans.  This is why a change to right brain thinking is important, it is a move towards relevance.  We have created technology, we now have to come up with creative ways to use it.


Chapter 3 High Concept, High Touch.

Quote: Act 1, the industrial age, massive factories and efficient assembly lines powered the economy.
Act 2, the information age, the United States and other nations begin to evolve.
Act 3, Call this act the Conceptual age.  The main characters now are the creator and the empathizer, whose distinctive ability is mastery of R-Directed Thinking.

Question: Since MFA's are becoming more useful than MBA's are we going to begin to see more MFA's incorporate business ideas, accounting, business laws, etc..., or MBA's bring in more art concepts?

Connection: So, how can we adapt our thinking to keep ourselves relevant?  We continue to search for meaning, "Pursuits devoted to meaning and transcendence, for instance, are now as mainstream as double tall latte (Pink, 2003, 60)."  The rise of blogging, expressing yourself on the internet could be one way people search for teanscendence and meaning.  Daniel Pink discusses the next part of the book as an answer to the question, he calls them the six senses.

Epiphany/Aha: The discussion about the importance of MFA's due to their attention to detail struck home with me.  Since I have begun exploring painting in my 20% project, I understand the importance of detail.  I think that if you take someone with an eye for detail, teach them some business basics, you will find that they are quite effective at running and anaylizing a business.

Chapter 7: 
Quote: "Up to and through the better part of the 20th century, regarding knowledge as a static, easily transmitted what made sense, and it was the primary principle we used to shape our understanding of learning and education.  Experts, for example, are people who are fully versed in the what of any given topic.  In short, we viewed ourselves primarily as homo sapiens.  In the 21st century, however, knowledge is becoming less a question of 'what is the information?' Moreover, in a culture of learning where the context in which information has meaning is subject to change, reconstruction, and appropriation, the concept of knowledge being a where takes on heightened import."
Question: As much as I want my students to learn all about information within a particular context, I still need to get them through their AP exams, so how do we find the balance between the rote memorized knowledge they MUST possess to pass their exams, and the fluidity of learning knowledge within a particular context?
Connection: Throughout this entire chapter I keps flashing back to a training video I watched in a previous career in sales.  This video can be applied to any group of people, including teachers and students.  I'm going to use another quote from the book to embody the video, "Culture, he says, does not create play; play creates culture."
Epiphany: The story about the students finding Iraq on a map was awesome.  I think I am going to use that this coming year.  I think I might have my students use Google Tour Builder to take me on a tour of the regions we will be studying in the Ancient World.  I hope they will produce some legendary results.

Chapter 8:
Quote: "Geeking out involves learning to navigate esoteric domains of knowledge and practice and participating in communities that traffic in these forms of expertise."
Question: I love learning the theory, however, I would also like some practical aplication, so my question is how do we easily assess if our students are in the "hanging Out, messing around, or geeking out categories, so we can differentiate our lesson pedagogy to help them advance to a more enriching classroom environment?
Connection, and then I slip into my Epiphany: This chapter made me think of my choice book, Daniel Pinks A Whole New Mind.  This chapter brings us three levels of knowledge formation in a digital space.  It is a shift in our understanding of both what knowledge is and how it is created.  I also have made the connection that our three badges for this course are taken from this chapter, we first got the hanging out badge, then we are working on the messing around, and our final badge is geeking out.  I like it!
 
Chapter 9: 
Quote: "Imageine an environment where evaluation is based on after-action reviews not to determine rewards but to continually enhance performance.  Imagine an environment where learning happens on a continuous basis because the participants are internally motivated to find, share, and filter new information on a near-constant basis."
Question: Is there a way to gamify the classroom and create this communal identity without technology?  I am not sure of the statis of my classrooms technology this coming year, but I would like to try to gamify my class.
Connection: I can see a clear connection to teacher observations.  Too many administrators use them as weapons to slash at teachers they don't particularly care for.  I have always thought an evaluation was a chance to see where a teacher is, and then to craft a roadmap to help the teacher improve.  There is also a connection to student assessments.  Assesments should be tools to demonstrate mastery, and let the student know where the holes in their mastery are, and identify areas where the teacher needs to work with the student more.
Ephphany:  I have a friend Dwayne.  He loves world of warcraft.  I remember in college (15 or so years ago) he would prefer to stay home from going out on the town to play his video games.  When we graduated many of my college buddies began playing WOrld of Warcraft as a way to keep in touch.  We no longer lived in the dorm next door to each other, and it was a way for them to still be in a community even when separated by distance.  I didn't play, I actually made fun of them for being "nerds."  I guess the joke is on me now, because I am secretly wishing that I had played so I would have a better understanding of the World of Warcraft dynamics.

 Keep Calm and Geek On. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2015.
 World of Warcraft. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2015.