“No one can estimate the value of education; no one can say where the mind will go once it is set free.”  -Martha Berry

A Brief History

Berry College first began in 1902, with the opening of the Boys’ Industrial School, a boarding school for  impoverished boys in the greater Rome, Georgia area.  The daughter of a local business owner, Martha Berry, felt that education could provide a path for local children who otherwise could not afford a proper education.

When some young boys stumbled upon the private cabin retreat where Martha read her Bible, she first learned that the children did not attend school or church and that they were had not heard some of the basic Bible stories.   She then began her dedicating time on Sundays to instructing the boys with a basic education and shortly thereafter began to attract numerous other children.  She then established four day schools, but after these schools appeared ineffective Martha decided in 1902 to use the 83 acres that she had inherited from her father to found the Boys’ Industrial School.  By 1909 a girls’ school was added.

Additional Historic Dates

• 1914 – Work became an integral component of the Berry education with students working eight hours on two days of the week, and attending class for the remaining four. The work program kept operating and maintenance costs low and helped to offset the students’ tuition and expenses,
• 1926 – Became a junior college and soon after a senior college.
• 1930’s – The school owned 30,000 acres, made possible through Martha’s relentless fundraising efforts that resulted in substantial contributions from the nation’s political and social elite.
• 1930 – Martha Berry gained national renown for her schools including being named by Good Housekeeping magazine as one of the nation’s 12 most influential women.
• 1932 – Graduated its first class.
• 1942 – Martha Berry’s death deprived the schools of their central figure as they entered their most difficult period.
• 1955 – The girls’ school was closed due to declining contributions and a proliferation of public education alternatives after World War II.
• 1956 – Concentrated efforts were made to develop the college’s liberal arts and professional programs offerings.
• 1957 – Berry was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Admission efforts were expanded to include urban areas, non-tradition students and commuters.
• 1960’s/70’s – Reforms were enacted including paying student workers instead of crediting accounts, modifying the strict code on student behavior, abandoning uniform dress and mandatory religious services, and holding national searches for faculty members.
• 1963-64 – Student work was made voluntary.
• 1964 – The boys’ school was renamed Berry Academy.
• 1971 – Berry Academy was made coeducational.
• 1983 – Berry Academy was closed in 1983 due to struggles with high cost and low enrollment.
• Late 1980’s – Several publications regularly ranked Berry College as one of the Southeast’s top five regional liberal arts institutions.
• 1990’s – Berry annually enrolled approximately 1,800 undergraduates and roughly 200 students in its business and educational graduate programs.
• 1998 – Improving the college’s national academic reputation, increasing diversity within the faculty and student body, and improving classroom, laboratory, and student life facilities became an initiative.
• 1999 – From land sales, local development and sound investment, Berry’s endowment had grown to approximately 185th among educational institutions nationally.

Awards and Honours

Berry College tends not to tout too many awards however, the campus is well known as a green campus, Storm Ready and Tree Campus USA.  They belong to the Annapolis Group (leading national, independant, liberal arts college), is AACSB Accredited (business) and a member of AACTE (teacher education) as well as the ACS and NSF (chemistry and sciences) and CNEE (nursing).

Athletically, Berry college belongs to and is a founding member of the Southern Athletic Association and is part of the NCAA Division III.

Maps and More

The following links can be found within the forward facing site for Berry College.

• Virtual Tour – Our new map will help guide you around campus and can be specified to show key features based on your preferences.
• Quick Facts – Degrees, facilities, student and faculty information can be found on this page.
• Our Schools – Find out more about a program that suits your scholastic needs.
• The Eagles – Watch live stream of the Berry Bald Eagles (and eaglets) from one of three cameras.
• Life Ready – Learn how you can give back to Berry.

Famous Images

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This first video is a little sumpin’ sumpin’ I threw together using Adobe Premiere.  It is a compilation of clips taken during our BOLD class which took place last summer (2015). Enjoy.…

Source: Videos

The below was emailed to us at work, but sharing is caring, so…

Many of you may have heard about a new form of malware, sometimes called ransomware, named “Locky.”  If your machine gets infected with Locky, you will lose access to your files unless you pay the ransom to unlock them.  So far, this ransom has ranged from $200 to over $400, but the ransom must be paid in digital currency called BitCoin or in pre-paid gift cards. 

The most common way Locky arrives is via an email with an attached document.  More than likely it comes from someone you do not know, which should be the first red flag to alert you that this is not legitimate.  If you open the document, it will be unreadable except for a sentence suggesting you enable macros as indicated below: 

If you do this, you will still be unable to read the document, but you will also activate a program embedded in the document that downloads the ransomware.  Locky will then scramble and rename with a .locky extension all documents, audio and video files, and other user generated files on the computer while also deleting any local backup copies of these files.  It will also scramble any similar files on any shared network drives, USB thumb drives, or external hard drives that may be connected to your computer.  The last step is the demand for payment to unlock these files, with instructions. 

How do you defend yourself from ransomware?

 1.       Make sure you are regularly backing up your important files and storing a copy somewhere that is NOT attached to your computer.  Files on network shared drives are backed up and stored separately, so these are protected, but any files on the local computer or on external hard drives attached to the computer are vulnerable.

2.       Don’t enable macros in unsolicited documents and be cautious with any unsolicited attachments.  Attached to this email is a guide that will help you spot suspicious emails.  Feel free to print this out and post in your office wherever employees or students work.

3.       Be sure that the Sophos anti-virus software is on all of your computers and is up to date.  You can confirm that Sophos is updating automatically on a Windows PC by hovering on the icon in your notification area in the lower right corner of your screen. To check on OS-X, click on the Sophos icon in the top bar and choose, ‘Show autoupdate window’.

When recording video for your Ed TPA, please consider the following guidelines:  A video clip should be unedited (continuous with no interruption in the events); The clip should include student / teacher interactions; You can feature the entire class or a specific group of students; students and teacher need to be visible and clearly heard; you need to obtain permission from parents/guardians of the students (and all who may appear in the video) prior to recording – those who do not obtain permission should still attend, but be off-camera.

Since your video will be reviewed it should be of enough quality that audio and visual aspects are clear to see and hear.  Keep the video straight forward and simple; there is no need for graphics, titles and special effects or music.

Here are some tips in preparation for recording your video: Obtain the video and/or audio equipment well in advance and if you do not have free access to video equipment, contact family, friends, teachers, or university advisors (or tech department); Contact your teacher and the principal where you will be filming so they are prepared for your lesson. Consider having a friend or teacher operate the camera for you; review your classroom for best area to set up camera (where will the camera/microphones need to be placed?)ze the need for a camera operator by scouting locations in advance; do a dry run for practice to test sound and composition;  try to record all of your lessons so that you will have footage to choose from;  act natural and advise students to do the same (along these lines, position the camera somewhere unobtrusive); finally, make a back-up copy of your video clip.

Please refer to the Ed TPA Handbook for any specific requirements regarding your area of study.

I’m not Irish, but hey! I’ll partake in a green beer!

I started off by doing a word jumble activity, unfortunately I don’t think there is a way to do multiple word jumbles.  Artist Jumble

Renaissance Artist Crossword was a much better activity to create and I found the more information was placed into the puzzle, the better it became.

This last one I feel could use some tweaking (concentrating on a continent or specific country rather than a world map) however I enjoyed putting it together and I like how it plays. Yay maps. Where Are These Artists From?

Finding educational games for the collegiate student is not the easiest thing and many games on the purposegames.com that were based on learning artist/artwork were not randomized so they became more about memorizing placement rather than actual learning.  That being said I appreciated this one titled: Paintings – A Lego on your Wall of Art?  This game reached a little deeper and has you match works of art along with the artists in a fun LEGO style.

As I previously stated, the games on here are quite limiting, however perhaps some more basic lessons could be learned to pound in art concepts such as The Elements of Art.

Some of the more difficult games that could be used make use of art techniques such as Pop-art World Leaders but if you are going for a timed score, its memorizing placement over faces.  For those willing to learn details of art (or world leaders these games can be useful albeit limiting. Here are a few more examples for comparison: 15 Art Movements, Renaissance Art and Ancient Art.

 

K-12

My scholastic upbringing took place in a small northern Illinois town west of Chicago.  I was fortunate in that the schools had access to computers, music and art throughout and as such I was exposed to forms of education that not only influenced me, but allowed me some opportunities that many schools did not.  I chose to partake in the many art programs that were offered starting in Jr. High which lead to my area of focus in college.

College

I attended Arizona State University and achieved a BFA in Intermedia (think everything from traditional life drawing through digital animation).  It was at this time that I realized how well my previous years had trained me.  Growing up, I assumed most schools had the same curriculum, but it wasn’t until my first year of college when I confronted a professor stating that I was tired of doing colour wheels and two and three point perspective having done them since the seventh grade.  My teacher pretty much stated that not all students came from equal schooling and had me work on something else.

Overall, ASU was a positive experience having a much better art program then expected (I still keep in touch with a couple of professors) and, at the time, was at the forefront of technology made available to students.

Graduate

Upon graduation, I returned to Illinois (though in hindsight, I should have perhaps moved to California and pursued a few career opportunities there) and while job-hunting began a graduate program in art at Northern Illinois University.  During this time, I had accepted at job at Cartoon Network in Atlanta and thus ended my half-completed grad studies.

Ten years and a massive layoff later, I found myself employed at Berry College taking advantage of their graduate program in education.  I decided on obtaining my masters within the education field as I can relate instruction to my current position.  I train students, faculty and staff with using our content management system to create web pages for Berry.edu as well as advise best practices pulling from my years of experience.  Working in the Public Relations department, I have an opportunity to still stay abreast of the entertainment industry and can perhaps adjunct teach art post graduation.