Spring 2014 Graduate Courses

This spring semester I am currently taking two courses at UCF. To begin the new year, I was admitted into the Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) Master Program within the Education and Human Performance College. With a concentration in e-learning, my goal is to complete the program within three years while appling concepts, principles, and theories directly to course development for the Global Real Estate And Technology University (GR8U) where I will instruct continuing education and eventually, licensing courses. This will be my second master's degree from UCF with my sights set on additional advanced degrees in the near future.

Currently, I am enrolled in the following courses:

• EME 6062 Research in Instructional Technology
• EME 6614 Instructional Game Design in Training and Education

--Corey

Reflecting on 2013

Once again, it is that time of the year when father time forces a brand new year upon us all. However, reflecting back upon the past year is an important action for looking forward to the future.

The past year for me involved mainly one specific purpose, academics. Earlier in the year, I was enrolled in two graduate courses, Human Resources Management and Strategic Planning Management, at the University of Central Florida. These two courses were core courses within the Master of Nonprofit Management (MNM) program in which I was working towards since the Spring of 2011.

After finishing Human Resources and Strategic Planning courses, I enrolled in an elective course Organizational Behavior. The reason for taking this course was to develop a concentration in public administration to add to my specialization in nonprofit management. I found Organizational Behavior rigorous, but enlightening at the same time, during my work within the course. For the course paper, I focused on the theory behind the communication process and applied this same theory to a later course taken this past fall.

Following the summer session, I finished the MNM program by taking Public Administrators in Governance and Public Policy in the fall semester. With these two courses, I successfully balanced my graduate courses with 18 hours in nonprofit management and 18 hours in public administration. The other course taken was an elective, Cybercrime and Criminal Justice. Even though I had no prior knowledge or experience with either two, Governance and Public Policy were wonderfully rigorous and thought provoking for me. In developing papers for these courses, I researched and covered topics covering Internet Governance and a theoretical perspective on Texting and Driving for a group paper.

The culmination of this past year's courses taken lead to graduating from the MNM program approximately two weeks ago. Walking across the stage and accepting a congratulatory handshake from a UCF provost regarding my academic achievement was an important step in my academic career, but more importantly achieving a life goal I had set twenty years ago after I finished my bachelor's degree. I had promised myself to eventually attend graduate school and receive a master's degree. Check and check for 2013.

Looking forward, I begin the next chapter in my academic career by taking e-Learning courses, Adult Learning and Research in Instructional Technology. My new goal for 2014 is to work towards a second master's degree in Instructional Design and Technology. Delivering future instructional courses online and in the classroom are reasons for working towards a Master in Arts degree. In addition, I intend to apply e-Learning theories and principles gained towards areas in human rights and citizen engagement within the domain of International Relations.

In summary, 2013 was a enlightening year academically speaking. 2014 will definitely be more of the same.

--Corey

A Felina Thank You to Breaking Bad

Tonight marks the end of the cable show, Breaking Bad (BrBa). Since season three, I have been a hardcore fan of the show thanks to a colleague's recommendation and applied peer pressure to watch it. Excluding season 5b, I have probably watched every episode of BrBa at least eight to nine times each via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video. (Note: I detest regular tv due to the commercials so I refuse to subscribe to cable.)

Watching the show has been a wonderful journey for me, to say the least, but unfortunately every beginning has an end or in this case, felina. In a way, BrBa has been that invisible friend who has always been there for me for the last three years. Whenever I needed something to watch in the background and second screen or because the selection on Netflix's instant stream was lacking, BrBa was always there. Factoring in the ability to binge an entire season without viewing a single commercial, BrBa was again, always there for me providing a compelling and cerebral-like story.

Before BrBa, I was fascinated with the show Lost, especially because of my origination from Hawaii, the state where the show was filmed. However, BrBa has surpassed Lost for me for many reasons. First and foremost, the acting on BrBa has been outstanding which lead to strong believability in the characters, situations of the characters, and transitions from situation to situation. Second, one of the notable downfalls of the Star Wars prequals was the overuse of technology which complicated the overall stories. In contrast, BrBa implemented very little technology, but when they did, simplified the use with non-smartphones, minimal internet use, and user-friendly technology tools such as the gps tracker Hank used to track Gus and Walt. Simply speaking, BrBa did not let the technology overtake the story unlike other shows or films. Third, the story was masterfully woven with symbolism, foreshadowing, and misdirection. A perfect example was the way the writers would hide details of plot in plain site of the viewers, for instance, Hanks' cataloging of minerals, not rocks Marie.

In a couple of hours, the final BrBA act will be aired, but before this occurs I will, for the last time, attempt, the key word being attempt, to predict what will take place in the final act tonight. Here is my prediction.

I predict Jesse kills Todd because of overdue karma. Since Lydia lives in Houston, Walt could make a pit stop traveling from NH to ABQ and eliminate her. I think Skylar will be found guilty and goes to prison for a long time. Walt Jr. dies in a car accident which has been foreshadowed in previous episodes. After eliminating the Nazis with his AK47 and a bit of help from the Vamanos Pest boys, a final showdown or shootout between Jesse and Walt occurs with Jesse winning this time over Walt. After disposing of Walt's body, Jesse collects the $70 million and gives it all away to a charity, possibly a cancer research organization. He then locates Brock and relocates him for being his parental guardian, for showing his undying love for Andrea. Distraught by all of the events, Maria joins the police force for continuing the fight against the war on drugs and a tribute to Hank.

For a wishful, ending twist, Jesse's little brother from I believe season three, becomes a chemistry teacher at a school. One of his students is Holly, a slacker type girl, who introduces Jesse's younger brother to the world of drugs, specifically Methamphetamine aka meth. The BrBA cycle repeats, again, with a reverse in roles this time, Pinkham is the manipulating mentor and White is the lost soul. The equation is once again balanced: pink + white = blue.

A solid thanks goes out to Vince Gilligan and his writers, the actors, and behind the scenes folks for creating one of the greatest shows in the history of television, in my simplistic opinion.

--Corey

Traditional Real Estate Commission Model

Above is a depiction of the traditional real estate commission model. The purpose is to visually represent the actors, events, processes, resources and services which take place within this model. In addition, a goal is to analyze all integral components for defining and creating patterns. The actors' names used are merely placeholders for abstraction purposes. This diagram, descriptions, and patterns will be included in my upcoming book Breaking Commissions: The Dark Side of Real Estate.

--Corey

Not Safe For Work Literature Review

This past semester I was expected to write a literature review for my human resources graduate course. I chose the topic sexual harassment and its effects within the work environment from the use of the Internet. Eleven peer-reviewed articles were chosen for discussing strengths and weaknesses in sexual harassment policy development for managing employees in this new digital era of mobile and desktop devices. Below is the introduction for the literature review with the entire article located on my research website. Please feel to provide commentary and feedback.

Not Safe For Work: A Survey in Workplace Policy on Sexual Harassment and the Internet A Review of the Literature

Introduction

Employers have the unenviable task of managing employees’ online activities locally in the office and remotely. Because of the Internet and the invention of the World Wide Web, the day-to-day working environment has changed significantly. From these technologies, the potential for acts of sexual harassment may occur and possibly disrupt nonprofit and public organizations’ safe and productive work environments causing lost hours of productivity and revenues.

Sexual harassment became an issue for organizations in 1986 when the Supreme Court included its awareness in Title VII. According to Bower (2005), sexual harassment involves two scenarios, quid pro quo and a hostile environment. Linking these scenarios to the workplace, researchers have attempted to study organizations’ use of the Internet and World Wide Web which have both significantly affected workplaces by converting them from traditional environments into today’s digital workplaces. However, because of the constant change in technology, developing and implementing best practices and policies dealing with sexual harassment can be a challenge.

From the literature, researchers discuss strategies for managing sexual harassment specifically relating to the themes of monitoring of employees, filtering content and employer liability. This paper discusses best practices and policies presented by the researchers for examining differences and common theories focusing on a central question, “How can an organization eliminate the potential for sexual harassment?” Recent literature articles were selected to attempt to better understand how suggested policy development and organizational practices should address sexual harassment within nonprofit and public organizations.

Real Estate Transport Protocol Abstract

For my next conference paper, I plan to submit the following abstract on one of the two internet protocols I invented not too long ago. Real Estate Transport Protocol (RETP) is the messaging and provisioning protocol for an eventual global multiple listing service in the not so distant future. The diagram depicts the actors and message flows. Full explanation will be discussed in the conference paper.

Title: Real Estate Transport Protocol: The Internet’s Multiple Listing Service Messenger

Abstract

Today’s multiple listing services (MLS) are antiquated, legacy systems due to tight coupling to their localized market and lack of interoperability. Moreover, these same MLSs are operated as controlled gateways eliminating public access, competition and global network distribution. This paper discusses a new internet protocol called Real Estate Transport Protocol (RETP) that resolves these inefficiencies. Using reserved internet port 32811, RETP provides a fire-and-forget messaging protocol for sending and receiving listings over the Internet to geographically distributed MLSs known as registrars. RETP creates a hub-and-spoke network topology for provisioning listings from a centralized registry to authorized registrars securely. Three messaging scenarios are discussed for demonstrating RETP’s operations: registrant to registrar, registrant to registrar to registry, and then finally, registrant to registrar to registry to multiple registrars.

Keywords: multiple listing service, internet protocol, distributed computing, network theory

--Corey

MNM Final Three

Unfortunately, I have not yet filled out my NCAA Final Four bracket out, but I did register for my final three courses for my Master in Nonprofit Management at the University of Central Florida. Technically, I really only have two more courses left to fulfill the thirty-six mandatory hours for graduation. However, I registered for an extra public administration course so that I will have a total of six public administration courses for the option of adjuncting government related courses if I so choose in the future. Most colleges and universities require at least eighteen hours of related post-secondary courses to instruct online or face-to-face.

Here are my final three courses:

Summer 2013:
PAD 6037 Public Organization Management

Fall 2013:
PAD 6035 Public Administration in the Policy Process

PAD 6053 Public Administration in Governance

Ironically, the degree is called a Master of Nonprofit Management, however I will have taken the same amount of course work hours, eighteen, in nonprofit and public administration within the program. The other, unrelated course taken was Cybercrime from the Digital Forensics program.

--Corey