Both Martha and I found ourselves resonating with this post from Jenna, who wrote it during her trip to NYC as part of her theatre class.

Jenna’s blog is part of a large online project we’ve been facilitating for their class this semester. My own work has been largely behind-the-scenes. Out front and with astonishing diligence and imagination, our Instructional Technology Specialists have worked for months with these students and their professor, Gregg Stull, to realize a dream. You can read more about the project and process at The Smooth Elephant. From there, if you’re interested, read along with the students and Gregg as they blog. There’s a lot of material there, much of it very powerful indeed.

Even so, in the midst of all these aggregated blogging, video, and podcasting wonders, it’s often the small moments, the moments that might otherwise be lost or known only to one person, that carry the richest rewards. Jenna’s special day, like all the other experiences these students and their professor have had during this course of study, has now become part of the fabric of my life too, and the lives of anyone in the world who finds these blogs. Thankfully, Web 2.0 makes that process of discovery and sharing not only easy, but likely. These blogs will live on. I hope they will become an ongoing project for these students as they carry their work into the professional world. I hope and expect they will be a great resource for future students, and for the entire department of Theatre and Dance.

I am very proud of these students, their professor (whom I am fortunate to have as a colleague), and the work my staff has done with them. I am humbled and honored to be among them.

As you’ll see on The Smooth Elephant, this project is only one of many in which the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies has partnered with faculty to augment and transform teaching and learning. More dreamers welcome!

EDIT: Martha’s reflections on the theatre project’s “getting down to business” are a must-read.