Those are Jim Groom’s words, and I quote them (with implied ellipses that don’t fit well in a blog title) from his latest blog entry at bavatuesdays. Jim’s an Instructional Technology Specialist here at the University of Mary Washington and, along with five other ITSs and myself, a member of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (the “DTLT” of “DTLT Blogs” on my blogroll at the right).

I quote Jim as a shout-out to a staffer who’s doing fascinating and important work, yes, but also because that quotation is the ethos I try to encourage as a manager and leader. It’s also the ethos I try to encourage as a professor. And it’s the ethos every one of the UMW ITSs lives every day.

For our task is herculean, and sometimes those proportions seem crushing. Often it seems as if we’ve blundered into the role of Atlas, a (I won’t say the) world upon our shoulders, and Atlas on an extended vacation. But of course Atlas had to stand still and take the weight on an immobile torso. He must have had a great view up there on that mountain, but it was the only view he’d ever have, unless he could lure another Hercules into range.

By contrast, we in DTLT are pretty much constantly on the move. We’re constantly finding new horizons, some of them right in front of us. That makes the weight of our tasks feel different, I think, and it makes our work, if not light, certainly joyous and, yes, exciting. At least sometimes. Sometimes, most of the time.

And as is evident from Jim’s post, from Martha’s moving account of the latest developments in the Theatre class project, from Andy’s constantly evolving expertise in multimedia presentation on the Web (he reminds me of the electronics expert in Mission, Impossible–or Q in the James Bond series–), from Jerry’s innovations in podcasting, Flickr, and wikis (and his scrupulous assessment of all the shiny toys), from Patrick’s guidance with all those codes (XML, XSL, RSS, Atom, URI, RDF) and the metadata they can contain, and from Lisa’s work with the College of Graduate and Professional Studies and its ongoing investigation of Web 2.0 tools and strategies, these folks are carrying a lot on their shoulders. They’re also working at some of the other herculean tasks: I seem to remember problems with a Hydra, and plenty of stable-cleaning to go around. But it’s hard to imagine a more rewarding mission: supporting, extending, and augmenting the academic excellence of this University. That excellence is the potential every one of our students and faculty sense, demonstrate, and help to create each day.

It’s a privilege to be part of these exciting herculean tasks. I won’t say we’re unique in facing them. In many respects, the academic enterprise is devoted to scaling those tasks ever upward for the entire community. But look at the strength it can bring us, when we work together.

Interesting conversation over at Steve’s Pedablogy site on what enables risk, and why teaching is such a walled garden even inside the university.

Rodney Brooks likes to take assumptions and negate them, so in that spirit and to play devil’s advocate, what if the problem is not that people aren’t thinking well about their teaching? What if the problem is that people aren’t thinking well about their professional work? Working on narrow topics and publishing things of interest to only a few could be a succinct definition of much of the blogosphere. What’s the difference? Why blog anyway? How do we get a “blogosphere” out of all the “b” blogs?

I’d submit that the difference is the way in which it’s obvious that one-to-few or few-to-few communications over the Internet are still parts of the conversation. It’s obvious that the work we little bloggers are doing is part of something much larger. The apparatus of higher education has managed to obscure that truth about the professional work we do. We can’t even find that “something much larger” on our own campuses, or reflect it in our curriculum, or foster it in our interaction with colleagues, much less find a way to demonstrate it to the world.

Unless we can find a way to demonstrate that “something much larger” to the public, why should we expect the public to offer support for our specialized expertise and labor? And why should we expect students to understand the point of their contact with us? It may be heresy to say this, but I worry that too much emphasis on pedagogy per se addresses a symptom instead of the real illness(es).

I apologize for the duplication of content from the distributed conversation regarding iTunes U, but I thought it might be interesting to post my five “what would it take for me to be satisfied with iTunes U?” items here and invite comment, additions, deletions, etc. to the list. With apologies to Martin Luther, then, here are my five theses.

I will be grudgingly satisfied:

1. if Apple makes it easy to copy URLs from iTunes to other podcatchers.

2. if Apple drops the specious talk of liberation. I’ve too much Orwell in me to think that the words don’t matter. 🙂 I don’t think that the fact we’re all sophisticated enough to recognize their jive for what it is furnishes a good justification for overlooking their appropriation of this language. I resent seeing all the passionate appeals for educational transformation that many tireless and unrewarded visionaries have crafted over many years become nothing more than ad copy. (But hey, I also resent Pete Townshend’s selling “Bargain,” a song he elsewhere calls a prayer, for use in car ads.)

3. if Apple doesn’t allow colleges or universities to configure iTunes for closed, “secure” access to content.

4. if Apple explicitly disavows any responsibility for copyright enforcement for school-generated content.

5. if Apple drops branding services/opportunities to make iTunes U look like “your college or university but act like iTunes.”

EDIT: 6. if Apple makes the Music Store link an “opt-in” item rather than a default link on the standard iTunes U menu. This item is probably the most quixotic of all, probably impossible from a technical point of view, but if I knew the primary interface didn’t promote a store in this way, I’d feel better. I don’t want to deliver teaching and learning materials inside a store, just as I wouldn’t want my reading of a novel to be interrupted on every thirtieth page with an ad. If you tell me that the ads would make the novels cheaper, that they’d help to put quality literature into the hands of more people at a lower cost, that I can just skip the darn things by turning the page, I’d respond that the price for these savings is just too high. When I read, I don’t want the merchants at my elbow. That’s why I paid for the book: to get some time with another human being, not to be targeted by commerce over and over.

Why grudgingly and not completely? Because I don’t want to create a de facto iPod campus, and iTunes U reaches maximum effectiveness as the campus gets closer to being iPod only. That prospect bothers me. Maybe it shouldn’t. There are plenty of campuses that support only one computing platform for students, and for very good economic reasons. (Ironically, that single platform is usually Windows, not Mac.) So far, though, the argument for diversity seems more persuasive to me. It’s important to note that for all its “think different” talk, Apple isn’t thinking different. It’s trying to leverage market dominance into a near-monopoly, just the way “evil” Microsoft is. I’d be less outraged, though no less troubled, if Apple hadn’t dressed itself in robes of righteousness for so long.

One more thought: Alan and Chris and others (I imagine) don’t take the verbiage on the iTunes U page too seriously. Alan writes, “The ad material Gardner finds offensive (and i just find dull and glazing) seems to be totally written by marketing people, not the people behind the program.” But that’s exactly what I’m alarmed by: the marketing people are the people behind the program. The program is, at heart, a marketing program. Thus there’s no distinction between “the marketing people” and “the people behind the program.” But it’s telling that Apple’s marketing tactics are aimed at helping us forget that fact. When I read all the technorati links to blogs saying “yippee, Apple to the rescue!” I see a reality distortion field that’s effective. Worryingly so.

Yes, ma, if D’Arcy and Chris and James and Alex jumped off a tall building, I guess I would too.

Those who know me will have to weigh in on whether I was able to craft anything like a Simpsons’ version of me. At least the locale is right….

As a prelude to the next podcast series on Gardner Writes, here’s a reading I did a couple of weeks ago of poetry by Andrew Marvell. The reading was part of our UMW “Thursday Poems” series, a marvelous tradition begun by now-professor-emeritus Bill Kemp. The idea is to congregate at 5 p.m. on Thursday afternoons to hear someone read poetry for thirty minutes. No lectures, little explanatory material, just a time to share compelling poetry with each other. I recorded several of these “Thursday Poems” readings over the last couple of years and will be podcasting them by and by.

Marvell’s a fascinating poet whose lyrics are often cited as models of ambiguity, philosophical complexity, and stubborn elusiveness (perhaps to the point of evasion). I begin with his commendatory poem on Milton’s Paradise Lost. (Marvell was a friend of Milton, and legend has it he helped spring Milton from prison at the Restoration, when Charles II put to death many supporters of his father’s execution.) I end with Marvell’s most famous poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” a poem that’s at once beautiful and savage.

The reading:
“On Mr. Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost'”
“An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland”
“The Garden”
“The Mower Against Gardens”
“Damon The Mower”
“To His Coy Mistress”

I’m also posting the reading at our UMW “profcast” site, www.profcast.org. There’ll be more readings and lectures there as time goes on. The first UMW Profcast features Claudia Emerson reading from her own poetry. Mine is a poor companion to Claudia’s, but the idea here is to keep the ball rolling, so that we’ll do.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (16.9MB)

Chris over at Ruminate offers a closely-reasoned assessment of the iTunes U issues. At a couple of points, though, I’m just not following the logic. Rather than leave yet another comment, here’s a response:

Chris,

You don’t see Apple posing as anything. I do. That’s where we differ. The difference matters, to me anyway, because Apple is using a vocabulary of liberation and altruism that’s modeled on the vocabulary the academy itself uses to define its mission. Looked at one way, that’s smart marketing. Looked at another way, it’s galling, and a lie. I don’t mind being offered a chance to buy something. I do mind being told I’m being set free in the process. To my mind, Apple’s rhetoric neatly matches Virginia Slims’ attempt to cash in on the discourse of women’s liberation in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

I’m obviously not being clear about what I mean by “ads.” What I mean is that iTunes is always already a music store, not just a content management system. The “ad” is on the menu on the left hand side of the window. And I imagine we’ll see more blatant ads placed directly on the page in the near future. Yes, many services are supported by ads. My point is that the principal content delivery media in education are not, and should not be. The analogy would be billboards in classrooms and sponsors’ commercials shown before and after every guest speaker, every concert, every public forum. I think that academic content, as much as possible, should not be accompanied by, or wrapped in, the noise and distraction of sales pitches. Like churches, schools should offer sanctuary for some thoughtful time outside the cries of the merchants to “come buy! come buy!”

I think the iPod is a wonderful device. I chose it for lots of compelling reasons. That’s why I don’t think Apple has to pursue this strategy of enticing institutions into iTunes U. Let the marketplace decide. Don’t force the issue by trying to craft a single-source environment–and yet that’s exactly what I think they’re trying to do.

UPDATE: Over at Ruminate, Chris responds to this post and offers a thought-experiment-challenge, one that strikes me as entirely fair and in fact helps sharpen my thinking a little more about what’s bothering me about iTunes U. Chris and I will probably never agree on the damage caused by Apple’s robes-of-righteousness marketing approach, but even with that out of the picture there are still useful points to discuss. I’ve taken up Chris’s challenge in a comment on his post. You can see the response for awhile on the cocomment feed on the top of the sidebar (right), at least until more comments take it off the sidebar.

From i six nonlectures (1953):

Let me cordially warn you, at the opening of these socalled lectures, that I haven’t the remotest intention of posing as a lecturer. Lecturing is presumably a form of teaching; and presumably a teacher is somebody who knows. I never did, and still don’t, know. What has always fascinated me is not teaching, but learning; and I assure you that if the acceptance of a Charles Eliot Norton professorship hadn’t rapidly entangled itself with the expectation of learning a very great deal, I should now be somewhere else. Let me also assure you that I feel extremely glad to be here; and that I heartily hope you won’t feel extremely sorry.

Podcasts a part of the read/write Web? You bet they are. But that’s an argument for another post.

Right now I want to share a snippet of an inspiring podcast I found via The University Channel. Dr. David Orr, Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College, spoke on “The End of Education” at the University of British Columbia on January 13, 2006, as part of UBC’s “Global Citizenship Seminar Series.” I found Dr. Orr’s remarks both provocative and large-hearted, and I was especially struck by one little anecdote he told in response to a student’s question about how she could help make UBC a better place.

Orr knows about real school, all right, and he just reminded me of something important that I can easily forget in the press of business: we must not run a deficit of joy.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.2MB)

Doug Engelbart’s vision, and my vision of Doug Engelbart, have been deeply inspiring to me over the last eighteen months as I became aware of his work and the context in which his work developed. Again and again I find his vision of augmenting human intelligence to be profoundly resonant with my sense of mission as a professor and an explorer in the uses of information technologies in teaching and learning. We are doing nothing if not building Engelbartian “capability infrastructures” in our work as educators within a community of learning.

For a variety of reasons, Doug’s been very much on my mind and on my heart lately, and this afternoon I just couldn’t stand to go another day without at least finding out how I might write him a letter to express my gratitude and to tell him how much and how deeply his vision and work matter to me. To my astonishment, in reply to a message I’d left on an office answering machine, Doug himself called me back, and I got to stammer my thanks in person. I also got to speak with Doug (he asked me to call him that, insisting he was just a northwestern farm boy) about connections I’m mulling over between his augmentation ideas and my own experience of, and work in, higher education.

More on the conversation in another post. Suffice it to say that at this moment I’m still in shock. I’m also deeply grateful to have had the chance to say “thanks,” and to tell Doug that I think folks are beginning to catch on. I believe he was pleased to hear it, and to hear how much his work means to me, though he was too modest to say much more than “that’s nice to hear, but I can’t quite grok it.”

There’s a good discussion on iTunes U going on in the bark back (comments) section over at Alan’s place, where the honorable CogDog detects a wee bit of passion in my own continuing response to iTunes U. Rather than leave another comment, I want to point readers to the comment thread and place my response here.

Alan asks, “where is the assumption that Apple *should* be giving away completely open hosting via a successful set up?” Good question. I don’t have such an assumption myself. In fact, there’s no reason on earth for Apple to give anything away, except perhaps for PR value. And no, Microsoft isn’t doing anything like iTunes U. My point, I think, is that it appears that Apple is giving something away because Apple is fostering that impression (see below). The reality is that we are the ones giving away the things that are crucial to our academic mission: free, open access to the knowledge we create; a public arena that is not dominated by implicit or explicit advertising; a commitment to our students that we will not build a learning environment inside a mall or a superstore.

How is Apple fostering the impression of its philanthropy and obscuring (I might even say hiding) its commercial ambitions? Look again at the iTunes U web page:

Education beyond the classroom
iTunes U is a free, hosted service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to your educational content, including lectures and interviews 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It’s the most powerful way to manage a broad range of audio or video content and make it available quickly and easily to students, faculty, and staff. And it is the only application that supports the overwhelmingly popular iPod. iTunes U also offers you the simplicity and mobility you expect from Apple because it is based on the same easy-to-use technology of iTunes Music Store.

Through iTunes U, users can download content to their Macs or PCs regardless of their location. They can then listen to and view content on their Mac or PC or transfer that content to iPod for listening or viewing on the go.

Look at the language: “free,” “easy,” “most powerful,” “overwhelmingly popular iPod,” “simplicity,” “mobility,” etc. This is a strategy to leverage the popularity of the iPod into larger commercial strategies by means of an appeal to the altruistic principles inherent in the professed mission of higher education (or education generally). I’m not so naive as to think that those principles are necessarily dominant or even decisive in education today, but I’m pretty stubborn about continuing to profess them.

Let me hasten to add that I do not mean that those who disagree with me about iTunes U are crassly commercial or care nothing about the mission of higher education. Far from it. If they were or did, Apple would have no traction with iTunes U at all. And it’s entirely possible I’m over-reacting here. But I don’t think so.

More close reading of the iTunes U site:

Colleges and universities need an easy way to create and distribute content throughout their educational institution. And of course, the content must be portable.

Why do we have that need? Because we haven’t stepped up to the challenge of creating that easy way ourselves. And yes, of course that content must be portable. But iTunes U uses the iTunes Music Store, and even if all the content is in the player-agnostic mp3 format, iTunes without an iPod is not very exciting as a portable content manager. As a very happy iPod owner, I marvel at the close and effective union of iTunes and iPod. I love the interface. But that doesn’t mean I want to adopt it as a content management system for my university.

iTunes U sets educational content free by delivering the best solution for the distribution of content that can be accessed by an iPod.

Along with the “liberation” pitch, there’s pretty frank talk here: “content that can be accessed by an iPod.” Sure, we can access that content if it’s not aac-encoded and if we don’t mind the limitations of iTunes when it comes to non-iPod players, but it’s clear that Apple has created iTunes U with the iPod, not education, primarly in mind.

And iTunes U complements other higher education online learning systems, leveraging existing investments in technology infrastructures.

One walled garden loves another. That sounds cynical, but that’s how it looks to me. On a Monday morning, anyway.

This one may be my favorite:

In addition to providing a great conduit for digital academic content, iTunes is also the largest source of legal digital music available online. So students can buy and download music that has both educational and entertainment value, with all copyrights honored and the full support of the music industry.

Hard to know where to start here. Apple will keep our students from being criminals, feed their heads with music that’s both entertaining and educational (what on earth does that mean?), please the tycoons who’ve stifled innovation and set artificially high prices while ensuring that artists get meager returns, and help us all route around the debate over existing copyright strictures.

Easy as pi
iTunes U is the only content distribution system that offers one-click support for transferring content to iPod, ensuring that students and others wishing to access information to go can do so quickly and easily.

Interesting logic. Everyone has an iPod, so we’ll naturally want the only content distribution system that offers one-click support for transferring content to iPod (I love how Apple omits the article before iPod, as if it’s a proper name). And once we have iTunes U, everyone will want an iPod, because it’s the only portable player that offers full support for all content available within iTunes U. “Easy as pi,” indeed.

Just a little more:

Instructors can easily post and change content on their own without impacting the IT department….

Doubtful. And is Apple prepared to offer free, unlimited technical support to students, faculty, and staff? It’ll have to be 24×7, I’d think, because of those pesky time zones.

iTunes U delivers on the promise of mobile learning in higher education by extending teaching and learning beyond the classroom.

That’s our job, not Apple’s. We can use Apple products in the service of that job, but that’s different.

Use your school colors, logos, and photography to make iTunes U familiar to staff, students, and alumni. iTunes U looks like your college or university but it acts like iTunes.

Chilling words. It looks like a school, but it’s really a store, and it will indeed act like one.

Purchase songs at a discount on behalf of your students through the iTunes Volume Songs Program.

We all scream for ice cream.

Become an iTunes Affiliate and earn a 5% commission on all qualifying revenue generated by links posted on your site.

Especially if we get a cut of the proceeds.

I wouldn’t be nearly so concerned about iTunes U if I were more confident that folks in higher education saw it for what it is, and if Apple’s iTunes U campaign weren’t so much of a piece with its larger campaign to make truth, virtue, individualism, and innovation into corporate brands. Apple doesn’t need to pursue that strategy, and we don’t need to help it.

A nod here to Jon Udell and Brian Lamb, who continue to voice concerns, and to Bryan Alexander, whose perceptive comments on the “turn in a copyright violator” provision in iTunes awaken even more. I also think Bryan and Alan are right to point us to OurMedia as an emerging set of practices and a model for how higher education might forge ahead without an iTunes U, or at least make the shopping center less worrisome.