A Donne A Day will be on brief hiatus as I help host the University of Mary Washington’s tenth annual Faculty Academy on Instructional Technology. Yesterday I picked up Bryan Alexander at the airport and had a splendid car ride down followed by an intense and rewarding dinner conversation … details to follow. Today we’re joined by Brian Lamb and Diana Oblinger, with more fine presentations and conversation to ensue.

Time to push the snowball downhill and watch it “gather to a greatness.” If all goes well, we may even generate a few podcasts out of the event. Stay tuned.

A colleague at the UMW graduation ceremonies today asked me if I would be offering helpful commentary in my Donne podcasts for all those folks who have trouble with poetry, especially older verse. I’m mulling over the request and would be grateful for any opinions my readers/listeners might have. Commentary can be very helpful. On the other hand, including commentary on the podcast would mean you’d have to fast-forward through my remarks every time you wanted to go straight to the poem. Perhaps I could include commentary on the blog and not on the podcast, but that puts listeners at a disadvantage. Interesting quandary.

Tonight I’ll simply read the poem. It’s one of Donne’s most famous lyrics, and one of his more bitter railings against women. Donne’s love of paradox and puzzle leads him to use various impossibilities to illustrate a cynical mood about life and love. The poem is dramatic, addressing its reader forcefully and directly, as Donne usually does. It’s also meant to be set to music, but that’s for another time.

It’s hard to know how seriously Donne means the reader to take the poem. Is he really as bitter as the poem sounds? Is it a moment’s mood or a settled opinion? Should we laugh or boo? Hard to know. One little point of interest: I think T. S. Eliot’s “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each” from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” owes something to this poem.

Here is “Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star,” by John Donne.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (653.7KB)

Tim O’Donnell gave me the good news that Gardner Writes actually made Adam Curry’s “new podcast” list back in April. Thanks, Tim and Adam. Those iPodder listings do show some, um, range; yes they do. Very interesting company. Salute!

Here’s my summer podcast series: A Donne A Day. Each day I’ll read a poem by the English Renaissance poet John Donne. The idea is to share this extraordinary poetry with you, to read it in such a way that it’s more intelligible than it would be if you simply read it silently off the page yourself, and to create a little archive of recordings that can serve as a resource for my students when I teach my Donne seminar in the fall.

Yes, I know: grades were due yesterday at noon. I have no teaching responsibilities until August. And here I go, creating teaching materials.

None of my fellow teachers will be surprised.

I hope you enjoy the podcasts. Not all of them will have commentary or reminiscences. Actually, most of them will not. But today I wanted to make a special dedication to a former teacher who changed my life for the better, Dr. Michael Roman.

Thanks, Dr. Roman. This one’s going out to you: “The Good Morrow,” by John Donne.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.2MB)

I feel like a 16 7/8 rpm transcription record playing at 78 rpm. (There’s some obsolete technology for you.) Actually, I feel as if I’m riding on a 78 rpm slab of shellac, and the pace promises to pick up over the next few days. But lest I forget….

1. The University of Mary Washington’s graduation ceremonies are tomorrow. The reception for senior English majors was this afternoon. I saw many of my favorite students and flashed back to many amazing, transformative moments in the classroom: that is, moments when they amazed and transformed me. I hope one day they understand how important they are to me. Maybe they already do.

We also bid a reluctant farewell to Dr. William Kemp, a Shakespeare scholar and dear friend with whom I have spent many happy hours watching movies, listening to music, cooking up teaching schemes, debating hermeneutics, and generally making sublime nuisances of ourselves. I’ll miss him terribly, but I won’t say goodbye, because now I can bug him even more regularly and with complete impunity.

2. Adam Curry is creating what he hopes will be (in current parlance) a non-evil podcasting network, the Amazon.com of podcasting, in which rich and famous podcasters subsidize small, grassroots podcasters and help to drive traffic to their sites by locating their Big Podcasts in the same directory space (www.podshow.com) as the little guys. The strategy show I heard last Saturday was very interesting along these lines, though it could have used some judicious post-production. (I didn’t need to hear all the hey-pal-come-in off-mike stuff, and I’m usually very tolerant of loose moments like that.) And Adam’s been talking about his plans all week this week on the Daily Source Code. Latest news: a podcast promo channel on Sirius. That’s pRomo, not pomo. Jerry’s not sure the podshow.com concept will have ramifications for teaching and learning (private conversation–write him and ask him to blog his side of the argument). I’m thinking the line between “educational” materials and the rest of the multimedia world will get finer and finer, and may eventually disappear. Never mind the mainstream media: textbook publishers must be ashen with fear.

3. The tenth annual University of Mary Washington Faculty Academy on Instructional Technology is coming up next week: May 10-11 in Combs Hall on the Fredericksburg campus. We’ve got what I think is a very strong lineup of speakers and presentations, poster sessions, workshops, and seminars. Here’s the program. If you’re within the sphere of this blog and you can make it on down, you’ll be very welcome.

I’ll even take you to Carl’s, home of the best soft ice cream on the planet.

5. A new podcast series is on the horizon: A Donne A Day. Watch this space.

From Tom Yager, who writes “Ahead of the Curve” for InfoWorld :

Technology workers who don’t see themselves as passionate, creative professionals, and who lack commitment to their work, will inevitably occupy the lower strata of the future job market. My new corollary to that is that all working people are consumers even on company time. We need to feel impressed and inspired by the tools and materials we’re given.

Words to live by.

I’m not sure I agree with the way Yager goes on to distinguish interfaces that exist for the computer’s benefit vs. those that exist for the user’s benefit, but that’s a thought for another post. For now, it’s enough to think that work in information technologies should be a vocation, that is, a calling, not just a job. This is a place where information technologies, teaching, and learning must meet. I’d also argue that it’s something a liberal arts university is uniquely suited to demonstrate, and to help students understand.

I’m also beginning to look to medicine for analogies with this work we do with teaching and learning technologies. There’s a great New Yorker piece from a couple of weeks ago I need to write about soon. Metrics, inspiration, creativity, ministry, assessment, accountability, synthesis, innovation. Can we make a meal out of all those ingredients?

Bryan Alexander has begun Dracula Blogged, an exercise in serial publication in which Bryan will enter text from Dracula on the novel’s own timetable, along with his reflections and notes on these entries. I anticipate some Gothic heroics in Bryan’s new project and eagerly await the first installment.

EDITED VERSION FOLLOWS: changes made several hours later after much thought and further revelations.

When I first saw Jon Udell’s latest Infoworld weblog, I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing straight: what he writes is so close to what I’ve been thinking and (intermittently) blogging about over the last few months that I thought I was seeing incontrovertible proof of telepathy. The new weblog leads to a recent Udell piece on the O’Reilly Network that fleshes out the argument in more detail. In both instances, Udell has synthesized and articulated matters of the highest importance for everyone in higher education–let’s make that for everyone in education, period, which would be, oh, everyone.

To take Udell’s analysis even further, two pieces need developing (thank goodness there’s still some work left for the rest of us!), both of them to my mind crucial elements of any comprehensive communication paradigm. One is metaphor. (I’m including analogy as a subset of metaphor.) I’d argue that the synaptic gap enacted by metaphor–and the leap-bridge enacted by understanding metaphor–is a vital part of the “getting it” Udell describes. There’s more here than the typical constructivist educational model can offer, in my view. Scaffolding is important, but new understanding must always be in terms of something already understood, and at some point that paradox yields metaphor. The other crucial element that needs developing is aesthetics. In fact, I’d call aesthetics the elephant in the room here. Ideas of elegance, even of beauty are implicit in Udell’s own prose: lovely parallelism, exquisitely timed syntax and punctuation, compelling paragraphing. Elegance is implicit in the idea of “iterative refinement,” too, just as it is in the kind of Occam’s Razor satisfaction inherent in a well-made solution to a logical problem. I suppose I’m reaching for another concept here, however, one that goes farther than precision and problem-solving. I’m looking for the elation that conveys joy, hope in living, and a moment’s respite from a broken world. I’m thinking about music, maybe even the music of the spheres. If engineering, engineering on the scale of the sublime. I don’t think of this quality as separate from precision or persuasiveness, but it’s more than just those things. (I don’t mean by “just” to downplay their critical role, either.)

All of that said, both of these Udell pieces are absolutely essential reading. Every time I read Udell’s work, I get my “favorite author” rush: you know, the kind where you think to yourself, “I must hunt up and read everything this person has written, and then read it again.” Cool. We must get this man to come speak at an EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative session. Note to self: invite this man to campus! Second note to self: make sure Udell meets Katherine Blake Yancey, whose recent CCC article on “Composition in a New Key” is also right on point in this regard. I wish Yancey’s article were online; I have the link-to urge and feel frustrated that I can’t.

Convergence. Synchronicity. To quote Yancey, “we have a moment.” Yes we do.

FURTHER EDIT: I’ve just discovered another reason for the convergence: Udell had actually read, discussed, and linked to the blog where I had initially discussed and linked back to his blog and podcast. Without a trackback, I couldn’t see that he had done so. In effect, I had been part of a conversation without knowing it. I’m used to that in the scholarly world, but the scale and pace are quite different in that world. The other wrinkle is that I need to be more diligent about tracking down all of Udell’s various writing outlets. He’s a prolific thinker and writer. Perhaps I should start thinking in terms of the Udellosphere. Favorite pull quote of the moment:

It’s exciting to live in a time when technical and cultural forces converge on a new synthesis of old themes. For networks of rich media, that time is now.

Amen, brother.

Technology Review blogger Wade Roush notes two new high-profile articles on blogging and podcasting. One is a Business Week cover story, the other a feisty essay on podcasting by Forbes.com’s Sam Whitmore. I’m not surprised to see a blogger celebrate the disruptive power of these new media, but when Business Week and Forbes register their strong agreement with this thesis, I feel the lines being redrawn once again.

Mainstream media analyzing their own disruption. Business Week starting its own blog, and announcing it in an article that’s a peculiar simulacrum of a blog, one that strikes me as a hand-holding exercise in executive desensitization. A Forbes columnist whose podcast is called “Closet Deadhead,” and whose efforts to license the music he podcasts reveal just how slow the copyright holders are to formulate policies in this area.

Interesting times. Feed your head indeed.

What a great title for a book about personal computers. I’m envious.

Computerworld‘s April 25 issue reports on John Markoff’s new book, What the Dormouse Said…. How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. Kathleen Melymuka’s interview is brief, but Markoff’s answers are fascinating, and there’s an excerpt from the book following the interview. It’s a bold thesis, even sensational in some of its ramifications. I imagine the book will inspire fear and loathing in a good many readers (and perhaps keen interest in a good many others). One thing, though, is clear (yet once more): computers are indeed a new medium, one intimately devoted to the augmentation of the human intellect–and, by extension, if we have the hearts and imaginations and strength for it, the augmentation of human community. That’s a legacy no one should be reluctant to own.

I’ll read the book as soon as term is done. It’ll be interesting to see if the book lives up to the promise of the interview and the excerpt. Lots of tabloid-fodder possibilities; I hope Markoff avoids them, and avoids demagoguery too.

*Actually, the Dormouse never said “feed your head.” That was Grace Slick’s rewriting–remix?–of Lewis Carroll’s account of the Mad Hatter’s and March Hare’s tea party.