Those of us who work in technology and faculty development know that there are huge challenges if one wants to move beyond the “low-hanging fruit” (low-hanging? I practically jumped into the harvester’s lap) and get to truly systemic innovation and progress. The UMW Teaching, Learning, and Technology Fellows’ program is our effort to get to that kind of progress. Our 2006-2007 Fellows did some fine work, individually and as a cohort, ably led by John Morello and the DTLT team. Here’s a picture of the crew in the spring of 2006 as they began their efforts. A description of the program accompanies the photo. It was thrilling to see the results as the faculty shared them with us at Faculty Academy 2007. Marjorie Och’s (Art History) virtual Venice exhibit is beautiful and inspiring, and Marjorie’s blogs this year are a huge part of UMW Blogs’ success. Charlie Sharpless (Chemistry) persuaded his students that “Chem is Cool” with an imaginative re-thinking of the freshman chemistry lab. Steve Gallik (Biology), a longtime fellow-journeyer in teaching and learning technologies, continued his innovations in developing an online Cell Biology lab manual. Craig Vasey (Philosophy) put together an impressive online learning space to support his Logic course. For copyright reasons it’s password protected, but you can see the header here, and a few of Craig’s early thoughts here. Project leader John Morello even joined in the fun with his own “MiniTube” project.

Now a second season begins. The 2007-2008 Teaching, Learning, and Technology Fellows met two weeks ago for an introduction to Bluehost and blogging. Today we’re going deeper into the blogosphere with the University of Tennessee’s fantastically helpful “Anatomy of a Blog.”We’ll also touch on Friend of a Friend (FOAF) and RSS. The rest of the time we’ll make some space for shared reflection. (I’m always up for the conversation.)

Already there’s activity from this cohort. Sarah Allen (English, Linguistics, and Speech) has her blog up, educating us about Thoth (I’m a sucker for language-play), and I’m looking forward to her leading us into a deeper understanding of the way writing and rhetoric underlie the work we’re doing this year. Go Sarah! Steve Greenlaw (Economics), like last year’s Steve, is a longtime fellow traveler, and his blog is a treasure-trove for anyone trying to understand pedagogy, economics, or the process of inspiration and creativity. And the still-waters-run-deep winner is Donald Rallis (Geography), a colleague who started at UMW the same year I did, but whom I’ve never had the chance or pleasure to get to know. I am delighted to say that Donald too has the soul of a born blogger. The site he’s set up for his Geography 101 class is a stunner. I’ve already learned a ton from it, and I can’t wait to read what Donald writes in the weeks and months ahead. I hope Donald likes comments (what blogger doesn’t?), for he’s sure to get a lot of them Start anywhere–but here’s one of my favorites to date.

Watch this space for more dispatches as the Fellows program continues. And even more importantly, watch their spaces, and enjoy their stories–and of course, comment early and often.

I promise not to make all my blogs meta-blogs–but this story is too good to resist.

This morning I checked Bloglines, where I subscribe to my own blog (reassures me I’m there, don’t ask), my blog’s comments (quick way to see all the commentary), and a Technorati search on my blog’s URL that shows me incoming links. I can also see the incoming links from my blog’s dashboard, but the Bloglines subscription is more convenient for at-a-glance checking.

This morning’s quick check revealed an incoming link for a blog called Whole New Minds: English in the Flat WorldWhole New Minds: English in the Flat World. Intrigued as always by the fact someone’s linked to my blog (Brian Lamb calls this the “power of positive narcissism“), I clicked on the link and went to see the site. There I found that the incoming link was from Karen Stearns’ weblog for a course she’s teaching now at SUNY-Cortland. On this particular blog post, Karen had linked to my blog. It’s part of the magic of blogging that any such link generates what’s called a “trackback” or “pingback,” which alerts the linked-to blogger that someone’s linked to him or her. The result is a kind of distributed cognition, or what one might call a strongly implicit conversation between blogs/bloggers. I commented on Karen’s blog post (another kind of response, though more direct and less “distributeable”), and Karen emailed me very soon afterwards, surprised and delighted I had found her blog and wondering if a trackback had led me there. I emailed her back, briefly, with a promise to put the longer account in a blog post that would itself generate a trackback pointing to her original post. One of the very cool things about Web 2.0 stuff, and in fact about computers in general, is that explanations and demonstrations can often be accomplished in one creation. This is one reason I say that computers can be like poetry, for poetry also constitutes a uniquely blended instance of meaning and being. But I digress….

I remember very keenly the first time I was surprised by this kind of distributed cognition/conversation. Jon Udell noticed I’d linked to one of his blog posts, and began a distributed conversation with me that I noticed when he began linking to my blog. It’s a lovely symmetry that led eventually to our meeting face-to-face, and to a relationship that’s been one of my most vital sources of intellectual development over the last two-and-a-half years.

As it happens, though I’m not sure Karen intended this lovely bit of symmetry, the blog post in which Karen linked to me concerns James Gee’s idea of “shape-shifting portfolio people,” and as you can see from the comment I left, I quickly found my way via Google Books to an excerpt from Gee’s book on, yes, wait for it: “Situated Language And Learning: A Critique Of Traditional Schooling,” which discusses many of the very matters exemplifed by what just happened when Karen linked to my blog.

Recursion, and spiralling upward. Is it any wonder I get enthusiastic about this stuff? Oh yes, and the moral of the story: link out to other bloggers early and often. Something about casting your bread upon the waters….

It’s easy to forget how foundational and transformative blogging has been for me. I’ve grown a little embattled (some folks at my school still say”blogging is silly”), a little weary, and truth to tell a little wary as well. As times get complicated, and events and emotions get tangled, it gets harder to push through the snarled yarns and just write, letting the devil take the hindmost.

Then I read a story like this one about Cambodian bloggers, a very tiny minority in an impoverished land who nevertheless feel themselves newly empowered as citizens–at home and globally. I read of the 17-year-old student who got together with three of her peers and organized Cambodia’s first-ever blogger conference, and of the way blogging has tranformed their lives. I grew up hearing the name “Phnom Penh” and associating it with the Vietnam War, with American invasions and official denials, and later with the atrocities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In this story, though, Phnom Penh is the site of the conference, and the bloggers there are opening windows to their country and the rest of the world.

The picture’s not entirely rosy, by any means, as the AP story makes clear. Yet I feel the energy, the passion, and the gratitude of these Cambodian bloggers. And I resolve to honor my own membership in this community, too.

And do please visit Beth Kanter’s blog for an inspiring account of her trip to the Cambodian Bloggers Summit in August.

I’m honored to be the keynote speaker at this conference, coming up October 4th and 5th in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Conference theme is “Social Learning Environments: Making Connections.” My keynote talk is on “The Digital Imagination.” Here’s the abstract:

For decades, higher education has run faster and faster to keep up with accelerating technological change. We’ve run from contractor to contractor, vendor to vendor, platform to platform, network to network, course management system to course management system. We’ve also run from paradigm to paradigm as we try to build a curricular presence for these technologies in an increasingly computer-mediated society. We’ve run from technology proficiency, to information literacy, to information fluency. We’re still running, and change is still accelerating. We have three choices. We can slow down or stop, and let the vendors design, build, and lock us into a digital campus. We can run faster, bet on every new shiny object, and try not to embarrass ourselves by throwing an email party in an IM world. Or we can run fast and well, but in a different direction, aiming at a different paradigm: that of the digital imagination, of the computer as mind. We can customize this paradigm for our individual needs, but we will not need to construct it, for it’s been hiding in plain sight for almost half a century. It’s time to go back to the future.

The conference program showcases a fine two-day event with presenters from JMU and other Virginia universities, as well as workshops on Second Life bookending the experience for attendees. I’m struck by how much innovation is here, particularly in open education and emerging technologies. We’ve all come a very long way from the start of this millenium. Conferences like this one fill me with hope that information technologies may yet achieve their transformative potential in our schools.

I’m looking forward to the event, and to the chance to share some of my thoughts with the participants and learn from them as well. I hope to see you there.

Thanks to Andrea and to Jim for their kindness in inviting me to speak.

‘Nuff said.

I tell my students again and again that I’m a better teacher when they’re better students, and that part of being a better student is not just being a cleverer student but being a more open and committed student. Bear down hard, be prepared for class, be creative and bold, and above all let me see your mind at work, online and face-to-face. If you do, I tell them, I’ll get inspired, and if I get inspired, I’ll be a better teacher–which means there’s more of a chance that they’ll get inspired. A virtuous cycle, and lots more fun than business as usual.

It will feel strange at first. The more familiar paradigm keeps us both in a more comfortable place. You do the work when and as it’s assigned, no more, and sometimes less. I take the work in, mark it, and return it to you. In Karen Stephenson’s analysis, it’s a transactional process. It doesn’t require much trust, and it leaves us both plenty of personal space for other pursuits.

Now, if we were preparing a play, or a recital, or a choral performance, or if we were training for the Olympics, a transactional process would obviously be the wrong choice for both of us. Why isn’t that obviously the case for learning, for school?

My high-school choir director, Mr. Snyder, used to tell us that we made him a poorer conductor when we weren’t well-practiced and fully engaged with our singing. He’d tell us that we literally made his arms hurt. By contrast, on those days in which we arrived knowing the notes, well-rested, focused and responsive and ready to make music, he’d take us to even higher levels, pulling nuances out of our releases, shaping phrases with revelatory care and detail, showing us performance horizons we hadn’t even guessed at but suddenly found ourselves traveling toward, together. On those days, we singers would get goosebumps. We’d look around at each other: can it be that we are making these sublime sounds? Didn’t we see those purposeful micro-gestures from Mr. Snyder before? Had we never realized the way one phrase could answer another, or how the altos subtly reinforced the tenors on a particular line? How could we have not understood why our director sped up the tempo just before the last chorus? It all makes so much more sense, now.

“Readiness is all,” Hamlet says. What kind of readiness am I describing here? The readiness to make music, to make meaning–to find meaning, rather? And of what does that readiness consist?

As a teacher, as a leader, I look constantly for readiness. My preparations are also meta-preparations, as I ready myself to find my engaged students and, on the good days, when I’m at my best, to bring those students into a fuller, more challenging awareness of possibilities for learning, for making, for doing.

And when my students inspire me, I hope I will always be ready to clap my hands and say, “again!”

A case in point for those interested in further reading: yesterday I lectured on lyric poetry and its flowering in the English Renaissance. (Yes, I lectured. Clowned, and preached, and hammed it up, and led the class in singing “Greensleeves.” It has its place.) A student blogged about part of the lecture. She inspired me to think harder and better about something I’d said. I commented on her blog and felt inspired to write more, hence the blog post you’re reading now. Her blog post will appear on the class aggregation page. My comment will appear on that page’s sidebar. I have realized my own blog post here, and glimpsed a more distant horizon myself, thanks to an inspiring student.

A virtuous cycle.

Again!

Trying, belatedly, to live up to Jon Udell’s “principle of the conservation of keystrokes,” I’m posting a little something I wrote a couple of weeks ago in answer my friend and colleague Chuck Dziuban’s question: “what is the future of online education?” Frequent readers will recognize some of my usual riffs–oldies but hopefully still goodies. It will also be obvious how much Brian Lamb has influenced my thinking: his piece on mashups in last month’s EDUCAUSE Review is a honey, particularly because of the passionate hymn to open content and open education with which he concludes his essay.

At any rate, here’s my .02:

Traditional models of distance education–education delivered, assessed, and credentialed by institutions of higher education–still dominate our thinking about online learning. Over the next decade, however, online learning will increasingly occur in ad-hoc contexts that rely on personally-aggregated feeds of syndicated, open content and tap into new kinds of credential-granting structures, including assessment-driven certification granted by agencies whose membership cuts across traditional institutional structures. Traditional course-for-credit models will persist–they certainly have their uses–but more and more learners will arrange their own “cognitive apprenticeships” by means of RSS feeds of content generated by a personal suite of trusted and inspiring experts, and they will build their reputations through certifications, testimonials, and a body of their own online work that generates persistent, sophisticated commentary.

Discuss!

With apologies to V. A. (Del) Kolve, whose pronunciation I am trying hard to imitate (listen to number six here for an example of Mr. Kolve’s reading), and Terry Kennedy, our dynamic medievalist-in-residence, who will no doubt differ with me on certain details (philologists! ach, du lieber!), I offer here a recitation of the first eighteen lines of the “General Prologue” to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. My students in British Literature to 1800 have to memorize these lines and recite them to me, and I’ve been promising them a recording, so here it is.

Some of the best lines in the language, these. Enjoy!

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Some of you may be imagining a yellow LP cover bearing the image of a man in a straw hat–good–but I will propose another answer here. I’m writing very quickly because I need to get to the office, so I invoke, even more strenuously than usual, my blogger’s rights: if I mess this up, I get to try again later. Work in progress, quarter-baked, huh? etc.

Shannon’s latest post over at Loaded Learning is remarkable even for her, and that’s saying something. It’s got me in a deep mull. Go read it, and after you catch your breath, come back. I’ll wait.

Jeff’s comment is precise: “I am wholly unfit, but I am willing. Consider yourselves warned” could well be the motto for the entire caravan. I’d like one of those bumper stickers too, please. Perfect. Perfect.

But still I mull on. I think, “is it true that Shannon is nothing ‘particularly special’?” I have an answer; I am bold to say I have the answer to that question. It is not true that Shannon is nothing particularly special. I know she’s not fishing for compliments and I know that disagreeing with her statement could make her think that I think that she is–but I just have to ignore those crisscross thoughts and get to the point and say, “if Shannon’s nothing particularly special, then no one is particularly special, and I’m being inspired by echoes in my own brain,” which I don’t believe for a second.

That said, I understand, deeply I believe, where Shannon’s statement comes from. Even more deeply, I understand how confusing it can be to feel privileged, to feel chosen, to feel called. Why me? Why Shannon? Why here, and now, are we entrusted with energy and strength and vision and a community of astonishing, continually inspiring caravanistas? And then, aren’t we arrogant to think so? And then comes the spiral downward … but that’s no good either, right? And when things go wrong, did we lose our calling? Were we wrong all along? Hearing things?

Which brings me to the point, if I have one: if “unfit” means “out of shape, not strong enough, not ready, not devoted enough, not focused enough, not confident enough,” then I am unfit, for sure. But if unfit means unworthy–and I know Shannon may not have meant it that way–I’m not sure. Turning my gaze outward, I feel very sure indeed of the worth of my fellow caravanistas. Part of that feeling comes from my inventory of their particular gifts–inventorying others’ gifts is one of the best parts of being a teacher, actually–but there’s that other part too, that understands and loves their capacity for what Keats calls the “wild surmise,” the catch in the breath that acknowledges the possibility of something transformative, the capacity to hear a calling and follow it. Isn’t that readiness a kind of fitness, a kind of “worth,” even if one doesn’t remember deciding to be ready? (The ending of Simak’s “Immigrant” always gets to me in this regard.)

Energized by Shannon’s post, thrashing about like a fish in a Gallilean net, caught and loving it–maybe air is breathable after all?–I turn to the OED to investigate the etymology of this word “worth.” The meaning very quickly centers on notions of value, particularly in exchange for things. I turn my empty soul pockets inside out and say, “that is not what I meant, at all.” There’s another meaning, “manure.” Oops. The OED says that’s probably a mistake.

I want to wrestle a little longer. I see that I may be forcing connections in the best folk-etymology fashion. (That’s for my philologist colleague Terry the K.) But I need the poetry. And then, there it is, in the first entry for “worth” as a verb (spidey-sense tingling like mad, now): the word “worth” seems to be related to the word “ward,” as in direction: “forward,” “backward,” “homeward,” “heavenward”:

Common Teut.: OE. weoran, wuran (wear, wurdon, eworden) = OFris. wertha, wirtha, wirda (WFris. wirde), OS. weran (MLG. and LG. werden; MDu. and Du. worden), OHG. werdan, werthan (MHG. and G. werden), ON. and Icel. vera (Norw. dial. verda, verta, MSw. vara, vardha, Sw. varda, Da. vorde), Goth. wairan. The stem is prob. the same as that of L. vertre, OSlav. vrtti, vratiti (Russ. vertjet’), Lith. versti (stem vert-), Skr. vit (vártat, vartti) to turn, the sense in Germanic having developed into that of ‘to turn into’, ‘to become’. Cf. -WARD suffix.

Go look for yourself. It’s worth it, and so are you.

Reading Brian’s post on his splendid EDUCAUSE Review mashup article (go read it right this red hot second–you will thank me, I promise), I realize I have yet to blog on my essay in the Sept/Oct. issue, or post a link to the podcast, or give my thanks. Although this post cannot begin to express the gratitude I feel, I will give it a shot anyway.

Thanks first and foremost to my editor, Teddy Diggs. It sounds presumptuous to call her “my” editor–after all, she edited Brian’s piece too, and hundreds of others–but she is so open and interested, so focused on bringing out the best I have to offer, that it feels as if she’s devoting her entire attention to me and only me for the duration of the project. If there’s writing in me that can come out, Teddy will see to it that it does. And her editing is just as subtle and effective as Brian says. I take notes on her technique so that I can improve my own work with my students in this regard. She’s a gem, and I’m deeply grateful she asked me to contribute to this issue.

Those of you who’ve followed my ups and downs over the past year will probably understand why I found the essay very difficult to write at times. It’s a memoir, so the research demands were comparatively light, and the conceptual framework was what I decided it would be. The difficulties came as I tried to think about an aspect of my intellectual and professional life that has occasioned some very intense times for me of late, both good and not-so-good. On a very mundane note, my laptop’s hard drive crashed right after I sent the final draft in to Teddy. It’s hard not to read that event symbolically. (Okay, I confess: I do read it symbolically.) Maybe I bore down on the keyboard a little more heavily than usual. As I wrote the piece, I had to consider whether this long strange trip had been worth it, after all. I had to take stock of a large commitment of most of my adult life, a commitment I hadn’t been fully aware of before the spring of 2003, and one that grew explosively in the three years following that spring. An explosive commitment: yes, that just about describes it.

So I want to thank my wonderful family–Ian, Jenny, and especially and always my longsuffering wife Alice–for enduring the explosions, and continuing to live through the intensity. I don’t typically shy away from an outpouring of profuse sentiment, but in this case I’m afraid I might outmaudlin even me, so they will have to be content with the depth I hope they know is behind these words.

There’s a long list of other people to thank, “with more warmth than a list can suggest,” as my Milton teacher once put it: Brian, Bryan, Dennis, Diana, Brian (not a misprint–there are two), Larry, all my Frye buddies (especially Andrew), Rachel, Cyprien, Jon, Barbara, Karen, Alan, Bill, Phil, Dave, Terry, Claudia, Bart, Freff, Kevin, Mark, Terry, John, Wes, Jill, Doug, Robin, Wendy, Rob G., Michael, Marcia, M.C., Steve, Jeff, Gene, Chuck, Vidya, Vicki. Many others; I fear I’ve left someone out. I cannot forget my beloved students–many of them now friends as well–who are particularly adept at keeping the marvels coming in all my adventures. They are beloved, oh yes they are. I hope they can bear up under that burden.

But finally, given that my subject was my involvement with computers, I pause a moment to thank Chip, Martha, Jerry, Andy, Jim, and Patrick. They continue to inspire me in ways I cannot begin to measure. They are patient and playful with me as I make my slow way back to the land of marvels. Special thanks to Martha, who read early drafts of the essay and generously encouraged me to keep at it.

There’s no orchestra here to start playing and stop my speech, so I’ll have to step in and stop me myself. My apologies to Alfred Bester–I’m spacey enough that this just might work, a little, as a once and future epigraph to my computer romance:

Gardner is my name,

Terra is my nation;

Deep space my dwelling place–

The stars my destination.

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