Will Richardson writes yet another great post, this time on Kindles, social reading, social writing, social annotation–well, go read it yourself, then come right back.

Now, strap in for more ironies and connections.

I came to the Steven Johnson article myself yesterday, after a colleague in the Baylor library emailed me and another colleague–the Director of the Electronic Library, as it happens– a link (go ahead, peel that onion, dear readers). He was inspired to send me the link because we had been admiring my office’s new Kindle at a meeting yesterday morning. So I go to the article–a fine and unusually thoughtful article, in my view–and I’ve got Diigo and Zotero on, and I see all the annotations, and I look through a few of the comments, thinking all the while “my goodness, I’m reading about the transformation of reading and writing in a space that’s already *itself* demonstratively transformed–recursion rocks.” Then I see that several of the comments are from Will! One of them says something like “I want to have a conversation about this piece with everyone right now!” And I think to myself that in some uncanny, asynchronous, space-and-time-folding way, Will’s wish has come true even as I read it. As John Keats writes of his own reading,

Then I go to Bloglines this morning and read Will’s blog post, and began to comment, and realized the comment was far too long and would work better as part of a distributed conversation. So I quickly port the comment here. Another layer of marginalia–to Steven Johnson, to Will Richardson, to the world–for now the margins themselves become infinitely extensible, even at the risk or splendor of the margins becoming boundless. (Actually, they already are and always have been–all books are written in the margins of others, and those margins detach and become books themselves. But I digress.)

I hear my skeptical colleagues saying “wasteful and inefficient! how will you keep track of all the layers of commentary? how will you find your way back to all the places you found? what if a server goes down? where is there time for all this stuff?” And I know they’re partially right–but only partially. I know also that the passion to connect that Will expresses so beautifully and forcefully, the passion to learn, to grow and explore and report back from those prospects and “wild surmises,” finds such reinforcement and so many rewards in this environment that my only standard of comparison is the golden summer afternoons I used to spend in elementary school libraries while my father did his janitorial labors and my mother worked at her home-health-aide job. Those afternoons I simply flew through the infosphere of a library, all those books potentially lying open to each other and to me. Now those golden moments can be shared, built upon, reflected on singly and together–as always, but more so, for good and for ill and for good and for ill and for good.

And when I yearn for that library Donne writes of in Meditation 17, I can go there, journeying through time and space with my fellow readers and writers. My fellow human beings. As always, but more so, with new frustrations, but with even more new inspirations. Always good to keep the ledger tilted toward inspiration (“by any means necessary,” I almost wrote). Plenty to worry about, plenty to be deliberate about, plenty to shape and build. Plenty to celebrate. God’s plenty, and ours.

It’s fitting that these threads weave such a tapestry on Shakespeare’s birthday. Shakespeare:  not a “university wit,” but good enough to be mocked publicly by one who was. Shakespeare, whose works were so compelling that his friends and fellow actors (those lowlife rogues) were arrogant enough to collect his writings in this new technology called print, where works as common and public as *plays* became both *plays* and *works* … and “not of an age, but for all time.”

Even though everything that grows holds in perfection but a little moment.

A birthday wish, then, for our wills and imaginations: may we always engraft each other new.

This podcast comes from a presentation Chip German and I did at the ELI 2009 Annual Meeting earlier this year. Here’s the session abstract:

What if course portals, typically little more than gateways to course activities and materials, became instead course catalysts: open, dynamic representations of “engagement streams” that demonstrate and encourage deep learning? The session will begin with case studies in enabling and designing such course portals, from both administrative and faculty perspectives. Participants will then form groups to imagine and design their own catalytic course portals. Finally, the presenters will discuss action steps that can lead to effective innovation at participants’ home institutions. Presentation resources, including a record of the participants’ design work, will be posted to an online collaborative space for continued discussion after the session.

I haven’t made that last part materialize yet, for all sorts of reasons (none of them very good ones). This post is at least a step in that direction, I hope. The images from the group work are just below, arranged by group. No doubt the work will be hard to understand out of context, but perhaps there’s enough in the audio and in the photos that something useful could emerge. I know I was very impressed by the speed, thoughtfulness, and sheer copiousness of the each group’s work. The idea of visualizing student engagement in such a way that the visualization itself would catalyze further engagement seems to have energized some powerful “imagineering” in the room, whatever the deficiencies of the way I imagined or described the exercise. (One conferee described my bit as “abstract and hurricane-ish,” which seems fair to me, alas.)

At any rate, here’s what the four groups came up with–in ten minutes, mind you! If the formatting breaks in your browser, let me know and I’ll try to fix it. Clicking on the images will take you to Flickr, where you can comment on them and annotate them.

The real bonus round here is what Chip has to say about the role of the CIO in empowering faculty, students, staff, librarians, and instructional technologists/designers to get to these kinds of experiments and catalysis. Chip and I had both read Fred Brooks’ classic The Mythical Man-Month in preparation for our session. In my view, Chip’s words represent a profound and all-too-rare understanding of Brooks’ ideas regarding conceptual integrity and design–as well as a profound and all-too-rare understanding of the potential for real learning within an agile, responsive cyberinfrastructure. Most of all, Chip’s understanding of higher-ed administration encompasses both the strategic and the tactical/operational, but always in that order, and with a true scholar’s gift for learning the lessons of history while charting a path to the future–a future that in many cases, of course, is already here and only looks like “the future” to those who are enmired in the past..

All of which is to say that Chip German gets it. Those of us who have had the pleasure of working with Chip have known that for a long time, of course, but it’s a privilege to demonstrate and share that knowledge by showcasing his own remarks here.

Post-script: For what it’s worth, my own favorite bit of “imagineering” came from USC’s Susan Metros, who suggested a course portal that would demonstrate the many levels and connections within student engagement streams by means of a 3D “infosphere” that one could fly through, reflect on, and build within. Her explanation of the concept was fascinating. Alas, the audio didn’t come out well for the group work, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that Susan’s idea takes the idea of “visualizing learning” to a whole ‘nother level.

Oh, and one more very important thing: during my spiel you’ll hear me refer to a guy who has made the whole UMW Blogs thing hum like a top–and whose intelligence, drive, and sheer heart have been a constant inspiration. I refer of course to the guy the Chronicle of Higher Education persists in calling “James”–the mighty Reverend himself, Jim Groom.

For those who’ve asked: yes, I do continue to record my presentations, even though I haven’t posted any audio for a long time. I’m hoping to rectify that (if “rectify” is the right word) over the next few weeks. Fair warning!

Here’s part of the audio of a presentation I did recently at the University Continuing Education Association’s 2009 conference (which I blogged a little bit here. My first presentation at UCEA, appropriately enough, was on podcasting, back in 2006. This year the pre-conference workshop was on “Convergence-Disruption-Transformation: Digital Alchemy and the New Online Pedagogy.” Elizabeth Meyer, Director of Online Learning at the University of California San Diego, put the panel together. I’m grateful to Elizabeth for the opportunity.

As you’ll hear, I immediately disrupted my own talk (auto-disruption?), so inspired was I by Jon’s lead-off presentation. I get around to the talk I’d planned about a third of the way through. The “Janet” I speak of at the beginning of the podcast was a conferee I’d just met and spoken with during the break before my presentation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (20.4MB)

Phil Long has just written a very thoughtful and challenging post at EdTechTrends. As I typed manically through my comment and watched it grow, I thought that instead of breaking the Blogger comment box I’d record a few thoughts here and further the distributed conversation.

Dear Phil,

Wow. I must read this book right away (Innovation, the Missing Dimension).

The more I talk about Web 2.0, the more I’m convinced that the heuristic points to habits of mind and heart with two primary characteristics: they seek, welcome, create network effects, and they trust in–shoot, they expect–emergent phenomena. “Play” is another name for these habits, but “play” sounds trivial–unless one reads Vygotsky (where he argues play is the gateway to facility with abstractions) or Huizinga (whose Homo Ludens rocks my world). The quotation you cite from Rosalind Williams is an extremely useful corollary. The focus on creativity is just right, in my view. People may resist the idea of playfulness, but it’s hard to naysay the idea of creativity.

Yet there are those who believe that creativity can be had without the mess of “odd connections, wanderings, and daydreaming” and without the investments of “time and space to graze.” There are those who will not tolerate the ambiguities and uncertainties out of which real innovation emerges. This kind of misguided “due diligence” has also shaped forced-march large-section courses that are little more than bucket brigades in which assessment becomes a crude pour-your-bucket-back-into-mine exercise in self-certification. This isn’t education and it isn’t working, but the human capacity for denial never fails to astonish me (in myself as well, I hasten to add). Oliver Sacks tells a dismal story in Awakenings of showing his colleagues films of Parkinson’s patients restored to mobility by L-Dopa, only to have those colleagues storm out of the conference room denying that any such thing had happened. When I first read that story, I was incredulous. Now, not so much.

I have long thought that we should assemble case studies of the education of innovators. Which teachers really helped? How did they help? What teachers furthered the thought of an Einstein, a Boulanger, a Curie, a Lennon? What was the secret sauce? I think we’d find some fascinating commonalities. And I think that what works for the high achievers will work for the less gifted as well. Find a version of “teach to the top” that isn’t merely “teach to the most capable” but “teach to the top of what each student is capable of.” A top that by definition cannot be clearly visible to either learner or teacher. A real learning summit–the place where learning and innovation join–is always just beyond the farthest resolvable detail. A spiral pedagogy to match Bruner’s spiral curriculum?

I remember the article I read many years ago in the Columbia U. alumni magazine in which alumni reminisced about Mark Van Doren and other famous CU profs. What they recalled most vividly were the digressions…. 

Your post is a vivid reminder for me of why social media and online affordances are such powerful learning opportunities: structured well, they maximize serendipity (it’s built-in to the Web) and make the odd connections, wanderings, and daydreaming visible, persistent, and available for reflection and further serendipity. We can’t all have MIT’s endowment or prestige, but we all have access to the amazing affordances of the ‘Net. All it takes is imagination, innovation, a willingness to go beyond what’s given (again, quoting Bruner, on the nature of true learning). Faith in the power of “shared inquiry and transformative conversations,” to quote from the emerging mission statement of the Academy for Teaching and Learning.

Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” has been crucial for me in this regard, as a student and as a teacher. Every single English Composition class I’ve taught since 1990 has begun with this essay. Now my “intro to college teaching” workshops do as well.  I’ve long drawn on Percy’s vision of education for inspiration, guidance, disruption (it doesn’t resolve very neatly). At least one of my former students, now a colleague, is carrying on the tradition as well. So I’ll give Percy the last word here, gladly:  a benediction, a valediction, a charge to the innovation banquet committee.

In truth, the biography of scientists and poets is usually the story of the discovery of the indirect approach, the circumvention of the educator’s presentation-the young man who was sent to the Technikum and on his way fell into the habit of loitering in book stores and reading poetry; or the young man dutifully attending law school who on the way became curious about the comings and goings of ants. One remembers the scene in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter where the girl hides in the bushes to hear the Capehart in the big house play Beethoven. Perhaps she was the lucky one after all. Think of the unhappy souls inside, who see the record, worry about scratches, and most of all worry about whether they are getting it, whether they are bona fide music lovers. What is the best way to hear Beethoven: sitting in a proper silence around the Capehart or eavesdropping from an azalea bush?

However it may come about, we notice two traits of the second situation: (1) an openness of the thing before one-instead of being an exercise to be learned according to an approved mode, it is a garden of delights which beckons to one; (2) a sovereignty of the knower-instead of being a consumer of a prepared experience, I am a sovereign wayfarer, a wanderer in the neighborhood of being who stumbles into the garden.

So much to blog about–SXSWi, talks from Boston to Tucson, many Baylor events–but before I get to all that, a moment to reflect on open educational opportunities and real audiences:

My “From Memex to YouTube” class is in full Final Projects mode, heading toward presentations in just a few weeks. Projects range from music and identity to social bookmarking (and organizing the infinite) to animating the Mother of All Demos. Lots of talent at work here. I’m eager to see what the seminar will create and share, and I’ll let you know when the live stream will happen (probably via Ustream again unless someone has a better suggestion).

This morning I’m especially jazzed to see that the “Tell a story in 5 frames” Flickr project is underway. I had an epiphany last week when discussing project ideas with the class: if you’re not sure what you really want to do for a final project, just read your blog posts to date. There’s probably a pattern of interest there. Look at the traces of your own engagement! Enjoy the strengths and predilections of your mind at play in the fields of study. Turns out that the photo project was right there all along, hiding in plain sight. And the results are coming in. The student (I keep saying “the student” in a doubtless misguided effort to preserve privacy) just posted the first “five frames” set to Flickr, and already two comments have come in praising the work.

Of course, I want the student to work hard and keep improving, but I’d be lying if I said the first outing was less than impressive. 🙂 Not to dote, or anything…. You understand.

Take a look, see what you think, and comment if you are so moved. More New Media Studies goodness on the way.

Just back from a quick and intense trip to Boston, where I was on a panel with Jon Udell and Sarah Stein for a preconference workshop at UCEA 2009. I always enjoy my time with the UCEA folks. They’re open and inquisitive. They’re also entrepreneurial, a space that most university continuing education folks live in by necessity (and turn that into a virtue).

Jon spoke on computational thinking (with the specific example of calendar curation), I spoke on disruption (from millicomputing to the mother-of-all-funk-chords), and Sarah spoke on teaching and technology with a particular focus on the NCSU Virtual Computing Lab. It was a pleasure and an honor to share the podium with Jon and Sarah. Both entered my life in 2005 and both have been wonderful colleagues and friends since that time. I see them all too rarely. It was hard to say goodbye. (I’m never any good at that, anyway.)

On my way back down I-35 from the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, my mind full of the conversations and shared struggles I’d experienced at the conference, I listened to an emerging technology podcast featuring Tim O’Reilly. I was surprised and stirred by the passion in Tim’s voice, and by the complex joys and cautions he urged upon us. Then, about three minutes before the end of the podcast, I was startled to hear a poem.

The poem, and Tim’s presentation of it, resonated with me very strongly, as it obviously did with the audience at his conference. I thought of my colleagues at UCEA, and my colleagues on the panel, and my colleagues in the Twittersphere who responded so generously and insightfully to the tweets we generated during the panel.

I hope it resonates with you as well.

The Man Watching

by Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.