It’s taken awhile, for which my apologies, but here at last is the podcast of Dr. Phil Long’s keynote presentation for the 2009 Baylor Scholars Week. Phil’s talk is very ambitious and comes at a great time as the two cultures meet again in the domain of undergraduate research.

I think Phil’s after some home truths here about human experience as seen through the lens of creativity, education, shared inquiry, and disciplinary methodologies. Listening to his talk again as I prepared it for publication, I was struck by the range of Phil’s thought and examples. History and neuroscience; academic research, teaching, learning, and administration; school reform (and the difficulties–or impossibilities–thereof); innovation and disruption. Most of all, I’m struck by Phil’s deep commitment to the encounter between teacher and student in which each learns from the other in true community, true reciprocation. The story of the Nobel Prize winner (about 41:45 into the podcast) brought me to tears when I heard it, and it still gives me chills to hear it now.

For me, Phil’s talk gets some key priorities in good order. First we must engage with and understand the environment in which we live, and imagine the possibilities with open minds and hearts. Then we must plan, execute, and afterwards, assess. Too often the assessment precedes the engagement, as we unconsciously, and sometimes with the best intentions, take fresh ideas and turn their gold to dross with habit, fear, and mulish resistance. We know the “no” before we make the effort. It takes courage, imagination, and a certain playfulness–maybe even what Keats called “negative capability”–to remain genuinely receptive to the opportunities before us and genuinely thoughtful about their benefits–and, of course, their liabilities.

For another great example of Phil’s thinking about these topics, see his recent article with Richard Holeton, “Signposts of the Revolution? What We Talk about When We Talk about Learning Spaces.”

But that’s enough from me for now. Time for Phil to speak.

Thanks, Phil.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (24.4MB)

It’s been quite a cavalcade of edtech stars at Baylor this spring. First Alan Levine, then Bryan Alexander, and then, in an unbelieveable hat trick, Phil Long. That’s got to be some sort of record for a February-March-April run of good luck.

Phil’s big moment for us was a deeply thoughtful and bracing talk on the “two cultures” divide in light of the new “imagination age” (cf. Dan Pink) and higher ed’s heightened emphasis on undergraduate research. Phil wove together Nobel prizes, Walt Whitman, C. P. Snow, students, teachers, curriculum–well, as soon as I’m back from Sweden I’ll put the audio up as a podcast and you can hear its breadth and ambition yourself. I was especially glad that three of my New Media Seminar students were there to hear Phil’s talk. One of the students blogged it here. The talk was a great keynote for Baylor’s Scholars Week event, a spring showcase emerging from our own Undergraduate Research initiative. We call it URSA, for Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Achievements. But we also call it URSA because at Baylor it’s all about the bears….

In addition to the keynote, Phil was generous with his presence and perspectives throughout his two-day residency. He interacted with my students at their presentation on Monday. He went to lunch with several folks from the library to talk learning environments. He accompanied me to the Phi Beta Kappa lecture Monday night, where we heard a fascinating talk on Chopin and the sublime, including a lovely piano performance that demonstrated the speaker’s thesis. A satisfyingly multimodal event, with philosophy, aesthetics, and scholarship combining in very persuasive mutual reinforcement.

The big events are important, and having Alan, Bryan, and Phil make their presentations at Baylor this spring has been a series of great opportunities to plant seeds and raise awareness. But it’s also those less formal moments that I treasure, those times when just having these amazing people walking around and interacting with us brings out great ideas and sparks innovation, sometimes right away and sometimes weeks or months later. To watch these people who are such inspirations for my own work spreading their light and creativity among folks at Baylor is such a joy. 

And the icing on the cake, aside from the requisite trip to Ninfa’s, was staying up late and playing with ooVoo–but that’s another story for another post.