Our first Faculty Academy 2006 session after the general welcome was a plenary panel discussion/presentation on blogging at UMW. Session leader Steve Greenlaw enticed, coaxed, and otherwise motivated a whole raft of bloggers from many disciplines and both campuses into sharing how they’ve used (or in one case, refused to use) blogs in their teaching and learning.

The results, as you’ll hear, are quite varied. Taken together, they reveal for me a fascinating record of a particular moment in the life of what is still a new IT tool in many learning environments. My staff and I are finding that the idea of a blog is surprisingly resilient and capacious, and that a WordPress blog (for example) can be scaled from a personal journal to a full-blown content management system. That’s not just our discovery, of course; others in the blogosphere report that blogs can be the front end to a complete e-portfolio. I suppose my own fascination is that the notion at the heart of blogging–the narrative of a mind, linked to other narratives and cognitive encounters–turns out to be another way of thinking about thinking itself.

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Funny how these changes creep up on you, and then one day: another world.

I’m teaching a summer school class on “Film, Text, and Culture,” and yesterday a little thing happened with big implications. We’re on the Little Women unit right now, reading the book and watching three film adaptations (1933, 1949, 1994). Yesterday was a group presentation day: one group presented on two critical/theoretical essays concerning adaptation, and the other presented on two critical/theoretical essays concerning feminism. One of the essays in the latter group argued that Rudolph Valentino’s subject position in film was unique in relation to female viewers. (That’s a crude summary, but it will do for my purposes here.)

On the preceding day, one student had asked me about an image of Valentino mentioned in the essay. I didn’t know or have a copy of that image, unfortunately, though I did find a large photograph in a film history book, which I duly brought in to class and handed around. That’s a perfectly fine and teacherly thing to do, but it clearly meant I didn’t understand something about the Internet in June of 2006, for the student’s presentation featured an actual clip from a Valentino movie, one she had found on YouTube.

Although I’ve used YouTube myself many times, once even in a professional presentation, I hadn’t even thought to direct her there.

Clearly this example says something about my own need to think more carefully and comprehensively about web-based resources. At the same time, it prompts me to reflect on the fact that YouTube was just starting up midway through last fall’s semester, when I was teaching my Intro to Film Studies class, and when I might have made the mental connection earlier. The larger point is that we’re witnessing not just the now-routine Internet phenomenon of major new resources, but also massively and unpredictably scaled repositories of public domain materials that are vital information resources for ourselves and our students. As the information abundance spreads, and if we are brave and curious enough to embrace it, we will find our own serendipity fields dramatically expanded. And we will find our students bringing archival gems into the classroom, casually and crucially. At that point, the professor’s role as advanced learner, one who models the “ah, what do we have here?” that’s the result and nursery of a good education, will be explicit and essential as never before.

Bring it on.

I don’t have a very elegant beginning crafted here. That’s a shame, but it would be an even bigger shame not to begin at all, so here’s the first podcast from the 2006 UMW Faculty Academy on Instructional Technologies. This lunchtime session on May 17 was entitled “A Fantastico Expedition: Massive Web Innovation on $6.95 a Month,” and it featured our five UMW Instructional Technology Specialists: Martha Burtis, Patrick Gosetti-Murrayjohn, Jim Groom, Andy Rush, and Jerry Slezak.

This was a great session for many reasons, and on many levels. Rather than try to describe them, I’ll let you listen and hear for yourself. I do want to say a special thank-you to Jon Udell, our Faculty Academy keynote speaker, who has very generously made this session the subject of both an InfoWorld column and a blog. These pieces are extraordinary in themselves and would be in my “save forever” category even if they didn’t feature the work we’re doing here.

I found nearly all of Faculty Academy deeply inspiring this year. And there were many moments that were truly magical. You’ll hear some of them here. There are more on the way.

I also need to say that these Instructional Technology Specialists are remarkable folks to work with. Their intelligence, wit, and imagination inspire me on a daily basis. I want to say something very intense and profound at this point, but if I do I’m likely to short out my computer (they’ll understand why), so I’ll simply say that I am humbled and grateful to be among them.

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Oook writes admiringly of this post from Stephen Downes, so I immediately went to read it. I agree wholeheartedly with 50% of what Stephen has written, and disagree violently with the other half.

In terms of the way people live their lives, it may be true that there’s no point to argumentation. But that’s regrettable, and it’s the fault of people, not of argumentation. That’s another way of saying that argumentation should *not* be pointless.

Polemic may be pointless, in that it merely solidifies convictions on both sides of the debate, and perhaps bullies a few others into taking the speaker’s/writer’s side. But polemic is not the same thing as argumentation.

I fully agree that cognitive apprenticeship is at the heart of real school. But reason, rigorous argumentation, must be there as well. As should hilarity, passion, dogged commitment, and a richly integrative vision.

If all we can do is explain our beliefs to each other, how are we to learn? Or perhaps Stephen has brought the notion of argumentation in through the back door, so to speak, in his notion of a true, honest, and forthright explanation. Does not the very act of communication imply a request that we consider his statement and, if we judge it sound (not just agreeable), agree with it or learn from it? Picking up on Ron’s comment on Stephen’s post, I too hope that my students will not simply say “that’s what Dr. C. believes” but will actually engage with it, argue their own position, and teach me something in response. There have been several occasions in which my students’ arguments about topics of class discussion have caused me to change my mind in some fundamental ways. And of course I seek to change their minds as well, when that’s appropriate, always holding in our class meta-mind the larger principles of openness, fairness, and rigorous analysis.

I understand that by responding to Stephen’s post I have in some respects failed the test, though in writing that I’m being harsher than I feel. I do think, however, that the mind and meta-mind I’m trying to articulate form the paradoxical, vital reality of human interaction.

That’s the punch line to a joke my dear mother-in-law told me many years ago. “Why do broadcasters have such small hands? Because you have to have wee paws for station identification.” Of course that joke, like jokes about typewriters and broken records, will need footnoting as the baby-boomers die out, but I’ll laugh even if it dates me. So there.

That said, I feel compelled to put a placeholder here to say that I have many things I want to explore about the recent Faculty Academy, about what I’m reading, about where my thoughts are taking me these days, about my new citizenship in Second Life, about last night’s episode of House and the ethics at the heart of epistemology (and vice-versa), but I can’t yet. Too many loose ends at this moment, too many projects I need to push a little farther along. And then there’s my job, too. All of which leads me to ask my five (or is it six? I lose count) loyal readers to bear with me for a while as I get some clear space to resume my natterings here.

I really want to push hard at some of the ideas and questions emerging for me out of the last few months, perhaps even the last year.

Stay tuned.

The event is over, yes, in terms of strict chronology. In other respects, I think we may have just matriculated into a vital, “real school” course of study. More on this idea soon. For now, I want to thank Jon Udell, Rachel Smith, Cyprien Lomas, and my astonishing staff of Instructional Technology Specialists for helping to shape and deliver this experience. You take my breath away.

Tonight I picked Cyprien Lomas up at National Airport in D.C. and ferried him to the motel near the University. Jerry did the same for Rachel Smith. Tomorrow we get started with the first of two days of Faculty Academy 2006.

We’ve been working toward this event for months, and to our great delight, we have about 110 folks already registered to attend and nearly forty presentations scheduled, including sessions by our special guests and by us in the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. We’re going to do our best to record and podcast all the sessions, and there’s a conference blog and a conference wiki so you can all follow along.

I’ll be blogging here, on the conference blog, and on The Smooth Elephant, and tracking my comments with CoComment. At least, that’s what I hope to do. Given the way these conferences often take on a ferocious life of their own, you may not hear from me again until Thursday, as I come down from what I’m sure will be an utterly exhilarating two days. But perhaps I’ll have the presence of mind to sneak in a few words here and there.

Viva Faculty Academy!

I was about to write that “The Flea,” one of Donne’s most famous, even notorious libertine seduction poems, changes its character radically when a woman reads it, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the poem stays the same. What changes, at least to some extent, is one’s horizon of expectations with regard to gender and/or sex. There are several ways to think about this:

1. the woman reads the poem against the grain, with an implied critique of the poem’s argument
2. the woman reads the poem with the grain (1), and the reading demonstrates Donne’s own witty or earnest or seriocomic critique of his own argument (i.e., self-consciously or not, Donne the poet writes in a way that subverts the poem’s argument)
3. the woman reads the poem with the grain (2), as a straightforward seduction poem, claiming the energy and wit and aggressiveness as her own

I don’t think I’ve exhausted the possibilities here by any means, and now that I mull this over, I see that these readings are available to men as well, depending on their own sexual ethics … but given that the poem’s original voicing is of a man seducing a woman, it’s easy to recognize why the reversal would stimulate thought.

Here’s Jess Rigel reading “The Flea.”

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In today’s Donne Seminar podcast, Charlotte Naas reads one of Donne’s less-well-known poems, “Witchcraft by a Picture.” Such is Donne’s sharply marked poetic character, though, that you could probably tell it was one of his even if I hadn’t told you. Try the experiment: play the poem for your nearest English major or poetry lover, and see if he or she can “name that poet.”

Click here to play Charlotte’s reading.

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Encouraging update on Pete Townshend’s web site:

The Who begin rehearsing in two weeks, during which time I have to finish the rest of the Who album with Roger – so again, I’m trying to keep the music simple and direct. Our new stage set will allow us to do some new things, and to help tell some stories as yet untold.

I’ll be in line with Alan when tickets go on sale.