My fifth EDUCAUSE conference. Hard to believe. Anaheim, Denver, Orlando, Dallas, and now Seattle. Each year I’ve met extraordinary people and learned a ton.

This year is particularly poignant for me.

I’m on the program committee, which has given me the opportunity to see the event emerge from the ground up, and to work with creative, devoted colleagues to help make that happen. As this year’s EDUCAUSE unfolds, I have an even greater appreciation for all the work that goes into this event, especially all the ingenuity and dedication represented by the folks who are presenting.

I’ll be reconnecting with many of those extraordinary people I mentioned above, and renewing my own excitement and commitment to what I believe is our best hope for genuine educational transformation.

I’ll have dinner with many of my friends from Frye 2005, and draw encouragment, strength, and inspiration from that most marvelous cohort.

At the ELI Advisory Board meeting, I’ll have the chance to review this year’s accomplishments and contribute to the direction of this wonderful group as we move forward into our next phase (see below).

And I’ll have the chance to discuss the topic of “Millenial Faculty” with a small group of conference participants. Since 1990, when I first starting using these technologies as a college instructor, I’ve been hearing about how a generational change will bring the professoriate out of techno-reluctance into techno-fluency, and usher in a new age of IT integration into teaching and learning. Well, the “Space Invaders” generation has their Ph.D.’s and they’re applying for jobs. Has that shift occurred? If so, what are the ramifications of this change?

But the most poignant element of EDUCAUSE 2007, for me, will be a changing of the guard. Brian Hawkins is stepping down as President of EDUCAUSE after ten years of outstanding leadership. And Diana Oblinger, who has brought ELI through three amazing years of growth and innovation, is here for the last time as Vice-President, for she will become the new President of EDUCAUSE on January 1, 2008. Both Brian and Diana are extraordinary leaders. They are also exceptional mentors. It’s difficult for me to express my gratitude to both of them without leaking all over my keyboard and shorting something out. Suffice it to say that I try to channel them in everything I do as a leader and community-builder. I will always be their student.

I’ve been in many learning communities over the course of my career. The dream of a university, a place in which diversity and unity find a common purpose and, even more importantly, a common joy, has come true for me in a variety of ways, from those magic days in which a class meeting takes off for the stratosphere to those days when a conference presentation or even a chance conversation with a colleague propels my own learning into a higher orbit. To my great astonishment, however, it was not until 2003 that I began to see how all these many processes in higher education might be aligned, might realize the synergies that our civilization so desperately needs if we are to address our challenges successfully. If any proof is needed that information technologies are really civilization technologies, as fundamental and as exciting as reading and writing themselves, that proof is here at EDUCAUSE, in abundance.

I wish I’d found this community ten years ago. I’m very grateful and honored to be part of it now.

Just back from a driving marathon to take our son to Hampshire College for a College Day visit. Aside from a 2.5 hour wait to cross the Geo. Wash. Bridge northbound on Sunday, one brief lost moment in the Bronx (missed the southbound turn to the Geo. Wash. Bridge), and a lovely rear-ender when a small truck piled into us as we were trying to leave Hadley (no one was hurt, thank goodness), it was uneventful.

Both Ian and I were impressed by Hampshire, for a number of reasons I would like to explore here at some point. We also both had some concerns, I more than he. Worth exploring those too, particularly because, so far as I can tell, Hampshire was founded on a very brave, far-seeing attempt at real school. The attempt continues, forty years later, and it was interesting to see some of the history of that attempt firsthand.

Then we got home, and a brochure had come from Deep Springs College–another of the brave real school attempts I’ve thought about over the years. I remember getting a version of that brochure when I was a senior. I had tried out for the Telluride Program and failed. (I was a semi-finalist and got an interview with Robert Davidoff, a young asst. prof. of history at UVA; it was the first time I’d talked at length to a college professor–and thereby hangs another tale.) Still, Deep Springs was fascinating to me, for reasons I have trouble explaining, even to myself. The current brochure is even more interesting than the one I received thirty-three years ago.

All of which brings me to today’s punch line, which has something to do with the pleasures and perils of growing up as a faculty kid. At least waggish Ian, who wrote and posted this note on a door in our house, has still managed to get to the comic side of all these questions.

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!