Category: web 2.0

No comments

Lecture: Teaching and Learning with New Media

  By , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve not posted on this blog in a while (see ProfHacker.com and http://mcclurken.org/ for other goings on).

However, I was honored to be asked to give one of the inaugural lectures in the Teaching Excellence series begun this year by UMW’s Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning.

What follows is the video and a list of the links mentioned in the talk.

Thanks to all for the opportunity and the questions. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

Overview

  • What is New Media?
  • My Goals in using New Media tools
  • Examples of Classroom Use
  • Assessing the Impact
  • What Can You Do?

    • What is New Media? – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media

    UMWBlogs

  • Blogging – Teresa Coffman (EDUC) and Steve Greenlaw (ECON)
  • Blog as course management tool — Sue Fernsebner’s Freshman Seminar: Toys as History
  • As site for collecting hard-to-find research sources for students –Steve Harris’s Hist 485: Researching Russian and Soviet Resources

    • UMWers & New Media

    Low Levels of Technology Use

  • Wiki for discussions in all my courses
  • Blogs as Individual/Group Reflections
  • Blogs as Research Logs (Historical Methods/Digital History)

    • More Intensive Uses of New Media Tools

  • Examples of Individual digital projects — US History in Film
  • Class Museum of history of technology projects (http://historyoftech.umwblogs.org/)
  • See also Krystyn Moon’s 19th-Century Museum – http://amst312.umwblogs.org/
    • Adventures in Digital history course
    Digital Toolkit
    • 2008 Class & Projects – http://digitalhistory.umwblogs.org
    • – Historical Markers Project (HMP) — [6]
    • – James Farmer Project (JFP) — [7]
    • – James Monroe Papers Project (JMPP) — [8] and [9]
    • – Alumni Project (AP) — [10]

    Adventures in Digital History 2010 — http://dh2010.umwblogs.org

    • UMW Images Project
    • Life and Legacy of Mary Ball Washington
    • James Monroe’s Letters as Minister to France
    • City of Hospitals: Fredericksburg in the Civil War

    Student Impact Survey — From November 2009 — Contact me directly for details

    2 Comments

    Brief Update — End of Week 5

      By , , , , ,

    I’ve been kept from blogging here lately by managing various class details and two searches, among other things. Still, I wanted to post a brief update of what’s going on in the Digital History Seminar.

    All four groups have submitted proposals (“contracts”) with their plans for the projects and how they will complete the project. [They did this via GoogleDocs that each group had used to write the contract.] These contracts included a description of the project, an annotated list of the digital tools they were planning on using, and a timetable for the completion of the major components of the project.

    My observations, in brief, after reading these contracts:

    1. In most cases, the proposed projects are more ambitious than those I would have assigned had I been very precise about what I wanted. [I was intentionally broad in my initial descriptions of the projects.] Although one or two of the groups may have to ultimately scale back their goals a little bit, thinking creatively and ambitiously about these projects is exactly what I hoped for these students. They have done that.
    2. The tools they’ve chosen to use are mostly those that DTLT and I presented to them as part of their digital toolkit. [Omeka, GoogleDocs, SIMILE/Timeline, WordPress (via UMW Blogs WPMU), WindowsMovieMaker, scanning, etc. There are a few exceptions that were outside that list (e.g., Adobe Contribute for a site that’ll be part of the school’s official site), but that’s okay. The groups at least had a chance to think about which tools made the most sense, given what they wanted to do.
    3. The schedules were often very ambitious, and that was the most common comment I made to the groups. Still, in almost every case the group members wanted to forge ahead with their ambitious set of deadlines, hoping that it would keep them on track throughout the semester.

    Each group received my comments and has until tonight to revise their contract for my approval. [They can still make changes, but they’ll need to have a good reason to do so after this point.] Next week we’ll continue our weekly discussions of a topic related to digital history (this week’s topics are Copyright and Wikipedia) and we’ll see the first groups present status reports to the class as a whole. Not only will these weekly reports force students to articulate where they are and what they’ve been doing, they will also provide a forum for students to share their problems and successes with their classmates.

    Honestly, I can’t wait to see the products these groups produce. If anything, I’m more excited now that I’ve seen their proposed contracts. I was talking to a group of alums this weekend about the project and many of them expressed the wish that they were back in school again. [This kind of project is infectious. Be warned!]

    The one thing that I’m slightly let down by has been the relatively light blogging of the process by many of the students. [Some have been quite good.] But, since that blogging is a major part of the way I can assess their work (and ultimately leads to part of their grades), I’m a little surprised. Still, that is a minor issue (and one that I’m working on) that I think does little to detract from projects that have the potential of being some of the best student work I’ve ever been a part of. [I don’t think I’m being overly hyperbolic here, but I’m not exactly unbiased either. Besides, I said this would be a brief post, and look at it now…. :-]

    5 Comments

    Starting a New Semester and a New Class: Risk and Fear in 2008

      By , , , , , , ,

    This has been a busy school year for me (hence the long absence of this blog) and this semester is no different. Still, I wanted to talk about this semester a bit as it begins, if only to remind myself later what I hope to accomplish. [Maybe I’ll find time a little later for a recap of what worked and what didn’t in the blogging I used with two of my classes last semester.]

    Major projects this semester:

    1. Host a conference (the Virginia Forum in April).
    2. Be part of a campus discussion about the role of digitization and digital initiatives.
    3. Integrate wiki-based weekly pre-discussions into my US History Survey and Women’s history as I’ve done in previous semesters.
    4. Teach a new digital history seminar.
    5. Other work items include a couple of faculty searches, covering some classes for a colleague, serving on four other committees, writing a conference paper and trying to get my book through the later hoops of publishing.

    The wiki-based discussions worked really well last fall and last spring and I look forward to using those again. [I introduced the concept of posting comments about the primary sources readings to a group wiki to my survey class which started today and one student asked, with some measure of disbelief, “Has that actually worked before?” When I told him that this was the third semester and the fourth class I’d used this technique with (and that the previous ones had been very successful), he seemed surprised.] Still, at least some in the class were intrigued (and a couple had already posted just a few hours later).

    The digital history class is my biggest new project and the point that I’m most interested in laying out here. A little background first: I have wanted to teach a history and new media class since I started adjuncting in 1999. For a variety of reasons (tenure not the least of them) I haven’t managed to get to it. I decided last year that I would teach the class this semester, as a 400-level history department seminar. I began talking to our excellent colleagues in DTLT almost a year ago and we began meetings last fall that started to lay the groundwork for this class. The class as I imagine it won’t easily happen without their help.

    So what is the class and what are my goals for it? Well, here’s the course description:

    This seminar will focus on the process of creating digital history. The course readings, workshops, and discussions expose students to the philosophy and practice of the emerging field of History and New Media. The course will be centered on the creation of four digital history projects, all of which are related to making local resources available online. These projects include the creation of an online presence for the James Monroe Papers, the construction of a site expanding on the state historical markers in the Fredericksburg area, the expansion of digital work previously done on James Farmer’s presence on campus, and the building of a digital exhibit for UMW’s Centennial.

    The roster is made up of mostly seniors, but also juniors and a sophomore or two. I’ve already surveyed their digital interests, comfort level, and self-reported digital skills (maybe more on that later). We’ve already chosen which projects each student will work on over the course of the semester. Almost every student has already created a blog on UMWBlogs and a del.icio.us account of their own. And we haven’t met yet.

    Check out the syllabus and the course site for more on the schedule and the rough outlines I’ve laid out for each group project here. [I should say that I’ve been inspired in the formation of this class by the work and graduate teaching of digital historians Dan Cohen and Bill Turkel, neither of whom I’ve met, but whose work I’ve been able to follow in a particularly New Media way. Equally important has been the work and encouragement of someone I have met (at Faculty Academy last year), namely Barbara Ganley, whose words, blogging, and teaching continue to influence the pedagogical choices I make.]

    I’m incredibly excited to teach a class I’ve wanted to teach in some form for my entire professional teaching career. But I’m also nervous. Nervous because I want the students to be able to choose some of the path the course takes. Nervous because I don’t know quite where that means we’ll end up. Nervous to ask many different people (from DTLT, from other faculty departments, from other parts of the institution) to work with me and these students on something that might not look very polished in the end. Nervous because I’m asking a lot of people to trust me that this will be worth it. None of that anxiety is stopping me from doing this class. Excitement overwhelms anxiety this evening before the first class. I hope that it will continue to do so throughout the semester.

    I hope that the students in this class will read this (I know one of them will soon, but hopefully the others will find it too). I know some of them are nervous as well. Good. I know that some of them don’t feel like they know what they’re doing. Good. I know that the class as a whole, and as groups, and as individuals, will struggle at times this semester to figure out what it is that their projects and this class is about. Good. I don’t mean that I want them to flounder without purpose. I will be there (with the support of some of the best educators I know) to support them and help them find their own way.

    But that’s just it. I want them to find their own way. I could (and have) assigned digital projects where everything that students did was scripted for them. [And many of them have turned out really well.]

    But I don’t want that this time. Or, I should say, I want more than that this time. I have given the students broad outlines of digital projects as starting places with some basic structures, and what I see as key components, but I’m not going to dictate what they should do. I’ve arranged with Martha, Jerry, Andy, Patrick, and Jim to provide students with a digital toolkit, an array of possible tools with which to approach those projects, but I’m not going to tell them which tools they have to use. I’ve arranged to have expert faculty come and talk to a few of the groups about their projects, but those faculty aren’t going to determine the students’ projects either.

    Those people who still follow this blog after its long absence, I hope you’ll check out the course blog, the syllabus, the students’ blogs narrating their work, and the projects as they begin to emerge. I, and the students, will benefit from your comments and suggestions.

    2 Comments

    Twitter: Why all the fuss?

      By , , ,

    I’ve been using Twitter for several months now. [I have ~25 people I follow and about the same number follow me. I post at least once a day and I’ve used it to learn more about people I already knew from work, and gotten to know people with whom I’ve spent less than 48 hours in person. I don’t have it on my cell phone, but I do check it fairly regularly when I’m online.]

    Although I have no idea what the company’s business plan is (probably to be bought by Google or Yahoo), it’s interesting to me that so many people are asking themselves how to use it (or dismissing it as overwhelming and/or naval-gazing). If we see it as a slightly different method of keeping in touch with other people, with people we’re interested in for a variety of intellectual or personal reasons, then good. Why the hand-wringing or defensiveness about it I see from so many bloggers (many of whom I really respect)? [For example] Is it that it’s really hard to explain to people who aren’t on it?

    4 Comments

    Slicing and Dicing for Education: My Thoughts on a Real School Tool

      By , , , , , , , ,

    [Let me start by apologizing for the title. I’m working to finish a book manuscript and I’m tending to see everything in history book title form at the moment…..]

    Martha has called out those of us who have been participating in some really exciting conversations about the future connections between education and technology. So, this is my response to Martha’s vision and an attempt to begin to explain my own. [I’m writing this assuming you’ve read hers….]

    One of the early complicating issues in those initial, wide-ranging conversations, as I remember it, was between those who saw the need for a specific tool for capturing one’s own digital trail and those who seemed more interested in the ability to manipulate and view information through a variety of filters (hence the “slice-and-dice” metaphor). Here’s Martha’s summary:

    Originally, I was focussed on one specific tool that I felt would meet a particular need — a Zotero-like device (Firefox plugin?) that a user could use to “capture” any kind of online resource and generate a sort of RSS/XML-feed on steroids. Sick of wondering how to get all the various Web authoring tools and social networking spaces to play nicely together, I wondered what would happen if we just scrapped that approach altogether and built some intelligent, lightweight, browser-based “appliance” that would allow me to cobble together a feed from any spot along my digital trail. (Others have asked if this isn’t del.icio.us. I still don’t *think* so, but I can’t really explain it. At least, not right now, I can’t.)

    I have to start by noting that I’ve never seen the set of tools as needing to be a single Zotero-like record of intellectual online travels, in part because of a larger concern with the ability of such a tool to capture off-line material too and in part because I haven’t wrapped my head around the best ways to use Zotero itself. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to have such a tool, especially as Martha describes it, but I’m not sure it’s the end goal. [It could be one of a set of tools, but I may be one of those who thinks that del.icio.us with its rss feeds is good enough, at least for now.]

    I also think that Martha did a great job of summarizing a great deal of what I hope this set of tools will be. Still, she asked for our vision of what umwronco could be, and here’s mine:

    1) A snapshot of our intellectual life — I’ve used this phrase a number of times to suggest a key use for umwronco to me. The life and mission of a university is ostensibly public, yet much of its interactions, discussions, and ideas remain bottled up in silos that range from the individual, to between teacher-student, to within the classroom, to the campus itself. Why stop there, especially at a public institution?

    • Example 1 — I can imagine talking to a group of potential students and their parents at an admissions function with a screen behind me showing a tag cloud of categories being discussed on campus in the last 24 hours or an intellectual map with student-created connections between and amongst various classes and extra-class sources and ideas. I’m geeked by how powerful it would be for me to tell those parents and potential students, “This is the intellectual life of this institution right now. Don’t you want to join us?”
    • Example 2 — Such a snapshot could (and should) be taken with a broader lens. e.g., what are Virginia college students talking/writing/thinking about right now?
    • Example 3 — Using such a snapshot, teachers and students, learners all, could see the larger intellectual world of the campus and build off that. [Admittedly the snapshot might be scary — does anyone want to see that the intellectual life of the campus includes a certain hotel heiress’s latest problems? But in that case maybe students and faculty could work to change the intellectual life and soon.]
    • Example 4 — Using such a snapshot, administrators, including student life personnel, could respond more precisely to student needs and interests, those prosaic (laundry complaints) and profound (responses to tragedies). In other words, it might be a way to measure the pulse of the student body.

    I would add that I want to be able to take various snapshots over time (a stop-motion movie of the intellectual life of the institution would be very cool) and to be able to change the scope of the snapshot (capturing the intellectual life of a class, of a department, of a single student, of a dorm–let’s not forget that even in the online world that physical, off-line space still matters a great deal). Do you see where the “slicing and dicing” comes in?

    2) A way for students to make connections between their various sources of learning and create a self-aware, reflective course of study — And no, I’m not so self-important to think that this only includes connections between their classes or a reflection on the courses required for their major. It is widely acknowledged that students learn a great deal outside of the classroom and their course assignments and this suite needs to allow students to make such connections. Still, I see this suite of tools as making it possible for students to more explicitly engage in the connections (and perhaps as importantly in the conflicts) between their various classes, even when those courses were created in isolation from each other. [This view is heavily inspired by a recent conversation with Gardner and Steve Greenlaw.]

    • Example 1 — A student learns overlapping material in my 19th Century American Families class and an English class on Women Writers. What current incentive does that student have to make such connections explicit? [I encourage students to bring up materials learned in other classes and I have some colleagues that do as well. But that process could be expanded and encouraged, allowing self-reflection for students and a view of that connections for others.]
    • Example 1.5 — A student looking for a class to take for next semester reviews those reflections/connections posted by students who have taken similar classes. Amazon’s site has a feature that is effectively: “readers who liked this book also liked this one”. Why couldn’t that work for students and classes as well?
    • Example 2 — E-portfolios — ’nuff said.

    3) A way to begin to dip into and process the larger flow (torrent?) of information online. [In other words, learning to deal with information overload.] — Recently there have been a number of discussions of the disconnect between students’ lives online and their abilities to navigate that online world in an academically sophisticated (or perhaps just critical) way. I’d want this suite of tools to train students in the art of information consumption and production.

    • Example — Digital literacy, as I see it, is fundamentally about the ability to navigate the online world in a reliable, thoughtful, critical way. [My lengthier versions of that definition…. ] So, a student might come to see the umwronco set of tools as a way to help them look at the online world in a new way, especially if it involved tagging/categorization, annotation, and a unified place to keep one’s own learning centered.

    4) A conscious, explicit reinforcement of the need to keep citation, authority and reliability at the forefront of sliced and diced material and an awareness of the role of bias and perspective. — Obviously related to the last point, I’m still close enough to my disciplinary origins to insist that any sliced/diced/created/preserved information be linked in a prominent way to its origins. To do otherwise risks exacerbating a sentiment I’ve noticed among students, namely that the web seems a seamless information source to them, not a series of collections of information with different authors (and therefore different authority and different levels of reliability). I expect that umwronco would help students (and faculty) to be more aware of their own assumptions and biases (in what information they can get, in what filters are being used, and therefore what material is left out) and those of others.

    • Example — Students could create an extensive, cross-course annotated bibliography through both linking and formal citations that could ground part or all of their online work.

    5) These tools will be perpetual betas, yet available in various “packages” depending on the expertise and interest of the user. — The phrase “perpetual beta”, which I picked up from Gardner and Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb, took me a while to embrace, but embrace it I have. Faculty and students will need to come to terms with a fast-changing, always-in-revision world of tools. [We need to remember that academia is constantly in revision; it’s just typically been on a (much) longer cycle.] Still, we need to be conscious of the need to attract people to the umwronco and I think a series of ronco-packages might be one way to go (even if never formally expressed this way).

    • Level 1 — alpha testers — they’ll try anything, as long as it has the potential to improve student and teacher learning.
    • Level 2 — beta testers — rough edges are fine, they revise their classes almost every semester anyway.
    • Level 3 — gamma testers — Fewer rough edges, numerous examples/models for implementation.
    • Level 4 — Everybody else — Sneak in a tool or two when they’re not looking….

    I’m aware that I haven’t been especially specific or practical about implementation at this point. I don’t think wedding ourselves to one technology or software or tool is the right approach here, especially given the rapid rate of change. I also am aware that I don’t know the specifics of how all these technologies work or even more important, the difficulties of implementation. With those two caveats, my view of the suite of tools would include some combination of the following: blogs, multi-user blogs, wikis, electronic forums, RSS feeds, del.icio.us, maybe Zotero, tag clouds, e-portfolios, GIS software, Bluehost, Fantastico, PhpSurveyor, YouTube, Drupal, IM, Twitter and BackTwitter, even (gasp) email. [Just to be clear, I don’t see myself using all of these, but the idea of a suite of tools is the point here.]

    Let me finish by reminding the reader (congratulations on making it this far!) that this post is part of a much larger conversation about this topic and many others that I have been privileged to be a part of over the last couple of years. Two points about that: First, many of these idea are not my own, or at least not in their original form. Most of them came from the other people in these conversations and so they should get that credit (in addition to those mentioned already: Jerry, Angela, Patrick, Jim, Andy, Chip, Cathy, Charlotte, Sue, and most recently, Laura, Alan, and Barbara). Second, I’ve been able to be incredibly honest with the people that have been part of that conversation and this post may reflect that directness at times. None of that directness or contrariness should be taken as anything more than respectful disagreement about parts of our shared mission. I mention this not for the core people involved in that conversation, because I know they understand that, but in awareness of the potentially larger audience. If you don’t have such a group of people you can be honest and frank and inspired with, well, join ours!

    3 Comments

    Facebook and Faculty: A Small Tale of Utility

      By , , ,

    A podcast by CHNM’s Digital Campus team and posts by Jerry Slezak and Jim Groom, stimulating an active conversation about the merits and weaknesses of Facebook in academic settings have prompted me to write about my own recent experiment with the social networking site. I’ve had a Facebook account and a growing number of mostly student friends (~65) for a couple of years now. I’ve used it mostly to keep in touch with recent grads, though current students have used it to look up my AIM account or converse with me about particular projects or their on-campus activities.

    Recently, however, I set up a Facebook group for my History Department Alumni Book club and invited those of my Facebook friends who were alums. Thirty joined in 24 hours, and other alums joined as well (I left the group open) bringing the total close to 40. I’ve already organized the next meeting and book choice via the event system and people have already RSVPed (and explained to the group why they’re not coming, if they can’t make it). Not sure why I resisted tapping into that existing community before now, but I’m glad I have.

    It doesn’t reach everyone; not everyone’s on Facebook, and not all of those who are on the site are my friends. [Though, as I noted, a number of unofficial friends have joined on their own .]* I have about 90 people on the email list for the book club and I still use that to contact most people. Facebook also won’t be the prime way we meet and discuss the books. [Face-to-face meetings are supplemented by a blog and comments at umwhistory.blogspot.com.] Still, Facebook allows an easy RSVP system and a convenient place to coordinate meetings and book choices and it will advertise the book club in a way that most alums wouldn’t have stumbled on before. [Not to mention the fact that current students can see it in my Groups and those of their friends who recently graduated, furthering the likelihood that they’ll join when they become alums.]

    I’m not particularly interested in using it for classroom teaching at this point (though I’m open to the possibility if it made sense); rather I see Facebook as a way to engage students in larger (broader than one course) discussions and as a way of interacting with students and former students through a group channel that persists beyond their time in a particular class or in their collegiate career. I’ll post about Facebook’s relation to the book club in future posts.

    UPDATE: A former student contacted me via Facebook after I created the book club group. He had wanted to be in the book club when he graduated two years ago, but had forgotten to contact me to sign up. He’d seen the book club group on Facebook and he’s excited to be able to join it now.

    * “Unofficial” is an awkward, though brief, way to describe people who I know, but are not Facebook friends with; however, “non-friends” (an alternative I considered) makes it sound like I don’t like them….

    No comments

    Anatomy of a Blogger

      By , , , ,

    Martha has asked over at the Fish Wrapper, what kind of bloggers we are, with the goal of complicating the notion of any one style or method or purpose of blogging. [She’s right, I do tend to think of blogging as more or less the same. This is another case of us confusing the technology with the conversation.] I’ll answer Martha’s questions for myself below.

    Generally, are you an impetuous blogger? Or do you mull over an idea or post for hours, days, weeks before hand? Do you draft a post and then let it sit until you’ve had a chance to revise it multiple times, perfecting your language and point?

    No, I’m a muller. I will let posts sit for months at a time. But, oddly, now that I think about it, not generally because I want to revise them more. I’m an impetuous drafter, writing blog posts as inspired, but I tend not to hit “Publish” on them very quickly. [Faculty Academy this year being an exception.] That has more to do with a deliberate (self)consciousness of my online presence than the care with which Barbara Ganley calls for in “slow blogging”.

    Do you “collect” the references in your posts before you write them (if so, describe your system)? Or do you blog with 15 windows open, copying and pasting quotes and URLs, as needed?

    15 tabs in Firefox (7 right now….)

    Do you blog in the admin panel of your blog? Or do you use some third-party tool? If you use a tool, what features does it have that hooked you?

    The admin panel. It’s worked pretty well for me.

    Do you automatically consider placing images in your posts? Or does this not even occur to you, usually?

    I don’t usually even think of it. I’m generally blogging about concepts, but I see Barbara and others do the same, but with pictures. I’ll have to think about this idea more.

    Do you write posts and then delete them before clicking “Publish?” Or, by extension, do you have draft posts that have languished for days, weeks, months waiting for you to pull the trigger?

    Yes, see above….

    Do you feel compelled to blog on a schedule? Do you feel guilty when you don’t?

    No, but I feel left out when I see lots of other people posting and I haven’t had time (or something to say).

    Do you “craft” the experience of your blog, adding sidebar widgets and custom graphics to lure readers into your space?

    I’ve added some sidebar stuff, but I’ve not thought about it as drawing readers in. After all, I tend to read other people’s stuff in Google Reader (and generally visit their blogs only to comment), so I tend not to worry as much about the reader’s Techist blog experience. [Maybe I’d have more readers if I did…. :-]

    Martha and Laura‘s posts about this view of blogging and technology suggest we really need to work harder to clarify that these tools are just that, tools, and ways of furthering conversations, creating interactions, and reading, processing, and adding to, that torrent of information to which we all have access, and with which we all have to deal.

    2 Comments

    Jim Groom & Claudia Emerson Redux

      By , , , , ,

    Jim and Claudia presented (neither for the first time at Faculty Academy) on an online literary journal created by one of her classes. Calling Nonce impressive does not do it justice. Check it out for yourself.

    [Nearly 40 people crammed into the room to hear them–Standing Room Only….]

    One particular point raised by Claudia that intrigued me was the notion of applying to change that particular class from 3 credits to 4, allowing for a “lab” component (or perhaps recognizing the increased time that developing and implementing some of these skills may take). [I’m aware that there are some complications related to campus expectations for what constitutes a four-credit course. Let’s set those aside for a second.] What do people think about the idea of a “digital lab” component for more credit?

    3 Comments

    “The Choir’s Getting Larger”

      By , , ,

    In a conversation today about the difficulty of convincing colleagues of the utility of technology-enabled teaching and a multiplicity of pedagogical approaches, and the concern that the people at Faculty Academy are often the people who have already bought into these notions, one person observed, “We may be preaching to the choir, but the choir’s getting larger.”

    I was taken aback for a moment, but then I realized he was right. Just look at the program for the Academy and you can see an impressive array of departments, ideas, pedagogies, and interests, all who add their voices to the mix.

    I would add to that (if I can take the metaphor a step further) that I suspect that the larger choir and its members have never been more in sync with the others in the choir, never more engaged with each other as teachers and scholars, never more able eager to see what others are working on, never been more ready to embrace teaching as a perpetual beta.

    [Why now? I suspect it’s a confluence of larger trends such as easier-to-use web tools, the rise of digital public learning spaces, and a willingness of students to engage in these online conversations/creations, as well as local strengths such as leadership, infrastructure and support, and the tech evangelism of a key group of people.]

    Where do we go from here? Why, back for Day Two of Faculty Academy, of course!