First of all, you can’t incorporate massive guns, zombies, loud music and fire into a presentation and leave people bored. It was a really engaging tool.

Secondly I felt it was completely in line with the overall theme of the presentation. You took the notion of a conceptual revolution and gave it a visual presence. Plus the whole anti-authoritarian sensibilities of the edupunk movement are such that an in-your-face tone is quite relevant and appropriate. Playing Mozart and speaking softly would have felt out of phase; images of Che Guavara, military dress and fire didn’t feel out of phase.

Finally – and this has only just occurred to me – the use of fire could in some ways be thought of as a metaphor for change. Fire takes existing structures and destroys them, and out of this new life is able to grow. In Australia for example, the landscape has evolved to the point where fire is a requirement for growth.

So looking at it that way it was quite relevant in making your point. Cast off standing conventions and expectations of what education is – or in this case burn them away – think creatively and act differently, like the Phoenix from the ashes so to speak

Besides you both burned yourselves too, so there was the sens of the entire Colosseum undergoing a Baptism of Fire.

It was the best presentation I’ve been to in a long time really – you guys did a phenomenal job Thanks again!

Cheers,

Mike

Just wanted to give you a huuuuuugggge thanks for the presentation. It was a truly amazing production to witness and importantly carried a brilliant message too. Just classic

Cheers,

Mike Bogle

This one had your name all over it, and if I wasn’t a total idiot I would have talked about http://freelearning.ca when the qquestion of support came up.

The statement you made in this post about not caring who it belongs to was beautiful and inspiring. In fact, your logic in that post of others using your resources through another mapped domain has made me think longer and harder about the future of UMW Blogs. So thank you, you’re one of the world’s finest educational survivalists, and it is a pleasure to break bread with you in person and virtually.

And the Floyd homage at the end, awe inspiring! I am so glad they left the audio of you singing in at the end. Jim Groom, I love you man!

I blame all the shennanigans on your special man friend. I really wanted to do a straight talk with suit and tie, but he kept pushing and pushing. Sometimes he is a hard person to say no to, but in the end I guess he was right.

@Jared- I find most people who sit way on either side of the Second Life fence either spend way too much time there (the zealots) or are the ones who criticize it from the outside looking in. It is a virtual *world* meaning there is complexity, not something you surf like a web page. What we try at NMC to do is to provide rich experiences that counter both kinds of BS — a stuning example is the experience of “getting inside Macbeth’s head” — http://virtualworlds.nmc.org/2008/10/08/macbeth/

Now excuse me whilst I hunt down some Glasses of Truth for myself.