I can’t begin to tell you how deeply I respect the intellectual generosity of D’Arcy Norman. Presenting with him at the Open Ed 2007 conference at Utah State University was an absolute honor and pleasure. He’s already done a nice job re-capping his portion of the session which was much more coherent than he suggests in that post. Moreover, he does an excellent job of suggesting how many of the ideas he heard over the last two days were simultaneously forcing him to re-think so much of what we assume about education and technology, and in particular the intersections between the two. That made the presentation all the more special because I was able to watch D’Arcy be brave enough to try and make sense of so many of the human issues at stake on a personal level, as much as trying to share what he is currently working on and experimenting with.
Whereas I was not nearly as deep, but I had some fun talking about the early Americas, literature, courses as arguments, opening up the archive, and using WordPress as a quick and easy publishing platform. Though I was a bit stiff up and until I could relax a bit with D’Arcy in the questions and answer and talk about UMW Blogs a bit, which is really my current infatuation love. I found myself talking about expectations of openness on a smaller scale between professors and students within a quite specific learning environment. Something UMW is doing so beautifully right now, and an idea I hold near and dear to my meager heart.
Which leads me to my final point, I frealize I have no real perspective on how much many of thefolks at this conference know about all this stuff (am I assuming too much), but find myself justing plowing through it because it has become so integral to my thought. I guess that means its time to slow down a bit and look around. The last month has been wildly exciting and frantic, and as much as I am enjoying the C()SL family, boy am I running out of steam these days. I guess I need to watch more B-movies!
If you’re interested, the audio from the session is available here.
Image courtesy of AHockley’s Flickr photo stream.
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So you’re the K12opened gal? It is a small world, ain’t it? Well, this conference gave me a pretty solid foundation for that class (especially Brian Lamb and David Wiley’s sessions this morning), so as soon as I recover from my current exhaustion I plan on returning to those readings and the other folks posts with some real vigor. Be talking to you on the tubes soon!