My friend and colleague, Dr. Gardner Campbell, invited me to spend a few days at Baylor meeting and talking with a diverse set of people. While there I spent several hours with staff from their central ITS organization responsible for teaching, learning, classrooms, labs, and library services talking about strategic alignment and strategies for engaging faculty. I also met with a group of faculty innovators to talk in depth about PSU's approach to ePortfolio and program assessment. We were able to look and talk about how the Blogs at Penn State are powering a large collection of digital publishing projects — from blogs, portfolios, and even projects like Study Abroad. I discussed our vision as it relates to our GatherIT project. On Tuesday I toured an amazingly well designed student lab space that put the emphasis on collaborative space instead of machines. I then wrapped up with a two hour session on new forms of digital scholarship with Gardner's faculty within his Academy for Teaching and Learning faculty development program.
It was an outstanding trip. I learned quite a bit that will inform future directions for us with ETS. You may download a PDF of my slides I used while discussing ideas related to strategic alignment.
Month: June 2010
The iPad Makes Me Better
I am now over two months into my life with my iPad and I think I have found the places it works best for me. I did use it almost non-stop for a month as a laptop replacement and found that it came close to filling that space. I say close because it didn’t manage my google docs well and it still doesn’t … that just means I use it for very different things than my laptop. I will continue to say that I actually really like that it isn’t a laptop replacement because it lets me get away from all that stuff after work and on weekends. I actually have found that the iPad makes me a better parent — that is so jacked up to write and read, but I am sticking by it.
I have now figured how to slot the iPad into my overall workflow and every single day I discover a new App that seems to make me really happy. They aren’t really making me more productive, but I have to say I really don’t care. The iPad is filling a different space for me than one built around productivity (and I like that). I leave my laptop at work all week, only bringing it home on the weekends (and that is really for those “just in case” moments if all hell breaks free). I use the iPad to do everything during the week while at home — email is killer, the web is amazing, playing casual games is a joy, reading books from iBooks and Amazon is perfect, and just not having the opportunity to do it all is such a treat.
And let me say it again that it gets better each day. Why? Because the App Store lets me find stuff that actually helps me do things better. I hate to say it but Reeder is the best google reader client I have ever used — even better than actually just using google reader! I say that “I hate to say it” because I have now purchased three of them … I bought it tonight after my friend and colleague, Brad Kozlek mentioned it in a post. The iPad invites me in, but pushes me out of the world of work on weekends. And that makes me a better person — I am convinced of that.
Locked Doors to Openness
Something I have been struggling with lately is the continuum of open to closed in lots of contexts. So much of the conversation in the tech blogosphere is all about Apple and the App Store/iPad/iPod/iPhone lock in. It is a conversation that if taken on its own I am completely disinterested in. I bought in years ago and that is that. The App eco-system and the perceived heavy hand of Apple in the approval process does not interest me in the least. It is, however, in this conversation that I am trying to pay more attention to where I am in my own career and thinking.
I read a great post that John Gruber pointed to yesterday by Neven Mrgan titled, “The Walled Garden.” Again this post dealt with the App Store, but I think it has some serious implications for thought about the field of education technology and the way we are working within our institutions to radically open up education. It sort of caught me off guard how aligned some of my thinking is around this topic … and in many ways I find myself standing on the other side of a divide I thought I’d crossed.
Aren’t the benefits of a closed, carefully managed garden clearly visible? The experience is controlled, so it tells a story – one which may not emerge from a democratic, anything-goes process (or do you think this sort of slow and deliberate story would emerge in a busy American city in the year 2010?) Charging for admission means that the place can be maintained, improved, and marketed. There are downsides to this, of course — maybe the management makes boneheaded decisions now and then. Maybe you think that vine maple would look better a little to the left — maybe you’re even right.
via mrgan.tumblr.com
Even in my teaching I struggle with open versus closed and I am growing tired of the “versus” in that conversation. Some things are better closed and managed by the few — not all parts of my open class are democratic and I wouldn’t apologize for that, but for some reason I feel like I need to say I am sorry in other contexts for not being totally open. I know there are times my students feel they know better than I … and many times I know they are right.
In my work, I am being pushed at my institution to take a broader view of the landscape and that is forcing me to see perspectives that I am afraid are not widely held ideals of many of my peers (many of whom I count as mentors and friends) from across higher education. I spent the better part of the last 10 years pressing on the idea that “open wins, period” and lately I am finding that there are times when closed is as much a winner.
via Shirley Buxton
I try to manage my own organization as openly as possible, but things are shifting under my feet. I recently did something I never thought I would do — I created a private blog space that only my staff can get to. Just the thought of that makes me cringe, but that is exactly what I did. I was finding that I was unable to share things that were in process openly as it was constantly being picked up and shared as gospel. As much as I enjoy seeing our work get recognized by the likes of our own Daily Collegian, Onward State, and the Chronicle of Higher Education the overhead of managing the fallout from it has worn on me. It isn’t a coincidence that I have stopped writing as much about my work openly … my work has changed and so has emerged a greater need to keep it guarded. So a private blog was born so I could once again be open with my own staff — it sounds crazy … I needed a closed space so I could be open. There is that gradient thing again.
I am chairing a committee charged with investigating the pedagogical affordances of various course management systems and that as well has me questioning some of my beliefs about it all. I have been a very loud opponent of the CMS in the past and I still don’t use our University-wide CMS in my own teaching, but through the work I am doing with a very smart group from across our Institution I am seeing it all in a new light. Why am I so damn embarrassed to admit that I do believe the CMS is an important part of what we do? I think these tools should be in place and more and more I see them as the access point to all of the innovative stuff we do outside the CMS — why not turn the place that nearly everyone uses into a portal into the Blogs at Penn State, our iTunes U dashboards, and perhaps even google services in the future? If my goal is to drive adoption of these types of (open) platforms I have needed to get beyond the “CMS is evil” stance and embrace it. Again, I need to pass through a closed space to arrive at opportunities for openness.
All of this is is interesting to me and I wonder what it means to where my work fits into the larger landscape of higher education. I have built much of the success of my organizations on being open, honest, and transparent. I want to continue to live in that space, but more and more I see value in some layers of control. I know we will continue to innovate and I know we’ll continue to share, but as the ideas of openness continue to spread I am seeing how closed is truly a part of the conversation. At the end of the day I do recognize the need for doors into wide open spaces — even in that realization I see the ridiculous contradictions. If the doors are locked, how does everyone get in? Maybe the open space on the other side isn’t locked? Not all fences enclose a whole area … what if the door is just the easy way for many of us to walk in and share out? I don’t know.
Vanishing Words
Agatha Christie’s cleverly plotted detective stories made her the 20th century’s best-selling fiction author—she sold billions of books throughout a career that spanned the 1920s to the 1970s. But her intricate novels may reveal more about the inner workings of the human mind than she intended.
via blogs.wnyc.org
This is really a must listen for so many reasons. It really makes me wonder what the importance of writing really holds for us as life long learners and participants in our own ongoing story as people.
I feel lucky to have jumped on the idea of keeping a blog active for the last 6 years or so as a place to reflect and record moments. I have at my fingertips the potential to look into my past and see my own thinking evolve. I truly wonder what my writing has to say about me at this moment and if there are things in it that can predict my future?