And He Blogs

There is a discussion going on right now at ELI 2006 Annual Meeting regarding the changing role of “Instructional Designer”. I put that term in quotes because it is meaningless without context. We are leaning toward the term “Learning Design”. In this discussion we ARE designing instruction. We are beginning the analysis in the very least. There are panel discussion questions such as is there a “sea change” going on in higher education in the acceptance of learning design. Is the campus culture recognizing the facilitating role of learning design? Many are clearly discouraged, but I feel that we can, as learning designers, simply bring what we know to the faculty (and administration). We are seeing what works and what engages US. We need to introduce these technologies to willing participants and begin the evangelism with them. We are seeing knowledge being created, shared, and implemented. We will show the way if can facilitate discussion such as this one, and then let faculty/teachers get some exposure.

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Originally uploaded by rushaw.

Jerry had a really nice post that brought up some genuine emotion from both Gardner and me. It’s still Monday morning at the ELI 2006 Annual Meeting, but there already has been a lot of reflecting. I also have my work cut out for me to summarize what’s so great about being here (and it isn’t just the weather!). It’s quite apparent what a great community there is here. Lots of caring faculty, administrators and staff. Back home there are lots of caring people that I work with - Including Jerry, Martha, Jim, Patrick, Lisa, Pam, and of course Gardner (and many others). I’ve gotten to see so much passion from “Dr. Glu”, and it’s so inspiring. More reflections to come. Good luck to those at home dealing with family issues. We’re thinking of you!

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Aggregation Presentation: My So Called Glu’d Life

Originally uploaded by Looking For Fish Tacos At ELI 2006.

Gardner Campbell, a.k.a. Dr Glu

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Beyond The Blog: Ready For Prime Time

Originally uploaded by Looking For Fish Tacos At ELI 2006.

How could a good instructional technologist not be psyched about seeing this presentation. I also might just try one of them fish tacos before I leave.

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Quick start to my morning here in San Diego - Not news really any more, but despite what you might think, there are those that aren’t in the Google has become evil camp for capitulating on censorship in China. A thoughtful post by Jason Calacanis - read and discuss.

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Well, I’m not a virgin any more. I’m writing this to you from San Diego, site of the aforementioned ELI Conference. I will start full time blogging when the conference starts officially on Monday, but I’ll do some unofficial blogging tomorrow.

Before I sign off, I need to get my mind clear of the thoughts of my first flight in one o’ them there jet planes. Airports, airplanes, terminals, and concourses. It’s an entire sub-culture that frankly fascinates me. Look, I’m the first one to shake my head in disbelief that I have never flown before. It has never been that I was afraid to fly, it’s just, to me, it was always so damned expensive. I never mind driving. I almost took a plane once. I had an interview at the College of William and Mary in 1998, and they offered to fly me down from New York State. I declined, mostly because my interview was in combination with other interviews that I had in Virginia, and I didn’t feel right about it. I had one interview at George Mason, and another at Mary Washington College. You may know how that story turned out. I didn’t get the job at William & Mary. I’ve been at the Mary Washington now for 7 1/2 years.

Back to the flight. The first leg was from Dulles to O’Hare, and after a few words from my sister, who loves to fly, I was throwing my coins and keys and sneakers (???) in a plastic bin. I now know in retrospect that I was spoiled just a bit on my first flight. The plane was half-full and I had the chance to spread out, a sharp contrast to the second leg of my journey. Anyway, so there I am, a rookie in Concourse C. I get to the gate just as the steward is talking about boarding. Seems there is some delay, but he insures us that the plane will board quickly because of the number of passengers is, as I said, about half what it should be. More waiting while the steward informs us of necessary maintenance that needs to take place. Then what appears to be a police detective, a TSA officer and a D.C. uniformed police officer show up. Then a very excited German Sheppard makes an entrance accompanied by his trainer. Then, what appears to be an FBI agent, arrives with a young gentlemen, and this is unfortunate, who appears to be of Middle-Eastern descent. Now the steward has to level with us. OK, it was necessary maintenance and a slight security breach. We eventually boarded and the nice captain explained that the young man, at the last minute ran onto this plane, thinking he missed his flight. This is the story we got anyway. So the pooch that I mentioned previously turned out was an expert at sniffing for bombs/explosives. I’m not scrared off by any of this, I am grinning from ear to ear.

Next comes the safety and evacuation theatre performance. What a macabre piece of kabuki this is! In the event of a water landing? I’m supposed to find a red tab and place the mask on my own face before I help others. This is just priceless.

Finally it’s time for the take-off. Keep in mind that your humble narrator does not do well with merry-go-rounds, so I have some trepidation about all these G-forces and pressurized cabins and such. No problem as it turns out. Though I did set a record for number of times my ears popped. I remember this happened once, maybe twice on the trip to the mountains in the family Rambler stationwagon. The gum my wife offered me pre-flight came in handy. Now the landing on the other hand was a different story. It felt like they had substituted two cinder-blocks for the pnuematic wheels that should have been under the plane. Once we came to a stop, I did feel like high-fiving a few people, but again, I didn’t want to call attention to myself in that manner. Once inside the terminal, at O’Hare, I called a few people to announce my accomplishment. Argh! Voicemail in all instances.

I did have a stupid question pop into my head. Do I need to go claim my luggage and then re-check it for the next flight? I know, how silly. I make my way to the gate for the flight to San Diego. What the hell are all these people doing here? This plane is smaller that the first one (757 vs. a 767) and there isn’t an open seat. Now a flood of smiles come to my face as I remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine gets stuck in coach and Jerry gets to ride first class. That particular show just got 1000% funnier. Overhead cargo storage is at a premium, and I started to expect a fight to break out over it. Surprisingly it was incident-free. There was more turbulance to deal with on this flight, so much so that there were quite audible groans several times as passengers queuing for the WC were asked to return to their seats. However the woman two seats from me is feeling no pain as she orders back-to-back glasses of white wine. The flight ends with a nice smoooooooth landing.

Now I’m hear in San Diego, and it hit me quite hard as I was dining on a Baha Fresh Fajita Burrito. I’m in California! More to come . . .

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I’m trying to be casual because everybody else looks very casual and relaxed. Maybe it’s a game we all play. Flights come and go all the time. I’m not nervous about the flight, I’m just nervous that I will do something that makes it quite obvious that this is my first time in an airplane. Yeah, you read that right. 41 and I’ve never flown. I am so pumped.

It’s a beautiful blue-sky day for my flight to San Diego for the 2006 Educause Learning Initiative Annual Meeting. All the Big people will be there - your Levines, your Lambs, your Alexanders, your Lomasi (sorry, that’s for Cyprien Lomas, and also a nod to Steven Colbert). Of course my first stop is rainy Chicago (at least it’s not snowy Chicago). We’re about to board so we’ll see what this big hunk of metal is made of. About half the plane is full, according to the steward. This may mean, wherever I sit, I may still get to see out a window.

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Who out there is a fan of the direction, or directions, that Apple is taking lately?

As I stated previously Dave Winer and Kevin Yank aren’t.
Martha isn’t.
Brian isn’t.
Gardner isn’t and still isn’t.
D’Arcy says not so fast.

The latest controversy invloves the TV ad for the new Mac/Intel computers. It seems that a few years ago, a music video by The Postal Service (the music group not the U.S. government entity) was made by the same people that did the current TV ad. And boy it sure has the same look. Ironically, their music video is #1 on iTunes now. Now that’s funny.

This and the other voices of concern that have been raised seem to point to the inevitable conclusion that all companies that become large tend to look like lumbering oxen, and all start to think the same (not different). Be careful what you ask for Mac users. As you become more popular, your favorite company will start to take on a striking resemblance to, dare I say, Microsoft? The cuteness of Apple being the hip, forward thinking company, and the other guys being dull and boring is starting to wear pretty thin. Can you say iPod virus?

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I got this notice on Friday about a new book from Will Richardson. C’mon $61.95? Well it turns out that the actual price is $27.95 if you dig deeper. I hope no one got scared off, because it sounds like a great book. Will’s Weblogg-ed site is one of my favorite educational blogs, and he is a guy in K-12 education that just gets it.

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Head . . .Full . . . of . . . Stuff. Must . . . jettison . . . information. Head . . . about . . . to . . . explode . . .

People ask me what I’m up to lately. Here are a couple of items from today.

Taking pictures of Jerry leading the THEA435 class on Wikis:

Getting cool MP3 player plugins installed (Click Play button to listen to music):

Music “Cold Cloth and an Ice Pack” by Derek K. Miller. Creative Commons license.

Also, working with DivX, helping build an intranet, thinking about film projects, blogging three times a week, testing out new digital cameras, testing out digital video cameras, welcoming students to online forums for a Biology class, etc.

People ask me if I like my job. You betcha!

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