cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Tom

Sigh, I found a case where my script was not working (it was for photo ownsers who never set themselves a nickname). I had to dig in deeper than I have gone with XPath, and was mostly my own ignorance as to whay I was having trouble extracting the right string. I got quick help from StackExchange.

You can find details at http://cogdogblog.com/flickr-cc-helper/. I also found out that Chrome users should see new versions of the extension pushed to their browser a few hours after an update, they are automated. If you want to force it go to Window -> Extensions (or Tools -> Extensions) make sure Developer Mode is checked, and click “Update Extensions”.

Doh. Firefox users can update from the Userscripts site by clicking the big green install button.

And hopefully flickr won’t be monkeying with their divs and spans. Or they will stay in business.

A poem made of TZ episod titles? Oh yeah, brought on by Todd Conaway.

Mine is called Be Sure The Job Is Done…

I Shot An Arrow Into The Air
And When The Sky Was Opened
The Four Of Us Are Dying

Where Is Everybody?

You Drive
The Fear
A Hundred Yards Over The Rim

A Nice Place To Visit
The Grave
The Fear
The Lateness Of The Hour
The Silence

What’s In The Box
He’s Alive

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by craig.letourneau.photography

I’ve known Cole Camplese for some time, we’ve blogged together, presented together, hung out all night after dull conferences together, drank together, I’ve dropped in and stayed at his house several times. I can remember the first time I came across his work- I was at Maricopa in the early 2000s bouncing around the web looking at the ways these new Apple things called “iPods” were being used, and came across a post of his how he had jury rigged a “consumption” device as an assessment tool.

I had scoffed at twitter when I first came across it in late 2006, but it was his description of an idea how to use it for communications among his PSU team that pushed me over the edge to come back to it in 2007.

With all this, I have been mulling a response to his “Innovation Confusion” post in some new thang called “Medium” – and want to respond constructively, critically, to someone who is a friend and colleague (Mike Caulfield “Reply to Cole: Pushing Back vs Pushing Forward” and David Wiley (“Be Awesome Instead“) are ahead of me).

Maybe “medium” is meant for… well I don;t know. I am not even sure what it is. Is it the twitterization of blogging, smaller nuggets? I see a comment there, but no way for me to comment. Are the only comments from other medium-ers?

And I know Cole is going against the grain of MOOC criticism by trying to leverage the movement for what PSU already does at a large scale. And it’s only out of a lot of respect that I say, “if Cole is into this, it cannot be all shite.” I give him that edge over many others because of trust, reputation. I can believe [some] in MOOCs if Cole is on board.

Yet, his post really bugged me, not for what it said, but what we have to infer. Let’s move into it. The lead off sentence:

Why do those who used to push forward now push back?

I know the answer to the question even as I ask it.

Yet, I never see where that answer is shared.

Next…

Why do the same people who pushed so hard for so many years to drive innovation into the teaching and learning space now recoil at the arrival of it en masse?

…

now that the MOOC thing has happened the same people who built rallying calls for more open access to learning are now rejecting this movement.

He’s not naming names- who are “the same people”? I feel like/hope I am on that list. I like to mock MOOCs. Why? Because they are mockable. I and I guess the “same people who pushed so hard for so many years to drive innovation” do this as well. It’s part of discourse to disagree, and in the past I have mocked Learning Objects, Course Management Systems, Internet Explorer, Stephen Downes… This “push back” is part of the questioning. Where in our history to we just jump n a bandwagon? The process of scholarship is one of pushing back constantly.

In fact, standing up to push backs ought to be what makes things stronger.

Were we supposed just to buy into all the New York Times hyped gushing over MOOCs?

Yes, the way the current MOOC landscape is shaking out has little to do with real honest to goodness open access. MOOCs are still closed in that you have to take the time to actually enroll in a “course” and take it over a period of time. I guess the true open crowd would prefer that everything just live on the Internet within “open” spaces like youtube and blogs. The reality of that is that it didn’t work and won’t for quite some time.

That, frankly, is one of the narrowest scopes of openness- getting to the course. I can live with creating accounts, but where is the openness of sharing the process? Where is Coursera, and PSU for that matter talking about their ideas for teaching this way? Can others repurpose the MOOC raw materials? If I consider sharing my aspects of my Coursera experience, I violate the honor code. It’s non-transparent. And yes, I think it deserves push back, not as a dismissal of the idea, but in the way its been done.

I refuse to characterize MOOCs as an entity, My bits of first hand experience are a handful of courses, and ones that I found horribly designed. I have not seen them all. Its silly to lump them all into one blob.

And that “reality” is not mine. “It didn’t work” has less to do with openness and technology and more with human nature (and what is meant by “does not work”?).

To many of us, openness does work, see the long string of Connectivist MOOCs, ds106, Wikiversity, phonar, P2PU.

If we want to move the needle on the conversation of openness, in terms of access, the MOOC movement is a real catalyst. I am sorry if the same people who dreamed of this moment aren’t happy with the way it is playing out … hell, it is amazing to me that it is playing out at this scale with these players at all — and by players I mean the universities, the staff, and the faculty.

Actually I concur that it is a catalyst, in the way of making people uncomfortable, not a bad thing. But what is it catalyzing? At what point does open come with pay to enter? Does it mean we have to buy it into lock stock and course?

Why are you suggesting we need to take sides? I’m on the side of learning, period.

I want all my ed tech friends to chill out.

Thanks for your concern, but I am quite chilled out.

In fact, I am having quite a bit of fun pushing back and questioning. A lot of fun.

Why is you seem to sound a bit defensive? Kind of like, “Mom, why won’t the cool kids play with me?”

To enjoy the fact that this is progress. That this isn’t selling out. That this is a step in the right direction. That this has the attention of faculty, administrators, and boards of trustees. That without that attention, this moment wouldn’t be happening. That our job isn’t to bash the movement but to do what we have always done — move it in the right direction using positive energy.

How is this a fact of progress? Hell I do not even know what a fact of progress here. Where are these facts, Cole? I’ve been looking high and low and have not seen anything that looks like a lot of progress. I am interesting in what is it that advances teaching and learning. And what we are seeing is by the MOOC machine is an effort to try and teach more people, many more people. And that in its way, might be advancement– but it has not shown anything near that. Enrolling more people in courses of wobbly pedagogy do not seem like progress.

If the moment were to do more than just keep trotting out numbers of enrollments or the honor card list of players, maybe.

Is there but a single right direction?

So here we go, old friend. You know I love ya, right? And we wills till sit around your patio drinking growlers and drawing diagrams of world domination?

If anything, your positivism and interest in moving MOOCs out of the bullshit hype cycle they have been on, gives me some small sense fo hope. I am looking to Penn State to break the shabby mold I have seen to date on MOOCs. But we don’t know what you are doing, because it seems to be happening behind Coursera’s So called open doors.

It’s not pushing back, its probing the question. And if “the movement” is not up to taking the heat, it ought to get out of the kitchen. If the MOOC Movement is that powerful, that catalyzed, y’all should not be worrying what naysayers say.

The way you deal with negativity is a demonstration of positive tangibles. Show me the MOOC-ey.

It’s not bashing, its not personal, it’s asking the MOOC makers to show us something. Bring it. Bring all that forward progress on.

It is saying, “Come on… bring it”

GIFSoup

Positivism? Hell yeah, All You Need is MOOC:

Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc.
There’s nothing you can teach that can’t be scaled.
Nothing you can grade that can’t be AI’d.
Nothing you can tweet but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.

There’s nothing you can lecture that can’t be video’ed.
No equation you can show that can’t be animated.
Nothing you can do but you can copy how to be you
in time – It’s easy.

All you need is Mooc, all you need is Mooc,
All you need is Mooc, Mooc, Mooc is all you need.
Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc, Mooc.
All you need is Mooc, all you need is Mooc,
All you need is Mooc, Mooc, Mooc is all you need.

A Wiggle Spectroscopy ds106 assignment:

Take two photos of the same subject from slightly different angles. Merge the two photos into a single looped, animated gif to create a wiggle stereoscopic image that simulates 3-D. A very good tutorial explaining the full process can be found on Martin Sutherland’s website.

I did not even intend to create this, but I took two photos in succession with my iPhone, and there was enough difference of angle (and the motion of my new friend Amyaz moving behind the bottle), to make it work as a wiggler. I used the PhotoShop Script “Load Files into Stack” and then simple GIFfed them out at a 0.2 second frame rate.

It almost suggests the frenetic influence of rare rum from India? Perhaps.

The back story…

It was almost an accidental choice when I booked a room for two nights at the Black Squirrel Inn www.blacksquirrelinn.com/ here in Wooster, Ohio.

What a treat to meet such a nice person as my host, Fong, but then it turns out her husband, Amyaz, is a Wooster prof and was in my worksop Tuesday! We hit it off, and he stopped by tonight to share more stories and rare rim from India= apparently Old Monk is not available in the US.

Old Monk is a vatted Indian dark Rum, launched in 1954.[1] It is blended and aged for a minimum of 7 years. It is a dark rum with a distinct vanilla flavour, with an alcohol content of 40%. It is produced in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, available in all parts of India.

There is no advertising, its popularity depends on word of mouth and loyalty of customers. Old Monk is the largest selling dark rum in the world Old Monk has been the biggest Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) brand for many years.

Here is to serendipity and connections.

And [wiggly] rum.

Playing more with the #ds106zone for the Twilight Zone episode of the Invaders. All of the screaming, banging, and destruction might is averted if Alien Lady checks her iPhone.

Instead of getting zapped by laser guns and whopping spaceships with her axe, instead, Alien Lady and Jim Groom laugh at old stories over the best tacos in Virginia, perhaps the entire east coast.

Messing with the Macguffin may be one of my all time favorite ds106 assignments, because technically it is pretty simple (superimpose some text on a screen capture of a movie scene):

Wikipedia defines the MacGuffin as “a plot element that catches the viewers’ attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction.” For this assignment forever change the plot of a movie, tv show, etc. by changing a single line of dialogue. Put this new line of dialogue below a screen-cap of the moment in the movie you’re changing. Credit to Tom Woodward for posting an example of this idea in the #ds106 Twitter stream.

The beauty here is in the thinking and decision of what incident might unravel the plot- the storytelling here is in the thinking not the tool tinkering. In this case, if Alien Lady is not in her house, she never encounters the spaceship (maybe they fly on to Jim’s house), and the creatures on the ship get to go home.

I knew I wanted one of the earlier clips she she is cooking in the kitchen, and holding objects in her hand. I got the idea to throw in a twist, what might get her out of the house, but tweet from a friend? So while her house is a shack, has no electricity or running water, she does have an iPhone (solar charger). I clone brushed the knife out of ehr hand in PhotoShip, and made room to insert an image of an iPhone (there must be only 10,000,000,000,000 of them out there). I did paste in a screen cap of a twitter screen rather than an iPhone ome screen, it is so small you canot read the tweet. I placed it over her hand, then copied her hand from the screen layer, returned to the oPhone layer, and deleted the selection to make it look like her hand was on top.

For the tweet, I used a very key site for doing ds106 fake content- LEMMETWEETTHATFORYOU http://lemmetweetthatforyou.com/ lets you type a username in a box, and the twitter message. In this case there really is an @AlienLady, so I inserted a clip of the TZ character for the icon.

And there you go, the power of the MacGuffin is that it can neutralize the Twilight Zone!

Probably the most well received talk at TED Tea Party City was Alien Woman, who shared her personal and moving story of thwarting the alien invasion.

(click for full sized glory image)

This Fantasy TED Talk assignment is brought to you by the ds10zone:

Create a scene from a TED Talk being given by a fictional character. Obscure or well known, feel free to have your fictional character pontificating on their story, and their “essential truth” that has come to be known as TED Talks.

Week’s 1 assignment suggested using one of my all time favorite episodes, The Invaders, which in typical TZ fashion, leads you into an assumption of character that gets flipped in the end. A power of this episode is is spareness, one actor (A pitiful “victim” played by Agens Morehead), almost no dialogue, and music that builds the suspense. The woman’s contortions, moans, and screams draws us into seeing her as the victim of an invasion from beyond.

The “essential truth” here is one of presumption, ignorance, language barriers, and use of violence over reason.

When Jim Groom discussion re-filming episodes of the Zone, I speculated a redo of this episode using my mountain remote home in Strawberry AZ, which, of course carries a bit of side meaning given my home states rather regressive attitude towards immigration (IMHO). Before Arizona SN 1070, when I told people where I was from, they would respond with “Oh yes, Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Tombstone” nut post 1070, it was more of a odd query of, “What is going on in your state?”

So just like Alien Woman, we may have some confusion/assumptions/predispositions towards people from other countries, we paint as invaders,

And thus TED, in reaching beyond its liberal bias, may someday have talks for spreading ideas that don’t matter. Alien Woman would be perfect as a speaker.

I have to admit working with the video from the UMW media server, was a bit of a struggle to use- since I could not pawn it, and getting a still was though if the movie was paused. But I grabbed my images ok. I downloaded the PSD template Ben Rimes created initially for this assignment. The poster shown on screen was borrowed from the It Makes Sense Blog (a site I feel dirty just looking at). In Photoshop I used the distort tool to stretch the image to the corners of the screen. I pasted in a few copies of the alien non aliens from the episode, and then did some erasing to make them appear to be behind the sign and the dude’s head.

I do like this creative challenge of finding assignments from ds106 that could be done with this episode.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

I’ve lost track of the count, but for 3 or 4 years, Jon Breitenbucher has invited me to remotely present 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story for faculty participating at the College of Wooster’s annuam Faculty Fellowship institute. When he approached me again in December, I asked if here would be interest in having me come to Wooster to do it in person. Not that I mind presenting online, but maybe we could do more in person.

And Jon said, “Let me check.” And he did. And that is how I ended up boarding a train in Flagstaff to ride 2 dys to Cleveland (the train was my idea). I decided to mix and match parts of sessions I did in Asia in March, to focus more on what makes storytelling compelling and things about the shape of stories:

A new piece is talking some about maybe what us a problem with the word “storytelling” (as it emphasizes performance) versus storymaking. Yet performing is inportant so as I have enjoyed lately, we ran through a round of pechaflickr. In this group (8 faculty) we all took a turn, and this group knocked it out of the park (the word was “frog”).

I took ‘em through the 50 Ways parts but more with a focus on the story process. Typically I talk through a story that starts with a prompt based on a local landmark. I chose the place Jon took me out to eat, the Olde Jaol- the prompt being:

You would never believe who I saw sneaking outside of the Olde Jail last night

The point is to run through a process following the 3 Act play structure- establish the character/inciting moment, describe the things the protagonist needs to learn / do to take on the challenge, and then how it resolves. I set these up in a Google docs participants can group brainstorm.

For this workshop, I know the participants wanted to work on things related to their courses or proposed fellowship project, so I offered that as something they could do in the workshop. Yet I saw there some value in them doing their brainstorming together in the doc.

They subverted my idea.

And I like that.

They wanted to work together on a single story, involving if I recall right, a ficticios college President, Prince, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Toni Pepperoni (a cricket coach) and our hero, Rabbi Jane. They changed the location. They wrote out a more complete narrative I have ever seen, with one pair working on the document and the others finding media, which they shared in a drop box. Again, working in pairs, the started building out stories in the tools – Vuvox, Photo Peach, Glogster.

And I think they got the goal that the media is not the intended outcome, but the process.

I thus actually managed to not do much on ds106, which was perfect, because I returned the next day (although my work was done) to hear Jim Groom come in via Google Hangout to present the ideas behind and parts of ds106. Jim was, ever more so, en fuego. He did capture their attention, and though a bit glazed eyed, they know now when he is called The Reverend.

It was a grand experience- thanks Jon and Ellen for making this possible

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Yahoo apparently brought in a high priced expert consultant to help them plan a rollout of a flickr update

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by WilWheaton

First all the change in the layouts, which I admit I like as a design- it forefronts the image.

But alas, the change did again break my CC Attribution Helper script. It took a few rounds of XPATH fiddling, but there is a new update available.

Yet the flaffle over what the new accounts mean is staggerling clownish. Most everyone I heard form on twitter was as confused as I what these new accounts mean for existing pro users. Most think they are being asked to choose one of the new accounts (you do not).

Why would I want to switch to Free? Just because it is free? It suggests I need to do something by August.

I’m staying Pro, Yo.

But ahem flickr.

You just drop this on a community w/o any notice? sneak preview? ask for feedback?

I feel not only like a user, but used.

Tumblr, meet your future maker. Errr, Makr.

Just squeeze the ref rubber nose

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by JLM Photography.

Disclaimer: Yet another blog post without a destination in mind; this is in the vein of open ended wondering, probably ripe for shooting arrows at. Batteries not included, void where prohibited.

I’ve been dabbling, writing, teaching about digital storytelling for years, I still cannot tell you what it is, as a definition. For sometime, I’;ve had this niggling question that has been knocking to be written out. It is a question.

Is there a difference (or anything meaningful) in making a distinction between when storytelling is used as a strategy for some other goal as opposed to a goal in itself (just to tell a story)?

A few months ago I was at a conference, and sitting in a session on SEO. OI think it was because I did not move quick enough out of the previous session, and got trapped in the middle of a row.

A woman got up in front of the room; she was a good speaker, enthusiastic, and introduced her SEO company and explained what they do.

“We are just storytellers. Period.”

I got little queasy.

I mean c’mon, you get paid money to improve some company’s placement in search results. Yes, you tell a “story” of that company, but its for the express purpose of a business advantage.

Ugh, am I some kind of holier than thou storytelling snob?

It’s the core of consulting firms who help

clients define and give voice to what’s best and most distinctive about them–and use the power of who they really are to create compelling brands, develop inspired leaders and deeply engage their workforces.

I mean that actually sound compelling and something I’d want if I was some CEO.

And then it becomes a thing we do to tell stories with data (and people I really respect do a lot of powerful work here)– when I look at sites like this, they are dominated by the tools and the techniques, and I am not rarely seeing the story. Yes, it is finding ways to elicit meaning, direction, maybe interpretation out of data, but are these really stories? With a jpurney of a hero, an arc, the overcoming of obstacles?

I have seem amazing ways to represent complex data, amazing ways to elicit trends, patterns, but is there really a story that data tells, or is it we tell stories with data? Or ???

I am not criticizing, I am just asking, fumbling with the question.

I do this myself in my workshops, where I urge people to use storytelling techniques to create a message that is more approachable, interesting etc.

So dont get me wrong, I am fully in support of using storytelling as a means to an end, but for some reason it bristles me when it comes off as being something more spiritual or ethereal (scracth that,s top using fancy words you neoliberal so and so…)

What is the difference, if any, when the end goal is just to craft a story, when Story (capital) ia the goal? I honestly was tipped here a while ago from a conversation with Barbara Ganley, when she told me why she loved the community of Cowbird, because it was to her, a place of people outside the mainstream, who were solely aiming for creating stories for the sake of stories.

Maybe it is a meaningless question. Likely.

Let me move on to another one.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by estelle f

I’ve been thinking to a lot about the word “storytelling” and how I bring it to workshops and presentations I have done (and are doing like next week). The word itself to me suggests the performance part, the idea that someone really good at it (like Barbara) are really powerful at the telling part. And while I believe that everyone does and can tell stories, the connotation that comes up is that really passionate, engaging person in the spotlight with a microphone.

If the word really mattered, I’d rather be talking about Storymaking than storytelling, because that is the stuff I like do- creating, manipulating, I feel more comfortable saying I am a Maker of stories than a Teller of stories.

Like I said, this is just one those free form posts of little purpose than to try and capture some thoughts. To be honest the name, and even the intent dont really matter as much as the making. Stop spending so much time retweeting links and gushing over TED Talks, get your butt over to ds106 for the next 5 weeks of the Twilight Zone flavored class Jim Groom is leading, and make some story art.

But if you got some insight or more likely, some criticism, bring ‘em

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

My pal Todd Conaway invited me to be a speaker at his school, Yavapai College, in Prescott, where they are running a three day faculty institute (Todd claims when he started, this event ran fo 6 days, that is hard core!). Yavapai is a multi campus system that serves the county of the same name.

I faintly recall attending a regional conference at this campus in the mid 1990s when I was a young mullett headed kid at Maricopa, but I hardly recognized it. I was told they had a major buildout since then. It’s quite modern with a lot of well done architectural design touches, and reflects much fo the college’s focus on community and fitness.

Todd asked me to do a round of Amazing True Stories of Openness- the audience was really into it, but I think I may have had more fun then they did. This was a brand new version,with new stories collected, and a bit nore background as a set up on the original idea for the web envisioned by its creator, Tim Berners-Lee. The slides and resources are available

As always when I do this, I wonder about the balance of playing the videos- what good is a presentation where I just go up there and play videos? There are more than 50 now on http://stories.cogdogblog.com/

Kudos to the amazing Thatcher for covering the session in video

I told three of my own stories that set up the idea for me, then paraphrased ones from a subset I made just for Yavapai, including three added by faculty Joane Oellers, Curtis Kleinman, and Jennifer Jacobson. Putting together a collection from the whole is something new I added, I had pegged a few Maricopa colleagues to do new ones since this was a community college audience.

I also sved some room at the end to ask about the barriers to sharing- I used a copy of the shared whiteboard responses I got when I did this session in March for ETMOOC:

Barriers to Sharing (click for full size)

It really struck me how much these barriers all stem from self-doubt, a sense that their stuff is not worthy in their minds. Being humble is one thing, but this goes beyond modesty, this is pervasive from what I have seen in sessions elsewhere. Most everybody pre-judges their own work as somehow less interesting or value. I don;t know what to do with this, but I am really intrigued to talk more about this. It paralyzes open sharing into not happening.

I also organized for the first time a list of rather general suggestions:

• Start Small. It need not be a lot of things shared, and it need not even be things you made. It can be ideas, teaching activities, gradin strategies.
• Make it Useful It should be something that goes beyond what you do in class, something that adds value fo your students first. Quite a few of the newer examples are ones where teachers are recording extra content, tutorials (or in one case, reading the text for students who might not be able to afford it). This alone is helpful to your students, and that could be it locked inside an LMS. But it takes no more effort to make it available to the world, and help others at really no extra effort. This was Curtis’s story, where the videos he was recording for his Yavapai Spanish students helped a man in Australia learn Spanish on his own.
• Be Yourself Put some personality into your stuff, come across as human. We have enough academic pomp and third person narratives. Let’s be human!
• Find Your Comfort Level (and go Beyond) I feel rather strongly about this- there is no learning or growth without stretching, and this is a pretty low risk way to extend your skills or abilities. Don’t just do what you know how to do, nudge yourself up a notch.
• Participate With Others It’s not just a matter of sharing out, and sitting back and waiting for the magic. The juice for the machine is when you participate in the space of other people, give feedback, connect through social media.

I did manage to broadcast most of this to #ds106radio, but dont have a recording. But Thatcher Bohrman was video recording.

And as I like to do, I asked for a volunteer to stand up and share a story on the spot. I appreciate David, a new adjunct faculty member, explaining why he chose to release his dissertation under an open license and becoming the newest story added:

And then the unexpected happened. Dean Stacey Hilton, who I have to really thank for sponsoring my visit, had read my bio, and was curious about what “pechaflickr was”… so I fired up a round, and Stacey along with Ian and ?? Suffi ?? all played it as good as I have ever seen, doing a moving talk about Donuts. It was so over the top, it glowed!

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

I had such an excellent day. There was a lively copyright/fair use session led by Thatcher and ?? Mike. At lunch retiring photography teacher Tom Gerczynsk was recognized by a Fellowship award. We might have overlapped because he taught at Phoenix College back in the 1990s. Hearing his down to earth teaching philosophy, seeing the video of s students out in the field learning their craft, and seeing how many of them came out to support him was moving. Plus Tom has incredible chops as a pro photographer, his images of commercial private jets are stunning.

Also ran into Paul Smolenyak who I had worked in a project back in 2000- this was his idea of creating a multiplayer game to help students learn about the ideal gas law. Great to see him again- his summer hobby is being a guide on Grand Canyon river trips.

And I caught a fantastic session by Curtis Kleinman on Why do my students STINK at Problem Solving:

You can blame the liberal media if you want, but let’s face it, it’s you! Students often are not good problems solvers because you (and I) set them up to fail with poor instructional design, especially when students are learning concepts for the first time. This session will look at research in Cognitive Load Theory and its arguments against constructivist instructional approaches such as Problem Based Learning, Discovery Learning, Inquiry Learning and other minimally guided instructional approaches, especially amongst novice learners. The session will also consider a few easy ways to improve students’ problem solving abilities through sound instructional design.

It was so refreshing to be among passionate teachers who are doing incredible work with students that never would see the light of The Chronicle of Higher Education or a TED Talk. These are relationships and experiences students will never get in a MOOC or some Walmart model of online education. The whole day did wonders to clean the foul stench of MOOC bullshit I’ve been reading lately.

So thanks Todd, Thatcher, Stacey, and everyone else I met and forgot their names for a fantastic day i Prescott. As always, I feel like I get more out of these events than maybe I can give (oops there is the self effacing reflex) (guilty).

Oh yes, and if they every ask you to play badminton… oh forget it.