renegade element

This link recently showed up in my twitter feed, and I must admit I sat and watched the whole thing, impressed at the quality of the effort despite the fact they were lip synching.
 

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

My thoughts afterwards:

1. Hey, I remember this song! It's a catchy little ditty.
2. This is fun.
3. This is community.
   

At the LDSC we used a lovely Q&A tool that those sharp ETS guys first saw in use at the Berkman @ 10 Conference earlier this year. I thought it was one of the best tools for audience interaction with the speaker because, not only did it give you an opportunity to put the question out there as they came up (instead of waiting for the speaker to finish), it allowed the audience to weight the questions by voting. The more votes a question had, the greater the number of audience members who felt that was an important point to be addressed. As a speaker, you can also quickly tell if you are engaging your audience or if you really need to redirect your focus. As we saw it demonstrated in action, we even got community engagement within the engagement, as other audience members either answered questions themselves or added to the original point. I thought it was fascinating and added incredible depth to the presentations from an audience member's viewpoint. Now, I am starting to see this method of engagement elsewhere.

While I've been "online" for a number of years, it's really been the web 2.0 movement that has triggered my current interest in how to apply these types of applications to online education. I myself am an interactive learner: I learn better when I can interact with both peers and instructor to explore and reinforce the subject matter that is being taught. Oddly enough, I require knowing that there's a certain time for class, and that my presence--or absence--will be noted. Until the web 2.0 movement, I associated my learning style exclusively with residential instruction courses, and honestly thought I could never be successful an online course. My assumption was that online courses were simply files of commentary to be read, and perhaps posting notes to a message board. However, I now believe online courses can be just as interactive as a residential instruction course and, perhaps, even have the potential to surpass their effectiveness.

The One Post A Day challenge continues as the end of the month marches steadily towards us. I watch on the sidelines, encouraging others and still reading. It's nice to connect, even at 6:00am while the coffee is brewing and I can't yet get into ANGEL for another hour. As I peruse my community's progress in the long distance running event, I see that many of my comrades are starting to stumble with the onslaught of additional work which the beginning of a semester invariably brings with it. Most lasted longer than I did, but are still, in the end, being forced to make choices of work priorities over personal priorities. The ones that continue to post are almost demi-gods, in my book; certainly they don't seem to be as radically effected by the students' return to UP. (Right now, I'm wishing I wasn't radically effected either.) I'm glad others are continuing to blog, because those of us who've had to stop are still watching from the sidelines shouting encouragement to those bloggers still in it to the end. These have been really thoughtful posts, allowing me the chance for some great insight into my fellow coworkers' daily lives and passions. Between twitter, the LDSC, and this blogging event, I am learning a lot about my community, and it's really been an eye opener into just how smart these people are (yeah, and perhaps even a bit intimidating).

I was downloading LDSC "stuff" from my camera this weekend and stumbled across some community love which kind of choked me up. Chicken And Stars is a podcast that I do along with @Reginaldgolding and @Micala, and it is VERY grassroots. We talk about local community, things that are happening now, what people are talking about, and try to highlight someone so we can all get to know them better. It is a lot of fun to do, and Wednesday nights are C&S nights, complete with adult beverage in hand, as we sit down to create more madness and mayhem.What I really love is that the community is willingly coming to play with us and engage in this little experiment of ours.  What makes this relevant on my professional blog is that, at the end of LDSC, three of our listeners decided to create an homage to C&S and presented us—in front of EVERYONE at the summer camp—with a fan poster and a canned goods drive that was then donated in our name to the local food bank. Voila the poster:

Summer Camp has finally wrapped up, much to my disappointment.  It wound down about an hour ago, actually, but I find I don't want to stop the voices in my head. I think for most people, we try to do anything possible to extend the post-event high of a really great experience. For me, I have all these ideas still running around playing tag in my head, so I am avoiding going anywhere that is going to infringe on that. Ironically, as I take the back road home, I pass a large group of small children and their camp leaders (in bright green t-shirts almost exactly the same color as my own, no less!) as they head back to base camp after a day of fun at the park. Happy, excited faces, kids talking to one another and totally engaged in the moment. On an impulse I pull over to write this because the looks on the kids faces absolutely captures the spirit of their ETS Summer Camp counterparts. Over the last two days, I have watched the campers engage in discussion, dialogue, and community. I'd like to think that this was a snapshot of how they really felt about being a part of the conversation: happy excited faces, talking to one another and totally engaged in the moment. It's a really great thing to see.

What does professional development mean to you? Can you measure it? Can you define it as one particular type of development? Perhaps most importantly, is your definition the same one your employer uses to measure you?

Okay, I have a confession to make. This was originally the talking point of my first post for the One Post A Day project. However, it had a very different spin, and a very different flavor was coming across. I think I'm glad I kept it in draft form, because the discussion that's been happening in the LDSC has allowed me to rethink how I personally want to approach my own professional development.

The Learning Design Summer Camp is today. Starts in less than 10 hours, in fact. I am on my way to bed after an evening of checking and rechecking my slides and wikipages, but I had a couple of observations I wanted to touch upon, and get my thoughts posted before I fall headlong into the hustle and bustle of camp. I feel the gearing up of anticipation for this camp, and it's great watching some of these new additions to our twittersphere actually get excited about the event. I, too, am looking forward to another opportunity to meet some of these people I only know by their screen names.

If you have been wondering where all my posts for the One Post A Day challenge are, then you can heave a sigh of relief and get on with your life. You haven't missed anything; in fact, I basically had to pull out before I ever really got started. Wow, you say to yourself, how pathetic is that? I agree. However, the best I have to offer is this quote on failure by Herbert Swope:

"I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time."