Those who have been paying attention only to partnerships among Silicon Valley companies and the Ivies may be surprised that the beating heart of a tremendous amount of academic technology innovation is a small state university in Fredericksburg, Virginia. At theUniversity of Mary Washington, the Division of Teaching and Learning Technology has launched at least four amazing initiatives [UMW Blogs, ds106, Domain of One's Own, and the ThinkLab] that should be replicated widely because it’s clear to even casual observers that they advance teaching and learning in myriad ways.

Or….

The innovations and—yes, I’ll say it—disruptions, emerging from UMW exemplify some of the best practices in developing communities of learners, fostering collaboration, encouraging writing and reflection and developing curiosity about the world.

And…

In an age when universities are pushing faculty ever harder to develop monetizable intellectual property, it’s refreshing to see faculty doubling down on using relatively inexpensive technologies to improve student learning. UMW is a case in point: it’s a modestly funded, small state university that, thanks to all the active minds (and periodic strategic hires) at DTLT and on the faculty, has become a major hub of innovation in higher education.

I’m verklempt!  It’s awesome to see the innovative work happening at UMW  for almost a decade now  get recognized more broadly. Leslie’s framing her brilliant article around our work is the highest of compliments, and it really means a lot coming from someone who has been doing this work from  both a support staff and faculty position for a long time now. People often ask “What’s in the water at UMW?” or “What are you all smoking?!” And while I don’t have a stock answer to that, I can say this: the simple process of openly narrating the work we do on our blogs has almost everything to do with our success. In other words, our willingness to regularly document the work we do, shared it openly, and even featured the work of others happening around the community has been what ultimately has made UMW’s DTLT that much better (and we are that much better). When you think about it, we’re not that different from a ton of other ed tech shops around the world: we support faculty, we run an LMS, we experiment with web-based tools, we pretend to understand what new media means, etc. For me, the one real difference is we have taken the time to narrate that process openly, which usually results in promoting the work happening around campus and injecting a little fun into the process (Andy Rush and I talk about this very thing all the time).

What’s most interesting to me about this formula is that it isn’t technical, it’s all cultural. Rather than squawking about MOOCs and the inescapable educational apocalypse, we went ahead and built our own networked online course (the ever irreverent ds106) that was very much inspired by the OG MOOCs, but was designed for our particular campus culture. Why aren’t more people doing this? Why are so many people wasting endless time writing about “MOOCs and the Latest Form of Autodidactic Rock Climbing Walls” rather then actually promoting the real work happening on the ground at their campuses. And I am not trying to be critical here because I have been to enough campuses the last four or five years to know there is a ton of awesome stuff happening at so many of them, it just so happens very few people are actually narrating it. The MOOC narrative has taken over, and we are all the poorer for it. Homegrown innovation on a university or college campus is not really all that complicated, it starts with the commitment to regularly tell the story about where you are and what you are doing rather than hanging to a bill of goods you are being sold about where you should be. Anyway, thanks Leslie, your article ruled, and it really made a bad month a little better. Big fan!

Original YouTube video

Just Because!

Everybody smile

This is a day to remember my Mom. However, there is no remembering Mom without the memory of my Dad.

As many of you know, My Dad died back in 2002. Now, my Mom has passed in 2013 amidst the chaos of a terrorist bombing and the manhunt for suspects. I tell you this only because of its eery similarity to 2002 when the East Coast sniper was waging his reign of terror as close as our local mall in Spotsylvania – while my wife Michelle was pregnant with my son Aidan. Both of whom thankfully are here with me and sitting in this church today.

You also know my Dad was a minister. His ministry was the word of God and the love of his son. My Mother was an educator, she wasn’t a teacher in a school per se, at least not until later in life, but she was MY first teacher. My Dad was slightly hands-off when it came to raising me. As I got older he related to me more and more. Some Dads are like that. As I grew older, I began to appreciate his education. Dad AND Mom always SHARED in the serving of any given parish. I work at a higher educational institution because of my Mom and Dad. I like to think my ministry is education.

Mom was always great with her memories. Well up until recently….

At my hotel, my towel smelled like gerbils. Let me let that sink in for a moment. A towel brought me back to the slightly used bedding that my gerbils, Lewey and Dewey, had in their massive tower cage when we lived on Comstock Ave – Well over 30 years ago. Smell is a powerful memory trigger as you may know. Another interesting bit of trivia – My Mom had virtually no sense of smell.

The most important thing that my Mom was is the family historian. First of all, my Mom had pictures. Photos in albums with brief descriptions. I loved looking at these photos. I Imagined the places that my parents went to before I was born, and what my family was like once my brother and sister came along. The stories of what came before me were powerful.

And so today I write on this thing called a blog. And encourage others to do so. Students mostly. I’m hoping one day soon that we will ditch the term blogger and use that word no more than we would if we would say that a person is an Emailer. I blog because it allows me to reflect and to hopefully, ultimately help people. Yeah, it’s like a diary. Like my Mom had. The difference is it that it’s a little bit more out in the open. I believe in finding the outlets of these triggers of our memories. They’re called stories. Human tell stories.

My blog has a name. The story of the name of my blog came from my Mom. She never really knew that.

How many of you know the comic Family Circus – Raise your hand?

How many of you know the hymn “In The Garden”?

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;

In the house where my Mom lived in Jamesville, she had a framed Family Circus cartoon of one the children – I think it was Dolly – singing the mis-heard lyrics “Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me.” Pretty powerful to see this every time I visit. Humor is also a very important part of my upbringing.

So the name of my blog comes thanks to my Mom. And He Blogs

So I will blog about this – I mean Write about this on my site, and I will include the picture that I just took. Because more than anything my Mom created in me a documentarian. And documenting life helps me keep hold of memories better and longer.

For my Mom, her memories left her many years ago, but she documented so well that we have a treasure trove of words and pictures.

Cherish your memories. But preserve them too.

Thank you all for being a part of this memory. I cherish you all.

Marion Baker Rush – March 22, 1930 – April 16, 2013

This little video blew my mind in so many ways. I don’t expect it to blow the minds of very many others – or maybe it will – I don’t know. First, some background. The Techcast Focus Network (TTFN) is a group dedicated to informing would-be broadcasters about technology that delivers the highest bang for the buck. They are a consultant group and therefore get paid for what they do, but they give back to the community in many ways through their video reviews and coverage of technology shows – especially the National Association of Broadcasters Show (NAB Show).

I have subscribed to TTFN’s YouTube videos for a couple of years now, and they have informed some of my approaches to video and live production ever since. I especially like the fact that have an ethics page to transparently disclose any corporate assistance they have received and address the lack of influence that may have on their reviews.

So imagine the aligning of planets that brought the TTFN folks together at the NAB Show at the Tiffen Booth to talk to Garrett Brown about the latest Steadicam products. “So what?”, you might say. Well, if you don’t know who Garrett Brown is, he is the inventor of the Steadicam. It is a tool to stabilize a hand-held camera for film, and now video. The Steadicam was first used in the Hal Ashby film Bound for Glory. It was perhaps more famously used in The Shining, following the character Danny on his trike through the Overlook Hotel, and later through the snow-filled hedge maze at the end of the film. It was revolutionary. It allowed the camera to go anywhere, at least anywhere a human could go with a camera strapped on. Cranes and dollies would be impractical to follow a character doing one complete revolution of the hotel perimeter in one complete take. The Steadicam made it possible – and mesmerizingly unique. Wikipedia has a picture of Brown walking and talking with Stanley Kubrick, with the device, on the set of The Shining.

So this got me thinking about my favorite subject, or at least work subject, education. Specifically the tools that we use to not just enhance, but to transform education. What the Steadicam has done is provide an extension to the body that allows what I said before, to “see” in the most accurate way to how humans see life. And to go anywhere that humans can go. As Brown says in the video above, we humans have a built-in Steadicam. The technological device transformed filmmaking. Tools like this have transformed education as well. I’ll let others argue the accuracy and application of the terms enhance and transform for now.

But we know some of the tools that have changed for the better how education can be delivered. Altered and enhanced learning by enabling networks and communities of practice. It’s OK to celebrate the tools for what they have enabled. The Steadicam didn’t save the film industry. No technology will save education. What has happened to the Steadicam technology is that it has become less expensive, and therefore more democratized. It allows filmmakers on a small budget to get the look that films like The Shining have. You can get them for DLSRs and even get one for your iPhone for about $150.

Educational technology tools are similar. And the best ones are those that you don’t think immediately as being specifically a tool for education. Textbooks, film projectors, overheads, blackboards, and even computers, all enhanced education in certain ways. To a small extent they changed how we “see” education, but in a literal way. The technologies that will transform education are the ideas that are born from them. My friend Gardner Campbell talks often and lovingly of “Alan Kay’s aphorism that “the computer is an instrument whose music is ideas.” The Personal Cyberinfrastructure that Gardner has championed the last several years, and that DTLT uses as a frame for our “culture of innovation”, is some of that wonderful music born from the technology. A Domain of One’s Own is what we think will at least enhance one’s education and perhaps even transform it in profound ways.

Now like all analyses of this type, discussions can get bogged down in over analysis. What about “X” or”Y”? Time to rip to shreds your little dream-like analogy or aphorism. Steadicam’s are still relatively expensive for some. There are DIY versions of  them out there. So how about DIY education? Questions and further analysis for another day. I prefer to bask in the strange and delightful performance of Garrett Brown hawking a product on a convention show floor that was derived from a device he imagined and used on the set of a film by one of the greatest directors of all time. Life is full of delight.

I have to confess I’ve been vaguely following the GitHub scene for awhile now but always considered it a place for hardcore programmers. I had heard that people were using it for other interesting things, most recently last year when App Dot Net put their Terms of Service out there and encouraged folks to fork it and offer their suggestions for modifications. When Alan posted recently about moving Feed2JS over there I decided to follow his lead and start actively using my account to explore the space. I’ll second his recommendation to go through the free CodeSchool lesson on Git to get a general feel for the terminology and how things work.

One model that I really like is how the CUNY Academic Commons and CHNM have their organizations on there to publish code they’re working on. On our best day DTLT could hardly be described as a group of programmers (more like self-described hacks) but I’ve no doubt that we’ll likely have something to contribute what with all the little snippets that Martha writes for WordPress to interact with various plugins and themes. To that end I setup a DTLT organization on there and added Jim and Martha (and yes, this is a callout to Andy Rush that he has to get an account. Get on the bus!). For our first stab at a repo I decided to see if we could use it as a collaborative space to build a proper Terms of Service for the Domain of One’s Own project. DoOO (how do you like that for an acronym?) is an interesting project because it centers around openness and portability of your data. And of course most TOS exist solely to remove certain rights from users. I want to believe with the help of others we can craft something that marries the two ideals. I’d encourage anyone interested to fork the project. This is just one example of a case where you don’t have to be a programmer to help out.

The more I play with the tool the more I start to get a feel for how the platform could be used similar to a wiki to allow versioning and collaboration for writing and research with a strict focus on sharing. I’m experimenting with having a living CV in a repo that I can use to track changes over time. I’ve only just begun to dip my toes in the water but I did my first pull request on Feed2JS today and the more I play the more confident I get with the possibilities.

Lock your doors AND windows as there are thieves about. The above video comes courtesy of B&H Photo, whom I have done business with personally, and have recommended purchases at UMW. The photo and video “superstore” has for the most part provided very informative presentations. There are a ton of great videos on their YouTube Channel.

Now I’ve seen many presentations on copyright both in person and online. I was intrigued by the description of The Copyright Zone Guys because they were supposedly funny and had a “light touch”, and they would also “rock [my] world”. I’ll spare you much of the theatrics of this video, but the bit that is particularly laughable starts at the 1:20:30 mark. It manifests itself in their myth busting section and is in regards to Creative Commons. I never realized it but CC is apparently a dangerously evil syndicate that “pisses off” the presenter (Jack Reznicki) because photographers defend them. Their licenses are confusing, and deliberately so, according to Mr. Reznicki.

He then goes on to recommend an article written by Mark Helprin in the Wall Street Journal (from 2009)entitled “Copyright Critics Rationalize Theft“. As Helprin writes about “public interest groups” check out this key bit:

The Creative Commons organization, for example, is richly financed by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Mozilla, Sun, the Hewlett Foundation, and others of type [sic].

Public interest groups like Creative Commons:

serve the new information super powers, the Standard Oils of our age, whose interests would be advanced if they did not have to bother with permissions and payments for what they call “content.”

The rest of the information in this presentation is in many cases equally laughable. I’ll let you judge for yourself whether much about this presentation is enjoyable, including Mr. Reznicki’s sidekick.

Look, I get when you are self-employed as a photographer, you want to protect any possible income. However, conjuring up consipracy theories regarding a supplement to copyright like Creative Commons is pure non-sense. The presentation bills itself as “Everything you want to know about Copyright and other legal issues, but were too scared to ask.” I’d be surprised that anyone watching this (and believing it) wouldn’t also be very likely to invest in a home security system and a car alarm. It’s not information. It’s scary. And they get paid.

So in an effort to be constructive, I would be happy if the Copyright Zone Guys would contact me, and I’d be happy to explain Creative Commons and their licenses. I know they want to get it right. Right?

The night before my presentation I was breaking bread with OSU’s Provost Joe Allutto, Social Work Dean Tom Gregoire,  Undergraduate Dean Wayne Carlson, math professor James Fowler, Chemistry professor Matthew Stoltzfus, Communications professor Nicole Kraft, and English professor Kay Halasek—and all of them to a person were deeply engaged in the questions of how OSU as a learning community will engage the world of online learning. And while they are experimenting with Coursera, that is just one avenue they are imagining—and Jim Fowler who is currently teaching Calculus 1 through Coursera has been programming  his own online course platform—which is exciting. What’s more, a community of faculty is thinking hard about what this means for a school that operates on the scale of OSU—and the experimentation is happening.

Mike Hofher and Steve Lieb setting up for innovateOSu

I guess this is where I am feeling buoyed by this trip, a big 10 university like OSU is actually investing a significant amount of resources in people like Mike Hofherr (the newly minted Associate Vice President of Distance Education and eLearning), Liv Gjstvang (the Digital First Director) and Steve Lieb to name just a few. And the leadership Mike Hofher has provided this group over the last two years is remarkable, he has a staff that is ready to re-imagine the work they do—-and everyone to a person I talked to was genuinely excited about the direction they are heading in. That is no small thing.

I think what is happening at OSU right now, will soon be happening in a lot of places, re-aligning resources and making a push to develop and work with faculty to engage online learning head-on. The fact that OSU is being proactive about this is smart, and, at least for me, that might be the silver lining of the MOOC craze as of late. Universities and colleges start to take the possibilities or engaging online learning seriously, we invest in experimenting wildly in this space, and ultimately realize we’ve only just begun and universities can build and design these spaces better than the venture-capital driven companies out of Silicon Valley (but that’s just me ). A new movement to invest in people not gamble on futures and shares.

Chris and Anand at innovateOSU

An educational community that is locked in can really make a difference in this space right now, and OSU is on the way to demonstrating that in spades. Not only do they have the centralized learning technologies support, but folks like Chris Hill represent a grass roots movement of edtech happening on campus, and seemed to me the two were working together to make the transformation that much more of a cultural shift.  It’s really exciting to go to a community in which you can actually see the community transformation occurring, and it’s funny how often that is coupled with an educational technology conference. There’s something to that. In fact, E. Gordon Gee was even tweeting at me! That is pretty amazing, and as someone in this field to have a president of such a high-profile institution reach out and give you a virtual high five is powerful! He is doing something very right.

Ohio State’s 4th annual #innovateosu conference began today—great to have @jimgroom on campus for keynote. @osudigitalfirst

— E. Gordon Gee (@presidentgee) March 26, 2013

I had a the pleasure of meeting with folks, sharing what I thought (always surprised to find folks listening ), and always honored to represent the work we are doing at the University of mary Washington. There is something really exciting about a big, public research university like OSU being deeply interested in what a small, public liberal arts college is doing with online teaching and learning communities. UMW is the little school that does.

Anyway, I had nothing short of a blast, I was injected into a community that is firing on all cylinders, and I shared the culture of experimentation we’ve been cultivating here at UMW for years as a means to hopefully inspire the folks at OSU to keep doing the awesome stuff they’ve started, experiment wildly, shave their heads , and not be afraid to take the amazing work they do as a teaching, learning, and research community and open up what they can to the public. An ethos of open that I ‘ve been pushing in my last three presentations.

On that note, I have been working through a presentation over the last two months, since SUNY’s Online Learning Summit Conference to be exact, wherein I have been trying to spell out what the field of “open” looks like currently, how I understand UMW’s approach to that has been, and what this means for truly rethinking teaching, learning, and IT infrastructure. It’s been a real pleasure to start fresh with a brand new presentation two months ago, and fine tune it at Virginia’s ACCS conference in mid-March, and then present my finalized version at innovateOSU. I’ll now move on to a new conceit, otherwise my talks tend to get routinized and uninspired (which I never let happen ), I kinda liked this new method. Focus in on a talk for an intense period of time, try and fine tune it, and then try something new after two or three passes. Anyway, I’m happy where this one ended. You can see the slides below and an archived video of the entire presentation here:

And, at the end of my time when I was back in Fredericksburg what do I get? A follow-up tweet from President Gee!

@jimgroom Do hope you enjoyed your time with us!

— E. Gordon Gee (@presidentgee) March 27, 2013

I most certainly enjoyed my visit, and in no small part thanks to an engaged community that understands online learning is here to stay, MOOCs are one small part of that, and the experimentation within institutions needs to start now!

How do we start thinking of information architecture that allows students and faculty to control their work (a la UMW’s Domain of One’s Own) and feed it cleanly into a distributed campus publishing environment? I hope to talk and work with people around an idea of revisiting and framing a suite of tools that might be bundled (like Commons-in-a-Box)  to make syndication hubs for online courses, communities, and even institutions that much more porous, open, and affordable. A perect example of this can be seen in ds106 or Alec Couros’ etmooc, thanks to the work of Martha Burtis and Alan Levine.

What’s more, I think the time is right to examine what it might mean if universities invest in open frameworks that they can customize and share as part of designing learning environments that meet the needs of a wide range of schools that are experimenting with digitally enhanced, hybrid, and online learning as a result of the recent push towards exploring these spaces. I still think their is gold in the hills of Jon Udell’s ongoing vision of a loosely coupled web of professional identities that we can link together and make discoverable as an engaged communities through aggregation, and I want to see if I am alone or not.

Now what say you?

Update: I was totally remiss in my first go round for not mentioning the recent, awesome work martin Hawksey is doing with syndication, aggregation, and a syndication-driven MOOC platform. He deserves a lot of credit for getting us that much closer!

Just realized how remiss I am for not mentioning @mhawksey‘s amazing work with WP as course hub recently mashe.hawksey.info/2013/03/mooc-i… will fix now

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) April 2, 2013