Faculty Academy 2007

Interesting thing emerging from the talks at Faculty Academy: the emergence of connections. Connections is nothing new, but I’m struck by a reversal of direction. Instead of lots of discussion along the lines of “I used technology to produce X kind of connection in students,” the discussion has been much more toward “I tried X with a vague idea in mind, and we all discovered these kinds of connections.” That is, I see a very happy and healthy starting point in gray area, and delight in what comes out. That’s at least implicit in the discussion of sharing-oriented sites (here, here, and here), more explicitly in the Interactivism panel, and extraordinarily powerfully in Barbara Ganley’s plenary session