Running with Scissors

Many folks have written some very eloquent posts about this year’s Faculty Academy. I won’t try to go there, but I do have one observation.

We saw more faculty attending this year than ever before. We saw many new faces – not just sitting in the crowd, but presenting as well. What’s going on here?

Two things are going on here. One, is Jim Groom – the guy is on fire! (get the 2007 tour shirt here) :)

But the other has to do with technology coming to the users. What I mean by that is that is it is easy now. A few years ago, creating a web page and getting it on the web was a complicated process for the average faculty member. But with many of the new Web 2.0 services like WordPress.com, Flickr, del.icio.us, and now Twitter, the technology vanishes behind the tasks faculty are trying to accomplish. Conversations center around content first, technology second, or third.

We are in a great position to now talk about what makes great teaching. It’s not the technology – it is what our faculty are now able to do with it.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 10:33 pm and is filed under FA07, Technology.