Cole W. Camplese

Staying Put

For the first time in a long time I am looking at my travel for the next few months and things look calm. Sure there is a little vacation in there and even one work trip, but for the most part I've tried to really scale back my Summer travel. I'm doing that for several reasons ... first there is the family. My schedule tends to be rough on them and I am trying to figure out a better balance. Besides, there really isn't a better place than our backyard on Summer evenings. Too perfect.

Another reason is the incoming class of Faculty Fellows. Each one brings an amazing set of ideas with them that I know will challenge us all to really push forward. I'll be once again working with Carla Zembal-Saul, while a big group of us will be working directly with Stuart, Ellysa, and Chris. I'll be surprised if every single person in ETS isn't somehow effected by their residencies. Its going to be fun. So just two reasons why you won't see any major posts about me leaving for this or for that. Will I miss getting to hang out with colleagues and visit new places? Yes. I will especially miss the Open Ed Conference happening in Vancouver, but I have to pick and choose my time wisely this Summer. Staying put also gives me a chance to focus a little extra energy here locally, thinking about how we take the next few steps in our work. I think it will be a Summer well spent.

The End of the Line

For 2008, that is. I don't have the mental energy or attention span to address the great comments from the Community Question on Identity from before the holiday break -- rest assured I'll get to it as the new year rings in. For now I think it is fair to say that I am enjoying some much needed time away from it all. I've checked email a total of three times since 12/24 and it has felt great. The good thing is that while my inbox was overflowing, the number of real issues to deal with was zero. What a relief.

We had an amazing Christmas morning -- my son is a little over two and he really got the concept this year. He actually played with the gifts and not just the wrapping paper and boxes like last year! My parents came for Christmas Eve and Morning so we had a full house with my sister and brother-in-law also joining. It was a great day! The evening saw us celebrate our daughter's 7th Birthday (which I am still amazed at).

We went to our hometown of Bloomsburg, PA to visit more with my parents and to see our great friend KP. KP and his wife brought their newborn son to the East Coast for the Holidays and it was amazing getting to hang with the best of friends. We spent time walking, eating local foods, and staying up and out way too late a couple of nights.

My WVU Mountaineers capped a good season by winning their bowl game and then a little later in the day went into Ohio State and beat the 15th ranked Buckeyes by almost 30 points. My Wife, Mother, and Father all have WVU roots so it was fun watching and cheering for them together.

No matter how you slice it up the Holidays are a great time to connect with family and friends. It is also a great time to reflect on the year and to start setting sights on what is to come. So Happy Holidays to everyone and enjoy a very Happy New Years!

The Revolution is in Full Swing

I got back from an interesting little unconference experience yesterday where Brad Kozlek and I attended the WordCamp ED at George Mason University in Virginia. It might seem strange that a couple of guys working a University wide blogging solution built on MovableType would have the nerve to go and spend the day with other faculty and staff doing the same, but with WordPress as the focus. I was convinced that the trip would be worth it and the discussion would center on the power of open publishing platforms for teaching and learning. I wasn't disappointed. Nearly the entire day focused on the outcomes and practices being realized via a campus wide blogging platform. It was cool to see people giving up a Saturday to get together and talk.

One of the big reasons I wanted to go was to get to finally meet Jim Groom in person. Jim is a passionate educational technologist who runs the Blogs at University of Mary Washington service. His work has been an inspiration to lots of people trying to free learning content across campuses. If you read his blog you know he is really into shattering the status quo and destroying the walls that have captured our institutional content for the last 10 years. Let me just say that his presentation rocked and it pushed Brad and I to spend nearly the entire 4 hour drive back to State College talking about how we are also thinking these thoughts -- and frankly how to push a little harder.

His talk was titled Permanent Revolution and told the story of how important it is that we promote the use of open publishing spaces to save the academy. He told it with the intensity and emotion of a man worthy of the nickname, The Reverend. He makes the claim that the "Notion of the Permanent Revolution" is at the core of what we are trying to do with education -- we need ways to rethink the digital space we are living in and how to take advantage of the affordances inherent in instant publishing. He claims that WordPress is a platform for revolution, but was quick to point to us and say the tools don't matter just the ways we allow them to be used. His assertion is that we must work to liberate student content -- in the LMS/CMS model students must pour it in and then after the course it gets packaged up, archived, deleted, and ultimately becomes inaccessible to the creator. It isolates the contribution. In the blog world, it belongs to the individual and the individual decides how to share it with the community (or the class).

A great talk that I wish was given more time. What I really wanted to do was explore the underlying principles with his talk and walk away from any thoughts of "my platform is better than yours." I think Jim and I were both very interested in talking about affordances of the concept, not of the individual tools. He and I are going to be joining forces with Brian Lamb, D'Arcy Norman, and Alan Levine at ELI in January to present a session on the use of personal publishing tools to drive educational practice ... I can't wait to have the conversation with he and the rest of that crew.

At the end of the day, it was a very worth while trip and one that has me thinking more critically about the notion of openness on our campus -- and how much louder we need to be shouting for its creation.

Getting Away and Coming Home

I'm not sure this is worthy of my One Post a Day goals I laid out a while back ... I've been pretty quiet for the last few days because I have been traveling. As a matter of fact, I am typing this post in the San Francisco Airport. I've been in Medford, Oregon since Friday visiting one of my oldest friends, KP. KP and I go way back -- maybe third grade or so? KP moved to Oregon about four years ago when he got married to his lovely wife. The chance to make a quick (albeit exhausting) trip to the west coast to see him doesn't come around all that often, but earlier this summer my wife and I decided I should make the time since KP had just had his first child. So, we picked some dates -- we had no idea when we booked that the month of August was going to be a total travel month -- and I just packed up and came on out. It was well worth the trip.

Since Friday I've golfed (I shot better than I have in years with a straight up 84 with borrowed clubs), visited wineries, sat on his back deck with his little man, visited more wineries, explored small towns, ate great food, and really just relaxed. It is honestly impossible to find ways to capture the beauty of the Souther Oregon Rogue River region ... the mountains, the grapes, and everything in between is breathtaking. Nice to stop and taste life a bit.

It was interesting seeing KP in his own element. When he comes east he sort of comes in as the old KP, but in his new hometown he is someone much different. Trust me, KP is the kind of person who can be anyone he wants and still be a blast!

So I am beat and getting ready to take off on a red eye so I can be back in State College by 10 AM. I'll then race home to spend a week with my family. I can't wait to see them and to take the rest of the week to get my little lady ready to go off to public school and to spend some "outside time" with my little man watching him play in the backyard. Summer has sprinted by us and Fall isn't waiting for us to catch up. A great summer and a great way to end it -- visiting old friends and getting to spend the waning hours of it with my own family.

Extended Perspective

Yesterday I spent time at the Mont Alto campus of Penn State working with faculty to help share the story of teaching and learning with technology. I was strangely intimidated as I sat in the back of the room waiting for my turn to talk. I'm not sure why, given the fact that talking in front of people is typically not something I get uptight about. As I reflect on it now I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I realized just how close I was to our primary audience. The room was filled with faculty who value teaching at such a high level and are repeatedly put into situations that make them question change ... these are the people who want so badly to be innovative but sometimes walk without the support structures they need to take advantage of our opportunities.

When I was at IST, one of the goals of the Solutions Institute was to create a set of online course materials that could be used by resident faculty all across the Commonwealth. The materials needed to be designed so they could be easily pulled into a resident section and serve as the basis for each of the core undergraduate IST courses. One of the things I had to do each semester was stand up in front of the statewide faculty and share what was new, what we were thinking about, and talk about how to take advantage of Online IST. It scared the hell out of me each and every time I did it.

But you know what? Each and every time it turned out to be a great experience. Faculty telling stories about how using Online IST allowed them manage four or five sections of courses, how they would never have been able to integrate technology without it, or other inspiring stories related to teaching. Yesterday turned out to be the same way -- a packed room of motivated and interested faculty all looking to enhance the story of their classrooms. Sure there were skeptics who pushed back on me when I talked about how critical portfolios are to the reflection process, there were people that rolled their eyes as I shared ideas about using youtube to engage students, and so on. But, without a doubt, it was an engaged and very interested group.

The thing it reminded me is that when we build new opportunities for our University, we are building them for all of our faculty -- at all locations. Just because we don't see them on a regular basis doesn't mean they don't exist. Traveling to Mont Alto and being nervous reminded me that our community stretches well beyond College Ave. and it is our responsibility to include everyone in the mix. You should have seen the response when I offered to come back with more ETS staff to dig deeper into these new opportunities ... overwhelmingly, faculty wanted to learn how to integrate new opportunities into their classrooms. I am now more than ever committed to expanding Digital Commons and using it as a vehicle to move more efforts into faculty development across all of our campuses so all of our faculty and students get what they deserve. It was a good trip that will be the first of many I suspect.

Getting Started at the Berkman@10

My colleague Chris Millet and I are sitting in very tight seats in Ames Courtroom on the campus of Harvard University getting set to listen the opening remarks for the Berkman@10, The Future of the Internet event. This is an event that I have been looking forward to for quite some time. I rarely get to attend events that I choose for my own development -- I do a ton of travel, but the majority of it is related to University business. Being able to come and listen to people talk about the Future of the Internet is a real treat. I have been following the work of the Berkman Center and several of their fellows for quite some time now ... names like Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, Jimmy Wales, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and so many others.

Throughout the day I will be doing my best to post thoughts related to the event as it unfolds. I will attempt to capture some salient thoughts that may provide some new opportunities for the work we do at Penn State and beyond. I'll be on Twitter all day sharing some things as well and welcome any tweets @colecamplese with ideas, reactions, or questions.

Real Life

With all of blogging about Second Life, identity, and my online world I thought I'd share something a little more personal than I typically do. I very rarely, if ever, go this far off blog with things, but I have to say the last two days away from home with my wife and my two children has me realizing more than ever what it is all about. I can say with total honesty that I really do love what I do in my professional life, but days like yesterday and today make me reconnect with what brings me balance and peace. Today in particular was amazing -- the sun, the ocean, a quiet walk with my (not so) baby boy asleep in the stroller -- all of it was humbling and perfect. After spending some amazing time on the beach with the family, a time my daughter marked by actually getting into the Atlantic Ocean in mid March, I can say that I am completely in awe of what is around me.

The two wonderful and mysterious little people who share DNA with me continue to bring me to my knees in appreciation. I never share public pictures of them, but the setting and their smiles have left me with little choice. So, with that I say I am sorry for inflicting a moment of personal reflection on anyone who decided to show up for this post and want to tell anyone who will listen that life is truly a gift. There will be no talk of SecondLife, RSS, Twitter, or anything else ... the images that follow are my meta identity. That's it.

At ELI 2008

Well, we got in yesterday and enjoyed poking around San Antonio. Today it all gets started. Allan and I present at 4:30, so we are getting set to put the finishing touches on our slides. Later this evening we're hoping we can get a little ELI Podcast -- ETS Talk style -- going with some interested people. If you read this and are interested get in touch with me ... leave a comment, come to our session, or look for us at 5:30 in the Hyatt Lounge. BTW, River Walk is very beautiful!

Vacation

I have been as off the grid the last two weeks as much as possible while on vacation. It has been a wonderful (And even a little stressful) letting go. Things are starting to stack up a bit, but for the most part I have been able to stay out of it all. The only downside to the vacation has been the cold I have had for the past four days or so. Both my wife and I have the same thing and it makes paradise a little less than perfect. Sleeping has been very hard and getting out to do things hasn't been easy either. Trust me, we're still enjoying ourselves, but not nearly as much as we would if we were feeling 100%.

I think it has to have something to do with my work schedule taking me to Phoenix, AZ last week. While I was there I felt like I burned the candle from both ends -- especially the first day when I did four talks. By the end of the day my voice was a whisper. I really enjoyed it though and felt like they were very well received. The second day I did a single 40 minute talk with abut 30-40 minutes of Q&A related to the Platform fr Innovation in Teaching and Learning stuff I have been working on. Again, I think it was relatively well received, but I did feel a little off my game ... maybe it was b/c one of the really smart people in the World was there (Alan Levine), maybe it was b/c I am still working this talk up, or perhaps it was just a little too much the day before. No matter how you look at it, I enjoyed it and was honored to be invited. I have write ups of what I talked about over at my updates blog.

Speaking of Alan, it was sort of surreal to finally meet him (BTW, his words are too kind). We have talked on the phone, I've listened to hours of podcasts from him, responded to dozens of blog posts, and shared emails with him for the past several years -- but up until last week we had never met face to face. The work he did while at Maricopa is legendary and the work he is doing now with the NMC is setting trends that we'll be addressing for years to come. A real treat to meet the CogDog!

What else? Let's see ... we went to Disney and had fun, but I will say that spending a few hundred bucks on tickets should at least guarantee a ride on something. Classes began for the Spring semester at PSU this week ... that means next Thursday (right before I head to San Antonio for ELI ... anyone going and want to meet up?) we have our first face t oface session of our CI 597C class. It should be a lot of fun and it might be worth watching the class blog for updates and all of the activity going on around the course -- there will be plenty.

And finally, speaking of blogs ... the Blogs at Penn State made the jump to MT 4 this past weekend. A huge step forward for the blogging project and I have to send a huge thank you to the Blogs at PSU team -- they made magic happen! More on all this in the coming days. Take care and enjoy the Macworld Keynote later today ... I am actually close enough to an Apple Store that if Steve does something big I am going to get it. Maybe.

Happy New Year!

Not much to say at the moment ... I am actually relaxing and enjoying being off the grid. I am getting ready to do some travel in the coming weeks -- I am heading back to Arizona to give a couple of talks back in the Maricopa system. I did one there last year and really enjoyed the people I got to talk with their. For now, I am staying off the grid and will probably be posting pictures of my travels over at Flickr. For now, I thought I'd share a quick picture of some really bad signage I saw yesterday at Downtown Disney.

Who wouldn't like a Hot Roast Beef Smoothie?