Day 2 Reflections

It's wonderful to observe the ebb and flow of your emotions as you discover that parts of technology integration are both tedious and frustrating because some work is very repetitive and the tools do not always work as advertised. All in all, this is a very upbeat and productive group, and I am constantly reminded of the sheer brainpower and creativity that resides in this one end of the Humanities Building this week. Not only do each of you possess extensive mastery of your subject matter, but you also are constantly thinking about how your work will be received by the students. That is consistent with my early Monday message of meeting the students where they are. I am very excited about what is still to come this week.

One lesson today was focused on the complexities of working with digital video, particularly the creation of clips from other sources (VHS and DVD) that will then be embedded and streamed in Blackboard. Between the loss of equipment in the video lab due to the power outage last Thursday, and the complications associated with learning updated versions of old software that we were comfortable with before, but now present new challenges for those who wish to convert video from one format to another, and prepare video clips for streaming to our students. Again, with all the complexities of the conversion and preparation process, your patience was remarkable.

A prep school colleague familiar with Choate once told me that our faculty was very talented, but not very innovative. I doubted that observation at the time, but after two days of TLI, I am certain the colleague was wrong. I think Choate faculty may not have quality time to think about innovation during the academic year, but give a faculty member a few days of uninterrupted time, and he or she will transform the landscape of teaching and learning at this very fine school.