Appropos of almost nothing, I just have to point to this great painting by Charles Fancher, lawyer-slash-artist: Mediation: Hour 13. I’ve been in meetings like this. How about you? What are your own personal participant destressors in these meetings?

Choconancy1 posted a photo: Graphic recording of Stephanie West Allen's talk on Total Brain Medication at the NW Dispute Resolution Conf - May 2012

Last week my post on Reconceptualizing facilitation and participation in a networked (MOOC) context garnered some interesting attention and some great comments. I wanted to offer a few more links to other blogs which are part of this distributed conversation, not only because they are interested, but I’m interested in weaving together these threads, both between the #BonkOpen MOOC (Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success) and the #Change11 MOOC. So here we go! Lisa Lane’s which I blogged about, but continues to have a great conversation thread. Willem van Valkenburg gathers a few links himself. Learning from Failure  from Kate in Australia. Bonk / Bb MOOC week 1: Motivation & Encouragement (?) and Questions About Network Learning (prompted by #bonkopen) from Jim Julius. (Jim, I owe you a comment!) Inside Higher ed on 4 Reasons Why the Bonk MOOC is So Interesting Ed Tech Dev What’s the "problem" with MOOCs? James Moore’s first week review of BonkOpen along with his related G+ stream Laura Gibbs has quite a few comments in her G+ stream as have  George Station, Phil Hill The Coursite’s team — platform sponsor of this MOOC - have been blogging about their experiences. Mass Education and Motivation on the Telic Blog. Haas Learning, Thoughts on the Curtis Bonk MOOC and Learning Management Systems Here are some more general MOOC-y blog posts: The Massive Open Online Professor (and I have to say, the term professor now feels odd to me!) from  Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt Bonnie Stewart, the problem with EdX: a MOOC by any other name? Ignatia - Selecting meaningful #socialmedia tools for a #MOOC or #PLN (which goes to an ongoing conversation sprinkled here and there about how to steward technology in MOOCs, matching tools to activities, etc. )  Jonathan Rees - What’s the difference between a MOOC and the University of Phoenix? (this idea strikes fear into my heart…) #Change11 "One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind" - Is that the MOOC movement? from Sui Fai John Mak   Any other ones I should be reading and linking to? Edit: May 7 - here are some more! Gerry McKiernan maintains a blog titled _Alt-Ed_ that is "devoted to documenting significant initiatives relating to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), digital badges, and similar alternative educational projects." http://alternative-educate.blogspot.com/ Scott Leslie tweeted this interesting First Monday article on "The internet, selective learning and the rise of issues specialists," noting the MOOC implications  

Are you stewarding technology for your community? Did you or are you considering a NING site? You may want to join in with CPSquare’s NING Stackathon. It will last for a year, but I suggest you get in on the ground floor now. John notes at the bottom that if you are willing to contribute a case, he will waive the (VERY MODEST) entry fee. Plus you get a six month CPSquare membership. Folks, JUMP on this! Here are the deets, via http://cpsquare.org/. Launching our Ning Stackathon By: John David Smith Hackathons are the current equivalent of a barn-raising, where people get together and work really hard for a short period of time on a fun project that somehow contributes to the common good.  We’ve used barn-raising as examples of the kind of personal, skin-in-the-game generosity that’s involved in communities of practice. We’re inventing a new portmanteau.  A Stackathon is working party that’s slower-paced than a hackathon and more reflective.  It gathers useful examples of something with a lot of sense-making built into the process.  Therefore a stackathon is not like the current craze for content curation.  Read on for details about CPsquare’s first Stackathon. During this stackathon we’ll gather profiles and portraits of as many living Ning-based or Ning-supported communities as possible.  We’ve started developing a list of interesting examples.  As we stack these communities one on top of another, we expect to discover new hacks that could make any of them more effective, sustainable, and fun. (And those hacks are probably relevant to simpler or more elaborate platforms than Ning, too!) We will try to be somewhat systematic in describing how Ning is configured for each community and how it fits in the community’s digital habitat. We’ll pay attention to the ongoing role of leadership, facilitation, and technology stewardship. That means understanding what the community is about, what kinds of activities are typical, and what other tools a community uses in each community. Understanding that would give us a better idea of how and when to recommend Ning. Our stack will also suggest many possible methods that one community could borrow from another (including the use of auxiliary tools, plug-ins, themes, membership restrictions, etc., etc.). During the stackathon (which will run for a whole year, from March 2012 to April 2013) we’ll have discussions in CPsquare’s Web Crossing site (password required: it’s for CPsquare members and people registered for the Stackathon), we’ll collect ideas in various Google Docs, we may have teleconferences, and we will collect some of our insights on CPsquare’s Media Wiki site. It all depends on what people want to do and are willing to do. You can participate in the stackathon by joining CPsquare or by registering for the Stackathon here (costs $10). Any Stackathon registrant who contributes a full community portrait gets their registration fee refunded and they receive a CPsquare membership during the last 6-months of the Ning Stackathon. (Thanks to Amboo Who for the photo!)

This morning from an #agchat tweet I spotted the word "affection." I had to click. (Thanks @USFarmerMag!) And found this from March. Take a minute and enjoy. ( I read it while listening to Rene Fleming with YoYo Ma, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile creating music with "Touch the Hand of Love." Mama mia. Great combo. I’ll embed it below so you can do the same if you wish.) For the 41st Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities which he delivered on Monday evening at the Kennedy Center, Mr. Berry, American intellectual and agrarian-minded elder, described how and why affection, yes, affection!, ought be considered the cornerstone of a new economy. Berry tells us that affection does not spring up fully formed; it is gotten to by way of imagination. It’s a train of thought worth quoting at length: "For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world," says Berry, "they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy." Affection, then, takes us beyond statistics and generalizations to the immediate and the particular. It focuses our attention on the beloved things right in front of us. This field,this child, this community. Berry observes that we live in a time where affection is discounted. It’s true: rare is the public discussion where affection - or beauty, or hope, or joy - is brought forward as a good and weighty reason to do anything. But Berry believes that affection is deeply motivating. "Affection involves us entirely," he writes. If he is right, love itself could be what moves us, finally, to care for the Earth. You can read Wendell Berry’s Jefferson Lecture, or watch a video of him delivering it. via LocalHarvest News - March 30, 2012. I loved this line: "affection does not spring up fully formed; it is gotten to by way of imagination."  As I prepare to facilitate an agricultural planning meeting, this is so useful for me to have in my mind. Where are you imagining and nurturing affection in your work? Your life? Who is imagining it for you?   Tree image from Flickr, License Some rights reserved by Frodrig

Choconancy1 posted a photo:

Just back from Bhutan, my mind and heart are full, and my mind is tripping forward to the next work that is flowing towards me. One is a collaborative session on improvisation at Northern Voice in a couple of weeks. This poem speaks both to the last 16 days in Bhutan and the upcoming collaboration. A bit of kismet that it floated in front of me, courtesy of Jerry Michalski. A little Saturday morning gift. I promise a post about Bhutan in the coming week. The Real Work It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work,   and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.   The mind that is not baffled is not employed.   The impeded stream is the one that sings. ~ Wendell Berry ~   (Collected Poems) via The Real Work — Wendell Berry.

Choconancy1 posted a photo: FSN Workshop Agenda

Choconancy1 posted a photo:

Choconancy1 posted a photo: