As Reclaim continues to morph, I ‘ve been thinking a bit about working teams. One of the real joys—and possibly under appreciated privileges—I’ve had professionally is being part of really amazing teams, which often translates to working with great people. I was living in New York City in the late 90s, just in time to witness (many times first-hand) the NY Yankees 3-peat World Series championships in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Now it might be easy to dismiss this team given they were chock-full of money and talent (they’re the Yankees, after all), but turns out the Orioles had an even higher payroll with arguably as much talent in 1998.* And also, remember the Mets!!! Beyond the money and individual stars there was something more at play—a sense of joyful commitment to the work married with talent made them something else all together. Even the leagues of folks who hate the Yankees would crack a little with that particular team—they were hard not … [Read more...]
UMW Domains a Win for Open
Audrey Watters has been on an all-out tear over at Hack Education as she wraps up the year in edtech. Few, if any, in the field are sharper, more concise, and resolutely independent of the institutional and corporate entanglements that pervade this space. I’ll echo so many others who have recognized how unbelievably important her voice is as a result. That said, working independently, speaking freely, and calling out so many on their nonsense doesn’t always pay the rent, so to help ameliorate this UMW’s DTLT would like to provide a standing offer of a job for Audrey when she finally decides to settle down Until then, I totally support her writing things like what follows when ennumerating the many “wins for open” in her recent post “Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: The Battle for ‘Open’:” University of Mary Washington’s “Domain of One’s Own” initiative (one of the very best things in ed-tech right now) has been picked up by other universities, including Emory and Davidson. Also, in … [Read more...]