Alford “Slim” Willock’s higher education experience is inspiring and revealing, and a little different than your average coming-of-age story. He is part of the changing landscape of formal education, while his experience highlights foundational values of higher education. Check it out:
More about Slim
In May 2023, Slim graduated with a Master of Science degree in Information Technology from Pace University. He connected to his bachelor’s and master’s programs through the NACTEL (National Alliance for Communications Technology Education and Learning) and CAEL (Council for Adult and Experiential Learning). NACTEL is a CAEL-led partnership of industry employers and unions working with quality educators to create and sponsor online education programs that meet the needs of current and future telecommunications professionals.
Production
It was a great experience collaborating on this video with Slim and the team at the Online Learning Center. To highlight Slim’s experience at Pace, we conducted a studio interview and captured his family celebrating at Pace University graduation in May 2023. With additional footage provided by Slim, we were able to illustrate his home life and work ethic.
“Library Orientation” in the Learning Theater, Summer 2016 by Yuntong Man
I just had the great fortune of spending two days with Leakey Foundation members exploring the meaning of evolution (and human origins) in relation to the theme of “human survival.” It was an amazing experience led by seven thoughtful and well-spoken scientists speaking about diverse topics such as physiology, virology, climatology, behavioral psychology, and more.
It not only led me to reflect on how to describe my work, but (perhaps predictably) how to describe it at a cocktail party in under two minutes. And for me, that’s the challenge of describing EdLab.
What are folks at EdLab doing?
At EdLab, our work touches on many of the ideas that were explored during two days of discussions on the survival of humans—namely, how can education help us solve our most difficult problems as a species?
We do a lot of experimental software and multimedia projects at EdLab, and we also run the Gottesman Libraries—a local, service-oriented side of our work that keeps us enmeshed in the immediate, day-to-day work of the Teachers College community of 5,000 teachers and researchers. And for the past two years, some of us have been involved in making a “learning theater”—an extension of both the “experimental” and “practical” sides of our work.
Creating a “Learning Theater”
I’ve been deeply involved in this project of conceptualizing, developing, building, and programming the Smith Learning Theater. Indeed, just recently I’ve spent many hours optimizing the workflow of the soon-to-be-completed AV system; multimedia, however, is only one aspect of this expansive project. In light of my recent cocktail party experience, I’ll risk summarizing the purpose and mission of this experimental space as follows:
The Learning Theater is designed as a multi-use space for active learning supported by innovative multimedia technology, a unique software platform, and the most knowledgeable teachers in the world.
(Oh, did I forget to mention that it’s a unique and complex architectural endeavor at one of the world’s leading educational institutions, and possibly the most advanced space of its kind in the world!? That’s right:pretty cool stuff.)
We’ll be unpacking this mission over the next decade, and trying to live up to the potential this space affords us and our collaborators. But if someone asks me right now what that means to make this space work, these are some of the ideas that come to mind:
Exploring the pedagogical and technological potential of such a space with everyone who uses it.
Working smarter, harder, and finding the right colleagues who are willing to undertake this inherently interdisciplinary work.
Taking risks, and resisting institutional pressures that diminish creativity.
Making an effort to share Learning Theater experiences with the wholeworld.
Thoughtfully supporting even modest efforts to use the Learning Theater.
…and rigorously demonstrating how learning happens in an active, comfortable space!
The Learning Theater should change the world. It should change education and, importantly, perceptions of education; it should deepen respect for teaching as a noble, complex, and valuable vocation.
This week I witnessed a handful of caring, thoughtful, visionary, and eminent scientists agreeing that, above all, the well-being of the human race essentially rests on the ability of teachers (of all kinds) to inspire billions of people to be more imaginative, curious, and empathetic.
It’s a complex problem a whole bunch of people need to work together to solve.
If you had a high school gymnasium, how would you turn it into a technology-friendly space for teaching, learning, and research?
As part of the Gottesman Libraries team, I’m currently involved in developing the concept of a “learning theater” — both programmatically and architecturally. Pulling this concept out of primordial soup of imagination (if such a space already exists as we imagine it, we do not know of it), our team embarked on a very broad inquiry:
What could a learning theater be?
What could it be within a library (in our case, it is)?
What is it within the context of Teachers College (with its legacy of innovation)?
We’ve already come a long way. Last winter, library staff hosted a series of design events with the TC community (summary videos can be viewed on Vialogues). This fall we’ve been working with a design team from Shepley Bulfinch to develop the concept and arrive at a schematic design. Our goal:
Renovate the 10,000 sq. ft. fourth floor of Russell Hall as a space for ambitious learning and research activities.
One aspect of our design progress that I’m very excited about is the ability for other educational institutions to use what we’re learning (and inevitably going to learn later on, after we move into our facility).
Don’t all schools need innovative teaching and learning spaces? These will be spaces that must accommodate richer and richer densities of learning tools – physical, digital, and any/every combination thereof. Being able to conduct research about teaching and learning in these spaces, therefore, seems to be increasingly important as well.
Retrofitting libraries and high school gymnasiums as new learning spaces could be only the beginning…
A friend of mine is wondering how to navigate undergraduate-level design classes (and perhaps ultimately a major or minor). More specifically, he is weighing the difference between “graphic design” and “web design”—and he asked for my thoughts.
Firstly, it matters what kind of work you imagine doing after college… but let’s say that you could do that work and have majored in either field.
Then it matters if you want to take one kind of class more than the others… but let’s say that you don’t have a preference.
Let’s say that what you’re asking is, “What will employer preferences be like when I graduate?” Then, perhaps the subtext here is, “What kind of career should I have?”
That makes it a little easier for me to give the following advice: find the college instructors that will make you the very best design thinker.
What is a Design Thinker?
I’m not sure I know. Tim Brown might—he’s a major proponent of the… idea? theory?– I do know that “design thinking” represents an interesting set of related ideas about collaboration, problem-solving, and production. And it seems to apply widely to the way the people and organizations imagine doing good work.
Some characteristics and behaviors that have been useful to me personally (in my own experience and as observed in my collaborators) are:
Being a generalist—having a little bit of knowledge about a lot of things (read widely! discuss!)
Being a generative thinker—contributing a lot (be brave! drink coffee!)
Being empathetic—with both your collaborators and end-users in mind (be observant! be generous!)
Being creative—adding a point of view that isn’t already represented (be…um, creative…)
So: when you go to college—probably any college—find someone (or several people!) who can you help you become better at all of these things.
Then find meaningful internships. Those will give you useful fodder for job interviews.
Oh, and don’t take my advice. I wrote this pretty quickly. Get a second opinion! etc.
(And for an extra hundred bucks, and about a week of effort, you can pick up the specific skills you need to be a good-enough graphic designer or web designer.)
This is an interesting example of “design” being an inspiration for a day-long collaborative event. Interesting in many ways, but especially for the marathon-like duration. (It seems like it might not have been worth it . . .)
Last week I attended the annual Association of College & Research Libraries conference in Philadelphia. Julia and I presented a poster on Pressible, and how our library is using it to expand the publishing possibilities available to our community.
Fig. 1: a flattering tweet about our poster session
I attended panel and paper sessions on “embedded librarianship, “building lean and mean web project teams,” and “connecting to the campus through creativity.” And Julia and I went to the great keynote on “declaring interdependence” by Raj Patel, the author of several books about food, economics, and democracy. Overall, it was a great day to think about libraries, information, and related educational issues.
I came away from the conference with a lot of different ideas. Instead of trying to make sense of it all (from project ideas to criticism), I’m just going to list a few:
Co-blogging. Librarians can support student writing projects by helping to host, edit, and collaborate around public blogging.
Augmenting reality. It would be cool to have an augmented reality mobile app for “seeing” alternative social perspectives. This app could make new kinds of choices possible by making them visible (e.g., choosing where to eat, shop, and hang out). But how could the data be generated, and by whom?
Reader advocacy. How can books better, and more directly, promote social action?
Cultivate a constituency. To strengthen democracy, all educational institutions need to cultivate student activism and civic-mindedness.
Pressible TV. What if made a short video of the daily headlines on Pressible? Could it better serve an audience that wants to read less but still be up to date about the community? If we had this stream of content, what else could we do with it (besides featuring it on the network site)?
Looking back at my notes, I see the theme of scholarly publishing emerging. Most of the sessions I attended touched on opportunities and problems around publishing—from the perspective of either a librarian, student, or scholar. I think these ideas stand out to me because there are so many opportunities around publishing at colleges and universities, not only “scholarly” publishing per se, but “educational” publishing more broadly.
The theme of our Pressible poster reflects this: our idea of “small ‘p’ publishing” is about creating new opportunities for students, researchers, teachers, and professionals to learn from and with each other. New technology and a lot of old-fashioned hard work is making it possible. And now that it’s possible, and on the rise, it only remains to be seen if these new avenues of publishing can have a positive impact on learning, and even a transformative impact on the education sector.
Overall, Thursday’s program was a very interesting and dense (sadly it was the only day I was able to attend the conference). I was appreciative of the conference organizers who clearly follow the “less is more” maxim when scheduling paper and panel sessions—the sessions I went to were attended by hundreds of seemingly attentive, inquisitive conference-goers. This alone left me with a positive feeling about the future of libraries.
Lastly, some quotes from Raj:
On the Dustbowl: “It isn’t an example of the ‘tragedy of the commons‘ because people were forced to enact the counterproductive behavior.”
On democracy: “Apparently the voting public thought Obama would be the pizza delivery dude of change.”
On hedge fund managers: “Luck [of class, education, and ability] isn’t the thing that should entitle you to that kind of money.”
Hey, I’ll be the first to admit, these were not ideas I expected to come from a library-related conference.
When does one decide to become a generalist? When did I?
Seth Godin insists that “art” should play a central role in the workplace. In Linchpin, he argues that seeing work as art is not only good, but imperative. I believe, however, that Godin would be better off calling his linchpin a generalist rather than an artist. This shift also highlights a consequence of Godin’s view: namely, that there are really two (very different) roles for linchpins: at the top of the proverbial corporate ladder, but also at the bottom. (After all, while considering his great flight attendant-come-linchpin as a maker of “generalism” rather than “art” is less satisfying, I think it’s a more reasonable view.)
Godin doesn’t say much about the linchpins that are stuck at the bottom. The good thing for reigning capitalists: they’re cheap, and relatively helpless. Why? There are so many of them. Democratic education is designed to produce generalists – but a sad consequence of poor educational performance is that it leads to bad generalists. Isn’t developing expertise a natural response to this situation? Indeed, hasn’t this been the emergent role of “higher” education? But now the predicament: the milieu of abundant expertise has taken the glamor away from generalism.
So what’s it like to be a school-aged person in the world today? You don’t have to look very far to see an abundance of despair (or, perhaps more tellingly, decadence). I think the reign of expertise is at least party to blame: expertise is the new mediocre, and the media’s obsession with expertise obscures the role of generalists.
