Dr. C.’s Learning Web

Dr. Elizabeth Phillips in her office in Trible Hall at Wake Forest University. I’m not sure when the photograph was taken, but this is how I remember her from my first class with her in the fall of 1975. Whatever I say here will be too little or too much or not quite right. I persevere in the saying because of the light Elizabeth Phillips shared with me, and shares with me still.
Dr. Phillips died last Tuesday night at the age of 89. Here is her obituary. Here is a news story about her death. She was born the same year as my mother. As it happens, she died in the same hospital where my mother died almost nineteen years ago, Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Now I have lost two mothers, for Elizabeth Phillips was surely my intellectual and academic mother. To say that she inspired me to become [...]

Original post by Gardo

Back in the office today after the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting, I met my first class at 9:30 this morning: Introduction to New Media Studies. Today was our first day on Doug Engelbart. In one moment, two-thirds of the way through the class, the synchronicities became unexpectedly piercing.
A student in the front row marvelled with disbelief at the intensity and complexity of mind Engelbart appears to imagine we should cultivate. The student insisted, with growing energy, that ordinary people couldn’t meet that standard, that it would be unbearably difficult to live in the integrated domain Engelbart eloquently describes. Could Engelbart really be serious in thinking we could and should be that alert, responsive, and focused? I replied that I’d never been in contact with anyone as serious about his vision as Engelbart was and is. I went on to say that Engelbart believed everyone should be striving toward just the [...]

Original post by Gardo