Ol' Thought Coach (OTC) and Network

find yourself...

2010-08-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

How to Do a TED Talk

2010-08-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

Visual Data Analytics

2010-06-20T09:08:00.001-07:00

dmsc govchal summer 2010 virtual inst.: the long now...part 2

2010-05-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Here we are: college is out, graduation's either last week or this week.

Ol' Thought Coach just returned from huddle up at U.Va. in Charlottesville.

On the way up we worked with SATO scholars David Currie and Karen King in Johnson City, TN at East Tennessee State University.

Setting up the EdTech program i-squared for June 10, 2010.

Watch for more details here and at our twitter, facebook, website and electronic mail portals.

The Timeline follows:

June 3: Youthspeaks Nashville event
June 10: i-squared with TSU and ETSU
June 15: Judging for dmsc govchal 4.0 begins
July 15-16: TSUVa residency: Home and Away

Ongoing:
PlayInterrobang: with Microsoft, Smithsonian and Learn and Serve
Evoke challenge: begin May 22, 2010

Remember:

The tools are cool but the people make the nation.

Always on it,

OTC (Ol Thought Coach)

Antediluvia. Now.

2010-05-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

OK Nashville is beyond capacity to describe. wild, warped aftermath of 14 inches of rain in two days. roaring creeks swept cars off lots, people to their doom and submerged homes and businesses a half mile inland either side of the cumberland river.

even seeing it does not make you necessarily believe it.

but after the flood comes the rebuilding. a lot of it.

but nashville is the technicolor cartoon in 4/4 time. when it comes to ego, we are professionals.

so it will be built back and the renascence will--mark the words of the ol thought coach--stun all who have the blessing of watching or helping to make it happen.

The Renascence will happen.

DMSC Govchal: Serious game.

Nashville's at stake.

There's a nation at stake.

These are our lives and they are happening right now.

In this world and no other.

The team will take a knee and a quick breather.

The team will collect itself and give support where needed.

And then the team will rededicate to the positive outcome and will surpass even its own expectations.

which are high. which are ambitious.

Which are aspirational and intentional in the best of all possible ways, in the best of all possible worlds.

A serious game.

Hard fun.

Governor's Challenge - Spring Fling - NSCC 2010

2010-04-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

dadgummit google password iphone prototype drunk.

2010-04-20T05:21:00.000-07:00

howdy.

just about wore out with the pollen thing. two times in the last two months. it's like a mini-portable flu that hangs like a wet pup tent on your mood, aspect and disposition.

but ol thought coach knows and loves the stones' swooner 'time waits for no one' and understands that portent, fer shur.

so to the tale that writes itself: govchal blast from nash state kicked booty and we are rolling forth with some real cool people engaging the Opp: tedxnashville continues apace and genty stirs the nashville cultural scene, govchal marketing is going great. The whole network is chuggin right along.

we have been approached by reps from university of illinois champagne urbana and will be moving into engaged tech project with grad student: folksonomy for the govchal library of 70 media assets harvested these 4 years hence. we'll metatag them, developing a system for guided research, production, assessment, analytics and publication.

in addition, we'll derive student learning outcomes from each of them as prelude to the full-on virtual institute assessment seminars taking place throughout the summer.

this is some serious value add to the govchal guided system. thinktankinc, cloudcorps, cloudco, IKE: strategies for enhancing existing resources.

and we'll be needing strategies: as will the google guys trying to plug the password dyke after the security breach, as will the one who lost the new iphone prototype in the redwood city bar. drunk, probably. what a hangover. great story, though. prototype sold for 5000.00. jobs calls the company, tweeted. photo of prototype deconstructed by geeks on line.

welcome to middle of the 'cruelest, month, breeding lilacs out of the...." ts eliot.

ol thought coach is a poet of word and number: compessed wisdom in dollops of pith and vinegar, of logos ratio-ed by the quotidian eternity you read about in books. pray about in church and out.

so why DID the SEC ban that cool eyeblack stuff?

over and out,

ol thought coach (otc)

test 2

2010-04-13T10:15:00.001-07:00

test 2
Click Here

test 2

2010-04-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

test 2

2010-04-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

test for govchal day.
Click Here

aw shucks....a serious game? Well, game on then...

2010-04-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

you guys are just great. what a team. ol thought coach is just jazzed about being a part of this unfolding 'serious game.' many ways to score, many more to win, but the one we're groovin on right now is organizing to play the serious game of how to relieve student debt by validated service equity. just startin ' that up!! Wow--can you see it? the serious game would involve getting our teams together and play for that championship: the best plan to lobby the White House to enter the dialogue. How do we bring the President to the table? That's a serious game by golly. That serious game requires an NCAA-like model of scholarship: The DMSC Governors Challenge, which will work tirelessly to help leverage the 500 million $ Tennessee just won in Race to the Top funds. Well, game on.

I've got tremendously positive feedback on my letter i sent yesterday. Here's a copy:

Dear Colleagues:

Next week, April 15, we will be creating a day-long social networking blast from the lovely confines of Nashville State Community College.

We'll be sending out text that you can forward to facebook, twitter and old school email networks and listservs.

GovChal is recruiting media and researchers who will judge media over a two month Virtual Institute and name a knowledge champion. Prizes will be announced.

Please visit our site at www.sandboxnetwork.org and register to:

I. Enter media as a student or faculty producer representing your university (2 or 4 year schools!) in our Governors Challenge. We have three networks to choose from:

1. Academic Network: Instructional media originating in courses.
2. Feature Network: Free-style creative work: videos, music, spoken word, etc.
3. Engagement Network: Service Learning/ Civic Engagement

See links on Governors Challenge page for details!

II. Register as researchers to help us assessment and process analytics of tournament data in honor code-based open source guided system. Our Semantic Assessment © combines quantitative, semantic and qualitative tiers: quick, simple, powerful data for analytics that quantify quality.

This analytics portion works as formative assessment data for any project-based course; analytics strengthens academic service learning reflection summative reporting.

And along the way name a national knowledge champion!

We are also organizing a ‘serious game’ campaign to lobby for student debt forgiveness based on validated service projects.

DMSC GovChal will utilize grass-roots social networking to advance this goal, which will begin lobbying the White House to consider this kind of social enterprise/entrepreneurially-flavored Service Learning and Civic Engagement.

The students have spoken and the GovChal is all ears!

Register for either production and/or research and our team will be in touch to help you grow your own knowledge portfolio using the govchal guided system of:

1. Research/Produce Media
2. Assess
3. Analyze data/revise
4. Publish

The model transfers easily to any interdisciplinary course. Join us as we engage this exciting new guided system of knowledge making and sharing.

Get ready for the Blast on 4.15.10! Please forward to your networks!!

best,

bob bradley (ol' thought coach (OTL))

Like i said: Game on...

Butler Tests the Null.....

2010-03-31T06:07:00.000-07:00

Here's to the underdog. Here's to the one who's been scapegoated, now reasserting, reaffirming aspirations and executions. Rededicating to fundamentals, to simplifying the steps for review. rededicating to the repetition, to the at-first babysteps that restart the journey, recharge the process.

Butler University tests the null in this weekend's final four: there is no statistically significant amount of belief that this team will perform at this level for this long and to this end.

That's the NCAA intercollegiate athletic model. Think of how many "Butlers" get up every morning, think of the students, traditional and nontraditional, retraining now for the recovery. For the time when they enter the game, execute the fundamentals that, strung together with persistent focus, brings them to the championship, the graduation, and beyond into lifelong learning.

Friday and spring is a-cumin in....sing Govchal Day April 15

2010-03-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

Beautiful day a-dawning: overcast with rain, but still the tender buds are want out from under and everywhere the approach is apparent.

Final Four delights abound, upsets compound and the Ol Thought Coach (OTC) gets dang near sentimental about it all.

Keep your eyes peeled for GovChal Day 2010 on April 15 at Nashville State Community College in the real world and globally in the great world beyond, including virtual.

Breathe deep. Loosen your muscles. Try a little mountain pose and savor the already-is-ness all around us.

OTC says shake 'em up, shake loose....

Ol Thought Coach

Nation-building for a Flat World....

2010-03-24T07:23:00.001-07:00

I saw a great post from Seth Godin's blog the other day. He was quoting Clay Shirkey. Post went like this:

Clay Shirky has noticed the trend of talented people putting five or six hours an evening to work instead of to waste. Add that up across a million or ten million people and the output is astonishing. He calls it cognitive surplus and it's one of the underappreciated world-changing stories of our time.
--From SETH’S BLOG

Ol Thought Coach (OTC) is the kind of guy who can get way behind this kind of thing. Abundance is law: shortages are created by humans.

Check out our www.sandboxnetwork.org for an experiment in social enterprise that could help close this gap.

Onward.....

Ol' Thought Coach up on TN's Capital Hill...

2010-03-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

You know, with Fess Parker dying this week, and sitting here in the TN House higher education committee room, the Ol' Thought Coach wishes he had his coonskin cap to put on and be proud about.

But he don't, so he will just say it's an honor to be here on behalf of DMSC Governors Challenge 2010 and the TN Campus Compact, which sponsored this event. I'll be checking in as the day goes on. We are awaiting the committee and TNCC Exec. Director Mani Hull is briefing us.

Our model of Engaged Technology blends academic service learning and civic engagement with educational technology. This model creates a guided system for formative and summative assessment, so crucial in the research and development of people, programs and platforms for collaborative learning in a serious gaming atmosphere.

I'll be posting from time to time as we participate in our state and national communities' governance: education is the business model.

bb

Launching 21 touches program of marketing dmsc govchal

2010-03-15T03:57:00.000-07:00

dmsc vp steve holt and ol thought coach (dmsc president bob bradley) are camped out finalizing our marketing push for govchal 4.0. we are charged with creating a social enterprise business model out of the engagement network, a model that will take the burden off state government and help fund the TN Campus Compact and the DMSC as we push for a 50 state governors challenge and an ncaa of engaged scholarship.

it's final four fever now and one can sense the amazing potential of overlaying the athletics model of collaborative competition over the education model. using service learning and civic engagement resources, each 2 yr and 4 yr institution that chooses to participate recruits its local k-12 into our model, forming p-20 pathways to knowledge making and a 21st century workforce that thrives in the global marketplace.

so here's to the hunker-down and we'll be in touch with all ya'll....the ol thought coach (otc) is proud to serve as dmsc president for these next two years.

we are working with Nashville State Community College for phase i: 3.15-4.15. Phase ii will take us to the deadline of 5.31!

yayusssss.....

kickin it...

2010-03-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

hey the ol thought coach back on the keyboard tapbox. i used to have a blue corona circa 1925 i used to compose my poems on. now i'm bloggin all fancy like. bein a word guy, i dig the way the vocabulary of new technology poaches and hybridizes its way right down the timeline. a whole new word bag opens up: meme; kernel, breadcrumb, outlier, degrees of truth, null hypothesis.

the last two really push my buttons: null hypothesis and degrees of truth. we test the null in research. proving degrees of truth. it's a great model. dmsc govchal is also going to embed a triangulation for qualitative research module in this year's challenge.

Through it, we set up our assessment model that generates data for end-user reports. this bottom up research model empowers all stakeholders in the guided system.

also sets up an honor code method. as a u.va grad (MFA 85), the ol thought coach likes the sound of that. only the individual can know whether or not she/he 'knows' something. Accountability and transparency applied in this guided system creates the wealth of real value, validated by standard research principles.

here comes march madness: a beautiful time of the year when academic 'brands' market their 'products' for competitive tournament events. Revenue flows from rabidly loyal customer base into NCAA and then higher ed coffers.

Our model of social enterprise markets scholarship, not athletics.

do the numbers. the mind reals. the heart soars. Ours is a vision of breathtaking scope.

breathe deep.

release.

here we go....
'

Valentines Day Wishes for All!

2010-02-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

We are finalizing the details on our next Challenge: govchal 4.0. Will be uploading our entry into the MacArthur/Hastac competition: Curatorial Crowdsourcing.

Ol' Thought Coach will be back soon with more news.

Happy day and many more....

OTC

Ol' Thought Coach musings moving forward...

2010-01-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

What a break! OTC has know tragedy and triumph, rest and recharge. And here we come now into the gates for a spring of 2010 that will be nonpareil in reflection, once we break the tape of 05.31.10: deadline for uploads and judge registration for DMSC Governors Challenge, Vol. 4.

We have a triangulated marketing plan research project in place between UT Martin, Nashville State CC, and TSU. We put in a great semester last walking through the strategy and now we are ready to deploy.

Thanks to ETSU for hosting us again: DMSC is grateful to them for their visionary leadership the past three years.

We are now working with NSF-developed Problem Based Case Learning (PBCL) to provide a proven system of production, assessment, analytics and publication.

So here we are: Steve Holt and his team at Univ. of Tenn (Martin) are poised to drive service learning and our Engagement Network Challenge through TN Campus Compact, the national Compact and other major networks that work our turf.

University of Virginia is also using the model campus-wide this spring through an Atlantic Coast Conference innovation grant. OTC will be working with them. We see Educause and MacArthur outcomes, among others with this work. e.philanthropy is a mission-critical overlay to our system as it assures both ethical and incentivization issues are in balance. The end-user (student, faculty, staff, dept/major, college and institution entire benefit from such a design. Look for more on that from our marketing team.

Ol' Thought Coach gotta run but peace be with all both now and always: Stay tuned for my next post that lays out the steps for winning championships.

OTC out!

RIP, dear Vic....

2009-12-26T13:02:00.001-08:00

Today brought post-christmas dawn glow and wonder, and then sharp stop upon reading news of the death of Vic Chesnut. Ol' Thought Coach was blessed to know him and to admire his courage and riveting displays of the craft and sullen art, to reference Dylan Thomas. His brutally-rarified aesthetic raised the southern gothic context to a new and reinvigorated niche of bewonderment, bedazzlement in the fractal face of the sacred broken heart. Humanity, your dumbshow joy and roughness.

Few if any have ever fish-tailed on the head of the cosmological pin so provocatively, so adroitly with the bottom line there like a bitter cold true north. yet the victory of his language, of his vision rendered in the merciless grace we know adorns all unspooling dharma...ah vic.

many thanks to you in the always ever-present hereafter. much praise to all who have gone before.

OK go.

Praise for Univ. of Tenn. at Martin

2009-12-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

The Olde Thought Coach (OTC) checks in on a chilly Thursday, fresh from a bracing workout over at the University of Tennessee-Martin. One marketing grad class and one marketing undergrad class each took a swing at marketing analysis for the ol' DMSC and its Governors Challenge. OTC is still amazed at what students can do when they are engaged.

Many gracias to DMSC's and UT Martin's Steve Holt, whose conference was a smash, as well. OTC is going to be back on their mailing list for sure.

OTC brings back 5 marketing plans and 5 powerpoints, along with terrific assets derived from the undergrad's work, including a flawless excel speadsheet of service learning contacts across the country.

We gave out a 100.00 prize to the winning team in the grad division and recruited a couple of solid prospects to move our team out into the marketing mainstream for GovChal 4.0.

More on all this later.

Stay warm and dig the season. '09 was not for sissies; now is when we roll it over like a swimmer's flip turn.

Remember to breathe deep and do the thought yoga.

watch the watcher.

take another breath for 8 counts, hold for 8, then exhale for 8.

do that again.

Now: begin to look across your matrix (third eye thing) and begin incrementally setting up your reports.

folders, first.

then single wins in each folder.

now you walk away.

and when you come back, you begin doing your reps.

cycling the portfolio,

circling the assets,

integrating their value into your breathing.

Now go.

Holiday Season Harvests: e.engagement, dmsc govchal and tsu 2.0: p.20 pathways

2009-11-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

TSU 2.0: P.20 Pathways proposal is almost complete, ready for submission to TBR Access and Diversity Division. This proposal details build-out of digital university press model to facilitate individual, institutional and community portfolios of validated media (text, audio, video, image) and service-based "sweat" equity. Teaching to learn is the MO here and the only sure-fire way to guarantee knowledge transfer and sustainability.

The Olde Thought Coach (OTC) will be journeying west to assist DSMC's Steve Holt judge marketing plans for GovChal created by University of Tennessee at Martin's marketing service learning classes. Two classes will present student-created marketing plans for GovChal 4.0 Spring 2010. This is the real deal: inter-institutional, intra-state collaboration in social enterprise. After all, education is the business plan.

TSU's Engaged Technology Institute (ETI) is nearing the completion of its second semester and all signs point to a fantastic set of outcomes. This data set will create the Institute's baseline and support build-out of the afore-mentioned Tennessee Board of Regents Access and Diversity grant, "TSU 2.0: P.20 Pathways."

TSUVa ETI collaboration is also closing in on its undergraduate research project. More on that later.

Sandbox Network's e.engagement, a professional development collaboration between Tennessee State University and Nashville State Community College is ready for Phase 3.0 after a strong developmental semester. Again, more on that and you can follow at http://www.eengagement.org/wordpress/

DMSC GovChal: The Long Now....

2009-11-14T06:14:00.000-08:00

Greetings!

End of October and first of November digital sandbox summits yielded fantastic meetings with ETSU, UVa, UNC and NCState. UVa continues to widen umbrella of support to Foundation resources. Collaboration on development received 50 possible targets for support for prototype for DMSC GovChal 4.0 during spring of 2010. Sibley Johns of Music Resource Center in Charlottesville is working with us to set up the DMSC GovChal 4.0 Music Network Challenge. Exciting design creates collaboration between Nashville and Charlottesville as Phase I pilot. More later on all this stuff cuz it's rocking the Old Thought Coach (OTC).

Collaborations with The Maxine Smith Fellows program of the Tennessee Board of Regents promise huge opps for increasing quantity and quality of access and diversity in Tennessee and across the nation. We need such leadership and TBR's MSF brings that kind of capacity. GovChal hopes to add value to their capacity-building mission.

Mid-November brings us harvest outcomes. These outcomes, paradoxically, inspire us to reflect on enhancing preparations for spring. A digital sandbox is a seasonal thing too. As the sun never really sets (that phenomenon is only a matter of perspective), the light of the earth never leaves. Each of us a fully-orbed node in a network that fires up this old thought coach's already active imagination. Whether old water on the moon or new stars in the sky, heart-felt tears of gratitude open up the days and nights, weeks and months: It's just one long Now.

What's the next call at this point in the season? A strong finish here is prelude to a solid foundation for spring's national push. Intramural tournaments! Each DMSC GovChal affiliate conducts its own intramural tournament. Bring your best stuff and upload it wherever you can. then embed the link for the ballot on that site and ask people to register and evaluate your asset(s). Take their time. Give honest feedback (this is also a research exercise in game theory/motivational systems measures), and click submit.

Each producer/artist receives a digital spreadsheet with all data from assessment for each digital asset. Assessment data is engaged to determine what suggested revisions- if any-- would improve the asset's quality or value. The producer/artist then revises and publishes the media asset, clearly stating what ideas they received for revision and how the producer incorported them in the asset. Subsequent analytics reveal asset's value to community. Etc.

Longitunidal stuff in perpetual assessment space. The assets become avatars, artificial digital, binary identities that evolve and orbit the virtual commons. Space and time are data forever. The long now. (for more on this: Google: Stewart Brand, TED talk, The Long Now).

In this way, lack of knowledge transfer between semesters (between fall and spring, between spring and fall) is eliminated through "bridge" platform of the intramural challenge. A virtual commons for those 'tween' times when you want to know if what you've made is any good. when a long distance collaboration could just keep on shaking, baking and incubating. Outside (but inside) school, the old thought coach sees a lot of open field to play toward goal. Play the ball to space. Let the teammate run on to it. Play the value to space, let the market run on to it and play on goal. Guided system: Many scores; Much data. Quality analysis: quality processes and products. Epic systems for the old thought coach.

Kick off: 12.18 (deadline for uploads)

Judge Registration begins: 12.1

Do your own thing.

Till next time,

OTC (Old Thought Coach)

PS: We're doing it big-time at Tennessee State University's Engaged Technology Instiute (ETI) in Nashville TN. Contact: rbradley@tnstate.edu if interested.

Perpetual

2009-09-11T11:22:00.001-07:00

Pre-Labor Day...

2009-09-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

As we approach the day called labor, the coach muses on the nature of work and how it's depicted in our culture. I've always been confused by the way work took you away from what you loved to do. Or at least that's the way it seemed to the coach.

I see it differently now, more holistically as it were. And part of this is better recognizing the power of design. Or maybe it's the power of the cognitive, generative motherlode of innovation of which the human mind is capable.

Maybe in this time of seemingly great risk, opportunities exist that balance the scale. And that we have the capacity to design our path through this best of all possible worlds. If not design outright, then perhaps co-design.

The curiosity about this possibility certainly feels better than its opposite notion, that a chaos of bad nasty endings are all we can expect on our way to the boneyard.

I like the curiosity; it feels fresh, new. The other notion is old and perpetual and boring.

So the issue answers itself.

Research. Data. Analytics.

Breakthrough.

What is Social ROI?

2009-08-30T07:42:00.001-07:00

At yesterday's Tennessee State University's 4th Service Day, an engagement-based inquiry was begun to track data elicited by the question, "What is Social ROI?" Data derived from this project will in part support TSU's application for Carnegie Engaged Campus status.

The project is collaborative in nature and will identify resources and empower individuals to track their own personal data with regard to that question. We see a portfolio project that produces and publishes validated media from students and faculty who self-select into this study. Participants can then elect to participate in financial literacy to fluency seminars.

An IRB has been obtained for the DMSC Governor's Challenge project, which creates the virtual sandbox for this TSU Engaged Technology Institute (ETI) project. ETI was founded at TSU in Spring 09 and seeks affiliates (individual and institutional) to advance this inquiry.

Stay tuned for more as this story develops (hint: it dovetails with our last blog post).

Sincerely,

the coach.

Well now....a Techno-Social Think Tank....

2009-08-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

Poised on the last week of august, we cast a glance back at the jewel of the southeast, East Tennessee State University, in Johnson City, TN. Convening thought leaders at ETSU in the inaugural TechnoSocial Think Tank model, DMSC and digiTenn christened the event, and this name will undoubtedly morph into a tweeted-out appellation. Same way the Governor's Challenge morphed into "govchal" through twitter research during this summer's Sandbox rolling summit. So we'll see how that turns out.

Think of it: Data management for e-bank equity. Calibrated using the online tool digiTenn brought to us for IKE measurement. 16 thought leaders signed on to quantify the quality of the engagement practice as professional development. Tennessee State University partnered with ETSU to stage the event. The TEDxNashville group also worked with the effort to embed innovation and sustainability in the p-16 initiative in TN.

Also announced was the DMSC National Governors Challenge Fall 09, Version 4.0. Results from Phase I available January 7 2010 and Phase II June 25 2010.

see www.sandboxnetwork.org for more....migrating slowly but surely into national calibration, ratcheting up the incentives for creative, responsible, measured collaboration.

2009 DMSC Governor's Challenge Digital Media Tournament

2009-05-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

The DMSC Governor's Challenge Digital Media Tournament is in full swing! It's not too late to enter! If you are a student, staff or faculty member of any institution in higher education (undergraduate and graduate), you still have time to enter!

We are also looking for judges! It's okay to enter AND to judge as long as you recuse yourself from your own assessment. Judges can register here.

It's okay if the submission is not freshly produced; as long as it has never been published and you have full creative ownership of and rights to the podcast, you may submit in either audio or video format at ETSU's I-tunes U site. Write dmsandboxnetwork@gmail.com for more information!