Thursday, August 19, 2010

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Sunday, May 23, 2010

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

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)

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Antediluvia. Now.

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.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

dadgummit google password iphone prototype drunk.

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)

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

test 2


Click Here

test 2

Sunday, April 11, 2010


Click Here

Friday, April 9, 2010

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

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...

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Butler Tests the Null.....

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, March 26, 2010

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

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

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Nation-building for a Flat World....

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...

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

Monday, March 15, 2010

Launching 21 touches program of marketing dmsc govchal

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.....

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

kickin it...

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....
'

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Valentines Day Wishes for All!

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

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Ol' Thought Coach musings moving forward...

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!