Liquid Networks and the Adjacent Possible

At ISTE this past June, I picked up Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From (reading notes here) and, after his fantastic keynote address, looked forward to reading it. After just finishing it, the book didn't disappoint, leaving me with quite a bit to think about on the verge of beginning a new academic year.

Using parallels from evolutionary biology, Johnson discusses how innovation happens and great ideas are formed, dispelling the myth of the "eureka moment" in the formation of ideas. He outlines 7 patterns that they typically fall into, and I'll outline a few of the patterns that I intend to focus on in the coming academic year. Johnson's TED talk on the topic gives a great introduction to his ideas, if unable to read the book.

Stuart Kauffman's concept of the adjacent possible, which he used to describe all of the combinatory possibilities of the molecular soup of early Earth, plays a prominent role in Johnson's arguments. The adjacent possible presents us with a "map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself" (31), and new combinations serve to expand the adjacent possible. Using this idea, Johnson argues that "[g]ood ideas are not conjured out of thin air; they are built out of a collection of existing parts, the composition of which expands (and, occasionally, contracts) over time" (35).

Johnson stresses that "to make your mind more innovative, you have to place it inside environments that share the same network signature: networks of ideas or people that mimic the neural networks of a mind exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible" (47). He calls this a liquid network, where ideas can freely flow from one node to another to build upon each other, and it's precisely this kind of environment that allows us to explore the adjacent possible. Importantly, "the individuals get smarter because they're connected to the network" (58) and the diversity that it brings to our thinking.

The "long zoom" that allows to
identify patterns within ideas (20)

Good ideas don't simply happen; rather, they must be cultivated over time, which Johnson names the slow hunch (81). As was the case with some of the most revolutionary ideas in our intellectual history (e.g. Darwin's theory of evolution), it's most often the case that a good idea comes into form as little more than a hunch. These hunches, in order to grow into something more, must interact with other hunches through the liquid network to open up the adjacent possible.

Finally, Johnson shows that error is an inherent part of innovation. According to the British economist William Stanley Jevons, "[i]n all probability the errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one" (137). That is to say, most brilliant ideas are founded upon failed efforts. Fear of failure is so pervasive in the edusphere today, though, that it's become a serious hindrance to creativity and the construction of liquid networks. Contrary to what many of us in academia were trained to believe, it's ok to fail, when working on a new idea.

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"Chance favors the connected mind." (174)

The experiences I had at InstCon, ISTE, and GTACHI were so profound that I'm still having difficulty putting them into material form. The networks that have grown on account of these PD opportunities have already paid dividends for my own thinking about how I want to change my teaching and how I want to approach PD in the future. So after a productive summer of professional development, it's now more clear to me than ever that we need to emphasize the construction of environments that facilitate good ideas by building more and larger "liquid networks".

A 17th-century commonplace book

It was practice in Europe in the Enlightenment Era to keep a "commonplace book" (cf. Johnson 84) with notes, quotations, and other ideas that allowed for reflection, which is critical for nurturing the slow hunch. Today, though, we're also able to share our reflections to a wider audience (i.e., our PLN, or Personal Learning Network) than ever, thanks to Twitter, blogs, and other social media tools. It's important to us that, within our liquid networks, we emphasize both reflection and sharing with regularity, while dispelling as much fear of failure as we can.

Despite our collective emphasis on using technology, we must also understand that "the most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop," as Johnson reminds us (61). That's why face-to-face conversations of the sort that happen at EdCamps and #CoffeeCUE meetings are so valuable. Twitter, etc. are amazing tools, but I'm now ready to create a stronger face-to-face network on campus.

As we know all too well, however, there simply isn't enough time for us to do everything that our jobs require of us, while adding enough reflection time onto the pile of administrative tasks. For us to even have the chance to build a stronger liquid network, we need to rethink how we handle some of our administrative duties by exploring the adjacent possible within the educational structure.

The ideas of "20% time" and passion-based learning have grown very popular of late, as they indeed should, but I haven't yet seen many discussions about giving teachers and administrators similar blocked time devoted to reflection. For instance, why not create an occasional "unconference" forum for interested faculty to gather during the workday (not on our own time!) to talk about what's on our mind and share some of the ideas that we've been thinking through (e.g. readings, project ideas, PD experiences, etc.). Shouldn't this our standard model for faculty meetings, rather than the usual "sit and get"? If we had this kind of regular opportunity built into our schedule, perhaps we could encourage more creative thinking and 20% time work from faculty, in addition to students.

How else can we construct liquid networks within our schools? I greatly enjoyed reading this book and look forward to future discussions about how we can build a stronger liquid network. Feel free to share ideas either below or on Twitter on how we can build stronger liquid networks.

GTACHI Reflections

It's hard to know where to begin in describing the Google Teacher Academy experience. As is often said, the two-day experience moves incredibly quickly, and you can be sure that all of our heads were already spinning from scripting, extensions, and maps by our first lunch. But the experience was incredible, largely thanks to the exceptional academy participants and lead learners, and without doubt I'll be reflecting on it for quite some time.

Overview

+Becky Evans and +Danny Silva began the academy by making the point that a Google Certified Teacher is an "ambassador for change" in the educational community, which is the most important quality of a GCT. That's to say, a GCT is about community.

Before we moved along to our breakout sessions, +Cory Pavicich reiterated that "You don’t know what you want to learn," underscoring the fact that learning is a process.

In the "Life of a Googler" session, Brian Fitzpatrick, a technology evangelist, founder of Google Chicago, and author of Team Geek, had some interesting insights to share about technology and education. When it comes to Google's celebrated 20% time, “creativity loves constraint,” which is an idea that we should keep in mind when doing passion-based learning.

Discussing what Google looks for when hiring engineers, Fitzpatrick noted that “really good engineers are attracted to companies that have really hard problems.” To my mind, this attraction is based in the "flow" from working on a good problem, since we're happiest when we're doing productive work (cf. my thoughts on Csikszentmihalyi's "flow"). To put it simply, we need to find more flow for our students in our classrooms and make learning fun.

Most interestingly, Fitzpatrick said that, when evaluating ideas to pursue, Google tends to evaluate the ease of reversal for a particular idea, not whether it’s good or bad. Such an attitude toward innovation stands in sharp contrast to the way education works today. To many schools are so afraid of failure that innovation tends to be labored and painfully slow, rather than fun and exciting, and this is something we need to work on changing.

The breakout sessions, unconference, and other presentations, including the session on Google culture, were all fantastic, but I'll avoid allowing this post to grow too long, I'll leave them aside for now.

Reflections

Looking back, I wish I had talked with more people in the academy, and I think that several others feel the same way. Between learning from lead learners, working in our sessions, and recording ideas down, it was practically impossible to work the room and interact with others. But that's part of the GTA experience, I think, in that the academy serves to create connections that will outlast the academy itself.

During our closing reflections, Team Goodyear was in agreement about our ultimate take-away from the experience, namely, that "it's not about the tools we've learned about. It's about the connections and conversations that we're going to have as a part of this community." I'm very excited to join the GCT community and discover what I don't yet know and continue to explore new ideas.

Fortunately, much of our conversations were recorded on Twitter and can be found in the #gtachi Twitter archive, #gtachi tag map, and session notes (thanks to +Ben Wilkoff for putting these together!), and +David Theriault's photoblog captured some of images of #gtachi. My GTACHI notes, however brief, are also open to be shared.

Ideas

I left GTACHI more resolved than ever to try two ideas this coming fall:

• First, based on the successes of 20% time in both the corporate and educational worlds, I intend to give my 7th-grade Latin IA students regular time to explore Roman culture, including anything from architecture and geography, to social customs, to literature. Because "creativity loves constraint", I'll need to put boundaries on the projects. I'm eager to try "crowdsourcing" grading of the projects in some capacity that I'll report on later in the year.

I'll also give my 9th-grade Latin III class 20% time to explore topics in Greek and Latin literature, linguistics, and, perhaps most valuable of all, modern Classical reception. I'll ask them to record their 20% work in their blogs (on which cf. here), with the hopes that we can share them with wider audiences.

• Secondly, I'll experiment with the gamification of Latin IA, thanks to some help from +Catherine Flippen. In addition to Google Apps, our school uses the Canvas LMS, which is structured around modules and also offers a number of LTI apps to add to courses, including Mozilla's Open Badges.

Each module can be organized around a thematic unit like direct object marking, indirect-object marking, verb person/number, etc. As a hook to for each new module, we can offer some kind of puzzle or project to solve that will lead us to the next objective, including figuring out what an inscription says, finding a specific location on a map, and more. As students progress through each module, they can earn badges as they acquire necessary skills with grammar, vocabulary, culture, etc.

Action Plan

The final piece of the GTA is the action plan project for which we're supposed to "innovate, inspire, and lead" with the goal of "changing our world". Our action plans are intended to be collaboration pieces with other GCTs and encourage us to think big. I'll admit that I still don't have a clear idea for mine. Based on the community-first role of the GCT, though, I'm excited to use my action plan for community development.

I'm especially interested in independent-school community and some of the challenges they face, including professional development, and may design my action plan with this group in mind. However, I'm also involved in the Classics community and the #latinlangchat Twtter chat, and given the challenges that teaching Latin poses, I am interested in working with within this community to help connect Latin teachers, classrooms, and resources from around the world.

I'd love to trade ideas for action plans with anyone who's also thinking through them or offer whatever peer review I can for other action plans. Feel free to get in touch with me to start brainstorming.

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The GTACHI experience will stay with me for quite some time, and I hope to have the chance to pay it forward to others who want to take part in the kind of community that GTA creates. Thanks to all of the amazing educators who made GTACHI even better than advertised. I'm excited and eager to continue our conversations, and I look forward to the opportunity to meet you all again!

Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow" and PD

Over the past couple months I've been reading a selection of nonfiction that has applications for education (cf. some reading notes). In just about every single book, including those by Cathy Davidson, Daniel Kahneman, Jane McGonigal, Daniel Pink, and now Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist famous for the study of happiness but underappreciated until relatively recently, and his idea of "flow" is cited, playing no small part in defence of the author's thesis. I suggest watching his TED talk on the idea to get a sense of the concept, if unfamiliar with it.

Simply put, "flow" is that rare state in which one is wholly absorbed in the moment, with a heightened clarity and focus on the task at hand, and it, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is when we are happiest and having the most fun. Flow is precisely what draws us to gather at conferences, converse on Twitter chats, in addition to teaching in the first place.

At ISTE, where I found myself pooled together with 13,000 other invested educators, I thought quite a bit about why some of us are so compellingly drawn to technology (cf. my thoughts), and I can't help but think that flow plays a significant role in the story. I think that one answer to the question of why we should be taking steps to use more technology in the classroom, however difficult and challenging it may be, is that technology can allow us to have more creative fun during the learning process by helping both teachers and students to find flow.

Based on the way our brains work, as a variety of authors have concluded for different reasons, being in the flow includes socializing and collaborating while helping each other, doing meaningful work, and receiving prompt and quality feedback, and this is precisely what technology does for us. Flow is simply having productive fun, when we're intrinsically motivated to tackle a task, and it's becoming more and more clear that we learn best when we're having fun. If used correctly, then, technology (which is only one piece if the puzzle!) can help us find flow because it makes it easier to collaborate, do meaningful work, and receive feedback, among other things.

No one could claim that we need technology to do these things or that it alone is the secret to flow, given that there are plenty of successful teachers who are able to engage their students in the flow without it. But ask yourself if you would rather have one awesome way of having fun and finding happiness in class or five different ways? We need to work to increase the amount of time we spend in the flow.

As we emphasize professional development to a greater extent than ever in education, it could prove to be constructive to consider when we feel like we're in the flow in the classroom. A few days ago, a colleague asked me when I feel like I'm "kicking ass", and to my mind, that's exactly what flow is for me. When we're having a great discussion, with students leading the way by making connections, that's when I feel like we're all in the flow. But one person's individual concept of flow can be very different from another's.

With that, I think it's a great idea to do some reflection this summer, while we're thinking about professional development, and consider what "kicking ass" means to each of us, expecting that we'll likely have different answers (which is ok!) that could help us to better define our own ideas of flow and find more ways of achieving it in class. At some point before the next academic year begins, we should sit down and share our reflections, while having a conversation about what flow means to us and how the use of technology could facilitate finding it. Who's interested?

ISTE 2013 Reflections

I had an amazing experience at the 2013 ISTE conference in San Antonio this past week (June 22-26) and will be reflecting on it for quite some time, I'm sure. It was a different experience than I expected, but one that nonetheless exceeded all my expectations. My #iste13 notes are public, and I welcome comments and questions to help me further reflect.

The conference was big in every way. In fact, its size made for some difficulties, like full sessions and wifi issues. But overall, the size only added to the social aspects of ISTE, which were easily the highlight of the event. Having a chance to catch up with some old friends and meet and have face-to-face conversations with people I've interacted with on Twitter was worth the travel alone. The feeling of collegiality and acceptance at ISTE was almost overwhelming, since it seemed that I was rarely not caught in an engaging conversation with someone, whether sitting in the Bloggers' Cafe or just walking through the halls of the convention center. The Twitter activity was nothing less than amazing too, with over 50,000 Tweets logged during the event. It'll be interesting to read through them over the rest of the summer.

We had some great #coffeecue meetings, where we talked about gamification, PD, and social media tools like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., and we had a great #brewcue at a local San Antonio favorite, The Friendly Spot. I learned a lot at ISTE, and I'll briefly highlight some of my more-specific takeaways from the conference.

1:1 Program Administration and PD

Saturday's HackedEd "unconference" was fascinating. In fact, I barely said a word, while I instead listened to the compelling insights that others had, based on their experience. In particular, I was very interested to hear what advice educations were willing to offer on professional development and working with 1:1 programs. Specifically:

• Several people advocate the importance of getting teachers comfortable with the devices that their students will be using, if different from their own. Our teachers have PCs, but most students will have Macs.

• The importance of visiting other 1:1 classrooms was underscored, and I think that we need to put more emphasis in doing this next year, when we begin our program.

• An organized LMS is key, which will be another priority of ours in developing courses with Instructure's Canvas.

• Interestingly, devices amplify what you do well and what you don't do well. We'll need to keep a close eye on this next year.

• With that, teachers must be willing to not be the expert with the tools in the classroom anymore.

• It's important to give only 1 or 2 tools for teachers to learn in the first year of a program. Next year, we're starting with 7th grade only and will be focusing our attention on Canvas and Google Apps.

• Finally, some educators suggested that a good PLN is more valuable than a TIS or other person whose job it is to facilitate technology integration. We need to think about ways to build a stronger PLN at our school.

Gamification

After reading Jane McGonigal's inspiring book Reality is Broken (on our #caedchat summer book list!), attending the Epic Leadership workshop, and talking to others about games, I have a new appreciation for gamification and the value of play in the classroom, namely, that the intrinsic principles of game mechanics (i.e. what makes a good game) can often be more valuable than the game itself. I've also come to learn that games don't just imply video games but can include almost any activity structured around solid gamification principles. Games can be played by students, but they can also be used with faculty for professional development and even to simply boost morale. I have some ideas for next year that I'll write up elsewhere.

Keynotes

I thought all three keynotes were epic wins. Sunday night, McGonigal highlighted the importance of gamers as "super-powered hopeful individuals" who are motivated by creativity above all other emotions (despite creativity not being an emotion).  She stressed that, when we're designing games for classroom, we should be thinking about positive emotions that gamers crave, in addition to points and achievements. And most of all, she stresses that we must "empower students to make contributions to the world now, not when they're adults."

Steven Johnson's Keynote on Tuesday morning was based on the premise that "not all great ideas are eureka moments." In other words, good ideas don't just happen but are the product of long-term thinking. In Johnson's words, an idea "is not a single thing; an idea is a network." I'd never thought of ideas in this way, where diversity becomes paramount. "When we surround ourselves with people who are different, we become smarter," Johnson stressed. With this in mind, I now believe that it's even more important to visit other regularly schools for professional development, given that "chance favors the connected mind." I'm going to make it a point to read his book Where Good Ideas Come From this summer.

Wednesday afternoon's closing keynote by Adam Bellow, adorned with his Google Glass, was both impassioned and emotional. He underscored the importance of creativity in the classroom, especially the role we educators play − we who "are the artisans, craftsmen, and chefs that make technology matter." As Socrates said and Bellow reiterated, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” I understand this to mean that we shouldn't spend our time and energy looking to the past or arguing about what clearly doesn't work. Instead, we need to build new "superstructures" together (cf. Reality is Broken p. 318) that pave the way for more creativity in education today.

I appreciated the fact that the three keynotes echoed similar ideas but that each of them approached these ideas through their own unique lenses. That different insights reveal the same things about the current state of education has got to say something about the importance of these ideas, I think.

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In the end, it's about the ideas, not the tools. We want to be social. We want to collaborate and help each other. As McGonigal, Johnson, Bellow and others have emphasized, we want to play hard and do meaningful work, and we want valuable feedback on our efforts so we can do even better in subsequent attempts. We want these things because, as the field of positive psychology is demonstrating, our brains have evolved to depend on them. With this in mind, my overall top takeaway from the whole conference, perhaps, is my own modified understanding the relationship we have to the technology we use. It seems to me that this relationship is Darwinian, in that the most successful tools we use have been selected for, based on their ability to give us these very things that our minds crave, like playful connection and meaning. If a particular tool doesn't allow us to do these things, it won't be very successful in the long run because no one will use it.

So, our task in going to conferences like ISTE isn't to learn how to force technology into our classrooms, but rather to move our classrooms to be more collaborative, meaningful, and give better feedback. And we do so by being connected. Technologies like GAFE and Twitter that easily help us to do so are the ones that we will always come back to. From now on, I plan to focus on the ideas and let the technology fall into place naturally. Next up, #gtachi!

InstructureCon 2013 and the LMS

Quick disclaimer:  I'm sitting the the Bloggers' Cafe at ISTE 2013 right now, which is an awesome feeling. I had an fantastically productive time at HackedEd 2013 yesterday, with a lot of new PD ideas, and this morning's Epic Leadership workshop on game mechanics with Jane McGonigal was just as good.  But I promised myself I'd reflect on last week's InstructureCon before I get too deep into ISTE.

Instructure, the company who builds Canvas, hosted their third annual conference devoted to using the LMS (a Learning Management System, or a tool for organizing a course around online materials). "InstructureCon", as they call it, gets rave reviews from participants in prior years, and I wholeheartedly agree. The conference was entertaining (lots of swag and great social events), bizarre (MC Hammer was the keynote performer), and it was additionally very useful to learn what others are doing with the system.

I have to admit that I've been a skeptical LMS user for many of the reasons Audrey Watters mentioned in her keynote. I was afraid that an LMS could stagnate course development and "sandbox" thinking too much, but after using Canvas for a year, I now see how powerful and useful of a tool it can be. It's entirely possible to build a de-facto LMS with GAFE, but one of the advantages an LMS can allow students to focus on the learning in a course, rathern than the technology. It also gives teachers who aren't otherwise interested in learning to wield technology a versatile tool to build a digital course. Despite some of my reservations and personal goals, I'm eager to move farther with Canvas next year and help our faculty to do new and engaging things with our students.

A particularly striking thought offered by Richard Culatta (@rec54) is that we shouldn't "put a thin coat of awesome-colored paint on top of something that is structurally flawed". Most participants at InstCon seemed to be aware of the idea that we need to be working toward change by pushing engagement and collaboration, lest Audrey Watters' fears be realized. This idea was clear in two ways, as I saw it.

• First, Canvas pushes modular design to courses, in that it creates a clearly-organized system for students to move through a course. Moreover, the modules are (or should be!) interactive, starting with a hook and proceeding through interactive and collaborative activities that the system offers (e.g. discussions, collaborations, pbl and inquiry-based work etc.).

• And second (and of particular thematic importance at this year's event), was the focus on API and LTI use. One of the advantages of Canvas over others LMSs, as far as I've seen, is its openness and ability to be customized by users. Instructure debuted their "App Center" last week, which promises to allow users to integrate third-party apps into their courses more easily.

With that, I'm looking forward to building clearer and more useful modules next year, especially now that we have mobile access to them, while integrating apps more easily (and hopefully writing a few of my own, too). I think we have an opportunity to do a lot of innovative things next year not only with Canvas, but with other online tools and most importantly, with the ideas that were in circulation next week. Richard Culatta also reminded us that, at the end of the day: "No one cares what courses you've taken. They care what you can do." It's time for all of us to "build our own awesome". Can't wait for InstructureCon 2014!

My more-detailed notes from #instcon 2013; comments/questions welcomed, of course. In particular, I'm very interested to hear how language teachers are using Canvas.

Summer PD Plans

Following up +Jennifer Peyrot's helpful post on her plans for "Summer Learning Fun" and thanks to the inspiration found in the scores of Twitter chats happening every day, I figured it'd be a good idea for me to consolidate some of my own plans for next year. I highly doubt that I'll get through everything, but I'm eager to get started, and I'm looking forward to talking with others about their own projects. It should be a fun and hopefully productive summer!

Reading I've been reading a fair number of books relating to education and pedagogy lately, largely inspired by the #CAedchat book club, and I've keeping my notes in an Evernote notebook. I'll continue to add to it and welcome any comments and questions. A few books on my reading list:

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman on the various processes involved in thinking
• Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal on the growing importance of games
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck on mindset attitudes and success
• Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison on teaching and thinking
• Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager on the "maker" movement

Thinking Next year I'll be teaching Latin IA to new 7th graders, which I've never done before. Our incoming class will be huge, and so I'm doubly excited to take on this task. Given that we shouldn't move too quickly with grammar in a class like this, there will be ample opportunity to explore the new ideas I've been absorbing from my PLN to build a strong community of invested learners right from the start. We'll all have laptops too, which will enable us to do things in class that we haven't yet been able to do. In particular, I'm interested in picking up a few ideas I've been thinking through over the past year, including:

• learning more trcks with our LMS Canvas
• developing mapping projects
• developing activites using Google Forms and search skills
• rethinking grading using standards-based grading (thanks #sbgchat!) and "crowdsourcing" grading
• exploring digital storytelling (e.g. student videos, comic books, choose-your-own adventures, etc.)
• playing around with TodayMeet for classroom management
• working on a collaborative Latin penpal program
• continuing to think through blog uses
• considering how to implement "20% time" and #geniushour
• thinking through "augmented reality" as a tool for education (thanks #patue!)

I've also been approached to teach an independent study in linguistics for a handful of upperclassmen next year, and I'm excited to start planning. Tentatively, the class will cover basic linguistic science in the first semester, then open to inquiry-based projects in the second semester. Because students will be on the other campus, I'm exploring ways to construct a partially online course, for which I could use #flipclass methods to provide content to students. Doing so would give students more flexibility to work the course into their schedules. It's very possible that a Google+ community, combined with Google Hangouts, could provide everything we need for the course.

Visiting I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in summer conferences:

• I'll attend InstructureCon to learn more about the Canvas LMS.
• I'm excited for my first ISTE conference for everything on technology in education.
• There are a number of edcamp opportunities later this summer, including #edcampsfbay on Aug. 10.
• I'll be co-organizing the free PlaydateLA "unconference" on Aug. 17 to give other educators in the LA area a change to explore ways to use technology in education. All are welcome to sign up!

Exploring I'm very excited to join the computer science club next year, when we'll be shifting our focus to coding and working on Raspberry Pi projects. We'll also tackle some Codecademy.com After-School Programming challenges.

Writing Finally, I'm very eager to continue some of my own work in Greek and Latin linguistics. I've got a book review to work on, in addition to a few papers I've been meaning to write up. By putting writing together with some of the other activities above together, I may hopefully come up with something to submit for CA2014.

Google Earth/Maps Latin Project

Thanks to inspiration from the Power Searching with Google course, I developed a digital Classical scavenger hunt for our last JCL club meeting of the year that takes advantage of Google's search-by-image feature. The experiment went well, and I'm looking forward to integrating the the use of images and Google Forms into my Latin classes next year.

I'm now thinking through ideas to use Google Maps and Earth, with some of the tricks I'm learning through the current Mapping with Google course. We will begin our 1:1 laptop program in 7th grade, and I'll have the pleasure of teaching our Latin IA course for the first time, including developing new collaborative activities and projects around the laptops.

I think that a mapping project of the sorts demonstrated in the course are perfect for our first project, based on the principle that "maps tell a story". Namely, We can let students choose ancient sites and build investigative tours for them using Maps Engine Lite, Google Earth, and the fantastic ORBIS project (an ancient travel tool) at Stanford. With the markup tools that Maps/Earth provide, we could even have students create their own overlay of Roman sites that are either in ruins or obscured by modern structures. They could easily point out features that are otherwise very difficult to see today.

The best feature of all, perhaps, is the ability to record a tour in a .kmz file to share publicly and even build upon further. This summer, planning on building a tour of Hadrian's wall, including details of some Roman forts, as an example to use in class, and I'll share it through Twitter. I also welcome ideas or comments from anyone else who has done any similar mapping project. In particular, I'm interested in sharing our map work with other classes out there to build a library of tours of ancient sites. Let me know, if you'd like to participate!