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I’ve been trying to write a short post about my arrival in Logan to begin this whole COSL ride for a few days now. Until today, I was so tied up in fear, uncertainty and doubt that I found it difficult to gather the words. I’ve started posts at three or four different points of the day, only to delete them shortly after as new stuff came up. A capsule summary:
* Day begins: do I have what it takes? And what is it I’m supposed to do? Man, everybody is so nice, I don’t want to let them down.
* First meeting with David, Brandon and Justin. We talk in broad themes about what we want to do. We identify a few ideas that I can actually wrap my head around, like a review of the literature on Web 2.0, or a survey of educator attitudes toward emergent technologies along the lines of the Daedalus Project. Elation ensues — maybe I can do this after all?
* Sit in on COSL project leads meeting. I thought I had a sense of the stuff COSL was up to, but am still blown away.
* Eat a delicious sandwich (I actually typed del.icio.us), hear Vancouver indie rocker A.C. Newman on the cafe’s stereo. Take it as a good sign. Man, these people are nice.
* I settle in front of the computer, explore some ideas and try some of the tools we talked about using. Quickly become overwhelmed by potential range of topics and approaches.
* Some more directed exploration, getting a sense of how crazy much stuff is out there. Trying to ignore all the email that keeps coming in when I’m trying to think. The hill gets steeper.
* Another round of brainstorming and refining. Watch Justin Ball download the dataset for CiteULike and do some crazy crunching on the fly. Dude has some skills.
* As working day winds down, realize that my brain is saturated, and the only semi-constructive thing I can do is toss off a quickie blog post, promising to write through some of the day’s themes soon.
Did I mention how nice everybody is?
Just remember, dude, fast cheap and outta control! Wahooo!!! You’ll do fine. Go have a beer 😉
Truth is, you’ll make a huge difference just by showing up. No lie. I know what you can do.
Rock and roll.
Thanks guys. It’s a little like downhill skiing for the first time. Lots of fun, but some chills and definitely some spills. And I do think I’m getting the hang of it!