Closing Thoughts

Larry Johnson's Closing Remarks

After two action-packed days, some closing thoughts on this most remarkable event....

We’ve seen the tools used to create mashups, the techniques experts have used to make them sing, and the many ways they have been applied to learning and creative expression.

We’ve seen mashups that anyone can do, mashups that inspire us, and mashups that have made us think deeply about this enterprise we are engaged in.

I’m reminded of Wayne Hodgins’ keynote in which he urged us to remember that man could not fly until we realized that the secret was not in the flapping. His point was that we needed to look beyond the obvious, and after two days of thinking and experiencing this topic, I realize that my own frame for mashups has been all about wings flapping.

Now I can see their potential in a completely new way.

Every session pushed my understanding, first a little in this new direction, and then a little in that one, and over the course of the two days, I began to realize that this particular areas of new media is not just a creative form, although it is clearly that — it is a powerful communication form as well.

At the end of the first day, Brian Lamb, a complete newcomer to Second life, demonstrated that remarkably when he took us all to the very edge of the possible with how these techniques can be applied to learning — and in the process raised lots of questions among those in the audience about message, copyright, ownership. It made some of us a little nervous as we saw how this particular form of new media can be intensely moving and powerful.

Speaking for myself, that nervousness was born in the realization that I have no foundation to help me know how to teach in this way — I have as much to unlearn as I do to learn.

I’ve been focused on the flapping …

The session we ended the second day with, by Second Life artist and sculptor Don Whitaker, was equally as transformative. Don, speaking as much through his art as his words, showed how gracefully you can fly if you look for beauty beyond the obvious.

Earlier in the conference, Anu Vendantham and Peter Decherney had showed us what sorts of really fun things can happen when you give students the freedom to be creative. Presenters like Cole Camplese and Jill Tinsley, and our comrades Tom Woodward and Jim Groom showed us the many tools they use, and in the process they, and all our presenters, helped us to visualize our own flights.

I always look for that one important takeaway in an event like this, and in many ways, for this one it was the realization that mashups are about making the impossible possible, about rethinking creativity, and about reframing how we think about communication.

Those are all things that run deep in the NMC — and the ideas and values we’ve witnessed these past few days resonate with all of us, that much is obvious.

And so because of that, I can say that mashups will be on the NMC’s radar for a good time to come. While there are amazing things happening, my sense is even more amazing things are just over the horizon. The combination of the virtual and the real, of art and information, of video and music … the ways to blend them are growing more and more intuitive and natural.

We leave this symposium with much to think about. And these thoughts will, I hope, drive more conversation and more creativity. And I promise you the NMC will continue to try to shine a light on this work.

And so, while we pause for now, let’s take what we have learned here forward.

Let’s find ways to make these new ideas, these new techniques even more immediate, and the applications we find for them in learning even more passionate.

Thanks to all the presenters, to Learning Times, and to all of you for being part of this.