Day 1, Lawrence, KS
Round & white
As I enjoyed biscuits and gravy provided by the Quality Inn, I didn't notice the ominous USA Today headline looming above.
Expectations
The presentation I worked on last week went fairly well, considering that I thought I had twice the time to present it than I actually did.
I misunderstood the schedule so began a leisurely 1.5 hour talk with having attendees discuss what they hoped to learn about. I wrote their thoughts on the extremely old school classroom chalkboard.
Forty minutes later the conference moderator told me to "wrap it up" so that the next speaker could begin.
Wrap it up? Uh-oh. Next speaker? Yikes. The saving grace of my super-condensed conclusion was that I could point out the links on my website and suggest that people explore them at their leisure.
Big picture
The keynote presentation talked about "Design Thinking," the biggest buzzword in our field. I'm never exactly sure what people mean by it.
On this slide you see a list of activities often associated with design thinking.
Is this process design thinking itself, or merely a piece of it?
Devil in the details
After the lofty beginning of the keynote, most individual sessions got down to the nitty-gritty of teaching.
Here is an incredibly detailed grading rubric created by Blake Coglianese (North Florida State) to clarify how a particular project will be evaluated.
Small-town America
Rising over the flatness of many Midwestern towns is the water tower. This one in Lawrence gets its own municipal park.
I passed by each day walking from my hotel to the University of Kansas campus. My one-mile route, courtesy of Google Maps "walking" option, took me through quiet pleasant neighborhoods.
Round & red
Late dinner from the Mexican place across from the Quality Inn was more colorful than breakfast.
The chiles rellenos, beans and rice were surprisingly good. The bag of corn chips was surprisingly large, not so good.
