The third session today definitely had some highlights, the variety of activities, and doing some things that were new. I know there is little that can be done because of the 1 hour time constraint, but the breakouts alway seems way too short on time to work through the task.

I mostly enjoy getting to meet and talk to people that is not possible in the “big” room, where we are all stuck in our boxes with named labels. It’s my favorite thing, just to have the small conversation.

Today’s TRIZ was great as a reverse approach to our usual way of thinking about a topic, what a clever Liberating Structure. Our group had a few ideas around how we can provide alternative forms of participating, and being sensitive to that in our design. The time factor too came up, it is such a challenge to pick a fixed around of time when for some groups it will be too much and others not enough.

I did enjoy the free write, having co-taught with Mia I have seen her use it but this was my first time doing it. This reminds me of some approaches I learned from a writing teacher colleagues a long time ago, where they felt as “instructors” they should do the same writing they asked of their students, being a co-participant rather than something like a marching band director. That’s always been a card in my deck.

Okay, the title here. Spiraling is not always a bad thing. I was so glad in our small group when Dani mentioned she almost filled her page with spirals, I was close to doing that. It was calming but certainly did not stop me from writing over it.

One of the things written in?? first quadrant?  was thinking about how to do IEH in asynchronous spaces, or just what would improve the way I am doing that. The video mode of zoom to me almost makes it by nature facilitator driven, or thats our norm. But there is always a front of the zoom room, someone manages it. And the video and audio puts expectations on people to participate in the usual way we consider what is participation.

And my last quadrant is, something that came out of session 2- is it possible to design group activities where a named facilitator is not required? Can a group manage its own direction? I think its an obvious yet, but how.

Lastly, from our TRIZ group I mentioned a practice I learned from my colleague Nancy White (a liberating structures maven) when we were worthing with a cohort of 150 faculty for a week long in person and then online followup. We had the BIG group in some sessions, then class size groups (15-25) for workshops, but she devised this third level called “triads” where we either ssigned or let people choose (I cant recall) to have 3 person groups who would agree to keep in touch after the in person event- and leave the how to them. For ones on the same campus or city, they could meet for coffee. Others could email, or create text message groups. The HOW was on them, and there was no followup or requirement or even expectation that they do this, but the aim was to create small scale connection groups.

And oops, like usual, I start writing with not a full destination in mind. I so appreciate this opportunity, and from my super power intro the other day, I am trying the one where I can make time slow down.

I failed.

And oh, thank you so much for this enduring poem on Kindness, I listened much more closely as audio than if I had read it. I am hopeful, if this SPLOT thing works, that it embeds the SoundCloud player here (I also like how in listening on  the soundcloud site, you can add notes/annotations to the specific point in the reading, a valuable activity)