Symphony Academy: Awakening the Digital Imagination (Sketchnotes from #CIRTLForum)

Gardner Campbell delivered tonight’s keynote at the CIRTL Network Forum. All day, we’ve been discussing the competencies and critical skills that STEM grad students and postdocs need to develop for future teaching roles. It’s good work and important work, but difficult work. Gardner’s talk, “Symphony Academy: Awakening the Digital Imagination” provided, for me at least, a much needed reminder of why we’re in this business of preparing future faculty. Our students, and the future students of the grad students and postdocs we mentor, are capable of deep and profound learning, particularly when they use digital tools to explore their interests, connect with each other and with others around the globe, and situate their experiences in contexts that have meaning for them. It’s no easy task to create learning environments that foster this kind of learning, but I think the ideas and examples that Gardner shared with us tonight point us in the right direction.

I’m not up to the task of summarizing Gardner’s talk. I believe it was captured on video, so hopefully you’ll be able to watch it on the CIRTL website soon. In the meantime, here are my sketchnotes from the keynote that, hopefully, provide a sense of what Gardner shared. Click on the images to see larger versions.