Epiphany Summer Institutes
The Newark Institute took place in the days just prior to the Richmond Institute, led by
Trent Batson, Judy Williamson, and Randy Bass. At Newark, all forty participants remained together for all of the sessions, and since most of the participants came from the New
York/New Jersey metropolitan area, many of them were able to commute to the Institute.
Newark: the 5-minute Diversity University
Father Guido Sarducci (a.k.a. Don Novello) used to do a bit on the 5-Minute University--where
you would learn all the things you actually remember four years after college is over. At the
Epiphany Institute in Newark, Trent Batson, Judy Williamson, and Randy Bass had a far greater
challenge and not a whole lot more time. In the space of two days
(not counting an after-dinner greeting the evening before and a post-breakfast wrap up at the
end), they had to give a comprehensive sense of the pedagogical possibilities of
computer-mediated communication to people of wildly different levels of preparation and institutional contexts. The
ultimate network turned out to be not Daedalus or Connect, not
the Net or the Web, but the collaborative class. Because that's what the Newark institute basically
was.
Richmond: Summer Camp for TechnoTeachers
At the Richmond Institute, teachers were able to enjoy one of the best features of long
summer workshops: the opportunity to become students again, experiencing some of their own
collaborative pedagogies. Each day, participants attended a morning lecture and discussion with
the whole group, then went to concurrent workshops offered by the Richmond leaders, panel discussions, or software
demonstrations, in addition to meeting in teams to prepare a series of group presentations for the end of the week. Since this institute
spanned a longer period of time, leaders and participants had more time to hold impromptu
meetings for special interests, to spend more independent time in the computer lab, and of
course, to go on the pub crawl, which included a trip to Havana 59, cigars and all.
Send comments on these pages to: Claudine Keenan