Then, this week as winter set in, I started to play with it. SwankoLab for some new colors; FXPhotoStudio for more texture and color filters; PaintItNow! for various brushstrokes and JuxtaPoser to layer things on top of each other.  Four, from about a dozen that I saved, are below.

Finally, I went back to one of the early experiments and brought it into ArtStudio where I used the pencil, paintbrush, blurr and eraser tools to create the one that said “OK, you got me!”

The final piece

Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. It’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to get extraordinary things done, without having their hearts in it. The best kept secret of successful leaders is love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce, and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services. Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart. - Kouzes & Poster, The Leadership Challenge, 2007 (p. 351)

You can find the chapter here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/t6253917v3r27821/

First up in the exhibit were stationary engines – this one was beautiful.

It struck me that the focus in education has been on access to a stationary “engine” (sort of, bear with me) from a distance whether by radio, television, the mail, or remote access to main frame computers.

DEC 10 main frame computer operations at BYU -- Circa 1969 by arbyreed http://www.flickr.com/photos/19779889@N00/4634262886/

Next up in the exhibit were the small portable engines added on to existing vehicles. The first steam-powered carriage by Olds was like a small tricycle.

First R. E. Olds Horseless Carriage

Likewise, the portable engines of various online learning models were “bolted on” to existing teaching approaches. Initiatives like Carol Twigg’s course redesign model started experimenting with various course designs to take advantage of the affordances of new technologies.

Next up were the first “mass produced” motor vehicles. The first of this type for R.E. Olds was like a horseless sleigh.

About this time, the first roads and highways were also being built. In education, the first “mass produced” model to take advantage of the Internet and World Wide Web infrastructure, was asynchronous learning, today called online and blended learning  (see Sloan-C for more).

Next up in motor vehicles innovation was the Ford assembly line – standardized mass production. I don’t think we’re quite there yet in online learning.  Certainly, there are component parts (like courseware) and standard processes (the science of learning design and emerging learning analytics). There is a disaggregation of services in education – such as the emergence of open courseware and open textbooks; course support services such as OpenStudy; and stand-alone credit-assessment services such as CAEL and kNext. Disaggregated products were a pre-requisite to Ford’s assembly line which was based on a dis-assembly line.  Also, there are (mostly) for-profit companies that are beginning to implement these components (i.e. Kaplan, Apollo), as well as a growing trend for do-it-yourself learning and education (i.e. read DIYU, see Peer2Peer University).

So, what will our next innovation in online look like? The mass-produced, standardized quality, affordable but not luxurious, Model-T?