AJCU/AUSJAL/DACE San Salvador Postmortem

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Originally uploaded by daggerquill

I just finished organizing the photos from the San Salvador trip, and that seems as good an excuse as any to finally talk a little bit bit about the conference itself. The problem, of course, is that I really don’t have a lot to say about it, mostly because I spent the bulk of the weekend completely out of my depth.

I was expecting it to be heavily focused on professional development, best practices, and other practical aspects of distance learning, and that turned out not to be the case. Instead, it was really three conferences in one, all focused on how to leverage communication infrastructures to to improve the quality of life and education for students throughout the Americas. The discussion centered on things like the development of an international course on Central American poverty, opportunities for student and faculty exchange, and delivering education to remote an impoverished communities using radio and television. One session featured a coordinator from Australian Catholic university making a plea for faculty from the Americas to get involved with delivering a certificate in business to students in Burmese refugee camps in Thailand. The Friday afternoon schedule was essentially scrapped in favor of extending that discussion about organizing a social network to foster coordination of Social Justice initiatives among the organizations represented, and the Jesuit community at large. The entire conference left me dumbfounded, in a good way. It was a far cry from the discussions of Blackboard administration tricks and other shop talk I was expecting, and it really would have taken longer than the few days we had to wrap my head around it.

Attending the conference, though, was a tremendous experience. I met some amazing people who I won’t soon forget, and with whom I hope to work more closely in the future. Simply being around so many people actively dedicated to making the world a better place was inspiring and, I’d like to hope, motivating. And in the end, there were some good practical pedagogy chats, too.

(*The picture is from dinner the last night. It is the second half of a ham and cheese sandwich that came out of the kitchen as an unexpectedly battered, deep fried, and absolutely massive ham and cheese sandwich. In the hands of two of my fellow conference goers, it became first a piece of dorm furniture, then a volcano–that’s cole slaw spewing out the top–and then, with the addition of some strategically-placed sugar, a ski slope, and left be literally laughing so hard I was in tears. That so much was accomplished with so little material is, I think, a fitting metaphor for the entire weekend.)