Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday I attended several sessions, all of which were quite good.  I especially enjoyed a session entitled, When AI Meets Education:  Strategies for Realizing the Potential, presented by Larry Ragan and Brad Znedek of Penn State.  Their presentation described a new initiative to develop the Penn State Center for Online Innovation in Learning that opened this past year.  The Center wil be focusing on the role of artificial intelligence in education.

In the afternoon, the keynote address was given by Matthew Luhn of Pixar.  Entitled, The Power of Storytelling to Inspire and Engage.  A lot of interesting comments about the role of storytelling in producing award-winnng animated films as well as in everyday life.

In the evening, Mary Niemiec and I had the honor of making presentations to the three new OLC Fellows:  Laurie Dringus (Nova Southeastern University), Vicki Cook (University of Illinois at Springfield), and Jill Buban (Online Learning Consortium).

At dinner, a group of eight of us had dinner at the Bluezoo seafood restaurant.

Tony