Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today Bonni episode 520 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, bird brains, the collective practice of getting better at teaching with Bonni Stachowiak.

Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning. Maximizing Human Potential.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:20]:

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:48]:

If you’re listening to this episode on May 30, 2024, you can pull out the birthday candles and wish teaching in higher ed a happy 10th birthday. Or maybe an anniversary is the more appropriate analogy. 520 episodes, 10 years, 10 times 52 weeks a year. Do you get it? Each and every week, an episode has aired every single week since June of 2014. So rather than sticking to just celebrating a single day or an episode, Bonni and I have some things in store that you’ll hear about at the end of today’s episode. But, for now, let’s talk about bird brains or the collective practice at getting better at teaching. I feel like there should have been a better segue there, Bonni. I don’t know.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:33]:

10 years, all of a sudden to the birds.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:35]:

I know. Wait. And that’s only just the beginning of the bad segues, so buckle up, people. Alright. Buckle up.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:41]:

Alright. Well

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:42]:

And, also, our podcast editor, I talked to Andrew earlier, and he’s like, are you gonna be blowing the noise maker things again next this episode? But I literally couldn’t it had ringing in my ears for far longer than I care to with our children. So we’re we’re not there’s not gonna be any noisemakers this time, but we are very filled with joy and excited to share about bird brains, which actually do have to share about the collective learning that we’ve both been a part of for more than a

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:09]:

decade. Tell us about feeling seen.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:12]:

You know that feeling where you just completely feel seen? I know, Dave, you recently went and spent some time with some people who are in similar I don’t even know professions, business owners, people, your friends who who can really relate to you, and I kept getting the pictures and going, Dave’s feeling seen. Well, I love that feeling. I feel so grateful when I have it. And it’s also cool when we can do that online. And I think about, like, whenever I see some kind of a meme from the television show Schitt’s Creek or even there’s going back, in fact, episode 5, I believe, Dave, I could be off by an episode or 2. We talked about lessons from oh my gosh. The movie is called inconceivable. The princess bride, lessons about teaching from the princess bride.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:58]:

I love seeing those memes. Well, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a particular meme where I I felt seen, but I also felt really not seen all at the same time, because it went like this. You know you’re getting old when you take a sudden interest in birds. And in fact, I have, in the past year or so, taken a sudden interest of birds, so ergo, maybe, you know, on the on the older side of things according to this meme.

Dane Stachowiak [00:03:27]:

I know about the conversation on the podcast about the Merlin Bird app. Is that how it started, or was it something else?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:35]:

That is how it started. Kerry Mandulak came on the podcast, and that was one of her recommendations was the Cornell Research Lab. They have the Merlin bird ID app, which I now use at least on a weekly basis in the backyard. But at first, I kinda she started talking about birds, and it was like the Charlie Brown teacher. And I didn’t so I wasn’t really listening because I’m like, oh, I’m not really a bird person. But then I heard about it that same week on another podcast that said it like this, it’s Shazam, but for birds. And then all of a sudden, it was like, oh, I think I need to try this out, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:13]:

There you go. And you have a colleague who has gotten you thinking about some birds too lately. Right? Am I remembering that?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:20]:

Oh my gosh. I totally do. So my colleague and friend, doctor Ludmila Praslova, released a book called the canary code. And, I mean, how perfect is it’s just the year of the birds, I think. And she talks about how the canary code, the title of the book, stems from the metaphor of people who are particularly impacted by dysfunctional organizational environments and injustices just as canaries in the coal mine. And she shares how and I’m actually gonna start reading from her book, the canary code. She shares that the canary in the coal mine is not a myth or a literary device. And I don’t think you’ve heard this yet, Dave, so you’re gonna wanna not not like you weren’t listening to begin with, but this is really fascinating stuff that I did not know.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:10]:

So, again, I am reading from Ludmila Preslova’s book, The Canary Code. She writes, for most of the 20th century, each coal mining pit in the United Kingdom employed 2 canary birds. They went underground with the miners as living, breathing carbon monoxide detectors. Canary’s intense breathing allows them to fly, but it also makes them sensitive to airborne poisons, and their distress was an indication that minors should evacuate. After serving that warning function, this is the part that really surprised me, because I had heard about canaries and canola canola canaries in coal mines, but I had not heard that they were actually given oxygen and revived. And I’m continuing reading here. The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England showcases a canary resuscitation device, a bird sized box with a metal frame, glass walls, and an oxygen cylinder with some tubing. In 1986, electronic carbon monoxide detectors replaced the birds, but the imagery remains a part of many cultures.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:31]:

The canary metaphor is popular in autistic culture as well as in chronic illness and disability communities. The Autistic Doctors International Group adopted the canary as its symbol because of the belief that, quote, if a workplace is manageable for us as autistic doctors, then it is likely manageable for most others. If we fall off our perch, others are likely to follow. Organizational problems like the lack of fairness, bullying, and toxic cultures impact people with much more intense senses and nervous systems before affecting others. And to close out my reading from Ludmila Praslova’s The Canary Code, she says, sensitive does not mean broken. It means processing the experience more fully and intensely just like birds process the air, the oxygens, and the pollutants more fully.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:39]:

What kinds of intelligence have you discovered that birds have?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:43]:

Oh, I have been having so much fun doing this research. I should be very clear if it’s not already clear to listeners. Total novice over here. Total novice. But I did come across a book by Jennifer Ackerman that talks about some of these areas in which birds are intelligent. So she writes, what kind of intelligence allows a bird to anticipate the arrival of a distant storm or find its way to a place it has never been before, though it may be thousands of miles away, or precisely imitate the complex songs of 100 of other species, or hide tens of thousands of seeds over 100 of square miles and remember where it put them. And I’m only reading at, you know, just less than a page of Jennifer’s book. Absolutely marvelous, incredible capabilities, and I’m very inspired by bird brains.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:44]:

Also, in case it isn’t obvious to people trying to really put another frame into bird brains, because normally bird brains are thought of as a negative thing. Oh, we are reclaiming we are reclaiming bird brains as a very, very good thing. I often cannot find where my purse is, where the things is, and the AirTags aren’t always helping me locate it very well. I mean, I’m I’m thrilled with what birds are able to do.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:10]:

You have discovered some things about learning to see. There is a note in my notes here about something to do with cheese and tying that in with birds and analogies. So

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:21]:

I did promise that this was gonna be a shift shift. We’re shifting now because we’re going from birds to cheese, but we will come we will return back to birds.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:29]:

But Alright. I I trust you. I trust you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:31]:

Yes. So we’re often told things like just do it. You know, the Nike the Nike what is that? A tagline?

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:38]:

Tagline.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:39]:

Yep. Yeah. And I kind of feel when we think back to so many of the episodes that we have had where people are kinda talking about that with regard to teaching, kinda minimizing how hard it is to do the to play these roles and, you know, just do it. Just do it. And in an episode with Derek Brough, I played a clip from the television show Schitt’s Creek, and this is famous to those of you who’ve seen it. You’ll know right what I’m talking about. It’s where the son and the mother are cooking together, and she he’s she’s trying to get him to cook her I think it was her mother’s recipe, and she just keeps saying, just fold the cheese. You just fold you just fold it in.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:17]:

What is wrong with you? Just fold it in. She clearly doesn’t know how to fold the cheese, and so I call these sort of I’ve shortened this to be, like, cheesy moments. What have been some of your cheesy moments or your fold the cheese moments or your just do it moments where it feels like whoever it is that’s thinking that all of this is very simple, you just follow the recipe and you just fold the cheese. That’s really started to resonate, but I’m not sure how cheese and birds come together. But we we can play a little bit on recipes now. You know?

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:47]:

Well, we can. You you’ve mentioned cheese. The kids are actually in the kitchen at this moment while we’re recording cooking brownies. So recipes, ingredients. I think there’s a link here to the ingredients for us to expand our individual and collective bird brains.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:04]:

So if we’re going to reclaim bird brains as a good thing and what maybe some of you learned for the first time about birds or maybe some of you already knew, how do we get those kinds of brains? And to me, a lot of this comes not in our individual cognitive abilities, but in our collective abilities to learn from one another, build community. And so Harold Jarche is someone whose work I have followed for more than a decade now, and he works in a space of personal knowledge mastery. And he talks about really to have to really be able to capitalize on the power of teaching and learning. 2 key ingredients are curiosity and humility. And he quotes Ernest Hemingway, where Ernest Hemingway wrote, we are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. And I think back to the times when I was able to speak and actually met up a few times with Stephen Brookfield, and he’s always big on that we’re never done. So he asks us to reframe this idea that, you know, I’ve I’ve okay. I I know I had to teach now, and he’s always describing it instead of I am becoming someone who.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:22]:

And this is something that I see often with things like technology, Dave, where people will say, I’m just not good with technology, and I invite us to reframe. I’m just not good at fill in the blank with whatever we perceive ourselves, and instead to reframe that to, I am becoming someone who. And Harold Jarche has for us a model that can help us build up those muscles to become better at doing just that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:50]:

So what are the three elements of personal knowledge management?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:53]:

So I’m gonna talk about 3 elements, but I’m also gonna let people know that if you’re interested in personal knowledge mastery or personal knowledge management, you can find out a lot more because we’ve done a ton of episodes. I think Dave and I have probably done close to 10 episodes over all these years on the topic, and, of course, Harold Jarche has a bunch of resources on his website. But for now, three components of the framework of personal knowledge mastery. It starts with SEEK, finding things out and keeping up to date, sifting trusted sources. Good curators are valued members of knowledge networks. The second part of the PKM framework is sense, personalizing information and using it. And this part, the sensing, includes reflection, experimentation, and putting into practice what we’ve learned just like we think our children might be doing in the kitchen right now with the brownies. We haven’t heard any sharp yelps of, this is the first time using the oven unsupervised.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:56]:

So yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:58]:

Yeah. Although there was a pullout of brownies earlier Oh, okay. Everything went fine. So

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:03]:

Oh, they put went back in to cook some more. Okay.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:05]:

Yeah. So I think it’s good.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:06]:

Okay. Good. And Cher. Speaking of Cher, we’re gonna work on recording. I think we’re gonna get to experience the Cher.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:13]:

If this episode ends suddenly or or it sounds like we came back later, hours later, you’ll know why.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:19]:

So the share component of PKM is exchanging resources, ideas, and experiences with our networks as well as collaborating with our colleagues.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:31]:

Alright. So what else, speaking of recipes, should we add to the recipe to enhance our bird brains, or or at least give us some new lenses to see.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:41]:

So in terms of having new lenses, one of the most challenging parts of about any attempts at becoming effective at teaching is that we forget what it was like to do something new. That that what is often called beginner’s mind. And so someone whose work I’ve long admired is Mike Wesch’s, and he has all kinds of great examples of him doing this in his life. He produced a single episode of a podcast he called life 101. It’s truly one of my favorite, I guess, storytelling efforts ever around teaching in a higher education context. And he also has a great video that he talks about what baby George and handstands have taught me about learning. And given that it is such a visual medium where he’s actually showing himself doing handstands and actually showing his baby short, this is more than a decade ago, attempting to learn how to walk down a set of stairs. I’m going to just encourage people to look at the video that will be on the show notes for today’s episode.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:46]:

But people like Mike Wesch have been such a good example for me to regularly experience what that feels like, because we think that, oh, yeah. We’re totally fine. I do new things all the time, and, I mean, I’m thinking about even something as small as Dave and I recently learning how to play a new board game and what was what that was like as an entry point. And I don’t even know if a board game is necessarily as good of an example because I don’t think that Dave and I had necessarily a huge fear of failing in terms of when you’re trying to learn something and there’s other people around that are able to observe those failures. And that’s just such a vital thing for us. And I’m gonna read a quote from Shenru Suzuki who writes, in the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few. So how can we tap into this beginner’s mindset by trying new things and experience the following three benefits of this regular practice. So one is a beginner’s mind helps us to heighten openness, and we can have a greater capacity for creative and adaptive thinking.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:59]:

And beginner’s mind can also help us minimize preconceptions, and we are more able to engage with the present moment. And finally, that beginner’s mind helps us to foster learning and really have joy in the discovery. And beginner’s mind is rooted in Zen Buddhism teachings. I do wanna be candid about the fact that I’m certainly not a practicing Buddhist, nor do I have a deep knowledge base in this, but I certainly have experienced what that feels like to have that kind of openness and reconnection with what it feels like to have something that is entirely unfamiliar and the benefits then to have that new perspective of what it might be like to experience some of the learning environments that we facilitate.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:50]:

I am so glad you had that experience with the game and approaching it in a new way. And you were a a definitely an inspiration to me would be a nice way to put it. My thought was when we pulled out that game and watched the 12 minute video about how to play it, what did I say? Like, could we still return this game?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:10]:

And now I already recommended it on an episode. People will have heard I think I’m I’m not sure what timing. But we we’re definitely both of us, I’m sure, would recommend this game now, but it definitely had a a harsh enter enter point.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:23]:

Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. And well, I think it it is it it’s so interesting, though, like, just the mindset you choose to show up in. I mean, clearly, you had chosen that Dave. It seemed to me to show up in a mindset of, like, learning and, finding out something new and experimenting, and I was like, oh, no. Also, how

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:41]:

did David Clark be wrong? David Clark could never be wrong. David Clark is the person who recommended the game to audition

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:46]:

Wanna do all the work and learn it

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:48]:

It was hard.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:49]:

It was hard. But I’m glad I’m glad now on this side of it. Like, so many things. It’s an analogy for everything.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:54]:

We’re having so much fun with

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:56]:

that. So many so many things in life. Speaking of life, you have a memory of your first professional job out of college and how it informs another lens we might use to expand the birdbrain?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:09]:

So my first professional job out of college was working as a computer instructor. And so my manager at the time there used to be microphones in all of the classrooms if we taught on-site. If we traveled to another business’ site, we wouldn’t be recorded. But if we taught on-site, pretty regular and would go the not not quite an 8 track. What was the I guess just a cassette tape. Yeah. Cassette tape. And then I would drive home and be able to listen to myself teach.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:36]:

And, Dave, it was agony. Oh my gosh. It was absolute agony. And I even think that wasn’t video, that was just audio, and how hard it was for me to process and hear. All I oh my gosh. I would irritate myself so bad, but I got better. I got a lot better. It was very hard feedback to take in, but incredibly powerful feedback that turned out to be quite transformative.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:03]:

Indeed. I think about you and I see ourselves on video and audio all the time now, and it seems natural, but how hard that is for almost everyone, and it was for us too initially when we first did that the first few times. It’s challenging. Oh, absolutely. How might we Dave be able to make the best use of classroom observation tools given what you just said?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:20:25]:

Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting to contrast that tape recording, which was a very I wanna say loud, and I don’t literally mean it was loud. Like, I couldn’t listen to it in the car, but loud in my brain to try to process. But all I was processing the tape of me teaching those computer classes was just processing what I thought was good or bad, and we can really be hypercritical of ourselves. And so instead, today, for those of us that teach in a higher education context, there are so many different classroom observation tools that are far more grounded in research. And, specifically, one that I want to mention comes from the group of co authors of enhancing inclusive instruction, student perspectives and practical approaches for advancing equity in higher education. And the 3 coauthors are Tracy Addy, Derek Dube, and Khadijah Mitchell. And these authors have gone and really rooted their work in students, and the students and performing a bunch of qualitative research and identifying 15 inclusive practices.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:21:37]:

And they have an entire website that is set up to help. The tool is the protocol for advancing inclusive teaching efforts. And if you’re curious about this, I’m very much looking forward to inviting Tracy Addy to come back on the show. I did see on social media that she’s recently moving, so I thought maybe not this month of emailing her to see if she wants to come back on the show. But I’d love to have her explore it with us more further. But I do wanna encourage you if you’re interested in a classroom observation protocol, I can highly recommend checking out the link in the show notes and learning more about this particular project and the research behind it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:18]:

What’s one thing you’d invite us to do in remembering to cultivate our bird brains?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:25]:

The biggest thing that I would invite everyone to remember, including myself, you are not alone. And I mentioned Jennifer Ackerman, the author of The Genius of Birds, when I was talking about some of the birds and their intelligence capabilities. And one of the things that she talks about in her book, some of you may have seen these before, Looks like a a whole flock of birds, but instead of, like, geese, how they’ll fly in a v shaped formation, It looks almost like maybe, Dave, you might help me with this description, like a cloud of birds moving together, and it both looks like chaos, but totally orchestrated chaos at the same time?

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:14]:

I’m trying to think of the mathematic term to use for this, and I don’t feel like I have a good term off the top of my head. But it’s like a it’s a cloud of birds that you can’t see the individual birds, and it moves and pulses. And it’s really probably folks have seen it on YouTube or something, but if you haven’t, look it up because it’s really fascinating to see. And I forget the name of the bird that is the bird that does that with large groups.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:23:38]:

Yes. And I I I may have it. Oh, starlings. There we go.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:42]:

I was like, it’s coming back to me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:23:43]:

So this is known as murmuration, and this is synchronized movement and collective intelligence that we can observe in flocks of starlings and other birds. And so Jennifer Ackerman writes, each bird is interacting with up to 7 close neighbors. So something I think is interesting, if you just watch the video, and I will have one in the show notes if you wanna check it out, it kinda looks like the whole mass is working in concert, but it’s working in concert, but with these smaller group formations. Jennifer Ackerman continues to write, making individual movement decisions based on maintaining velocity and distance from fellow flock members and copying how sharply a neighbor turns. A group of 400 birds can veer in another direction in a little over a half of a second. And there are three reasons why birds if anyone’s wondering why on earth do birds do that, why birds and people engage in murmurations. There is strength and solidarity, so they have safety when they’re a part of that whole from predators.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:59]:

They can have warmth and information exchange. And I think back to what we talked about with personal knowledge management and thinking about really that common good. And finally, they have optimal group dynamics. There’s cohesion and individual strengths. And someone who’s been on the podcast many times before is my friend and often collaborator, Maha Bali. And she talks about that she writes in an article, which I’ll also link to. Her article is entitled outside in entangled openness as subversion influencing emergent change. And she writes about both the murmurations as a kind of distributed or decentralized care, and then she compares that for much of the work that she has done through her early work with virtually connecting, where it was making conferences more accessible to people who weren’t able to join, and then in so much of the work she does today in equity unbound.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:04]:

So that’s really when I think about this, Dave, and why I’m so excited to be celebrating with you today is I think back to sitting I remember exactly where I was sitting upstairs in my office and you sitting there and us sort of deciding, you know, our like, how to sort of process. Our our daughter was just a few months old at the time and kinda like, how am I gonna move forward? And you were like, I’m not sure, like, what exactly you should do, but, like, I do know you should just keep podcasting. So I’m I keep thinking every time I say the phrase, just keep anything. We just saw our daughter in a production of Finding Nemo the musical this last week, so everything’s just keep swimming.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:44]:

Just keep swimming.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:45]:

So for me

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:46]:

keep swimming.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:47]:

It’s been 10 years of just keep podcasting and how incredibly grateful I am for this community of bird brains that I have formed these networks with and and not en masse, but really, like, in small groupings and and the ways in which people have connected me with other people with similar interests and struggles and challenging, and we’ve wrestled with things together. We’ve been angry about things together. We’ve cried. We’ve expressed joy together, and what a beautiful, beautiful murmuration this has been for a decade.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:19]:

And today is just the beginning of the celebration of 10 years of teaching in higher ed. So what else do we have coming, Bonni, in the next year?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:29]:

Well, one thing that was very helpful to me was instead of thinking about trying to come up with an episode that could be worthy of this decade of work of every single week doing this, of airing an episode for that long, it just was too much pressure on me to feel like I can do this, and so I had some people asking me questions and and talking with me where I realized, did I have to celebrate it on a single episode? Let’s celebrate it for the whole 10th year. Why not? And so what we’re gonna be doing is to celebrate the 10 years starting in about August because more of you listen. You can’t some of you in the United States than North America, it’s our summertime, so some of you kinda maybe don’t listen quite as with the kind of regularity that you might during your academic year. So when we all are likely to be coming back to or continuing on with an academic year, we are going to be launching an opportunity where we can surface and share our stories and our experiences together. And I’m so excited about this. I do get to have so many one on one conversations or sometimes coauthors will come on, but how fun it’s gonna be able to be to open up this community and get to laugh together, perhaps share some pain together, and share some ideas, and and share our stories of teaching and learning together. And so I’ve been able to partner with GooseChase. GooseChase, some of you may already be familiar with, but for those who are not, they say experience is everything.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:04]:

And they were originally inspired by scavenger hunts, so that may be where you’ve heard of them. I know for me about a decade ago, Dave, I was at a conference where someone introduced me to their virtual scavenger hunt platform and the app and everything, and I’ve been familiar with it ever since then. Goosechase is an online platform that enables organizations and schools to engage, activate, and educate their communities through delightful interactive experiences. And goose chase experiences are created online, but they take place in a real world context, and we’re kind of interested in bringing our worlds together through a teaching and higher ed experience that, again, we’ll be launching in in about mid to late August. And we’re so excited about that, and we’ve already had some meetings. And, boy, my gosh, the the people who lead there at GooseChase are so good at asking great questions and at getting me to think more creatively and more critically about game experiences, and that is something that we’ll look forward to sharing as we produce this experience for teaching in higher ed.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:08]:

Cool. Can’t wait.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:10]:

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. And my recommendation is from I Dave, I know both of you and I, we know a lot of people who love the television show doctor who, but doctor who has been airing since, I think, the sixties. And so the idea of, like, how would you ever get started with this universe that it feels like we’re so far behind? So I came across an article by an author who I like a lot. Her name is Sarah Bessey, and she wrote the beginner’s guide to doctor who. And so she talks about in the beginner’s guide, she’ll talk a little bit about some of the characters, and she’ll familiarize. She’s very careful about not spoiling anything. I love her intentionality behind that. And then she recommends 3 different paths that a person could take to start getting into the television show doctor who.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:01]:

And so our family well, first of all, Dave, I don’t think you’ve decided fully if you’re coming in or not with us, but 3 of the 4 of us have decided that our entry point is with the most recent season of doctor sorry. The most recent what do you call it? It’s not a season. But

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:17]:

Yeah. Iteration.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:19]:

That sounds right.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:20]:

I’m sure there’s Doctor Who fans that are just

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:22]:

pounding on the Hudson. At their podcast player. So we are starting out with the Disney plus, which is the the current one right now and have been really enjoying it a lot. And so I don’t wanna give too much away just because so all of it’s there. If you’re interested, how would I ever jump into doctor who? Even if you really like doctor who, I think you’d enjoy this article by Sarah Bessey. And, Dave, I’m gonna pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend today.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:46]:

Bonni, as the international president of the Bonni Stachowiak fan club. I do feel a responsibility here on your 10 year anniversary to recommend you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:57]:

Who am I?

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:58]:

As, many of you know, Bonni has been speaking at conferences and events and faculty development experiences for many years now all over the place. And she has just created a new talk titled, Bird Brains, which sounds familiar.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:15]:

This episode has been inspired by a few of the aspects of what you’ve been talking about. And, you’ve also recreated another talk from almost from scratch. And the feedback that you’ve been getting on this latest talk, which you did virtually actually, was how practical and actionable the session was. And also, as you said earlier, the importance of feeling seen in a context that’s not always easy to do online. And the thing that I think is really, special about I mean, so many things special about you. We could do ours. The in this context that you’ve had so much experience because of your prior career in technology and now as an educator and your passion for learning and using online resources and working in hybrid environments and all the things you’ve been doing over the years. It’s, it’s been really fun to see how you bring keynotes and presentations, both in person, virtually, and then sometimes a combination of the 2, and it’s been really fun to watch.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:19]:

So for folks who are thinking about that, planning for events, hopefully, you’ll reach out to her and consider her for one of your future events, and we’d be honored to talk to you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:29]:

There is a link on the Teaching in Higher Ed website, which I’ll put in the show notes if you’re interested in engaging on that. And thanks so much, Dave, for being here and celebrating a decade. A decade.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:43]:

Indeed. It’s been a long time, and we’ve got a whole year of celebration up ahead. Thanks so much for including me. I’m honored.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:52]:

Today’s episode was produced by me, or should I say by Dave and me, by Sure. Bird brains. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. If you’ve yet to sign up for the weekly updates from Teaching in Higher Ed, now is the time. Go over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe, and you’ll be able to receive the most recent episodes, show notes, along with some other references and resources that don’t show up in the regular show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being a part of the teaching in higher ed community, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.