Yesterday I returned to Berkeley after a couple of fun-filled, stimulating weeks in Europe.
I’ve been coming to the Continent for the last half century but I’m still a wide-eyed tourist who revels in the art, antiquity, and eccentricity I encounter on the other side of the Atlantic.
The nominal reason for this trip, the tenth annual Learning Technologies conference, was great fun, particularly because I shared the closing keynote address with two pals, Donald Clark and Charles Jennings. We didn’t rehearse; we didn’t need to: we’ve been following one another for years. The day before the event, George Siemens and I toured the Imperial War Museum, chattering about learning and society (and the horrors of war) for hours. I talked myself hoarse conversing with friends old and new.
From London, I took a cheap flight to Bilbao and then a bus along the northern coast of Spain to the beautiful country village of Santillana del Mar. I wandered up and down the cobblestone streets, contemplating my next book, and took in the recreation of the nearby Altamira cave paintings. (I will get back to the book topic in another post.)
I left Spain by way of Bilbao, enjoying both the Guggenheim and the narrow streets of the medieval city. Next up: Rome.
Over the course of two days, my friend Robin Good took me on an incredible tour of ancient Rome, wandering the narrow passages he frequented as a boy between delightful houses and beautiful churches. Art and history and great architecture everywhere we turned.
Traversing Rome on the back of a motorbike puts the taste of adrenaline in your mouth, but that was the only way we could see everything on the second day’s agenda: the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, the Palatine Hill, the Circus Maximus, and the Aventine Hill for starters.
If you know Robin’s site on Professional Online Publishing or saw his presentation on learning at LeWeb this year, you can imagine our topics of conversation. Robin and I read the same books: Ivan Illich, John Taylor Gatto, and dozens of other learning revolutionaries. We spent hours talking about social media, the wrong-headedness of schooling, the boredom of traditional learning, and the importance of informality.
Here’s an impromtu interview that took place in Robin’s office near the Vatican. Robin’s reach is incredible. More than half a million people visit his sites every month. Over 13,000 have already watched our interview!
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And it was great to see you in Europe – and I fully appreciate that Olympia2 is hardly “Old Europe”. For many years I went annually to St Paul de Vence and last year, after a gap of some 15 years, I went again. When I said to a friend, “It hadn’t changed” he said “It hasn’t changed for a 1,000 years” – that’s “Old Europe!
Very best wishes. Alan