My Twitter background: The "Invisible College" explained
Last week, while Tweet-sourcing metaphors to describe
Twitter, Christopher Sessums sent me a link to the "Invisible College."
I was immediately struck by the beauty of
this idea as a metaphor for the emergent vision of education we're
constructing together through our blogs, tweets, wikis and other
experiments that exceed the institutional. The last line of this
description, captures it completely "through experimental
investigation":
"The Invisible College was a precursor to the Royal Society of United
Kingdom. It consisted of a group of natural philosophers (scientists)
including Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, John Wallis, John Evelyn, Robert
Hooke, Christopher Wren and William Petty. In letters in 1646 and
1647, Boyle refers to "our invisible college" or "our philosophical
college". The society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through
experimental investigation.[1]"
I chose the image of the invisible college to represent what it is I
am taking part in right now and how meaningful this idea is to me as
an organizing metaphor.
