TravelinEdMan - The World Is Open

We/I have lost a true friend. I still remember meeting him about 13-14 years ago at the E-Learning conference in April 2002 in DC which I believe Elliott Masie hosted. Near the end of the conference, there was a group of people sitting around various tables and reflecting on how the conference went. My friend Dr. Ellen Wagner pulled me aside and told me that I had to meet a guy sitting with a group of people at a nearby table. His name was Jay Cross and he was among those who 5 years earlier had become known for a new trend called E-Learning. We had a fascinating conversation that day and dozens of times after. There is no one out there with whom I can have candid feedback about pretty much any learning question that I might come up with. Jay knew pretty much everyone and everything in the field. He was a mentor, confidant, guide, inspirer, listener, creator, experimenter, and world knowledge synthesizer. No one like him in the world.

Whether Jay or someone else had coined the term e-learning mattered little. What mattered was that there was something unique that had emerged for delivering instruction to masses of people around the planet. Jay recognized this technological event was anything but ordinary. In fact, Jay himself was anything but ordinary. I was delighted that Ellen Wagner had pointed him out to me. We soon became good friends.

Jay seemed to know everybody. He certainly interviewed or reviewed some of the foremost authorities in learning and technology in his Internet Time blog. So much history of the fields of training and education, learning technology, e-learning, computer science, organizational culture, performance improvement, and business management in those posts. A college professor might assign his or her students to scour through Jay's Internet Time blog (as well as other resources from Jay Cross) and find some of these excellent historical pieces and hold class discussions on them. In fact, I may try this idea out tomorrow with my class.

A decade ago, when I was working on my monster book, "The Handbook of Blended Learning: Global Perspective, Local Designs," I felt fortunate that Jay agreed to do one of the two forewords. The other foreword was from the well known scholar, Dr. Michael G. Moore at Penn State. Jay's advice in that article was spot on as usual. Now that Jay has passed and that particular book is nearly a decade old, I decided to send email asking the good people at Wiley/Jossey-Bass if I can post the forewords to the Blended Learning Handbook to my PublicationShare website. I have taken the liberty of posting them for now and will remove it if they say no.

Jay Cross and Michael G. Moore. (2006). Forewords to the Handbook of Blended Learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs. In C. J. Bonk & C. R. Graham (Eds.). Handbook of blended learning: Global Perspectives, local designs. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer Publishing.

As Jay points out, "The ideal blend is a blend of blends." See Jay's Figure F.1. Dimensions of the Blended Learning Stew. Thanks for those insights on blended learning Jay!

At the end of the day, Jay Cross was a champion of others. He would interview them. He would write to them and ask their opinions and later promote them when and where he could. He provided such services for me on many occasions. Jay would also organize teams of people to discuss new trends and innovations or to respond to some of his own ideas and recent writings. Examples of such team meetings might include ideas about new forms of conferences or meetings, some new synchronous conferencing technology, discussing various informal learning examples, and/or pretty much anything you or he might dream up. In addition to those group meetings, Jay would often gin up a novel idea and solicit feedback on it. Across it all, he was amazing.

I interacted with Jay on many occasions since that first meeting. Among them was the American Educational Research Association (AERA) meeting in San Francisco on April 10, 2006. My long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Kim Foreman, arranged for a special event over at San Fran State University that night including Ke Zhang, Bob Reiser, Brian Beatty, Jay Cross, myself, and others. I spoke on blended learning. I think Bob Reiser from Florida State University discussed some aspect of corporate training or human performance technology as did Jay. Many of my current and former students attended the event. See pics below. Unfortunately, of the five people in the first few pictures below, both Kim and Jay are now deceased (see my August 20, 2010 blog post on Kim).

I tried to get Jay to do the "Indiana I" with us, to no avail.

Jay and I both delighted in the overflowing crowd that was attracted that evening. Standing room only and many people sitting on the floor at SFSU.

Jay dazzled the crowd.

Then we went off to dinner. I still could not get Jay to do the "Indiana I" with a group of my current and former doctoral students at IU.

A few years later (January 27, 2009 to be exact), my colleague, Dr. YaTing Teng, and I had he privilege of walking the streets of Berkeley with Jay. And of course we grabbed some excellent lunch and he told us many a fine story. I cannot remember why I was in the Bay area that day (I will assume that I was at a conference of some type), but I am glad I was able to stop in to see Jay.

See below...unfortunately, it was not Jay's car, but why not take it for a spin? Jay seemed to know everybody except the owner of this car. Too bad!