About 200 students and faculty turned out for a magnificent presentation by Jim Groom last Friday.

We wanted Jim to help us announce our “Ed Parkour” idea to the university faculty, and he didn’t disappoint.

In typical Jim Groom fashion he “parkoured” right to the front of the room, launching himself down the steps and dropping to a roll, dislodging both of his microphones. Brent Anders (our generous and wonderful video technician) cringed a bit, but we were off and running again in no time.

He began by quoting Dylan Baker who says, “Parkour also influences one’s thought processes by enhancing self-confidence and critical thinking skills that allow one to overcome everyday physical and mental obstacles.”

“Doesn’t this sound a lot like higher ed?!” Jim exclaimed.

We love the metaphor of parkour because it invites us to see the structures of the world not in the terms of how they were intended to be used, but for how they might be used. Walls, obstacles, and barriers become objects to be leveraged, harnessed, and sometimes altered. The practitioner of parkour sees the world as a playground of possibility. Likewise, the practitioner of Ed Parkour tries to leverage and harness the “walls” and “structures” that try to control learning. Ed Parkour is learning around, over, and outside the walls.

Jim took this a step further by noting that at the core of this movement are two important values. The first is “human reclamation.” This one is of vital importance in today’s technology-saturated world. The practice of Ed Parkour asks us not to reclaim the human by denying the technology, but by mastering it and using it to create in our own terms. At this, Jim is a master, inviting his students into wildly creative adventures, digital stories that integrate into their everyday lives and thereby demonstrate how they are ultimately the authors of their lives, but only if they choose to take on the responsibility.

The second value is non-rivalry. To this end Jim demonstrated how students can become involved in ongoing communal art projects such as the one he has helped engineer at The Daily Create.

The most beautiful part of the talk though was not what he said, but how he says it. Though they call him “the Reverend” he is not your typical preacher teacher. He is more like the conductor of a grand orchestra, harnessing and leveraging the skills of those around him and allowing them all to play beautifully together. It is no surprise that DS106, his course on Digital Storytelling, has not been contained within the walls of the University of Mary Washington. It is spreading, with students from New York, Kansas, and Japan now involved, and this may just be the beginning. Virtually everybody in the room wanted to be a part of the class, and some of them already are(!), signing in virtually and contributing their own creative assignments.

Obviously, we can’t say enough about what a joy it was to have Jim on campus. Enjoy the talk.