(Both the foreground and the background images have been made with Wordle and processed with Gimp)
I went to explore the forest and I have found some flowers. Flowers are beautiful and it makes you feel good to find beautiful things. I didn’t pluck them because in my hands they would die. Instead, I will go back to find new ones and perhaps even more beautiful ones. The magic is not in the flowers but in what it let them grow.
This post is just to say thank you to a number of people I knew within the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course, people to whom I owe something. Different connections, dialogs, ideas, some contrasts, not all the possible connections that could have been explored. For sure, some possibly great ones have been lost. Never mind, what it is important is that bunch of vividly colored connections. They are very important to me because they reduce the strong sense of loneliness I have in my work.
The background of the picture is composed putting in Wordle the index of my university’s site, institutes, departments, services, labels. Closed boxes, the people inside, closed. We talked about the role of openness in education in this course; there are books on the role of openness, even on the management of companies, nowadays. The university here is desperately closed and static, at all levels.
In this course I learned new things, discovered new perspectives, found new resources, got the right mood to take new actions but the most precious gift was the possibility to share uneases, feelings, yearnings with someone else. That’s why I like to put your names together as a bunch of flowers.
Thank you.
Andreas Formiconi 
La stessa solitudine che lei dice di vivere al “lavoro” la provo io a “studiare” per questo ho scritto la lettera che lei ha gentilmente pubblicato.
La tristezza è il nostro movente: dove ci porterà?
Hello Andreas,
I love flowers! And the ones you have presented are a lovely tribute to connected learning and the connections we have made. I am honored and humbled to find my name in their midst.
For your sharing of your teaching, I thank you! I’ve truly enjoyed this window onto your practice.
My very best wishes,
Lan
Fatto Sara, l’ho aggiunto io.
Grazie!
Prof un post davvero commuovente. Mentre lo traducevo avevo la lacrimuccia…
Scusi ma come si fa a mettere il link all’inizio del post per indicare la pag con la mia traduzione? Perchè non mi riesce di metterla.
Sara Fiaschi
What a beautiful bunch of flowers! A great gift to all of us and yourself. This is a blend of passion with reason, isn’t it? And everyone of us is touched with your passion.