Details, Details

The first half of my professional learning plan's online course component is up and somewhat running--submitted for evaluation as part of my coursework in EDLD 5318: Instructional Design in Online Learning.

As I share my thoughts on this, you may want to buckle up and prepare to go down a metacognitive rabbit hole. Yes, I am aware that rabbit hole trips typically do not involve seat belts. My blog, my rules.

At any rate, my first mental pass at this post involved a passing mention that whoever said "the devil is in the details" knew what they were talking about. Then, because I am who I am, I immediately asked myself, "I wonder who actually said that?" (Metacognitive rabbit hole. You were warned.) And faster than you can say, "Quick, to the Google search bar!"...well, I went to the Google search bar.

Apparently, the phrase "the devil is in the details" came into use as a variant of "God is in the detail," which, depending on whom you ask, is a French (maybe German) saying popularized by Gustav Flaubert (or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, or his colleague Charles-Édouard Jeanneret Gris, or any one of a half-dozen other people). It was here that my investigation sort of trailed off, partly because of my intense and slightly irrational hatred of all things Flaubert, but mostly because I got to thinking about how both sayings, wherever and whomever they came from, seem particularly applicable to what I've been doing.

Nothing focuses the mind like minutiae. In honing in on the tiny logistical details of the course I'm creating, I am both discovering things that aren't working out as well as I hoped and things that are developing into something beyond what I thought possible. Clearly, God and the devil are both hiding in the details of my grand plan. Now to say a little prayer and get back to work on the second half....