The Ghost of CC Future

The whole reason the Ghost of Christmas Future shows up is just to say “Don’t eff this up, Ebenezer. Get your act together and avoid your terrible future”. It worked for that cranky old bastard and it could work for us.

On Saturday at The Creative Commons Global Summit in Toronto, Ashe Dryden showed us some of our past futures. Things that we used to think might be our future. What I take from that is the need to think about the things that could have happened, the things we hoped would happen, the things we hoped wouldn’t happen and what actually did happen to help us try to forge the best future that we can. The ruby red-lipped, shark people of Jupiter with 8-pack abs have not yet taken over, but we still want to avoid it. Maybe they are super chill, though, so who knows?

So in that spirit, I want to make sure I don’t squander the opportunities that attending the #CCSummit afforded me and forge the best path that I can from here. If Scrooge can do it, I can, too.

Here’s my quick list. It is not exhaustive of all the things I want to take from the summit, but it’s my start:

  • Read my signed copy of ‘Made With Creative Commons”.

Popping into Helen DeWaard’s Virtually Connecting Session with Rajiv Jhangiani (@thatpsychprof)

  • Get CC certified and hope that they go with tattoos as their form of certificate/badge because that would be tight.
  • Use those pretty pictures on unsplash. Hopefully they can get themselves a button on the CC Search page. Found a pretty sweet one of a ‘ghost’ for the featured image of this post, I think.
  • Finish colouring my Women of The Commons colouring book if I can get it back from Alice.

  • Work to put a project in place to make sure we’re using all of the open textbooks that we can and move towards contributing as well. All the amazing work BC Campus has done for open textbooks is soon going to be adopted by eCampusOntario so that we can join the party, too!
  • Convince Matt Ryan and Tom Jenkins to get on Twitter and join the party.

What’s your CC future?

 

Feature photo: https://unsplash.com/@luisdelrio

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

p.s. Here are the culprits who broke the news/Internet

 

Digital Pedagogy: It’s Like Riding a Digital Bike

The saying, ‘it’s like riding a bike’ means you just don’t forget. Even if you don’t use a skill for a long time. You can pick it right back up. I can see that has truth to it, but it got me thinking about what it is actually like to learn to ride a bike.

It starts out with just about as much support as possible. A grown up literally supporting you, balancing you, giving you instant feedback and encouragement. And oh the rush of emotion when you actually do it on your own! Just a few months ago, I witnessed this happen. The boy shouting “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!” as he rode away for the first time. It struck me that I witnessed an event that boy would probably remember for the rest of his life.

After that first time you ride away from your support person, what kind of ‘formal’ instruction do you really get or want in your bike riding skill acquisition program? Not much at all, really. Now it’s all about experiential learning. You learn from the crashes what not to do. You learn from exhilaration what to do. You try different bikes and they feel weird at first, but then you figure it out. You roll over new terrain shaky at first, but then you get used to it and enjoy the challenge.

I can remember most of the actual instructional events in my life to do with biking. Probably because they are so few and far between. Any formal tips or tricks for biking have been searched and sought out on my own here and there in magazines or from other cyclists and I have just been ‘experientially learning’ the rest of the way (the experientalliest learning being the year I spent as a bike courier.)

But I digress and lose sight of the point I haven’t yet made. So, to review what I’ve been trying to say: learning to ride a bike includes large amounts of start up support and then you’re mostly on your own.

I think that the bike-learning methodology is kind of what it’s like to wade into the digital world as an educator. You can find those opportunities for the start up support to get going, but from there you’re on your own to choose your path. Going into new systems is like trying out a new, different bike. WordPress might be your all purpose commuter and a flat-tired unicyle might be your Learning Management System. And like biking, you can get more out of it by adding some accessories (Slack, Twitter, etc) and joining a club or community (Virtually Connecting, #OpenLearning17, #ds106 etc.). Your friends are here to help, but it’s up to you to ride through new terrain and feel the wind blow your hair back. It’s great fun that you have to work for.

“Bike near campground First Landing State Park” flickr photo by vastateparksstaff https://flickr.com/photos/vastateparksstaff/33089545372 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

featured photo: “riding bikes” flickr photo by jonny.hunter https://flickr.com/photos/jonnyhunter/1043775061 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

 

 

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