Last month I had the opportunity to let people know about The Open Learner Patchbook via the PressEd Conference. If you want to get your mind stretched open in regards to using WordPress in your pedagogy, check out each of the presentations, which have been curated in to moments here.
The Open Learner Patchbook is a very basic use of WordPress in comparison to the others. But still, I think it’s cool. Here’s my moment:
I was also very happy to get the chance to chat about the Patchbooks at Davidson College last week. (Here are my slides for that one.)
The excellent round of questions that arose from the Davidson talk made me realize that it is high time for the Open Learner Patchbook to have its Pressbook version (like the faculty patchbook already has) built so stay tuned for that!
This is a blog post version of my talk this morning at the Fleming College Spring Teaching & Learning Day. I spoke about how using Twitter can help you grow a professional learning network. And maybe a little bit about how PLN building is not a shmoozefest just for your own personal benefit. It can and should also be of service to others.
I only had 25 minutes, and I’m writing this before it happens, so here everything is in a more lasting format. What I hope happens is that we, the people reading this and those in attendance can hatch ourselves a nice, juicy PLN that leads to innumerable mutually beneficial connections.
For starters, here are the slides I used. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure situation here. As I lay this out in blog format, I’m going to have to choose the pathway for us. I hope that’s ok.
I choose to start with “Twitter is a Sauce”.
What I mean by that is that if your PLN is a stir fry, then Twitter is the teriyaki. The protein and veggies are friendly, shary people, communities, and organizations. It’s also things like podcasts, blogs, sites, courses, conferences, events and more. Twitter helps them stick together and turns them into something tastier and more fulfilling.
We don’t even need to take my word for it. Here in this post by Sarah Wendorf, as part of her work in the Ontario Extend mOOC, are no less than 18 ways, with awesome examples, how she uses Twitter to make that stir fry for your heart and mind. And many of those ways are not for Sarah’s sole benefit. Most of them offer her own expertise and ideas and access to her PLN in service to others. Saucy!
Okay, we are ready for our next path. I choose to go to “Sweet Tweetin'”
The Sweet Tweetin’ section is your basic “what exactly can we do with a tweet” 3 minute tutorial on how twitter works. I tried to find a couple of tweets with a lot going on so that we could break it down and see what can happen. I found this one which includes an original tweet with an image and a link, a quote retweet, tagged people, likes, retweets, a reply. This gives us plenty to look at. You can do a lot with a tweet.
A second busy tweet to look at is this one which included a Twitter moment (which represented a conference presentation that was held ON Twitter), some hashtags, another quote retweet and tagged people:
Check out @greeneterry's all-tweet presentation on The Open Learner Patchbook, and then come see him in real life next Tuesday at our Spring Teaching & Learning Day where he'll talk about Twitter as a Professional Learning Network! #FlemingLDS#NFE2018https://t.co/NWczQ8tTD5
These were just examples of the things you can do. It didn’t hurt that the tweets themselves were about things I hoped were of interest to the attendees to check out, hopefully serving as an example of Twitter being saucy.
I guess now would be a good time to see what the No Problems Here choice is all about. Is that a herring?
I hope we survive this pathway.
oops.
Go check out slides 9-11 in the slide deck to see what happened there. It’s just a reminder that Twitter is not always sunshine and lollipops. Let’s go back and try again. “Working the Net” next okay with everyone?
Working the ‘net’ is seeing what we can do with our PLNs. What can we get out of it? What can we make it do? For starters, we can ask it for help:
I once asked two people in my PLN directly for some Open Education Slide decks to work with. What resulted was this collection of slide decks from about 30 fabulous people and orgs that advocate for Open Education. There are probably 1000+ slides to work with in there. Nice work, PLN!
I also wanted to show how you can offer access to your PLN to others. It will still benefit you to find out what your PLN can come up with for answers to a question posed by a friend. This one just took a quote retweet:
Look through the replies and follow threads and you’ll see that now McMaster has like 30 awesome books to order for their Teaching & Learning unit and that I am now part of a book club with some awesome folks in Oklahoma.
Okay now we have no choice but to head to “Follow”ship. What’s that?
“Follow”ship is a short fellowship in following people, in order to kickstart a PLN, right here and right now. I started by going over a few things that I have found via twitter that I treasure. You can check those out in the slide deck.
There’s nothing left to do now but make our PLNs grow by attacking this twitter list – PLN Kickstart List – with a whole lot of pressing of the “follow” button. The link takes you to the member list, so you can follow the heck out of everyone on the list that you’d like. DO IT!
The list includes any of those attending the talk in person that I could collect and anyone mentioned in any of the slides. I hope this list amps up a whole whack of networks. You want on the list, too? Ok! Pop your name in here.
I find that the PLN makes the work that we do less lonely, so I hope this talk and this post can serve to help you make some new connections that will work for all of us. I’m happy to connect with you.
Want to go deeper? Do today’s Daily Extend, today’s involves that same PLN Kickstart List and takes it a step or two further.
featured image credit:”Hatch!” flickr photo by chidorian https://flickr.com/photos/chidorian/173712147 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Digital Pedagogy Lab in Toronto. There were five intensive tracks. I chose to go for the Digital Storytelling track led by Chris Friend. I worried maybe I was taking the safe route by choosing a topic I’ve done some work in before. I think I kind of just wanted the chance to jump back on that horse.
When you see other track leads like Martha Burtis, Dave Cormier, Jesse Stommel, Sean Michael Morris and Amy Collier there’s some serious FOMO, even while you’re there. Chris was the most unknown entity of the bunch to me. I’m glad he is unknown no more.
Digital Pedagogy Lab puts us, the participants, very much in the centre of the “what are we going to do while we are together” question. The leads, therefore, cannot know precisely what we’ll be doing. I imagine it takes a lot of courage to hop on a plane to another country to deliver a three day intensive session and not know exactly what bits of their expertise they will need.
So what did we do? We discussed our story ideas, worked them, focused together on things here and there that seemed to be shared needs or interests, spun our wheels, worked our ideas some more, shared our ongoing progress. In true open pedagogy fashion, Chris began and we built up a shared doc. (I’d share it here, but I am not convinced everyone in the group would okay that. I will update with the link if I can.)
We took some time to chat about what we might want to get out of the stories, what emotion we wanted people to feel, what purpose it would serve. Much of the time Chris spent one-on-one helping guide these stories out. Many digital routes were pursued.
Mine went nowhere.
It was not for lack of effort or anything but my cavalier attitude towards closing my laptop. I came in to the experience completely fascinated by one of the suggested readings, unphased that many of my fellow track members seemed to despise it with a passion. I wanted to do something kind of out there. Something that threw you in to the middle of the story not knowing much about what’s going on. I wanted people to feel “wonder”. My pursuit of wonder was even discussed live online in one of three wonderful Virtually Connecting chats during the event.
My secondment at eCampusOntario ends soon so I wanted my story to be about my experience, for the folks back at Fleming College. I am well aware that there is not enough there for “wonder” to be experienced. I mean, some folks may wonder where I’ve been but “wonder: the emotion” is not really on the table here yet. My shot at that comes from the incredibly enabling opportunities that open education offers. My story was meant to offer rabbit holes to the things/people/experiences that I’ve been lucky enough to work on or near for the last 2 years. Things which I believe have the potential for wonder.
So… it looks I like laid a very simple task out for myself: Provide a bunch of rabbit holes to wonder! I’d been a little bit enthralled lately by the idea of text based adventure games that Sidney Shapiro had been working on with his students, but learning Python was not in the cards just now… So I thought I’d go with a Choose Your Own Adventure format (since I’d recently done okay with the idea in a presentation format.)
Track mate Kendall suggested I try out Twine – an open source tool for telling interactive, non-linear stories? Sounds perfect. And it certainly was, except for their weird to me way of “saving” lol.
I concocted a story that involved a condition known as “Post-Secondment Frazzle” in which one has no recollection of ever being away. As I wander through Fleming College, I run into people I know who had had the same experience who would help me to find out what I’d been up to at eCampusOntario. This would ultimately lead readers to different rabbit holes (hopefully) of open education awesomeness as we worked together to cure my frazzle.
It was coming along, but still very much a work in progress. Not sure if any sense of wonder was imminent or anything. But then at the end of day 2 I closed my laptop without doing whatever Twine needs you to do to save but not call it save.
40+ passages were nuked. So I got nowhere. Back to the drawing board.
But, #DigPed, you definitely took me somewhere. You took me somewhere when Sean Michael Morris’s opening remarks dropped the mic and the gauntlet right from the get-go. You took me somewhere when Rajiv went extra personal, experimental (and fun) with his opening keynote. You took me somewhere when you left us to sit in our work for a while during workshop time. And you pushed me somewhere when Jess Mitchell didn’t let us go easily with the closing keynote.
Put together, it sent me on a path somewhere. And like Jess said, “completion is good for bridges. It’s not good for community.” I’ll be headed that somewhere for a while and I’m glad some of this somewhere is with you and everyone involved in all of this.
photo “ONTARIO-00368 – Colour my World” flickr photo by archer10 (Dennis) 198M Views https://flickr.com/photos/archer10/14656590048 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
I’m a new member of the Squad Goals Network. I’m grateful to have been invited in by John Stewart (but you don’t need an invitation) when we connected to record an episode of my podcast. He told me about this group of folks doing this strange thing… working to bring people together, share each other’s stories, and (more than anything) lift each other up. It shouldn’t be so strange, but it is a little.
It’s is a bit like a PLN (professional learning network) already built for you because guess what? According to Squad Goals Network member Angela Gunder, as soon as you think you want to be involved, you are a lifelong member. And what does membership get you? Access to people who may have some of the experience you could use right now. People who can answer your questions and point you in good directions. People who can lead you to other people that you can learn from. And what we get from you is the same. We get access to you, your experience. We would be lucky to have you.
Now what is this “met” squad goal I mention in the title of this post? It’s my own goal: to truly connect with one of the members. I already knew John Stewart and Keegan Long-Wheeler and have connected on Twitter with more, (including Ryan Straight, who is masterfully leading the spooky Squad Goals Network social media for October) but to actually have a chat with someone is a big step to being truly connected. So I asked Angela to come on to my “Gettin’ Air” podcast. She was kind enough to spend her lunch hour at the Global Online Learning Summit to chat about her work, and the squad. I also seem to remember being roped in to running the Squad Goals Twitter for November. If you want to hear more about the squad, have a listen! It will be published here on Friday. Also, if you’ve read this far, that means you have read the words “Squad Goals Network” over three times. and you are now a member of the squad. It’s kind of like Beetlejuice that way.
In fact, if you want to hear the podcast right now, sneak on in here and listen to it, or read the (editing in progress) transcript before it comes out!
Last week the Open Education Conference was held in Niagara Falls, New York. I am going to hark back on my experience there for my third post of the Ontario Extend 9x9x25 Reflective Writing Challenge.
Post #OpenEd18, now deep into followup micro obsessions (H/T @jesshmitchell): @drmjbishop's Niagara Barrel Heroine, the 63 year old Annie Edson Taylor, first person to daredevil over the falls (having first tested the efficacy of her barrel on her cat): https://t.co/3h2rkApbjO
I had a barrel of fun, but I am going to reflect on things I wish I did differently while there. I’ve been lucky enough to attend the last three Open Education Conferences. I’ve also been lucky enough to meet and become friends with many people in the community. I get excited to see them and eager to catch up.
So here is the first thing I wish I did differently: I wish I did not skip the speed networking that followed Jess Mitchell’s very, very wonderful keynote on the opening day. And I wasn’t the only OpenEd “veteran” to do so. In my haste to see some people I already knew, I missed the chance to connect and help people newer to the movement. I could be a helpful node in your Open Education network, and I missed a chance to offer that help. Maybe it’s not too late though, if you’re reading this and want to connect, please do!
OpenEd is truly full of people who would LOVE to chat with anyone interested, would LOVE to bring more people in to the fold. It’s been billed as the family reunion of Open Education. Which can be great, but can also seem like a club that is hard to get in to. And “club members” may say that you just need to say hi and we are happy to get to know you, but that is intimidating, and frankly kind of hard to pick the right time when someone you want to meet is deeply engrossed with catching up with an old friend. I will do better to offer up my network connectivity status to others in the future.
Another thing I wish I’d done differently is a more long-term missing out. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to truly recognize the importance of Wikipedia in Open Education. I got the opportunity to try to contribute a little bit to Wikipedia in an edit-a-thon run by Bonnie Stewart and Amy Collier. The prep work that went in to this was unbelievable.
I'm super proud of the crew that worked on these pages. Hugs and a million thanks to my fellow #OpenEd18 Wikipedians (many of whom did not start off as Wikipedians) https://t.co/SueDBIriBo
The simplest (simple, but not easy) way to introduce a non-disposable assignment to your class was sitting right there the whole time! Add to Wikipedia. Believe me, the process is academic as heck. As Robert Cummings said in his session on teaching with Wikipedia: (paraphrasing here) Academic writing is too often writing what you think and then finding things to support that. Wikipedia writing flips that so that you are working with nothing but truth. This is probably so obvious to most, but I’ve been busy looking at other ways to embed open in our teaching and learning. Wikipedia was just too “already there” for me to think hard enough about. Not anymore. So what I wish I did differently at #OpenEd18 is to learn more directly from Amy Collier and Bonnie Stewart about how to Wikipedia while I was in the same room as them. Luckily though, Daniel Lynds is hard core and has already pushed me to meet with him on a regular basis going forward to finish what we started.
Which takes me to the final thing that I wish I did differently while there. I wish I thought and acted more directly about what to do next. Make not just connections, but plans to connect and take action. It all comes at you so fast, but making solid plans to do something with someone holds more weight when you make those plans in person. I saw others taking action. Ken Bauer and Joe Murphy promised to complete their patches of The Open Faculty Patchbook for me (woot woot!). It’s not like I have no plans, I just wish I made more direct plans with people while I was there. A couple things I did nail down is that I will be interviewing Billy Meinke for my podcast and helping Ken Bauer with the Virtually Connecting podcast! NICE.
#OpenEd18 Student Panel They've come from all over the state to let us know how experiencing #OER has helped them squeak by. We can do more to make it less of a squeak. pic.twitter.com/g1twAI8ech
— 👻 Terry it's almost Hallowgreene 👻 (@greeneterry) October 12, 2018
We can make a huge impact with each other. Maybe it would be cool to try to have a daily theme at a future conference. Day One, helping newcomers feel welcome and connected, Day Two: normal conference day stuff, Day three: plan for action together. And sprinkled all throughout, making connections to those who couldn’t be there a la Virtually Connecting.
We’re going to need a really big barrel to fit us all in together as we go over the falls.
This is IDIGOntario‘s 2nd post of the #9x9x25 Challenge
When I signed up to be on the IDIG team I very vaguely said that I would like to write something about the “Front End Analysis” phase of Instructional Design. Also known as the “what are we doing and why” part.
If you do this part well you can avoid making big mistakes down the road. You might even realize that you shouldn’t even do it at all. You also tend have that “come on, come on, let’s get going!” feeling buzzing around you. I am feeling that right now as we prepare to try a new way of delivering Ontario Extend in January. But no matter how many angles you try to anticipate, something will surprise you when you implement it.
A good example of this came from the scholarly project I worked on to complete my Master’s of Instructional Design. I created an instructional Alternate Reality Game (ARG). It was designed to help youth identify problem gambling behaviours and to know how to reduce their harm. I completed a lengthy front-end analysis in which I tried to anticipate who the learners would be and what needs I should meet to help them complete the game. I never considered that some kids might not be up for suspending their disbelief in what was meant to be a fun way to learn.
Tyra aka Chance the “missing” dog
The first test went great, with a group of ninth grade students who were asked to participate and agreed of their own accord. They had fun and were successful in taking the story to its conclusion. The final test run, however, was a different story. In working with the program facilitator for the gambling awareness group, we chose to bring the game to test it out on an entire class of (I think) 11th grade students at an “alternative” high school. I don’t recall too much about the make up of the class or the reasons they had enrolled in a “different” kind of high school. In general you could say that the students were rightfully kind of pissed off about how their education was going so far.
They didn’t want to pretend. They didn’t want to suspend disbelief. They didn’t give a damn about rescuing a fake dog. They completed the game activities, but it would have probably served them better to give them a handout describing the harm reduction strategies and to just have a frank discussion about how these things have affected their lives. I remember clearly the look one student gave me when he realized I was trying to trick him into playing along. That’s when I knew that this program was not even close to the right thing to bring to them. It was utterly deflating.
The results of the test run were that yes, students reached the objectives. Learning was measured to have happened. But the feeling in the room was not the fun buzz I was working toward in the back of my mind. It was a stark opposite.
I’m going way over 25 sentences by digging in to that anecdote. My point is that I did not anticipate, at all, that this idea of learning via a game would resonate so poorly with these students. I didn’t ask the right, or enough, questions in my front-end analysis. JR Dingwall’s post in which he did ask the right questions to help bring about a great result, is what got me thinking about what questions to ask in the beginning.
So I ask you, what are the big questions you ask yourself and others when you first sit down to analyze a potential ID project? How can you avoid making something that leaves students feeling flat and misunderstood?
“Question?” flickr photo by spi516 https://flickr.com/photos/spi/2113651310 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
Soon you’ll be hearing the pitter-patter of little feet is a bit of a weird saying when anticipating the birth of a child. You hear a lot of other stuff for months before any footfalls. Maybe it should be the screamy- shouty of little lungs.
Speaking of pitter-patter, it’s time for me to get back at ‘er. I’ve been off on parental leave since early June with our third daughter, Hattie. It’s been a fantastic, sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled, tear-and-some-giggles-filled summer. But today I return to the team of Program Managers at eCampusOntario which is also wonderful and caffeine-fueled with some giggles (less tears, for sure).
This post is written for me to get my head around where to go from here. Below I will list the challenges I put to myself for the foreseeable future. If you have any thoughts or would like to wrestle any of these challenges with me, let me know.
Ontario Extend
Ontario Extend is a program designed to help educators better use technology to enable learning experiences. It has a set of modules as well as a suite of websites designed to connect Extend community members together to share what they are learning. It’s good fun and it requires daily care to keep it growing.
So, two fun challenges for me here:
One is that Extend had Alan Levine running the show all summer, showing Extenders how to take it to the next level with weekly meet ups and a Domain Camp. A series of weekly posts Alan made has left us with some fantastic fundamental resources for educators who want to stake their claim to their digital teaching and learning spaces. I plan to catch up on all that he has done and keep building from here. The GIF below represents what I hope not to do here.
A second challenge with Extend is that David Porter and Valerie Lopes are zeroing in on completing some research about the Extend Community. Which means we will learn about what works and what doesn’t. Which means we will get the chance to do some revising to make it better. A great opportunity.
Gettin’ Air
This is my podcast on voicEd Radio. It’s time to kick off Season 2! On the show I chat with those working in open and technology-enabled learning. The idea is for people to ‘get some air’ time to share what they do in the hopes that some people listen and get inspired to try new things or even share what they do as well. I challenge myself to increase the diversity of the voices coming on the show. The show has focused mostly on chatting with those working in Ontario, since we are here to serve Ontario Post-Secondary. But now I think that hearing what is happening outside of Ontario will serve us well to hear, too. Look for a mix of Ontario educators as well as some more global voices this season. If you want to chat with me on air, I want to chat with you! Let me know by commenting below.
The Catch & The Pitch
These two blogs are designed to regularly share quick snippets of goings-on in open and technology-enabled learning in Ontario. The Catch is focused on things from an educator’s perspective while The Pitch will collect the stories of learning with technology. The Catch ran all last year, but The Pitch is yet to throw its first post out there into the great wide open. Stay tuned for posts from both soon. The challenge is to get these two working off of each other and connecting the stories and people from both perspectives.
The Open Patchbooks
The Open Learner Patchbook and The Open Faculty Patchbook are ongoing projects to collect stories/how-to advice for teaching and learning and putting them together into something resembling a bigger picture. My challenge is to get more contributions, especially for the Learner Patchbook, and put them together and publish it as an open book in Pressbooks (or maybe the sequel for the faculty one!) If you have any thoughts or know anyone who might want to contribute, let me know in the comments below! I am very excited to get to speak on this topic at OpenEd18 next month. Maybe I will see you there!
I attended last year as a participant but this year I wanted to do a little more by submitting a proposal to run a session about The Open Patchbooks. Rumour has it that my proposal arrived to CC as the very first submission. Fact has it that my session was accepted (YAY!) and slotted in as the very last presentation. Sunday evening at 5 p.m. (LOL!)
I’d been having fun throughout the weekend claiming that, technically, I am one of the headliners of the event. Like Beyonce at Coachella.
On the other hand I realized that in reality most people would be on their way home when my session occurred. Not to mention that the weather outside was utter nonsense.
Anyway, I figured I might as well get a little weird with it. I very much appreciate the eight of you who did attend. You are my heroes. You’re weird too, though.
The 31 embedded tweets below should explain things
1. #CCSummit#Patchbook I decided to do 2 weird things for this #ccsummit presentation: -Tweet out all my slides via scheduled tweets a la #pressedconf18 (because it's 5 p.m. on Sunday and you probably left already) -Do it in the style of an old music compilation TV commercial pic.twitter.com/sF8TfW3t0X
If you love openly licensed stuff designed to help each other learn in a compilation format, you'll love… (see next tweet in less than a minute!) pic.twitter.com/N2OzDrNFC3
Each person shares their story of their take on a teaching or learning skill. Put them together into: A Community Quilt of Learning and/or Teaching pic.twitter.com/7PjvziEJB9
Started collecting the other side of the story this January. Again each contributor just picks one aspect to write about and share their personal take on it.
All new patches appear on their respective sites as they are received. We can then take a collection and move them to @pressbooks to publish a "quilt" Have done one for faculty patchbook https://t.co/oEDYWOdWc8 and will do so for Learner Patchbook, too pic.twitter.com/4ASQY0S5V1
Kenzie shared her story of growing up with dyslexia and how she overcame this barrier to her ability to and enjoyment of learning. pic.twitter.com/ZCiMUoEzrI
Bullying continues into college and maybe there's even less support to help those affected. See this patch about how it affected Mary and what she's learned about how to deal with it. pic.twitter.com/yjJJWVfJpP
Brittney Babin from @CambrianCollege gave not only her peers some tips for working with instructors, but also some things for faculty to hear about how they must shoulder some of the relationship building load as well. pic.twitter.com/MHhg1TleOP
All about how Terry Greene thinks lesson planning should go and how @blackjodie32 can make it better using Universal Design for Learning Principles. pic.twitter.com/MA6U4BwjjA
Sheets Ain't Cheats@Katklimbstrees shares her take on allowing cheat sheets for various assessments and in the process reveals just how awesomely she is in her students' corner. (all these images are openly licensed & attributed on patchbook sites btw) pic.twitter.com/O9zTMB4eKX
Bigfoot & Blindpsots@GeorgeFogarasi's writing is like fine jazz as he takes us through his years of learning about respect for students and how it plays out, especially with international students in the mix. pic.twitter.com/GvYOPaSFIX
The Shift Keys@Bali_Maha and Azzah Awwad share how they redesigned assessments to promote learning at the American University of Cairo. pic.twitter.com/LBX4nVIyIC
Fish and Wildlife Technician Ryan Hill shares how a new class comes together by connecting their shared interests and experiences. pic.twitter.com/NvdCH8B9EW
We will keep posting as long as we keep getting patches for either version. Write one about your teaching, about your learning, or make it into an assignment for your students. Connect with me @greeneterry to do so. pic.twitter.com/1q0w2Qgql9
“If… your main concern is that you’re not getting enough engagement or it’s depressing to not have eyes on you, or see nothing but laptop decals, well… You may want to look at your lecturing style.” pic.twitter.com/excqyxg8ae
We had an awesome logo design done by https://t.co/Xyh3TL4PuD and plan to get some shirts made up for Open Learner Patchbook contributors. Maybe you will get one!
(this was the last tweet, feel free to ask questions/comment) THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME! pic.twitter.com/eDmBpfZtay
The PressEd Conference (still going as I’m putting this together) was today. It’s a conference on Twitter, about WordPress in education. No travel. No expenses. No fees. Maybe not even pants.
THERE WAS SO MUCH COOL STUFF. Take the rest of the year off and sort through #pressedconf18.
What better way to collect the stuff from my presentation than on WordPress (good suggestion, fellow #pressedconf18 presenter, Alan Levine!)
Here’s my collection of tweets about Ontario Extend.
Extend is the opposite of a visit to a national park. Leave your stuff everywhere. A trail of your participation. Current cohort of “East-Ender Extenders” https://t.co/MQGcgV6qzH leaving their mark so that others can use their work as cues for their own. #pressedconf18 3/15 pic.twitter.com/n1GQZ4n6vi
#pressedconf18 Yesterday's Daily for example. "Stop Your Crying, It's a Line of The Times" https://t.co/1uGO3kq73A from Collaborator Module. we collaboratively created a timeline of (not so) important events. fun bit of practice with a new toolhttps://t.co/dTDlMAhntE
Example from Activity Bank: Misunderstood – Identify a concept often misunderstood in your discipline. Can you think of an analogy that can help make the concept make sense to students? This activity now has 10 responses. MORE PLS!https://t.co/HHvoxjxMxO#pressedconf18 8/15 pic.twitter.com/Nf8CnVpnjr
The University of Alberta Ski Team put on a fundraising party in the fall of 2002-ish. Being of the “drinking team with a skiing problem” mentality, they had themselves a fun slogan to print on the tickets.
We Go Down Fast
The only reason I still remember this is because the ticket printers made a little mistake and printed something else.
We Go Down East
Why did they think “we go down east” was a ticket-worthy slogan? They must have thought the fundraising was for a ski race in Quebec or something. Who’s to say? All I know is, as far as misprinted ticket stories go, it’s my all time favorite.
In another story of going “east”, a group of intrepid Ontario post-secondary educators are about to kick off the Ontario Extend East Cohort on March 6th. Together we’ll experiment, curate, and collaborate with technology for teaching and learning. We’ll do it all in the open.
It works a little (maybe a lot) differently than most P.D. events you may have come across. There are four pieces. One of them stays still and the others are on the move. The one piece that stays still are the modules themselves. Six of them: teacher for learning, curator, collaborator, technologist, experimenter, scholar.
The moving parts are where the fun happens.
The Activity Bank – A place to add your response to all of the various module activities. You get to see what your peers do with it rather than everyone hiding their work in a dropbox. For example, the “Please Allow Me to Introduce My Field” activity already has a few responses. You also get to add more activities. It’s a bank where any deposit one person makes can be withdrawn by anyone and everyone.
The Daily Extend – A place for short and sweet daily activities. Why? Two good reasons are that it allows us to easily connect with each other on a regular basis and gives us all low stakes opportunities to dabble with new tools and ideas. This is the Experimenter module reaching full actualization. And it tries to be fun. Like this one: Taylor Swift Curriculum Design
The Domains – This is the flow. Maybe sometimes a trickle, sometimes a babble, sometimes a flood. A central place where all of everyone’s work will appear. You’ll see blog posts that are responses to module activities, posts that are new activities, reflections, calls to action, new ideas and new plans. Hopefully even stories about misprinted fundraiser tickets. See the “East Cohort” central flow here. You’ll see this post there, because I threw my blog into the mix. We’ll show you how to do it.
What I hope and believe the Extend community can be is a slightly informal and loose yet strong and lively connection of faculty members engaged in teaching and learning with technology in the open. If you’ve ever felt lonely in your pursuit of providing great learning experiences to your students, you can say goodbye to that. It’s going to be awesome.
So far there are approximately 60 people from across Ontario signed up to participate. As in the misprinted ticket story, “east” doesn’t really mean much. Everyone is invited. And if March doesn’t work for you. We’re running the “West” cohort in May. We’ve even got a couple of current students lined up to join in and keep us on our toes.
Comment below if you have any questions or comments. See you “down east”!
image credit: “No Fast Skiing” flickr photo by Joe Shlabotnik https://flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/349939582 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
