Sparks flying

It's even busier, now that the marking is done. Each day I have a plan for tasks to complete and then I 'flow' into digital spaces, stopping to read and reflect. My current flow is streaming from Virtually connecting.

The Virtually Connecting conference schedule, with five conference events being organized, has been the focus for me in the past few days, and will continue into the next few weeks. I've created two blog posts for two conferences [Creative Commons Global Summit, OER18] and will begin the post for the OEGlobal conference in Delft. I will be actively participating in one capacity or another and supporting others to take on some new roles in the community. This NodeXL visual graphic shows the connections and my space/place in the open framework for the Creative Commons Global Summit and Virtually connecting.

I've also blogged a bit for the Ontario Extend activity bank

• Extending My Reach
• Bank Deposit
• I'm an Experimenter - a Lab Report

Only now I realize that some of the links are dropping and the pathway to my new Extending Thinking blog site, through Domain of One's Own is 'dead'. I'll need to put this onto my learning list and become better at managing my own domain through CPanel and Reclaim Hosting. 

I've added a blog post to the VoicEd.ca blog with some thoughts about nurturing The Reluctant Voice.

I've tweeted each day for the Daily Extend.

In reflection - I'm wondering how these are going to impact my 'SoTL' research for this eCampus open education fellowship. Something to think about this week as we dig into the SoTL module.

Remixing - it's not obvious

Serendipity led me to Bryan Mather's blog post on the OER18 conference website this morning [It's Obvious].
From there I took a turn on remixing his images in a way that made meaningful connections for me.
The remixed image:

Here's the link to the remixed image in the Sandbox Gallery.

Then, I tweeted out to others to extend their interactions.

Followed by an addition of this item to the Ontario Extend 'make one' - this was a first time for me.
Openly creating and making, code breaking (with hex colour codes for fun) and connecting.

Doing the daily deed

I've been engaging with the Ontario Extend daily tasks - called Daily Extends - since the kickoff event on March 6th. It's a manageable make on a daily basis. My hook into doing a daily deed. It's habit forming and I'm now looking forward to the prompts posted and then figuring out how to respond. Not always the correct ways, but they get the deed done! When I jump in early, it's sometimes easier but sometimes it's a bit more challenging so I'll wait till later in the day so I can see how others respond. Then I can 'riff off' of someone's post to create my own extensions.

There's a leader board but that has never been part of my purpose. It's the daily 'make me think' that keeps me coming back. Last year I participated in a daily doodle for a month. I know there's another doodle challenge going on right now, but this will have to wait until I've completed the daily extends. Only one daily thing can happen at a time - otherwise it's too distracting and nothing else will get done. So here's my daily extends - https://extend-daily.ecampusontario.ca/hashtags/hj_dewaard/

There may be nuggets of wisdom or just plain fun, but over the course of almost a month, there's certainly a trail of digital breadcrumbs, left out in the open, as I create, share and connect with others in this engaged, community space.

Continuum

I've just finished a session with Maha Bali and Autumm Caines talking about Virtually Connecting. It was a session with folks from the University of Coventry, Digital Media Learn Lab (@disrupt_learn). The focus was on virtually connecting from conferences, in conversations, with relationships of trust and vulnerability. I'm left with a feeling of being misunderstood and battered by positions of privilege from those who don't face the same barriers of finances, space and place. As I write this, I'm thinking of the feelings Maha must feel when constantly being questioned about building relationships in open, digital spaces through video conversations. Why does this one event leave me with these feelings and impressions?

I'm not accustomed to confrontational stances. Most people I speak to in open spaces have a less assertive stance in our conversations. This was different. Push back, provocative statements, and feelings about binaries are leaving me feeling unsettled after this session. I'm going to come back to this post since there's a continuum involved and I'm at the low end of it right now. ..... more to come.