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.

In Conversation

I truly enjoy learning in conversation with others. Sharing ideas, actions, insights all add to my own thinking, actions and curated resources. So, the first conversations I had this week with the OER Fellows, with some of the OEORangers, and with Jenni Hayman, all added to my knowledge construction.

The opportunity to meet for the first time with the OER Fellows, in Zoom, was great. We are a diverse set of open advocates with varying skills, fluencies and contexts. The plan is to next meet in person to do a deeper dive into our collective understanding of what it means to be an open educator in Ontario. We'll explore how we can support the open movement (OEM) to adopt and adapt open resources (OER) as we shift teaching and learning into open pedagogies and practices (OEP).

The conversation with others in the OEORangers group is a means to breaking out of institutional silos where work is often done in isolation with no ripples outward to other organizations of higher education. This conversation creates ripples across the college/university divide and builds connections between individuals (faculty, staff) who are openly advocating for access and adoption of OER.

In chatting with Jenni Hayman, I was able to dip deeper into my own work as an OER Fellow and try to understand my position in the 'grand scheme of things'. We shared ideas, contacts, interesting details and common interests. Planning for a series of webinars over the coming year fits into what I hope to accomplish and we tentatively looked at early July as faculty begin course design and syllabus production. Other bits of the conversation included:

• Bento Box series - 12 apps of Christmas as mentioned in the Catch
• Becoming an open educator - UK Open Education site; OEPScotland; Lorna Campbell
• Christina Peters - #GoOpen Fellow in the US; 20 states using OER?; zero professional learning about OER or OEP
• BCCampus OER toolkit (need to take a look for this)
• CCGlobal summit - she's working on session to develop mini-modules on OER and SDGs as learning outcomes, tied to UNESCO work; connected to Rory McGreal and Pedro ? from Peru as mentors
• EdX course on Media Literacy - Dan Gillmore on YouTube doing interviews with media experts such as Mimi Ito
• Roger's diffusion of innovation being applied to her research work on Open is an Invitation: Sense Making and OER. 
• REB (research ethics board) approval process takes 4 times longer than you think; each institution has their own process; 
• she's working with approval and distribution through teacher/learning centers to recruit participants in her study with pre-questions, workshops, webinar, post questions - has letter sent out already but awaiting REB from four institutions she's working with.