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.

Putting it in the Bank

Part of the Extend East activities includes adding ideas and thoughts to the 'bank' of information available to other extenders. For each module, there are a variety of activities or teaching & learning tasks to select from - it'll become a rich repository of great ideas, crowd sourced from extending participants.

The six modules follow the framework set up by this graphic [CC licensed] that outline mindsets and actions required by educators in current higher education contexts. These include

• Teacher for learning
• Curator
• Technologist
• Collaborator
• Scholar
• Experimenter

These are not new to me, but I'm engaging with them as an experienced educator who has more to learn. Since there are many opportunities in these modules to enrich my perspectives and reframe my understanding, I'm engaging as much as I can. I'll continue to contribute to the bank and keep a record of my 'deposits' to track my 'return on investments'.

My first four 'deposits' include

• Misunderstood

  Analogy for Learning

  https://extend-bank.ecampusontario.ca/examples/analogy-for-learning/

• Concept Map

  Mapping it out

  https://extend-bank.ecampusontario.ca/examples/mapping-it-out/

• Cornell Notes

  Combining strategies

  https://extend-bank.ecampusontario.ca/examples/combining-strategies-cornell-and-sketching/

• Driving a Car

  Lesson Plans

  https://extend-bank.ecampusontario.ca/examples/lesson-plans-are-like-learning-how-to-drive-a-car/

The first one, a blog post, caught the attention of Doug Peterson, who talked about this with Stephen Hurley on VoicEd Canada in their weekly podcast This Week in Ontario Edublogs. I happened to see the notification on Twitter and caught the live radio show, but will now go back and link in the 'banked' recording. I'm always excited when my blogs extend beyond and catch other's attention. I'm humbled by the power and potential of sharing my words and what they may mean to others.

Keeping Track #OExtend - Daily extends week one

At the end of the first week as an Eastender Extender, I can honestly say I'm having fun. It's not quite a MOOC but it's got me doing things, creating things, building connections and getting feedback on what's happening.

First: the daily extenders. These are quick tweets done daily to connect to conversations about the topic of the day. These usually take a few minutes to create and then a quick check in a few times a day to see what others' are saying. So far, it's been an interesting conversation:

• oext103 - an everyday metaphor for extend [Metaphorically speaking!! Breaking out of the snow and cold!]
• oext104 - Fit a big ambition on a post it note [Build global digital citizenship understanding]
• oext105 - What can you say except.... You're welcome. Share something that deserves gratitude [Rules of Netiquette graphic]
• oext106 - Worst learning outcome statements [Worst Possible Outcome: Students comprehend & perceive critical thinking factors to know & be aware of, while values are accepted, apprehended and understood. They grasp, have knowledge of, and learn the core concepts in course content through assessments.]
• oext107 - Overload [Cognitive overloaded. My brain on overload - when I'm on the red line but the info I need is at the end of the green line!] Tweeted with an image of the Tokyo Subway system.]
• oext108 - Simple Sunday Extend: Sock share [two socks image attached to tweet - Colour Me Rad and eCampus Ontario socks make a perfect pair]
• oext109 - Seek some hidden curriculum [Not explicit, hidden under learning events = become a networked, connected educator. #NoMarksForThis #WIIFM Leave the course with your own #PLN to #KeepLearning]
• oext110 - Celebrate a technical accomplishment [Celebrating this 'union' of two great knowledge organizers! It's my contribution to @ontarioextend #oext110]
• oext111 - What don't I know? [Admitting it here first! I don't 'git' what the 'github' is all about? Would love to know, but it's all foreign like wiki wondering and html language to me!]  added a Power Ranger giphy.

If you want to see all 9 in one place, the Ontario Extend leaderboard links to the daily creations by each of those participating. Interesting way to keep things organized. You can see my leaderboard HERE. 

Openning a DoOO

As part of my Extend East participation, I've been sharing with others through the #oextDaily tweets. I've created a couple of blog posts and linked them into the Ontario Extend Bank. I've been reading and creating while learning and building connections from content to knowledge. Yesterday I went another step into extending and created my domain.

While I've already got two domains that are mine - hjdewaard.com is my Weebly domain and FiveFlames4Learning is my Wordpress domain, this is where I hopefully will migrate and create a 'super domain' to connect them all under one location. Not sure how that is going to happen, but for now, I'm taking advantage of the eCampus Ontario offer to have my domain hosted by Reclaim Hosting. I've claimed a domain that is unique - hjdewaard.ca is now mine and only mine. Here I will craft my launch into a new digital identity.

After looking at many other digital spaces listed in the Ontario Extend Domain of One's Own documentation, and reflecting on my own unique style, I'm deciding to go with a launch space that builds from the primordial metaphors from David Thornburg's Campfires in Cyberspace. These have resonated with me over the years and as I was grappling with this last night, I can neatly fit the digital work I've done, am doing, and will be doing, into these metaphors.

In the next few days, I'll try to craft with care, knowing that this is a beginning and that one space to rule them all will not necessarily mean that all the others will end. My work on the blog site Five Flames for Learning will continue but I can collect and share all the multiple blog spaces I've created over the years under the hjdewaard.ca domain.

I am open to the challenge of Domain of One's Own. It's a chance to reframe my digital identity and reshape my digital persona.

Wrinkles in time

Today is the day that the movie of Wrinkle in Time opens in movie theatres. It's appropriate that I revisit this blog now, after a block of time away. I'll make an effort to continue posted here on a daily basis. This week has also been Open Education Week - which I've been participating in, in some small ways.

On Monday, I was one of the guest speakers in a webinar hosted by Katya P. from OCUL (Ontario Colleges and Universities Libraries). I unfortunately was double booked for this time and my efforts to do both at the same time did not work out as well as it could. My open participation was done from a dressing room in a wedding dress shop and finished at a table in a coffee shop.

On Tuesday, I participated in the eCampus Ontario Extend workshop with a colleague - we drove to Peterborough, Fleming College to attend in person. The three 'legs' of this program include 1. daily creates, 2. activity bank, and 3. Domain of one's own [Extend Studios]. This work will be done under the umbrella of six modules [Extend Modules] which will distribute badges as we create and produce content. I started blogging with the Ontario Extend category linking my Five Flames blog site to the RSS feed with other's blogs [Extending into the Open]. I collected a list of #ExtendEast participants on Twitter and shared it on my blog.

Today I'm participating in a webinar [#OER18 preview] hosted by Teresa MacKinnon in the UK with guest speakers Lorna Campbell, Momodou Sallah, and David Wiley. I joined after receiving a notification from Teresa about this session and was able to fit it into the day. The full day of Open Education webinars [Open Education Week Web-a-thon], this being only one of many being done today, has been organized by Jenni Hayman, presented using the eCampus Zoom resource. I'll also be joining Jenni for a few moments in an eCampus Ontario chat session.

It's been a busy week, since I have also suffered through a nasty head cold. This hasn't held me back but did have me staying home rather than driving to teach my class last night. I'm fortunate that my students are capable of creating and participating using digital technologies, so teaching from my home was not a problem. I set up the learning 'events' to engage the students with the content from the web page for the day. Open access, open learning.