Interviews - talking about myself in the OPEN

I've had four interviews now, one video, two audio and one text. I have to admit my favourite was the text one, but it took the longest. I wrote and rewrote my responses to Doug Peterson's questions to make sure it read the way I'd want it said. I was thinking out loud without really talking out loud. Here are the links to these four interviews:

• 101 Open Stories with Jenni Hayman
• Getting Air with Terry Greene
• Que Sera Sarah? with Sarah Lalonde
• An Interview with ... by Doug Peterson

I blogged [What's Your Story?] before I did the interview with Jenni. As I was talking with Jenni, I was referencing the blog post to make sure I'd mention those key points I'd written about. So, in a fashion, I was writing this interview as well as doing the video recording. Writing and thinking go hand in hand for me. Drawing and thinking also works to tease out what's really being said.

Now, I'm returning to the audio and video interviews and getting a transcribed version, as part of my ethnographic study into my open educational practices - how I teach, what I teach and why I teach they way I do. Some insights will occur, I'm sure.

After reading Ethnography in the Digital Internet Era: From fields to flows, descriptions to interventions by Annette N. Markham, there will be some deeper inner dialogues about this work I'm doing. The frameworks described are already tinkling through my brain:

• internet as tool, medium, or network of connectivity; ethnographies of networked sociality
• internet as place or world; ethnographies of immersive environments
• internet as a way of being; ethnographies of the contemporary social world in a digital age

Concepts like 'boundary marking' and 'iterative oscillation' are bringing forward some issues I need to consider in this particular circumstance. More to come.

Open Education Conference

Today, I'm attending the K-12 OPEN Conference from Athabasca University. Here are the topics, links. I did register but that is not a requirement for participation in these sessions. The recording will be made available beyond these moments in time.

1. Understanding the Commons for K-12 - Serena Henderson (CC certified educator)

2. Go Open from the Ground Up  - google slides of the presentation. Some links and resources from this session

• Where can I learn more about OER?
• OER 101
• What’s #GoOpen?
• Office of Educational Technology #GoOpen Landing Page
• #GoOpen District Launch Packet
• Office of Education Technology Story Engine
• What are policy considerations for my state? 
• iNACOL Report OER State Policy in K-12 Education 
• CCSSO OER Portal
• SETDA OER Case Studie

3. Curation Made Simple, Stephanie Slaton, Instructional Media Specialist Austin Keon - "Do good work and share it with people" - Steal Like an Artist

• Pinterest - https://pinterest.com/givemOER  
• Airtable.com - free templates for collecting resources, like a spreadsheet, pivot table; takes more time to set up, more detailed for curation, detailed library; https://airtable.com/shrqzxqC9Q2OvLxj 
• Trello - search things by tags; https://trello.com/b/7qfBAwN1 
• Evernote - notebooks, can build card templates.
• Slack teams - share and communicate tools.
• Zapier.com
• https://givemoer.wordpress.com

4. Opening Up 1-12 Education in Alberta - Frank McCallum & Lise Pethybridge

• Where is OER now and where is it going - multi author/ web site/blog 
• Multiply K-12 OER Project
• oer.adlc.ca - repository site

5.  Multiply K-12 Open Educational Resources - Dr. Connie Blomgren & Verena Roberts

• redesign process ABOER (higher ed materials) resulting from funding
• created podcasts and videos 
• ABOER starter kit - google doc 
• ABOER champions kit - google doc
• UDL considerations in file formats to be used
• 5 R's of OER - Wiley's reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, retain
• resources - videos and celebrations of OER use and users
• OER podcasts - list of participants - playlist on Soundcloud 
• Marshal McLuhan - technologies as amplification

6. Sharing K-12 Resources Across Canada: Silos, Gardens, or Open Range? Randy LaBonte

• State of the Nation: K-12 eLearning http://k12sotn.ca 
• 
  
• 
  
  http://cider.athabascau.ca/sessions 
  
  
  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/elearning/bank.html
  
  
  http://www.cforp.ca
  
  
  http://www.learnquebec.ca/home
  
  
  https://bclearningnetwork.com
  
  
  http://ocr.openschool.bc.ca
  
  
  http://teachbc.bctf.ca

One Day Late

I have subscribed to a couple of listserves and groups to enhance and extend my awareness about all things OPEN. The Open Education Digest sends me information weekly. I can collect them, return to them and link from them to areas of interest. Last week, because of my marking schedule, I put the newsletter aside and got to it today, only to discover that I had missed the day! Yesterday was the tenth anniversary date of the CapeTown Declaration. As I open the document outlining the ten key directions to move open education forward, I am delighted to see several that impact my movement into the OPEN.

I sent an application to join the GO-GN network and received a lovely email response today from Dr. Bea de los Arcos welcoming me to the community. I am happy to join this group since I know there will be lots of support as I venture into the PhD programme. I applied to this group without indicating that I am soon to be a student working toward a PhD so I was accepted on my merits as an openly active educator, which makes me feel even more welcomed. As I checked out the GO-GN twitter stream, I noticed this retweet from Rajiv Jhangiani leading to this report by Rory McGreal about Open Education Resources (OER) Applications from Around the World.

Autoethnography

While I'm pondering the nature of my action research, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) project for the OER Fellows commitment, I've been reading about autoethnographical research. This form of academic inquiry fits this purpose and my style, but as I'm reading, several BIG questions and ideas are coming to light.

I've just finished reading 'Easier Said Than Done: Writing an Autoethnography by Sarah Wall (2008). In this work she shares her experiences in writing an autoethnographic work. The acceptability of her writing to the formal and informal reviewers, for both academic and journal publications caught my attention. Since I can anticipate that my story about open educational practices could become published works or potentially lead to further academic research, I will need to attend to some of the issues outlined by Wall.

An autoethnography, as outlined by Ellis (2000), should

• fully engage a reader in the flow of the story
• offer something new understandings of the context of the story
• share discoveries and author's insights 

Wall shares a realization that her work would need to "connect my personal experiences explicitly to relevant theory and 'legitimate' method". These are words of caution for me as I venture into self reflection about course design, open teaching methodologies, and sharing in open spaces.

Sources of data for autoethnographies were explored. These include interviews, observational field notes, documents, artifact analysis, research diaries, records, articles, letters, personal notes. The artifacts that are of most interest to me include reflective journals, emails, memos and sketches. Memories are also valid for autoethnographies. The notion of "head notes" was something new that caught my attention. Wall states that "headnotes are more important than field notes". With a reference to Margaret Mead, it speaks to my position in this SoTL work I'm attempting to capture - long acquaintance with her field of study and her 'lived consciousness' where she can "perceive and record aspects of lived experience that nobody else could".

Next Steps:

• more reading about autoethnography
• examine what data and/or artifacts should I be collecting? - i.e. tweets with/from students?
• continue sketch-noting observations and readings as artifacts of reflection in the open

References:

Ellis, C. (2000). Creating criteria: An ethnographic short story. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(2), 273-
277.

Wall, S. (2008). Easier said than done: Writing an autoethnography. International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/160940690800700103

Functional Art - Chapter One and Two

The Functional Art by Alberto Cairo  Chapter 1 and 2 - graphic visualizations for reflection.

Chapter TWO 

Participatory Culture

This past week the focus for the classes I've taught has been on the concept of 'participatory culture' with resources from Henry Jenkins.
"Further to this, Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel & Clinton (2009), in their book Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, outline the features of a participatory culture." MDL4000 - Winter Term 2.1 along with this image adapted from this work.

This now connects to some reading I'm doing from Catherine Cronin - Opening up Open Pedagogy, where she's defining open learning, open pedagogies. She mentions participatory culture which caught my attention. How do these defining characteristics connect to open pedagogies and assessments.

1. low barriers to artistic expression - educators can create and prepare creative lesson designs in a variety of contexts using video, audio, text and iconographic media. 
2. strong support for creating and sharing with others - in the open educational movement there are many others to reach out to when creating or conceptualizing teaching and learning. The most recognizable forum is in the OER textbook production area. The less active group creating and sharing areas are in syllabus creating and assessment designs, but my experience reaching out to Laura Gibbs for her open assessment design is one such example.
3. informal membership - Virtually Connecting is an example of how this works in the open
4. what is known is passed from experienced to novice - within the open educational communities, those who are working in open pedagogies are sharing their expertise with those who are shifting their teaching practice. Digital Pedagogy Lab is one such space where experienced and novice work together for a 3-5 day immersive learning experience.
5. members believe their contributions matter - for those who engage and support the VC community, they feel that their contributions provide opportunities for access to conference knowledge building conversations.
6. members feel socially connected - through the use of social media, members feel they know each other. When they do get to meet in physical contexts, the conversations pick up from those in digital spaces
7. not every member must contribute - within open educational communities, there is no pressure to participate, with invitations and opportunities provided where and when individuals are interested or ready to join. The OEORangers is one example of the invitational call which led to the OER Fellows to support and engage those who responded to the invitation to participate at a deeper level.

Are all open pedagogical advocates aware of participatory culture characteristics?

References
Cronin, C. (2017, April 24). Opening up open pedagogies. Retrieved from https://catherinecronin.net/research/opening-up-open-pedagogy/

Voices in the Air

Yesterday, the podcast that I had recorded with Sarah Lalonde last Friday, went on the air. The conversation was tweeted out to my students and several took time to listen. Some connected conversation happened in class today as a followup. Episode 35: Digital and Media Literacies

Today, as part of my class time, some students who wanted to try podcasting, were given the opportunity to do so. During this time, one student made the decision to also participate - confirming my believe that, given a safe and supportive environment, students will engage in using technologies and media that they may not have tried otherwise. I'm modelling and my students are engaging, moving into the open.