OEGlobal - collecting ideas

I've just returned from two weeks of travel in the Netherlands. One week was focused on the OEGlobal event and the second week was for touring and family. So many insights and thoughts, but here I'll focus on the OEGlobal collaborations and connections.

Arriving at the conference venue with Pete was an interesting beginning. It was held in the common areas of TUDelft where students milled around and through the spaces in which conference attendees circulated. Once I had ensured my registration and dinner tickets, we walked back to our hotel, stopping at a local grocery store to pick up food and drinks. Each day I walked to and from the university site to the hotel, enjoying the views and environment of this lovely little corner of the country. 

The OEGlobal web site has a repository of all the events and keynote live stream videos.

• keynotes information page 
• keynotes live streamed videos
• schedule of presentations - searchable by name or topic
• gallery of photos from each of the days 

The OEFellows also kept a collection of collaborative notes from sessions attended. In this shared document are links and presentation slide connections.

Some key pieces in this and the OEschedule 

• Conceptualizing OEP - Catherine Cronin & Iain McLaren
• Links from Catherine Cronin 
• Transformative Learning: What can it teach us about introducing educators to OER
• Open Enough - eight factors to consider
• Open Education and Open Society: Popper, Piracy and Praxis Rob Farrow
• GO_GN OER - links to presentations, works in progress
• Verena Roberts - Open Educational Practice: Expanding learning environments in K-12
• Jenni Hayman - Making Sense of Open Education

My Professional Self

I've just read a chapter in the book The digital academic: Critical perspectives on digital technologies in higher education. This piece was written by Inger Mewburn (The Thesis Whisperer) and Pat Tomson (Patter), both of whom I've been reading quite a bit lately. There are several points in the chapter that resonate for this work I'm doing as an Open Education Fellow with eCampus Ontario.

Although the focus of this chapter is about blogging through a doctorate, it has relevant insights for me as I blog through this fellowship. I am creating my 'professional self' as an open educator in a specific manner - one that may not be evident as I do this work. When I get to a point of 'completion' I'll be able to look back, pull the data from the various social media spaces, analyze the qualitative and quantitative content, and hopefully provide some insights into this work.

The data collection conducted by the two authors was done using Survey Monkey, targeting those who were in their doctoral programmes and who were regular or intermittent bloggers. They selected 193 respondents from the 278 responses and used software (DeDoose) to code the data. Four trends became evident - creating a scholarly persona, slow thinking, pleasure seeking, and knowledge sharing. These are definitely four reasons why I blog in many specific circumstances and topics.

For this blog site, the key purpose here is for slow thinking and sharing resources, insights and topics of interest with myself. This is not a fully open site or one that is my usual blogging space, but it is not hidden or private. I do have another blog site that is both, where I post thoughts that are mine alone, not open for public consumption. My public and professional self does have a private space for reflection and engagement as well. So many layers and levels of negotiation into the open learning and teaching spaces are necessary and healthy, I think.

I'll go back to the DeDoose site and read/review the users guide to learn more about this technology in preparation for my upcoming course.

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.

New framework for open - CARE

I've been caught up in a conversation - well, as digital conversations go - about a framework for stewardship of open educational resources (OER). This started with a tweet from Jim Luke (@econproph) that was retweeted by Robin DeRosa (@actualham). The blog post Jim wrote [OER, CARE, Stewardship, and the Commons] caught my attention since I knew nothing about the framework being described. I noticed that Jim will be speaking at both the OER18 and OEGlobal conferences coming up in April.

So I began to read and dig a little deeper.

The framework comes from Lisa Petrides, Douglas Levin and C. Edward Watson - Toward a sustainable OER ecosystem: The case for OER stewardship. It proposes the following:

"The purpose of the CARE Framework is to articulate a set of shared values 

and a collective vision for the future of education and learning enabled 

by the widespread adoption and use of OER. It aims to address

the question of how an individual, institution, or organization 

seeking to be a 

good steward can contribute to the growth 

and sustainability of the 

OER movement 

consistent with the community’s values."

The article continues to expand on the role of stewards to contribute, attribute, release and empower.  These roles are described as a 'duty of care to the broader OER movement'.

The framework is discussed by David Wiley in a blog post [The CARE Framework] where he makes several interesting points. His followup post [The CARE Framework, Take 2] continues the discussion. I appreciate Wiley's belief to 'release early & release often' since it brings attention to a topic worthy of examination. I'm not sure I would have found this without the various tweets referencing this topic. Wiley begins by clarifying his stance - he likes the framework.

Ah, to be a fly on the wall when Jim Luke meets up with David Wiley at OER18!

Stephen Downes weighs in on the discussion with two blog posts - The CARE Framework, and Schrodinger's OER - both being a brief response to David Wiley's blog post. He states that OER can be destroyed without stewardship that will respect, protect and not destroy it. He points out the threat of 'conversion' which impacts OER and OEM. This led me to a post by Stephen about defining OER - Open educational resources: A definition. This one I'll keep for future reference.

My take on the CARE framework - its an interesting addition to the conversation and puts the responsibility squarely on the individuals and organizations in the movement. If thinking about stewardship is the right focus, then there is lots that can be shaped by other stewardship movements such as global climate change and the environmental movement.

References

Downes, S. (2018, March 15). Schrodinger's OER. [Weblog post]. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=67896

Downes, S. (2018, March 15). The CARE framework. [Weblog post]. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=67893

Downes, S. (2011, Jul 14). Open educational resources: A definition. [Weblog post]. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/post/57915 

Luke, J. (2018, March 17). OER, CARE, stewardship, and the commons. [blog post] Retrieved from https://econproph.com/2018/03/17/oer-care-stewardship-and-the-commons/

Petrides, L., Levin, D., & Watson, C. E. (2018, March 4). Toward a sustainable OER ecosystem: The case for OER stewardship. [blog post] Retrieved from https://careframework.org/

Wiley, D. (2017, March 19). The CARE framework, take 2 [Weblog post]. Retrieved from https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/5528

Wiley, D. (2017, March 9). The CARE framework. [Weblog post]. Retrieved from https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/5487