conference
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An OER24 transmission
I mentioned my visit to Cork to pull off One Last Job at OER24, which I am now safely and legally returned from. There I gave a fun presentation with Maren on podcasting and internet radio, and one on the afterlife of my 25 Years of Ed Tech book. The conference was excellent, with thought-provoking, engaging and warm keynotes from Rajiv Jhangiani and the double act of Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin. We had a compact, full GO-GN workshop the day prior to the conference. I like seeing new generations of GO-GN scholars coming through, there were few of the attendees who had been before and it felt like a…
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One last job…
Next week I head to Cork for OER24. While I may get invited to conferences once I leave the OU, this could well be my last one, and will definitely be my final one as GO-GN director and OU employee. That’s right, before I head off into the sunset, I’m going to do One Last Job, what could go wrong? In the manner of all One Last Jobs, a crack team has been assembled to pull it off. We have the GO-GN squad, running a workshop the day before the conference for a small team of explosive experts OER Researchers. As I’ve probably mentioned before, working on the GO-GN project…
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Social media as festive metaphors
I gave the keynote at the Social Media in Higher Education conference on Tuesday. As it was the in the week before the Christmas break, I chose to adapt my social media choices as 70s disco track idea and use festive metaphors. First of all I emphasised the problems with using metaphors, and how festive metaphors can highlight this – not everyone celebrates Christmas, and not everyone celebrates it in the same way. The metaphor can therefore be excluding or get in the way of the point you are trying to make. I hope there was enough social recognition of the metaphors however for them to be meaningful. I wanted…
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October round up
Hosting a two day GO-GN workshop in Edmonton followed by the OEGlobal conference was the main activity of this month. This was the first conference post pandemic for many people, and it was good to reacquaint myself with many of the global contingent. It was also a tad wistful as it’s likely to be my last OEGlobal and possibly last international conference. So, I was potentially seeing a lot of people for the last time potentially. I got to go out on a social high note though with a trip to see the Edmonton Oilers play with these good people: While we’re talking about OER conferences, the OER24 call for…
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Voices in the open
I’ve been at an excellent OEGlobal conference in Edmonton for the past week. There was a lot of presentations about networks of open pedagogic practice, use of open textbooks to engage students, regional OER initiatives, and so on. It was impressive stuff and a significant advancement from the sort of solo-educator open textbook implementations we used to see. We were there with the GO-GN team, celebrating 10 years of that network. This was our largest gathering, with members from 15 different countries. Robert Schuwer gave a fascinating talk on the history of the network – tip to people setting on a project that may have legs, make sure you record…
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ALT’s 30th – looking back to ALTC 2018
As part of ALT’s 30th celebrations, there are some posts looking back to ALT-C’s of the past. I’ve chosen 2018, although it was not a great conference for me personally, an alternative title for this post might be “when life gets in the way of conferencing”. It was a memorable conference for ALT, as it was their 25th anniversary. As a special conference it was chaired by the then President (me!) and Chair (Sheila MacNeill), and with Maren as one of the keynotes. It took place at the University of Manchester, which is a great venue, but, and this will become relevant, not particularly easy to access from Cardiff where…
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Spider cats and super peeps
I was at the OER23 conference in Inverness last week, hosted by UHI, so here are some snippets of thought. First up, we hosted a GO-GN one day workshop with 16 attendees. It was great to get back to a fuller session after trialling a smaller one as we emerged from lockdown last year. We used this event toi launch the super-duper mega edition Research Handbook. This combines the Research Methodology guide, the Conceptual Frameworks guide and the Research Reviews, plus other useful openly licensed resources. It is intended as a growing resource so we will add more to it. If you’re doing any research, but particularly related to open…
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OER22 – the GOGN penguins cometh
In case you’ve missed it, OER22 is back with a mix of face to face, online live and asynchronous online this year. Everyone’s favourite conference (yes it is), is co-chaired by our lovely GO-GN team of Rob Farrow, Beck Pitt, Paco Iniesto, Kylie Matthews and me (although I’ve been firmly in the slacker category over the past month). The papers are in, the reviews have been done and the decisions sent out. It’s going to a great event, so I’d encourage you all to register. The themes are: Theme 1 – Pedagogy in a time of crisis: what does an ‘open’ response look like? How has the word of open education…
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Proctorio sponsor OEB, so it’s a no from me
via GIPHY Online Educa in Berlin is one of the biggest ed tech conference in Europe. I’ve been a couple of times and was going to attend this year, mainly for the gluhwein. But I see on their website that proctoring company Proctorio is now their platinum sponsor. I genuinely appreciate that running conferences is a difficult balancing act, made even more precarious in post-pandemic times when travel is still uncertain for many. Getting sponsors for a conference is often the difference between it being feasible and not. But equally, one must ask, what would it take for a sponsor to be deemed unsuitable? And for me, Proctorio are some…
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Let’s go to the ocean – April review
Highlight: The OERxDomains21 conference was a big highlight this month. When we’ve all become accustomed to online conferences, it is difficult to make any of them feel different. They are in the same platforms (Zoom/Team), they have the same structure, and they don’t feel different from your everyday work. What I admired about OERxDomains21 was the thought, and successful implementation, of an overall aesthetic. Beyond a logo, not many conferences do this. The Community TV theme was carried through in the programme (like a TV guide), the platform (StreamYard and YouTube), the intro and end credits to each talk, and the old adverts shown in breaks. In addition Discord came…
