Perspective is everything. These giant ships leaving the port always look so close.
The Cascadia Open Education Summit was this week and I knew I wouldn’t be able to attend much of it because there is so much to do and so little time to do it in. I worked a while on Monday because I wanted to get thing organized for my week so that I could at least enjoy the keynotes
BCcampus does such a good job with events. There were so many positive comments. Brenna was keynote one and I always enjoy listening to her.
Someone shared a pretty hilarious meme about wellness seminars that I shared with our HR manager because I know she has a sense of humour. I sent it with a thanks for all they do because hey, everyone is trying.
I don’t know where the image came from so I can’t give an attribution but I’ll see if I can find out.
I did sit in on a session about Open Pedagogy in Practice. It was about one of my favourite things – students as content creators. Really cool project where 34 students made a textbook using Pressbooks. There were 2 students there presenting along with the instructor.
I also listened in on the Zero Cost Textbook presentation while I was doing other things. It seems that Business and Health programs of 2 years are the current sweet spot for ZCT. My take away was that having students create some content in areas where Open content is scarce could be a great thing.
The final keynote really had an impact on me this morning. Kaela Parks from Portland Community College talked about Disrupting Ableism with Open Practices. I am going to share the recording for this one when it’s ready. I was having a conversation with my daughter yesterday about what ‘normal’ is and that I don’t think there is such a thing. I think most people probably feel a little out of place at least sometimes. I’m not sure I’ll be able to put thoughts into words but I’ll try. I’ve never needed an accommodation and I’ve always been told I’m ‘smart’. There have been times when I know that I’m not getting something the way other people are but that other things come easily to me and not to them. It took a NIC instructor to point out that I’m a conceptual thinker. Just knowing that made a huge difference for me. I learned what questions to ask if I was getting stuck. I need the big picture, not just the steps (show me the bicycle/swingset/Ikea bookshelf, don’t just tell me how to build it). In my EdTech Masters program so many fellow students were teachers and a lot of them very sequential. It was interesting learning with them and sharing perspectives. All that to say that we can figure out ways for students to feel included and it should be part of our conscious thinking about the design of everything.
We got another craft module out this week and have content and a little structure going for the next one. I’ve pulled some resources for a respectful workplace module and will work on that and the Craft module next week – one step ahead of the students but almost at the finish line.