Transitioning - a liminal space

 

Navigating the landscape - photo by @warwicklanguage CC BY SA

The academic year 2024 has just started. Not for me though. For me this is the third year of retirement and I am still in the process of transitioning from the professional me to the personal me - identities which have been enmeshed for so long it is tricky to navigate. When I read this post from Alastair Creelman, I was reminded that I need to continue to work on my navigation skills. I always found his blog really helpful and I felt rather sad to read that he would no longer be posting, although I fully understand and respect his reasons. I tried to add a comment to reflect how important his thoughts have been along the way but sadly it did not appear. So if you read this Alastair please know I am grateful for your open sharing and for how you helped me. 

Another blog post which influenced my own thoughts on transitioning came from another open hero of mine, Martin Weller. This post  is so significant as it captures the ongoing challenges of our time and reminds me of the importance of fighting for open practices. This has been an aspect of my professional life which transcends the "employment" phase and is deeply embedded in my personal psyche. I have reflected often as to whether, post retirement, I should continue to research and publish. I am still in two minds on this. I don't lack things to do to be honest!

There is one area of openness however where I feel progress is not where it needs to be yet and where I can hopefully continue to be of use. It is the area of open recognition. I think I find this so important because it goes to the very heart of my commitment to self determination (both political and psychological). The technical mechanisms include ownership and curation of an eportfolio and collection and curation of open badges. For me these tools have so many uses:

• fostering community belonging and pathways to self development
• offering recognition and encouragement in online fluency
• supporting creative activity in assessment and knowledge creation
• providing safe spaces for experimentation and individuality

Life in the age of AI will bring bigger challenges and some temptations which we must review critically. Spoiler alert: Open AI - it is NOT Open, nor is it Intelligent. This is an age which must relish in the nature of the human, must celebrate our creativity and diverse intelligences. Academia and our educational instutions must embrace the opportunity to be on the right side of history. Money and league tables must matter less; values and integrity must dominate your futures. 

I can see my next steps more clearly now. Funny how blogging helps. 

Staying on board

                

My teaching career began in the 1980's and, as I have mentioned on this blog before, I was an early adopter of technology in language teaching. The Internet was not widely used in education for some years to come but my professional teaching career was to be hugely shaped by it's birth. I lived through the "advice" which came our way, some of it helpful, much of it erroneous and lacking in awareness of the contextual realities of teaching in the 20th Century. The 21st Century picture is not hugely different. Change is never easy, the future is "not very evenly distributed" The video remix above is just one example of the issues educators face with the challenges of working in the digital domain. Legal and ethical issues as well as practical choices continue to make the teaching ad learning environment one which requires collaborative effort, critical awareness and co-operation. I consider myself to have been fortunate to find and participate in great networks to support my understanding of learning technology such as EUROCALL and ALT. I was fortunate enough to be able to research and publish in my academic field whilst working at the University of Warwick.

I am no longer employed in schools or University, having retired at the end of 2020 after 30+ years but I don't feel able to step away completely at this stage. I continue to offer my skills, such as they are, to organisations such as EUROCALL as a Trustee and member of the Executive, and to the not for profit UNICollaboration . I am also proud to be able to contribute to the voluntary work of Future Teacher 3.0 and #LTHEchat.  The continuation this offers has enabled me:

• to maintain a sense of belonging
• to keep my knowledge up to date
• to enjoy fellowship with kindred spirits

I write this post to share the changes I have experienced since retirement as they may be of interest to others. 

Firstly, as I no longer have an institutional affiliation, I have of course lost access to some of the privileges I enjoyed as an academic staff member. Most significant of these is access to academic publications which live behind paywalls. As I favour open publishing I am glad that I can still read the work of those who share openly. 

Secondly, as a pensioner I examine my budget regularly and no longer use Microsoft products. Expensive licences are not justifiable for personal use, I prefer to pay less and get great value from Google storage and Chromebook use. I use my more limited means to support great folk such as Bryan Matthers and his Fabulous Remixer Machine  to campaign for greater fairness and sustainability and to maintain my own websites. 

Finally, I use my knowledge and skills to help newer practitioners make informed choices and to warn of the dangers of technological evangilism. I do so by sharing openly on my blogs and through maintaining curations such as my Tool Parade dynamic document and my Pearltrees account. I worry that education has a shorter memory than ever before as experienced teachers are considered to be too expensive and retention is now a huge issue. Never mind the impact of AI on our sector! 

I guess I won't be around forever but at least I can leave a digital legacy.

 

The future's bright...

 

                                        Image by Ylvers from Pixabay

Some of you may remember the tag line of a telecoms company that went:

The future's bright, the future's Orange

I have been reflecting on my participation in the Future Teacher 3.0 network and the connections between the future, the orange flames illustrated here, the nature of forest fires and technology are all coming to my mind. I last wrote about the impact of Future Teacher 3.0 nearly two years ago.

Now I wish to reflect more urgently on the nature of this network and the resources it provides. Urgently because time is running out, we are (if you hadn't noticed, let's face it our government hasn't) in a global climate crisis. We are also at 90 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday clock.  The orange future is upon us like a forest fire. Education is urgent, must be accessible to all, sustainable and free from bias if it is to help humanity to face the future. Importantly, it needs to be trully sustainable. 

How does Future Teacher address this urgency? 

• the resources it contains offer a comprehensive digital snapshot of technology enhanced learning in 3rd sector education spanning many years. We can learn from the past to better face our future
• the community it has created over 7 years is vibrant and supportive. You can connect on our LinkedIn group we have recently moved away from the burning hotspot of X formerly aka Twitter. We are better together.
• The shifting sands of technologically "enhanced" teaching and learning bring big challenges and a need for critical thought. We have to watch our step.
• As educators we have a responsibility to ensure access for all, push back against bias, exclusion and discrimination. We must keep our eyes and our hearts open. 

Urgent action has been happening in Future Teacher 3.0 over a prolonged period thanks to a small group of committed individuals who got together supported by a little European funding and decided to keep going after the funding finished. That activity is captured on the You Tube channel with subtitles added to increase accessibility for all because it matters. We will be reflecting on the latest series of webinars shortly because urgent action in a crisis is best when it is based on informed, intelligent decisions rather than unthinking knee jerk reactions. I am very proud to a be team member and to be able to contribute in a small way by recognising through an open badge the work shared freely by others. 

If we can incorporate these resources into our teaching communities we have the possibility of the hope of a better educated, more sustainable way forward in education. The growth that often we are told follows forest fires, pushing up from the grass roots.

Snowdrop by Teresa MacKinnon CC BY

on e-portfolios

 

Over the years I have used eportfolios for many different purposes. Prior to the ALT Winter conference 2020 where I will be a panel member talking about e-portfolios I think it would be useful to draw all my explorations and activities into one place. This will be a post with lots of links but I hope also to summarize the rationale for looking to eportfolios in my work. The image above is taken from the Mahara #MUM (Mahara users Midlands) group which now resides in mahara.org. 

Firstly, it is important to distinguish between a portfolio and an eportfolio. There are many professions which expect to see a portfolio in order to recruit. A typical portfolio in this context (photography, modelling etc) would include examples of the work you are most proud of. A curation which shows your talents and expertise. An e-portfolio can also be used in this way of course. An electronic version of the same. This is how I used mahara for my CMALT assessment and subsequent review for example. The beauty of a digital curation is of course that it displays multimedia evidence wrapped with contextual narration. It reflects the fact that much of my activity is online and open. Display of my open badges also tells the story of my activity. So for me an e-portfolio is the logical choice. 

My rationale for supporting e-portfolio is more that just encouraging folk to "show off" however. An eportfolio is a very useful personal collection tool. By default, using Mahara the pages and collections you create are visible only to the user. This makes it a "domain of one's own" a space online (as I presented in ALT winter conference 2016) which can be used to collect your work, a space to reflect upon your experiences of online or blended learning which may for example have happened in a more formal VLE space. This is the approach we adopted in Languages@Warwick mahoodle and in the EVOLVE training co-laboratory. This store of personal reflection and evidence can easily be curated, selecting good examples which can then be shared more widely. There is an economy of time and effort gained in this approach and the results I've seen in our Assessed e-portfolio for language learning summarised in this e-book for example bear witness to the power of this approach. The eportfolio owner can acquire vital digital literacies (management of IP/copyright, permissions and online visibility) which improve the quality of their online presence. I have written extensively and openly about the process of forming a construct for assessment, leaving the documents available openly on scribd. A more recent final year module I created, Developing Language Teaching was 100% eportfolio assessed. A fact which was fully appreciated when lockdown arrived this year. Using their eportfolio as a private space throughout the course encouraged students to evidence the evolution of their development over time. Some extracts are included in this recent presentation for the MaharaHui2020 conference. 

Finally, I have also used an eportfolio shared space (Mahara group) to support shared research such as in the case of the WIHEA #knowhow project. Shared pages allowed us to collaborate and view each other's research and then decide together where we should investigate further. In a project such as this where staff and students in different roles had limited time to get together the shared group space mediated our interactions, saving time and allowing us to collaborate remotely. The digital artefacts we stored there were then easily accessible for us to create a digital poster for dissemination at the end of the project.  

My conviction that eportfolios can be a really useful tool for staff and students alike has several key contributing factors:

• Deep thought and reflection require private space and time as well as mediated discussion. We provide for both in the physical world, I believe we need to provide digital spaces with the same affordances. Especially in a pandemic.  
• Ownership is a crucial conversation in the digital domain. Legally there is too little protection for the rights of the individual who creates online, the industry would prefer us to all be consumers. There is much to do to increase understanding of Creative Commons licences.
• The assumption that all academic work should reside on institutional platforms to which you lose access at the end of your course or contract should be challenged. The possibility to export and retain your work should be supported. 
• Designing assessment which use e-portfolios is a really useful collaborative activity. For a practitioner it requires questioning what we value and empirically investigating how best to achieve that learning. There are of course disciplinary differences but sharing your construct openly can inspire others. 
• Learning is not a tidy, linear process. It is full of twists and turns. Making that explicit through reflection can help us come to terms with the challenges we face and find better strategies. 

Here's the recording from the ALT Winter conference 2020:

#eurocallgathering A meaningful mission on my road to retirement

 

Summer 2020 was to mark my the end of my teaching at Warwick. I plan to retire at year end and didn't want to leave the next cohort part way through their learning. These were just plans in my head, but they were of course affected by the arrival of a global pandemic - forecast for some years by experts and yet unexpected by the UK Government, which of course had their eyes only on the earning potential presented by their #brexit agenda. 

As it became apparent that we would not be able to travel easily, thoughts turned to how we could maintain some continuity in the Eurocall community which is almost entirely supported through an annual conference, already some way into planning to take place in Copenhagen. A difficult decision was made, we would not be able to go ahead. I had been co-opted to the board of Eurocall in 2018 and this organisation has a special place in my heart. 

As an early adopter of technology for language teaching and learning I had become aware early in my career that there was a group of academics who researched in this area. As a teacher, even as a head of subject I didn't have resources to enable me to join a physical conference. I read some of their work and attended local training events in Warwickshire but back then there was no easy access to information through the internet. In the 90's, when Eurocall was founded I used CD-ROMs such as Granville in my teaching. Later in my career, having moved to work in Higher Education I was able to track down Graham Davies, thanks to his ICT4LT website and twitter. I contacted him in 2010 as I had taken on a role to support staff development at Warwick Language Centre and he kindly agreed to speak to our teachers in his Second Life persona. Even with my very rudimentary skills in Second Life I was able to get my avatar to wear a Eurocall t-shirt! Warwick language tutors listened to Graham together and discussed how we could further embed technology in our teaching practice. I felt I was offering them the chance to connect with the leading edge of research and those with most experience. 

Graham and I shared a love of Europe and the need to support language learning:

UK withdraws from ECML, European centre created to support excellence in language teaching - reducing our influence over policy #mfl #sttf

— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) October 28, 2011

Sadly Graham died 2 year later. I attended a celebration of his life in Second Life, a really moving event. He cared deeply for the fellowship he found in EuroCALL and I felt honoured to be able to pick up his legacy through working on the virtual strand blog. I felt that the challenges I had faced as a young teacher would not be going away. The opportunity to make the work of Eurocall more open and accessible to all who supported language learning was one I could not resist. For me this was personal

The idea of the #eurocallgathering event was born of the challenges presented by covid19 in 2020. 10 years after Graham had spoken to our teachers, I put a plan together to use the under-utilised capacity of our G Suite to ensure that we could still get the community together. I set up a site a hashtag and a You Tube channel and spent the summer months pulling it all together. Thanks to the support of the executive, the conference committee was able to transfer much of the planned event online. We didn't have the joy of visiting Copenhagen but we were able to share our work and and fellowship for two packed online days which will also leave a legacy behind them for others to find. 

The wide range of research which is generated by this community continues and #eurocallagathering only shows a small cross section and much of my work continues with UNICollaboration which was born out of the work supported by Eurocall. The stream is widening, as John Gillespie pointed out in his keynote.  

Knowledge creation - trouble at mill

As scholars and academics we are knowledge creators often working at the edge of understanding. We have a mission to share and report back on what we find, especially when it can help others but even when we don't really know or understand the significance of what we report. That becomes a shared task, we work together as a community to extend understanding. In my personal case, as a teacher I have spent over 30 years looking for the best ways to engage my learners in intercultural and linguistic understanding, looking to build their curiosity and supporting their lifelong interest in language learning. As a researcher and open educational practitioner I report back to share what I find and others chime in. 

It is therefore natural to me that I would turn my hand to editing Wikipedia as a way of sharing knowledge. I am a newbie but a long time supporter of the project. I have been researching in an area variously described as "telecollaboration" or "Online Intercultural Exchange" or "virtual exchange"  as a teaching practice. It offers much to support my aims as a practitioner. I have published in this area and when I used Wikipedia to search for a reference to it, lo there was nothing. There is a page on telecollaboration which was dominated until 2013 by references to the tools and technical functionality:

(on left wikipedia entry from 2009, cf current page)
now much improved with good references to the academic work in this area, a page on web conferencing which again focuses on the tools and their history. I could find nothing on the educational practice of virtually connecting people from other cultures to facilitate discussion and build those all important soft skills and/or language skills. 

However, my editing knowledge at the time was very limited. Inspired however by an Open Education SIG webinar by Martin Poulter I decided that the best way to learn was through experience (a maxim I hold dear in my teaching). I started an account, drafted in a sandbox and then took myself off to a wikipedia meet up in Oxford where I met some really helpful folk who told me where I was going wrong. I learned much in the few hours I spent in an Oxford pub that day thanks to these guys:

In summer 2018 the page on Virtual Exchange was approved and since then others have continued to edit and add to it. I felt proud to be able to contribute to this project. I went on to set up a Wikipedia editing workshop at the EuroCALL conference in Finland with help from a Finnish editor and amongst our participants was the fabulous Parisa Mehran an Iranian language educator living and working in Japan. She shared my enthusiasm but unfortunately her first post was blocked as it didn't comply with the editor guidelines. This was a newbie error and I was quick to try to get help to get her back on the right track. Help did indeed come from colleagues in Wikimedia UK and I believe she now has a better understanding of a process which quite rightly observes quality controls. 

However, it seems my objection to Parisa's blocking has made me a target of some unwarranted attention on my talk page accusing me of promotional editing. I have read the Conflict of Interest guidelines again and again and I cannot see any reason why I could be accused of flaunting them. I guess you could say that as a teacher I promote language learning (so sue me) but as I have a son with a language disorder I am pretty realistic about the benefits of languages to those who have more basic communication needs. In reading this page I would say that the editor who accuses me is engaging in harassment. I find the tone of his comments offensive and patronising. I have left them on my page "for the record" but this post is also recording my side of his story.

The strength of the Wikimedia project lies in the community sharing of information. That community must be tolerant, diverse and supportive. I am privileged to know many in the community who advocate for Wikipedia, I will always remain one of them despite such experiences because I recognise that it takes time to build an inclusive, supportive community. I will not be silenced or marginalised due to my gender and neither should others. 

After all, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

The invisible permaculture of learning and teaching.

The importance of open educational practice.

I'm no artist as you can see on this my first attempt to sketch the role of open educational practice in supporting the sustainability of teaching using open educational resources. Clearly the image borrows from the water cycle. Admittedly it is stretching the analogy a little, the earth's natural climate is not driving this, rather it shows how the agency of individual practitioners can drive the sustainability of learning resources. OERs on their own would repose in their repository, we would see the sunlight glint from their surface and congratulate ourselves on a sea of wonderful "content". However, once practitioners get involved in the uptake, remixing, improving and shring of OERs, then the magic can really happen. Not only do the resources become more visible, moving further into the landscape. As they travel they bring new life, new connections between practitioners, new ideas, new ways of working. A vital tool in this permaculture is provided to the practitioners in the form of Creative Commons licences.

A culture of sharing has long existed in schools, the workload is intense and collegiality important in order to thrive. However, sharing a worksheet with a colleague does not always transfer to the digital domain. Back in 2009 my friend Kate Borthwick presented the results of work which was undertaken in the then languages subject centre around a repository called Language Box. A key difference in the interface of this system was the understanding that sharing is a social practice, it works best when we know who we are sharing with, when we get feedback and accreditation for our work. This emotional aspect, very familiar to those who engage with social media, seemed to increase the engagement of students who pilotted the resources, they were more likely to comment and remix the resources. 

Today I was able to participate in a Virtually Connecting session with participants in the #digped conference in the USA. This is another great way to use technology to embrace the human need to connect with others and thus enhance and intensify the international connections and discussions around teaching and learning in the age of the internet. I had been following the #digped discussions on twitter and it was clear to me that these folk (many of whom I was already following on twitter) share my passion for the intelligent use of technology and the use of a critical digital lens when implementing learning technologies. fortunately my social media skills are greater than my sketching so I will be actively continuing my sharing with these folk with the aim of ensuring that the digital agenda is not dominated by the "solution providers" who will be selling their AI driven systems as ways to save money in education but by the nature of human interactions which are so rich in often invisible or unseen ways.

“Why as a species are we so invested in the future of AI? Why aren’t we investing as much in people? That’s not a technical question. It’s a moral question.” @anya1anya #digped

— Digital Pedagogy Lab (@DigPedLab) 30 July 2018

As for the sketching, my PLN made me do it! Encouraged by them I will try new things, one day I may be a better sketchnoter, and even if that doesn't happen I will have confronted an aspect of my life that I neglected after a bad experience during my schooling. 

Supporting the connections across continents

Link up for greatest impact!

When people get together great things can happen. We can learn together, support each other and things that may have seemed impossible become do-able. As chair of the EuroCALL CMC SIG I am delighted to be involved in several initiatives recently which focus upon increasing the connections between the European activity and our colleagues in both the USA and Japan. 

Firstly here's a message from Sahar Matar of the EuroCALL Grad students SIG:

We, the board of the Eurocall Grad Students SIG, are starting a new method to connect members of the SIG and to help them to get to know about the activities of the conference in case they could not make it. We are inviting volunteering grad students to play the role of the SIG ambassadors this year. This role entails that they share on Twitter or any other preferred social media, updates on the conference sessions and information picked up in the various sessions they may go to during the conference using the conference hashtag #eurocall2018. 

This hopefully will give members more opportunities to have access to the projects presented at the conference and to get to know people with similar interests on social media. This is part of a collaborative work with our sister association, CALICO. We have implemented this method with the CALICO Grad Students SIG at CALICO2018 in Urbana-Champaign, IL (May 29 - June 2) and that was awesome. We are planning to do the same here to connect the members of both associations. If you are going to Eurocall2018 and you see yourself interested in being our ambassador, please email Sahar at saharmatar2@gmail.com

The conference twitter account is @eurocall2018

Secondly, thanks to @virtuallyconnecting we joined folk at the 25th anniversary of the  #JALTCALL2018 conference in Japan. This was such a joyous conversation with participants from several timezones chatting face to face, connecting practitioners, keynote speakers, researchers and enabling participation where costs of travel or other restrictions would often be a problem. You can watch the recording of the session here. 

Whenever we organise a physical conference many may come but many more are unable to do so. With travel bans, domestic responsibilities, financial limitations all playing a part in making physical mobility more challenging and with the technologies for connecting abundant and increasingly easy to use there is no excuse for not including such "open door" activities as part of your conference's arrangements. The opportunities we increase by using social media - new contacts, new networks, new collaborations - are too good to miss. I am delighted to support Sahar in her plan to find social media champions. I will never forget the way such an approach helped Parisa Mehran during @eurocall2017 

Here's a flavour of the social media conversations from #JALTCALL2018 (you will see Parisa here!) :

Designing OER and becoming an Open Educational Practitioner.

This is Ufuk Balaman @ubalaman. He is a member of the Eurocall CMC sig (Computer-Mediated Communication special interest group) and we meet at Eurocall 2017 in Southampton. He invited me to work with a group of his students in Turkey who are working on learning design for language teaching. The session was planned together and ran on 20th March with me in my office in Warwick and his students in a large lecture theatre in Hacettepe University, Turkey. 

We ran it as an open session, collaborating using a range of web 2 tools and a live classroom (Bb Collaborate Ultra). Firstly I wanted to establish a shared presence and we used several tools for this:

• A shared gdoc which held the session plan and links
• A padlet board to share images 
• Hashtags to help aggregate and extend our online interactions: #ELT382

We quickly got down to the important reflection on why we need to design using digital tools through Mentimeter:

and then the deeper conversation about the risks and challenges:

This was really getting interesting! I started to talk about the Video For All project, an EU project looking at how to use video in language teaching. I shared the paper on produsage I wrote with Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou @sarahconf (then at Monash University) which showed just how tricky it is for language educators to navigate the many restrictions on use of commercial video to provide relevant, motivational content for learners. Intellectual Property in the online space is still a battleground and some decisions are still being contested through campaigns such as #fixcopyright and save the link. I shared information about Creative Commons licences and the coming accreditation available to those using them. I shared some useful tools for video creation such as Flipgrid, Lumen5, VLC player and 

There then followed some video based challenges:

• To share their thoughts on creating video for language teaching using the flipgrid here
• To create an OER and add the link to a Credly badge claim in order to get their own open badge. 

I raised the point about the pressure teaching systems are currently under and the importance of sustaining effective teaching practice manned by real, talented individuals. People who can make a difference. I shared this article on sustainability. 

Now I wait to see what they devise and share. Already the fliprid responses are encouraging. We have perhaps started a community of practice here for language education designers.

Meanwhile I hope that others are going to take a close look at the potential for Open Educational Practice for the improvement of educational opportunities everywhere. I have shared a collection of resources based through Thinglink in the graphic below which came from the Opening Up Education report by the European Commission. 

Free for all

Why Open Education Matters from Blink Tower on Vimeo.



I have just completed the first iteration of a new module LN306 Developing Language Teaching. The course has attracted a good cohort of students including a number of Erasmus students from Germany Italy and France and I have constantly been impressed with their instincts for what makes good teaching. The central objective of the course is to look at how as teachers we can create interventions to address a specific learner need and includes critical analysis of learning design and pedagogies. In passing during the course I have shared some of Open Educational Resources (OER) and tools for creation. In our final session this week I asked my students to critically evaluate the winning video from the Why Open Education matters campaign above and again the level of understanding proved a useful bridge to a constructive dialogue.

The video paints a rosy picture of how OER can improve the world, but said one of the students:

• how do you know what "good OER" look like? After all, text books have a kudos and an authority as they are endorsed by your tutor. Who can you trust?

This has frequently been a criticism levelled at the OER movement: too idealistic, all fluffy clouds and rainbows. I explained my position. 

I am very much in favour of what has been called by Martin Weller "Little OER", resources created by individuals to fit their context and subsequently shared under Creative Commons licences so that others can remix, re-use and re-purpose. The main benefit of this sort of creative activity I posit is as a means for contributing to your professional community. I admitted that I have created and shared slides which have carried the odd typo (as indeed do many text books I have used) but the benefits of this "open educational practice" (OEP) outweigh the disadvantages of the escalating costs for students of course materials. 

Surely the ability to critically evaluate all materials should not be sacrificed in favour of a blind acceptance that material on the reading list is automatically more trustworthy? Surely a student would be happy to know that his/her tutor is actively engaged in their professional community and able to adapt and create resources which best meet their local context? The students agreed (or seemed to at least) and I look forward to seeing their learning designs as part of their e-portfolio assessment in April. I am happy they have plenty to think about. 

The truth of course is that this learning design challenge matters more than ever to their generation and those who follow. The expertise of teachers is constantly undermined by politicians and the very existence of teaching jobs under threat thanks to "austerity". I am far from alone in seeing the potential of the open internet to inspire and support my profession.

The creative opportunities for learning design offered in the digital domain are endless:

Making your open textbook

A set of resources to get you started in curating your open textbook

It takes courage and commitment to engage in open educational practice there are few rainbows unicorns or fluffy clouds. This post describes the situation beautifully. Going open is a sign of strength worthy of Camus' approval as in L'Homme Révolté:

« La vraie générosité envers l'avenir consiste à tout donner au présent. »

More stories of connection

And so to phase 2 of my Clavier story for Simon +Simon Ensor 

When you look at the literature around the use of technology in education you will soon come across references to disruption. Having been an early adopter of technology in language teaching I have experienced this and my Master's research (on the user perceptions of voice over the internet) also identified that embedding technology in learning design does require a return to first principles if it is to be embedded successfully. As such it is a useful mechanism if you need to focus teacher attention on why we do what we do. This perspective from IMS Global on disruption clearly assumes that there is something inherent in the existing status quo in education which needs a shake up and gives an industry insight into learning technology in the business of education. Many of us working "at the chalk face" felt that disruption was "a good thing" I'm sure. After 30 years in education the never ending re-invention of wheels and flow of buzz words takes its toll. However, taking a more critical stance we need to challenge that underlying assumption - what do we value about education that needs to remain in place?

The next phase of my Clavier journey saw new connections, collaborations and co-creations. (This story is not chronological you may have noticed, it is thematic). The serendipity of networked practice together with a heightened attention to the importance of protecting the place of human interaction in education resulted in many conference presentations and publications . The Clavier experience had ignited a spark which fed an intellectual curiosity. Central to this was a realisation of my own agency in progressing educational opportunity for all. I decided to be an open educational practitioner and again my network - an international collection of educators in many different contexts - were reliable in getting involved. This internal event about teaching excellence at Warwick saw staff exploring physical and virtual spaces, connecting virtually with Marcin Klébin @makle1 in Poland; the doors to the EuroCALL conference were opened this year thanks to collaboration with Maha Bali +Maha Bali and Virtually Connecting, my students have created open educational resources and even contributed to online conferences, the WIHEA #knowhow project (see https://storify.com/WarwickLanguage/warwick-window-on-teaching) produced resources and connections to help others decide on a path to opening up their work. Having found my voice in the academic community and a means to engage in the meaningful deployment of my abilities across institutional and national boundaries thanks to the open internet, I have made yet another career "modification" - one where I can pass on a new perspective to students considering teaching languages.(https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/applying/undergraduate/crossschool/ln306/) I do not wish to be a "teacher trainer" but rather a co-learner in order to support the sustainability of a profession which I have loved throughout my career. Clavier has been part of that unexpected sequence of events and the network which has stretched around the world has seen me working with colleagues in Egypt, Poland, Sweden, Australia, the USA, Spain, Finland, Canada and the UK! 

Stories of connection

@WarwickLanguage mdr small changes in systems may have unforeseen major consequences. @makle1 #clavedu #warcler pic.twitter.com/WtxcEV7nla

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 10, 2017

The paths we take as we travel through life are sometimes the result of conscious decision making, sometimes the inevitable result of our behaviours, sometimes directed by others, often a complex weaving of all of these and more. Simon has asked me to reflect on my Clavier journey and as I have captured much of it through my writing, publications and discussions I have decided to weave it here in my first blog. 

CLAVIER is more difficult to define than the acronym may appear, as I recall Simon and I discussed the choice of letters as I traveled back from a trip to London for a UCML meeting. At that time I was working with this umbrella group for languages to support communications using social media and to raise awareness of the need for better government support for languages in the UK.  I have always been a passionate advocate of language learning, although my understanding was irrevocably changed when my first son was diagnosed with a language disorder back in the 1990's. 

The first connection with Simon came (as you can see in the artefact shared at the top of this post) in 2011. A supportive intervention in what was becoming a rather bad tempered exchange online. This serendipitous meeting on Steve Wheeler's blog back then was the spark that led to the creation of connected network at a point when I had recently developed an online space using moodle for supporting the teaching of languages at Warwick's Language Centre. The opportunity therefore to connect our student cohorts meant that we could set about creating a shared, large scale virtual exchange. 

The background to the years since then has been the "elevator music" of the skeptic. Public discourse full of condemnation of social media, a "bad thing" for promoting trolling, anti-social behaviour, even terrorism. I have to say that apart from the negative physical effects of all the time spent sitting working on a screen (which I should have counter balanced more actively through resistance and greater emphasis on physical wellbeing) the connected approach to learning and teaching has been overwhelmingly positive for me. In 2014 I reflected on the happenstance arising from digital connectivity.  

My background coming to this project was quite different from that of Simon. Language teaching has been my career since I left university, I completed my Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) back in the 1980s at Warwick and I had worked for 15 years in secondary education rising to a leadership role before joining the Language Centre as a part-time tutor when my children were still young. I had been an early adopter of learning technologies and when I returned to Warwick I was able to complete further learning including an e-learning award and a Masters in Post Compulsory Education which had provided lots of opportunities to reflect through blogging. I reconnected with the EuroCALL community finding Graham Davies online (sadly now passed away but not before he agreed to deliver some staff training through his Second Life presence, a real highlight for me) and this inspired me to research through my teaching and this community. The learning was further extended through becoming part of the Association for Learning Technology where I have increased my technical and theoretical perspectives in learning technology. 

So that's phase one of Clavier for me...the next post will cover the next phase. 

CMALT review: from now to 2020!

Thought for the day provided by random pen in my session room #eurocall2017 pic.twitter.com/jZUfzXIw6b

— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) August 26, 2017

With thanks to @davidhopkins for prompting me to write this!

Last summer I was delighted to get confirmation that my CMALT status has been extended until 2020. With it came the suggestion that my submission could have included reflection on where my career will go next. Well, that really would have required greater powers of prediction than I have. We all know the question don't we: "Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?"

From when I first started out in teaching back in the 1980's I have always been very aware of the importance of setting career goals and I have had what some might call a successful career. I moved into teaching management early on, becoming a Head of French after just 2 years in the job. I have been very deliberate in managing a portfolio of my work in order to navigate my way through the many challenges of having a family, balancing their needs with my own. I took the risk of changing sectors - hence la modification , investing time and energy in professional development, learning and contributing to my communities, supporting and mentoring others. It has been this approach which more recently has shaped my goals, which have become less about my career and more about what I believe to be important: addressing social injustice and working for fairer access to education for all.

Perhaps this means as I have got older I am less interested in being driven and more interested in who is driving! That's not to say I have decelerated my career though. When I became a teacher I was very aware of the privilege of becoming a member of a professional community. I have been shocked by the drive to de-professionalise my profession, successive politicians have undermined the importance of real people working as communities of practitioners, focusing instead upon target setting and league tables. Forgetting the humans at the heart of human learning. As a result there is a huge recruitment crisis in education and a real risk that UK young people will not have access to the learning they deserve. Social inequality is greater in the UK than ever with 4 million young people growing up in poverty.

So my personal career progression seems rather unimportant by comparison. It would probably also rely on completing a PhD. This would mean diverting financial resources away from my family to achieve an ambition. That's a club too far. If I do get there it won't be through the UK system as the financial cost is too high.

I take greater pride in these developments:

• being part of the EVOLVE project a 3 year project to scale up virtual exchange
• continuing my commitments to the ALT and Eurocall communities on the Open Ed Sig and the CMC sig
• the creation and delivery of a new module for the School of Modern Languages and Cultures: LN306 will focus on Developing Language Teaching to provide a new generation of creative language teachers who will pick up the challenges of the digital realm. 

In 2020 I will be 60 years old. I doubt that I will grow old gracefully, never been my style!

Living in the wild

'There are better ways to think of languages than as rules-based systems': a torrent of language & ideas from @stevenlthorne at #Eurocall17 pic.twitter.com/q7olusAOD8

— Paul Kaye (@PaulKayeEUlangs) August 25, 2017

Tomorrow is the final day of the #eurocall2017 conference. Time for a few reflections. The conference has had a packed schedule as usual and there are a few things I have noticed this time which indicate a greater level of technical engagement from participants. Clearly the focus of this conference is technology enhanced language learning but the shift is towards greater use of "wild" technologies. It may just be my impression but I think there has been a mood of determination that what we do is important. I think Graham Davies would have been proud. There was:

• lots of interest in social media and web tools
• a dynamic group of MALL (mobile assisted language learning) CMC (telecollaboration etc)  VW (virtual worlds) users and lots of PhD students too
• a real interest in open practice as we are all keen to continue to connect and collaborate despite travel bans, brexit and other threats to mobility
• great examples in the keynotes of how the web has transformed learning

I have two further sessions tomorrow. 

A session on CMC in the open

A Virtually Connecting session to reflect on the event before we all bring this year's event to a close. 

I have a feeling that the connections will continue through social media in the coming year too...watch this space!

Working in the open

🦋🌸🌼 #dandelion #dandelionblow #field #nature #scenery #pretty #sky #plants #pretty

A post shared by Becky Skrine (@beckyskrinee) on Jun 13, 2017 at 12:47pm PDT

Currently I'm at the #eurocall2017 conference and wanted to put together a couple of posts around my experiences there. Firstly, like the video image above I spent yesterday afternoon as a virtually connecting onsite buddie and it was very gratifying to be able to provide the means for those who couldn't attend the conference to speak first hand to our first keynote speaker Steve Thorne who was generous with his time and engaged passionately with the network, providing additional insights into his presentation. You can view this session here.

If you are not aware of the virtually connecting network take a look at their blog. Co-directors Maha Bali and Autumn Caines set up the organisation as a way to help those who don't enjoy the freedom to attend conferences for whatever reason, most of which will affect all of us at some point: family commitments, financial or visa restrictions for example to get a flavour of the conference proceedings and get up close and personal with keynote speakers. Everything is managed on a voluntary basis through Slack channels and the resultant recordings shared openly through YouTube.

We had a great session and there is another on saturday with Shannon Sauro and Kate Borthwick sharing their reflections on the conference so join us!

#BYOD4L: Thoughts on connecting.

Image: Flickr Pandora connection issue CC BY SA 2.0 by Abraham Williams 

A grey Monday morning has been enlivened today by my participation in the Bring your own device for learning #BYOD4L activities. Today we focus on connecting - spending time in various online spaces encouraging other teachers, researchers, students, learning technologists or other interested folk to connect to the #BYOD4L event: 5 days full of online activities exploring how we can make use of technology in our professional roles to increase our impact across our sector, discipline or even just within our institution!

Connecting has been a major focus of my professional life over the past few years. In particular, making computer-mediated connections to enhance my professional activities and researching how such connections can best work for my context. This work has completely transformed my life as an educator and I would like to share some of the things I have learnt. 

• Birds of a feather flock together!

Human beings like to join others with similar interests. You can't insist that everyone connects through decreed spaces in order to talk about something - well, you can but ultimately you will fail. You get a kind of begrudging compliance unless there's a real shared purpose which everyone buys in to. It's not all about the tool or the schedule, although thinking about such things may help. You have to create an atmosphere and those you wish to connect with have to believe it is worth investing their time connecting. You may have to accept that only those like you will come along. Of course this leads to the accusation that some spaces are echo chambers and some are hijacked for less than illuminating purposes.

• Keep an open door and an open mind

Connecting through open groups on social media platforms reduces the barriers to connection. Don't think everyone will flood in, most of us prefer to "lurk" watching what is happening and forming opinions about whether or not to join in. By providing a welcoming presence and dealing sensitively with all new arrivals, gradually you will see discussions taking shape. It is vital that responses are timely, immediacy is known to be key to engagement. Keep an open mind on migrating discussions to other digital spaces, do your research on your connections and find their networks if you want to engage more deeply. You may find that your connections lead to serendipitous encounters and developments. Mine certainly did. You may also experience the demands of such nodal activity. 

• Go global!

What is to stop you! Once you have an online presence and connected devices there are no borders preventing you from following your disciplinary interests around the world. There are many networks which connect for fellowship, interaction and mutual support so follow your interests. If you are interesting in telecollaboration for teaching and learning in Higher Education check out this new academic organisation: Unicollaboration.  You can enhance your language skills in the process!

Clavier No Boundaries from Teresa MacKinnon on Vimeo.

Coalescence

Strategic #Narrative Embodiment: group shift from potential community to coalescence https://t.co/jNn0ddcXFh @elmibester #Knowledge #KM #SNE pic.twitter.com/AxBKl9e82v

— Alexandra Lepercq (@Espenel) October 1, 2016

 I found this graph illustrating the development over time of a Community of Practice (Wenger) very helpful as I prepared to deliver a workshop for tutors this Christmas. In many ways we are a diverse group, international colleagues coming from a wide range of teaching traditions and with varying levels foo interest and expertise in technology enhanced teaching and learning. What unites us is a love for supporting language learning and after recent developments a degree of clarity about how we assess language progression. 

I analysed our progress towards becoming a Community of Practice (Wenger) in a paper delivered at Eurocall in Evora, Portugal some time ago. Time now to revisit this. In the paper I talked about the importance of "tending" the community through shared activities. Several of our "technology enhanced learning" champions achieved recognition for their professional development through fellowship of the HEA (Zhiyan Guo, SFHEA) or are working towards this. Others have taken advantage of the open courses shared through our 101 news forum (e.g. Chiyomi Duble completed the Blended Learning Essentials mooc) Since the paper was written there have been institutional changes which intervened making the TEL meet-ups a more challenging activity. As our operating unit (the Language Centre) was merged into a new wider School of Modern Languages and Cultures, new pressures arose :

• a loss of budget allocation for our activity reduced the security of the future of the Languages@Warwick project.
• Institutional implementation of a central platform provided a new location for student courses, dividing our community activity over different platforms.
• a push to move teaching resources into the central moodle made TEL advocacy a rather political activity, internal discussions became divisive and sometimes unpleasant. 

However, the shared commitment to a good blended learning experience for our students remains. Our "champions" have continued to engage and develop their practice, putting our TEL activity amongst some of the best on offer for language learning in HEIs. An emergent group of practitioners are working at the leading edge of TEL through Online Intercultural Exchange and the use of video creation and creative online assessment techniques such as the e-portfolio project flourish. And so I can see that we have moved along Wenger's graph towards coalescence and that is gratifying given all the contrary influences which threatened to unpick the progress made. Tomorrow we all meet up for our annual Christmas show and tell session and continue our journey learning together disseminating through a co-authored blog aimed at increasing student understanding of TEL in language learning.