Anti-social social media?

 

New Year, new ways of connecting to explore. I have invested many hundreds of hours over the years in developing my use of social media channels in order to inform and amplify the causes I support, notably :

 language learning and teaching (I was Communications rep for UCML for some years), 

european language networks (I still hold a communications role for EuroCALL)

open education (curating on open practice and through the Open Ed SIG) and

virtual exchange (communications for UNICollaboration - a not for profit organisation) and many other projects such as the #knowhow one in 2017 (illustrated above). 

My use of Twitter has been fundamental to all of these roles. The open nature of the platform enabled me to make connections and build a network. I became proficient at using tools such as TAGS Explorer and Wakelet to curate tweets and provide insights against hashtags which could inform strategic direction for these causes. The networks and connections have made a real difference to my professional and personal life. 

Image from Pixabay CC0

I am very used to internet based tools changing and even disappearing (remember Storify?) but the latest changes on Twitter are without doubt challenging. Musk's impact on the company, the workforce and the integrity of the service are very worrying and often inhumaine. I have covered several bases therefore and, with the help of other open education practitioners I have extended my use of both Discord and Mastedon. Clint Lalonde's blog post is helping me find my way on the latter. He is a wonderful example of the importance of being an open educator - taking the time to log what you learn really helps others. It is a selfless act undertaken out of care. 

The openness of social media has been vital to the visibility of connections such as this, likeminded educators have been able to share wisdom. Sadly we only hear about the more negative aspects of openness such as the use of platforms to spread false discourse and harmful abuse. I have always maintained that we need to be present in such environments in order to understand how they work and call out abuse. In much the same way as bringing light to dark environments in physical spaces. 

I recently attended at #socmedHE22 conference hosted at Northampton Uni by the lovely Hala Mansour where I was able to share my #openbadges work and meet up face to face for the first time in ages with old and new friends for the first time since the first lockdown.  My second attendance at this small but likeminded grouping. Many friends have been contacts through #LTHEchat another vibrant network of open practice which relies on Twitter as a platform. It is clear that many years of interaction will be lost if we all decided to leave en masse. Not something I can bear to contemplate so I stay and curate my Twitter feed with a vengeance to block and mute the voices I cannot tolerate. 

As many uses of social media become "mainstream" parts of organsational communications strategies there will no doubt be further attempts to monetise the content and control the discourse and so those of us who work (unpaid of course) to uphold social justice will have to continue to consolidate our networks, amplify our influence to counter the voices of the powerful, wealthy 1% and treasure our values. Currently I am experiencing Discord and Mastedon as places where this can happen. I hope to see that further through the OER23 conference backchannels too. Once platforms move behind paywalls more people will be excluded from participation and the existing inequities are further widened. I am therefore placing a call to arms for those who are active in this space to consider the ethical implications of their actions. We have much to lose. On a personal note I will also continue to support and advocate for the work of the Internet Archive as a means of protecting years of recent history mediated through social media platforms. 

#JuneEdTechChallenge DAY 1: The VLE in my life...

 

Join the #JuneEdTechChallenge at any point, whenever you can, throughout June #ALTC #EdTech pic.twitter.com/0B75s0yf9x

— David Hopkins (@hopkinsdavid) June 2, 2021

This is a great initiative from ALT, encouraging the open sharing of our different learning teach contexts throughout June through social media. Although I may not be able to keep up the pace every day I was reassured by David's tweet!

Day 1:

The VLE in my life - well there are multiple VLEs I have used over past years and as I have now retired it may be expected that I no longer have to use VLEs, but I do (mostly Moodle/Mahara/Google workspace/Canvas/Blackboard/Ning). I was responsible for procuring and implementing a VLE in the Language Centre at Warwick University back in the day, it was based on Moodle and Mahara (a mahoodle no less!) and was called Languages at Warwick. The focus was upon creating course spaces which encouraged interaction. I wrote about the development in this book chapter. We were ahead of the institutional curve by several years and when Moodle finally became a central initiative our platform was "dissolved". My colleagues still tell me though they are glad they had access to their own VLE prior to the wider implementation as they upskilled as a result. 

Moving to a central VLE came with some serious losses though. We had previously been able to create "managed holes" in Languages at Warwick courses in order to admit students from other institutions to participate in our virtual exchange initiatives. This was lost and we relocated this work to our Google Suite over which we still had control. Virtual Exchange is a proven approach to online learning which helps to build capacity for online teaching, supports interdisciplinary and intercultural learning and thanks to recent research through projects such as EVOLVE and EU initiatives involving the academic organisation (soon to be not for profit org) UNICollaboration , has gained significant traction. We were at the forefront, but faced with lack of institutional support we moved into the wilds. There we found personal learning networks (PLNs) and created personal learning environments (PLEs) of our own. 

VLEs have their place, they are private, institutional spaces generally. However, real life requires knowing how to navigate not just the private, secure digital spaces but also the broader "wilds" beyond. That journey requires greater critical expertise, a form of digital fluency which ideally comes with a deeper understanding of digital ownership, profile management, appropriate behaviours... a whole raft of "soft skills" and expertise which is best acquired through activity alongside others, a community of practice. My situation is very comparable now to that of Sheila and I was so delighted to read her post and see her use of the French word "dérive". I have described my journey through learning technology in the past as being that of a "flaneur" , wandering through online spaces to see how they affect my interactions, how communications change, who feels uncomfortable, who is excluded. This has become central to my critical digital practice, focussing on open educational practice using social media spaces for example. 

Being able to flow between spaces is a huge advantage. This water feature created with recycled television screens captured that feeling for me. Each VLE needs to suit the needs of those who are using it, it needs to make us welcome and protect what is dear to us. Otherwise we just move on and find our own spaces. The challenge now before all institutions in the post pivot era is to co-create spaces which are suitable for today's needs. Sustainable, equitable, welcoming, accessible, fair spaces. It should allow for continued learning beyond the institutional experience: portability of resources and acquisition of knowledge and skills to address online intellectual property confidently. This is more than any one VLE can offer. Like Sheila, I am keen to continue this reflective journey and I'm thinking about what I could contribute to the next #SocMed conference...

Connecting communities and conferences: We have the technology!

Last week I made my way up the M1 to join the #socmedHE conference. Strictly speaking it was the #socmedHE18 conference but as it happened in 2019 I kept to the generic hashtag mostly. I was off to present - or rather to facilitate experience of - Virtual Exchange. The rationale for this was to connect participants at the Nottingham Trent based conference with those attending the Future teacher 3.0 conference in York. Both exciting HE conferences on the same day but about 90 miles apart. Both sharing experiences and expertise in online or digital teaching. My aim was to use what I have learned through designing and running virtual exchange over the past 8 years and share my enthusiasm for the work of the @ft3uk team. I have regularly attended their lunchtime webinars which are always comprehensive, interactive and useful for professional development. 

The design for this session was founded in experiential learning. I designed 3 tasks to take the participants through these stages:

1. Information sharing
2. Comparison and Analysis
3. Co-creation

Timing being short the tasks included a little ice breaking but, unlike the cohorts I usually work with, the participants in these 2 conferences are more homogenous - all working in UK education, mainly Higher Education practitioners. The embedded gdoc in this post shows the tasks in more detail. My slides were a remix from those used by UNICollaboration to present virtual exchange. The co-creation was aggregated using the two conference hashtags through a Tagboard and a wakelet post. (again this was a modified version of co-creation due to the time constraints, our virtual exchangees have to intentionally co-create artefacts but they typically have weeks to negotiate this). 

My session was a face to face session at Nottingham Trent #socmedHE18 transmitted through my Blackboard Collaborate Ultra room to York. The Erasmus Plus Virtual Exchange initiative supports practitioners through training to design and engage successfully in virtual exchange and offers opportunities for students to have meaningful international experiences which may compliment or even take the place of physical mobility in cases where it is not possible for whatever reason. 

Recognition of training or participation is provided in the form of open badges. A framework for the creation and issue of open badges for virtual exchange is shared here. The badges are issued through our account with Open Badge Factory which is based in Finland and those who earn them can collect and display them through setting up a profile on Open Badge Passport. Here's mine. 

This taster session - the resources for which remain open - hopefully gave in insight into the excitement and potential for working with those who are at a distance. Having experienced for myself how virtual exchange and connected practice can enrich your understanding of the contexts and challenges faced by others, help develop technical and learning design skills, bring new and exciting opportunities to both students and teachers, I feel that it was a valuable experience and certainly a first for me to present in 2 conferences at the same time!

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!) :