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The Open Education conference last week was easily one of the best conferences I’ve ever participated in. It was intense, incredibly run, thoughtfully planned, and brought together an extremely diverse and intelligent group of people. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so intimidated by the sheer number of scary-smart people in the same room.

The conference was awesome. Lots of people have already recapped the conference itself – I’m not going to even try to add to that. I’m also not going to write a post about how fracking awesome everyone is, listing them all by name. I had a blast talking to everyone. They all rock. I am honoured to have had the chance to meet so many great new people, and to hang out with so many old friends. Blah blah blah…

What I was struck by was the ways I found the conference changing how I was thinking about education, openness, and inclusion. I felt a similar shift at the first Open Education conference I attended back in 2007, but this was a much deeper, more pervasive feeling.

Open Education is not about Resources

Although many of the sessions touched on Open Education Resources (OER, Learning Objects, content, etc…) there was a strong consensus that education is about so much more than content, and is also so much more than the tools and technologies used to present the content and connect the learners. This was a refreshing stance, as we seem to be highly content- and technology-centric when thinking about education (and Open Education, specifically). How do we shift the focus from content to interaction? From publishing and/or consuming to interaction and engagement? There were some interesting conversations about this, and although I don’t think there can be any solid answers, the fact that we’re looking at this stuff as more than just content, at education as more than just broadcast/receive, is a good sign.

Openness

Scott Leslie talks about “planning to share” vs. “just going ahead and sharing” – and the most interesting projects (and non-projects) all shared this theme. There were no RFPs, no committees, no Advisory Boards. People just started sharing. And that’s the only part of Openness that matters. It’s not about licenses, copyright, or anything other than just sharing what you’re doing.

And, there is also some hypocrisy in “open” projects – for example, the showing of a very short clip of RIP: A Remix Manifesto, at an education conference, in an art gallery, apparently cost over $100. And the distributors wanted over $300 to let us watch the entire movie. A movie that ends by saying “Download this movie” – and is not legally downloadable within Canada, even though it was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Openness is not about licensing, it’s about sharing. And locking a movie that is inherently about sharing behind a paywall is breaking the spirit of openness. Hypocrisy.

Tribalism

At an evening session on copyright, Sonny Assu presented some of his work – where he appropriated many of the commercial symbols that have been pushed on us and have become part of our cultural heritage. He talked about how we now use these symbols as parts of our selected tribal identities. The tribe of the $5 coffee cup. The tribe of the white earbuds. This got me thinking about everything I saw in terms of tribalism and identity – which tribes or shared cultural groups do I broadcast membership in? What does that mean, for how other people perceive me? Do they see the symbols of the group identity? How does my perception of others’ group identities affect my interactions with them? How does this affect the relationships that are crucial in education? Lots of stuff to think about, and no answers to come.

Inclusion

Following on the thoughts of inclusion, and on the strong sense of male dominance at the conference (which was a veritable sausage party), I started thinking much more about inclusion. If the open education conference was so strongly over-represented by white males who shared similar backgrounds, why is that? If it’s not through active exclusion (there is no club to join, no registry to sign, no approval process), it may be through a sense of inclusion or non-inclusion. Why are women, people of colour, people of various other backgrounds, not as strongly represented here? Are they missing because they don’t feel welcome? Do they perceive a risk in joining the community? Do they see a barrier to entry? The middle-aged white dudes may not see barriers and risks, but are they tangible for others?

If so, what can be done to encourage others to actively participate in the community? Is that even something that is desirable for everyone? Does everyone’s participation need to be visible to be valid?

But… I said at the top of this post that the participants were extremely diverse. WTF? well, they were, compared to some other edu- and tech- conference. But were hardly diverse, when put into a global perspective. Yes, people were there from a long list of countries, and from a long list of institutions, but almost all shared a similar privileged western background.

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Photo by Diego Leal

My travel for the 2007 Open Education conference in Logan, Utah was approved. I’ve never been to Open Education, but it sounds like an amazing event. And, to top it off, I get to present with Jim, hang out with Brian and Scott, and meet David in person.

I still need to figure out the logistics – there aren’t any direct flights from Calgary to Logan, so I guess I’ll fly to Salt Lake City and hitchhike the rest of the way.

Unfortunately, I need to leave on the last day of the conference because of family obligations. I’m hoping I can find a flight that means I won’t miss much of the conference.

Of course, this means that I need to buckle down and do some actual writing and work on the material and presentation…

I was given the choice between 2007 Open Content and EDUCAUSE in Seattle. It was a hard choice. Maybe I’ll go to EDUCAUSE 2008? I’ve never been to one of those, either.

Brian just posted about Northern Voice 2007, which will be hosted in Cyprien Lomas‘ palacial treehouse on the UBC main campus. I’m going. The first two NV events were awesome (the first was the best conference I’ve been a part of).

With more room to spread the sessions out, and in a more flexible, amazing new learning space, this is going to be one helluvan unconference. Here’s hoping they dial back the femmie quotient on the conference T-shirt this year, though…

I was contacted this morning by someone from Lexi.net to let me know about the upcoming “Your Online Identity” conference in Calgary on November 17, 2006. I hadn’t heard of the event before, so had to check out the conference website for info. It sounds like a really cool event. Not as by-the-people-for-the-people as Northern Voice, but still sounds interesting. They’ve lined up an impressive list of speakers, including The Dooce herself.

I think it’s pretty cool to have an event like this in Calgary. I’ve been toying around with the idea of a Northern Voice YYC since I went to the first Northern Voice YVR. I’m not sure Calgary’s ready – Vancouver’s much more plugged-in and seems more aligned with the whole “web 2.0″ / blogging / yaddayadda stuff. But, maybe this is a sign…

I’ll try to make it to the Lexi.net event. It’s definitely not as inexpensive as NV, at $125 for the day, but I’ll try to make the case for it.

Update: I’m in. Looking forward to it!

Stephen Downes is hosting a keynote at BCEdOnline 2006 (Thursday April 20, 2:45-3:45pm) and was gracious enough to invite Brian and myself to take a ride on his coattails to join him on stage for the keynote. I’m going to fly into Vancouver just for the day (and will try to be as awake as possible during the keynote).

We’re planning to do something rather less conventional. Not quite an “un-keynote” – but more of a discussion or fireside chat, directed by the audience. It’d be pretty presumptuous not to tap into the audience for an event like this, so an open discussion-slash-Q&A session seemed more fitting. Likely not quite to the level of managed chaos that we were able to achieve for the Social Software Salon, perhaps more akin to the Edublogger Hootenanny.

But, for it to work, audience participation is key. It doesn’t have to be in-person participation, either. I borrowed a spot on Brian’s wiki to hold a list of potential topics/questions to be brought up during the session. If the lines at the microphone don’t form, we can fall back on these.

If you’re going to BCEdOnline, or just have some ideas about what should be discussed, please surf on over to the wiki page and edit to your heart’s content!

I’m not sure, but I’d guess the session will be recorded somehow for sharing afterwards with the rest of the class…

It’s a busy time for edtech conferences online. First, HigherEdBlogCon is running, now Cole Camplese and friends are putting on a shindig at Penn State, and sharing it with all of us!

Cole sent me a link to their Teaching & Learning with Technology Symposium website – a Wordpress site running a nice K2 theme. How cool is that, for a campus-wide symposium at a huge university to be driving the online resource for the event in an open source blogging app?
The agenda for the event looks pretty interesting. Everything from the usual suspects to “The Strategies of a Dog Who Finally Caught the Car” – sounds like Alan might have had an influence

Anyway, thanks to Cole for sending the link, and thanks to Penn State for sharing this symposium with the rest of us!

I just about spaced and missed this online conference on “blogging” in higher education: HigherEdBlogCon 2006 (thanks for the reminder, Brian!)

The first round of online events (April 3-7 – right now!) is on the teaching implications of blogging. Topics like case studies, integration with LMS, blogs as personal learning environments, information literacy, etc…

The next round of events (April 10-14) is on library & info resources, followed by admissions/alumni/marketing (April 17-21) and websites & web development (April 24-28).

I’ll try to keep track of the events as the occur, but am assuming/hoping they’ll all be available in archive form for use/reuse after the conference.

Oh, and it’s free. That ain’t not half bad. It’s going to be bad to take over Flickr like we did for Northern Voice 2006, but it’s a start…

I just cashed in all of my Aeroplan miles for a return flight to Northern Voice 2006. I’m SOOOOO looking forward to those couple of days in Vancouver. I’m skipping the DrupalCon that’s in town the week prior to NV so I’m not away from the family toooo much… I was originally planning on hitting both events to gather ideas for the seemingly endless lineup of Drupal-related projects we’re working on at the Learning Commons, but will settle for lurking on whatever online component they have, and catching the Coles Notes version during Moose Camp…

Booking the tickets through the Aeroplan program was less painful than I expected, but they sure have a weird method of selecting flights – they provided me with about 10 preselected combinations of flights on the days I selected. I couldn’t just pick the individual flights with the times I wanted. I suppose that’s the tradeoff for cashing in on an almost-free trip…

This summer, at the NMC 2005 Summer Conference, they shot a bunch of video with interviews of some of the attendees, and some highlights of the conference. The video was distributed via DVD to the campus NMC rep – which is/was me. Instead of duplicating the DVD, or managing some form of sign in/out process, here’s the video. It was a quick-and-dirty rip of the DVD using Handbrake, so no bonus points for the art of video compression… The video is only 9 minutes long, so it’s not a big time investment.

It looks like the “official” version of this video on the NMC website is MIA, so if you want to see it, this may be your only chance. I make a quick cameo early on – look for the guy in the blue Hawaiian shirt and beige shorts walking past the camera with snack in hand at the Apple reception…

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