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PLEs, PLNs, and connecting virtually online with a community... it's always about the people!
25 Years of Ed Tech is a serialized audio version of the book 25 Years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller of the Open University and published by AU Press. The audio version of the book is a collaborative project with a global community of volunteers contributing their voices to narrate a chapter of the book. Bonus episodes are a series of conversations called "Between the Chapters" to chat about these topics and more!
"In this lively and approachable volume based on his popular blog series, Martin Weller demonstrates a rich history of innovation and effective implementation of ed tech across higher education. From Bulletin Board Systems to blockchain, Weller follows the trajectory of education by focusing each chapter on a technology, theory, or concept that has influenced each year since 1994. Calling for both caution and enthusiasm, Weller advocates for a critical and research-based approach to new technologies, particularly in light of disinformation, the impact of social media on politics, and data surveillance trends. A concise and necessary retrospective, this book will be valuable to educators, ed tech practitioners, and higher education administrators, as well as students."
Credits:
Text in quotes from the book website published by Athabasca University Press CC-BY-NC-ND
BG music Abstract Corporate by Gribsound released under a CC-BY license. Track was edited for time.
Artwork X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licenced under CC-BY-SA.
Audio book chapters produced by Clint Lalonde.
Between the Chapters bonus podcast episodes produced by Laura Pasquini.
0:03
Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book 25 years of edtech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura Pasquini
0:15
Welcome we are at chapter eight teen living in 2011 personal learning environments or pls, I've got a great group of folks with me today. So we're gonna go through introduce and say hello to Autumm Caines, Christian Frederick, Maha Bali, Rebecca Hogue and Helen Dewward. I was told Maha told me before we got started, that it's somebody's birthday. And it's the author of this book. So on a count of 3123, happy,
0:43
happy birthday.
0:49
All right, it's so bad. I know I love it. It's great. I want it to be awkward or whatever. So it's January 6, we're recording. It's early in the morning for me here in the us so we can get everyone in everyone's timezone around the world. And then we're really happy to wish you happy birthday. On a podcast, even if it comes out later. You deserve birthday surprises all year round. Alright, so personal environments, were something that came out based on a few things we've talked about in previous chapters of between the chapter podcast and I brought this group of folks together because they know what it means to be in community to learn and connect with each other. And I think maybe we should define it because when I invited this group, I think there was a misconstruing between personal learning environments and personal learning networks. plns. So what the heck are between where do these two things, I think, how can you have some idea,
1:40
I really like to differentiate between personal learning environment are the spaces and places and, and tools and technologies you use as the like the content, the processes, the devices, the services, and then the PLM, the personal learning network, are the people, the groups and the collections, the conversations, the gatherings and and I use Thornburg metaphor of the fire, the fireside conversation, fireside chats. And that's, a lot of times we have to think in in terms of agency, that the individuals agency, their their control over what they're where they're engaging their experiences, and ultimately, the purpose, why they're in those environments, why they're in those spaces, particularly now with, with the pandemic space spaces that have shifted durbridge, you know, the landscape dramatically. So, thanks. That helps. Yeah, I've graphic in that I've kind of separated out the two in a graphic.
2:51
I love that. I will say a Martin defines it as a quote him on his page 123 tools, communities and services that constitute the individual educational platforms that learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals. That's how he defines PLC. So in this conversation, you're going to hear us talk about a combination of those two things. But how and I love that you just talked about agency and like opportunity where people could gather more than anything else is what I'm thinking about.
3:19
It's interesting, because when I when I miss Rebecca here, just from a voice perspective, when I hear network, I think of it from a connectedness perspective.
3:30
And so for me, I thought of network. So as in personal learning network, it included the tools as well as the people because I think of the non agency like so knowledge exists in, in computer networks, right, like so not just in people. And so I kind of think of the PLN is a bit more of a holistic term, then PL E, which is really, I don't know, when I, when I read the chapter, I was thinking, it sounds like we're trying to replace the replace the learning management system. But we didn't quite go far enough and get into Domain of One's Own, such that some of the examples, we're replacing it with just another private system. At least that's what it felt like to me when I was reading it.
4:20
Yeah, I mean, I want to blame Martin for that. And I told him on his birthday, this Maha. I told you, Martin on your birthday, that I'm going to say bad things about you, because I think you made a wrong choice there. I understand that you wanted to talk about pls. But I think what Rebecca was saying is, you should focus on the people. And I agree, like it's like yes, we have so much there's so much wrong with learning management system. But if you want to go all the way you focus on the people and then how far do you go with the people I wouldn't necessarily say Domain of One's Own because that's not the only direction to go. But it's one of the directions obviously. And, and it's, I guess it's what it's about what the people are doing in the in the space that Makes you decide to go to a certain space, rather than honestly nothing in particular about the space itself. So like, for example, and I don't even know if this is the right example of a personal learning environment, I didn't finish reading the chapter. Oh, if we, if we say, they're really short chapters, I just didn't have time to read this one. Where, for example, you look at spaces like slack or discord, which I think of as semi synchronous third places because they're not the learning management system. But they're not also your personal space that you use with your friends. But you can use it at work, or it's cool. We were just talking yesterday about how we're hacking Slack, which is supposed to be for the workplace, but using it for education. And we're hacking discord, and using it for education, but it's supposed to be for gaming. And it's about what people do with things and how people form their networks. And then the PLN is about the people and can go across different environments. So virtually connecting, for example, which we will talk about soon started out, for example, in different spaces, and they move but the network moves to different spaces, the environment where we collaborate, moving from Google Hangouts on air to zoom, of course, it changes things, but it doesn't change the essence of what we are, I think, emphasis on people.
6:12
So the co-opting of spaces, the hacking of spaces is interesting, because I don't know in 2011, if we were doing that as much than we were just like joining these spaces, willy nilly, and not really thinking about some of the other implications that are going to be brought up. Well, something's missing. And we talked about this a little bit in our pre chat.
6:31
Yeah, there is there really isn't a definition or a clarity around. What does he mean by learning environment? And I think, do you just envision LMS learning management systems as the learning environment, because that really misses the markets. It's it's a bigger picture, like Rebecca said, it's a holistic image of what a learning environment looks like that includes,
6:57
they say, violi, right. And the UK is a virtual learning environment. So that's not that different from personal learning environment. Whereas when we talk about a professional learning network, it's about a network and not a person's environment, right?
7:09
Yeah. And I will jump into vlts Virtual Learning Environments is a common term, probably using UK and some other places, Australia and New Zealand as well, that virtual learning environment is an educational technology. I'm going to use an Wikipedia definition. It's a web based platform for digital aspects of courses of study, usually within educational institutions, which is a really broad way of saying institutional enterprise systems or spaces or software's that where they do teaching and learning, but that may not always be the case. Right? So that's, there's some flexibility in that definition. So that's a good call out Helen, I will say it's assumed maybe and maybe should have been talked about. So we're add some annotations to that document. There is a document, where did that come from? The annotation documents that's going through this book, and there's like little notes, have you all have seen it now? There's a hypothesis annotation of Martin's book, where did that come from? And it was that was after a talk that Martin must have done at one of the conferences, I'm assuming
8:11
a hypothesis annotation is, is, is on the public hypothesis access, and it just overlays the the book itself. So anyone can do public annotations in hypothesis is that what you're thinking?
8:26
at all see, innovate, there was a workshop hypothesis annotation workshop for two hours, where we focus on Martin's book, why there's a particular day in June or in May, where a lot of people annotated the book.
8:41
Cool. Thank you for and we actually dropped a link in and I will put a link that to our the hypothesis annotation of the book, because there's some really cool notes and comments. And this actually will just augment, probably what I should have read a long time ago before I started this podcast. So this is really helpful if anyone wants to dive in. And it's a link to what they talked about at all see innovate, which thank you for catching me up on that. I appreciate that. What is what are others thinking about? This is terms of Kelly's just still defining we don't have to go beyond this yet. But what are you thinking?
9:17
So um, this is Autumm. I'll jump in. And just really quickly to say that, uh, I only finished the chapter moments ago, read it really, really quickly, and had the realization I was like, oh, man, they're not talking about personal learning networks. We're talking about personal learning environments, and my brain started to go 2011 2011 What was I doing in 2011. In 2011, I was actually pretty occupied with an LMS merge, like an LMS change. So I was at an institution that was changing from one LMS to another, which is a major project, um, but I think that was occupying a lot of my time. I'm a little more forgiving about the chapters focus on environments and tools a little bit more so than communities. Because from a historical perspective, I think I think Maha has right, I think that's not the right conversation to have. But unfortunately, that's the conversation we had in 2011. Right, that was the thing that people were talking about, that was the thing that the conferences were pushing all of that kind of stuff. Um, so unfortunately, I think we kind of went down the wrong path with some of that kind of stuff. But that's the end, I wouldn't say everybody was doing that. But there were definitely some folks who were talking about communities who were talking about that kind of stuff. But there was a lot there was a lot of push from vendors, there were a lot of push for there was just a really big voice, about environments and to web 2.0 was huge. There was new tools popping up all of the time that could do different little things. Everybody was signing up for all these accounts, no regard for data, no regard for, like, where anything was going, it was just like, Oh, this is a free account, let's sign up for it and tinker with it and see what it does.
11:13
Christian here? Hi.
11:15
I was just going to say that I don't, I wouldn't. I don't think we we blame Martin. But I think the conversation that as far as I know, in 2011 2012, I just joined this whole sphere or realm of connected learning, so to speak. So I'm kind of the puppy in this, this conversation. I, it might just be for me. But I don't really see a huge difference in the environment versus network conversation, because in the chapter itself, Martin at the end makes the point that it is about, I think, social connections and all that. And that was when I started in this field in 2011 to 2012. That was very much very, very much my my understanding of it as well. And at that time, the I agree that many people signed up for all kinds of platforms and monolithic platforms that that promised, like the kind of end of the rainbow scenario for learning. I think the conversation was always one, at least the people that I talked to always acknowledge that and the environment without the people without the connections without the network in itself isn't really going to work. Anyways, the MOOCs kind of changed that the the xMOOC so to speak, but that wasn't really supposed to be a learning environment from from what I understood. And that's just my my little bit. And it might, might almost be a cliche of sorts. But in terms of defining learning environments, I would like to see someone define something that is not a learning environment. So where what kind of environment is an environment where you do not learn anything? That kind of is, that's why I wasn't even missing the definition of the learning environment. And in this context,
13:07
I was just going to jump in and say the question I got brought up, and I should have asked is, what were folks doing in 2011. And the two different ways that we go, it's really important. Ironically, I have to give a shout out because I wasn't sure what I was doing, Clint alone, that is helping with this podcast, actually was doing his thesis, his master's thesis research on pls. And I have a blog post from this to document it. So this is what I do. And so I was like, thoughts on my PLN is what I wrote about in February, because I was in my grad program myself. And I think this is a really interesting pivot point where I don't know if those two are the same, but maybe they get talked about the same. And I love that you brought that up Christian, because the end of the chapter does talk with this. So this chapter is housed. Yeah, between a few things. Um, we I was gonna mention that. This is before we talk about MOOCs, this is after we talk about Twitter, and blogs and LMS. So this is a funny spot that the PLN/PLE could have been almost anywhere, and it falls after the connectivism chapter, as well. So this is kind of where we're sitting in the world of the book itself. And, yeah, I'd love to know, where were people in 2011. Thinking about this as well.
14:23
I have to answer this one, because 2011 was the Egyptian revolution that started in January, and ended with the ouster of a president that we'd had for 30 years in February. So that was 2011 for me, and so it doesn't sound like enough to handle that situation. It was, as you probably know, and maybe if people are so young, they may not know this, the entire Egyptian revolution was based on people forming on Twitter and Facebook and everywhere. And I think back to what Christian was talking about in terms of learning environments, you're learning And it's also your physical environment, right? I don't know if the chapter talks about that like, though Yeah, you're right. I think everywhere it could be a learning environment. It's not an everywhere each person's learning environment is their their space. But I think for so for me to tell them love is a very special year it had that it's also a traumatic year for me that ended in the birth of my daughter. But so that's what I was doing in 2011. And it's also when the revolution happened in Egypt, they disconnected the internet for about two weeks, because the internet was so powerful, and in getting people together for activism. So if you kind of think about Black Lives Matter, and the metoo movement and all that this was way before that, where people were using social media for that, before they knew it would be used for surveillance against them. And then they would get arrested because they were gathering online. But they were also finding ways to subvert the internet ban by using I think satellite to tweets, and it was it was really, so that's what 2011 is for me. I'll say that. I feel like if the um, the only thing for me, that's kind of missing from the chapter going back to that question a little bit, I know, kind of weaving some of the different questions together here. I hope that's okay.
16:12
I think there's a conversation of the informal learning that's missing a little bit that I'm thinking about with what Maha has saying around the revolution in Egypt in and I think that that was maybe the hope for the personalized learning environment in 2011, there was this idea that people would, that students would embrace their own tools, and that they would adopt things themselves that there maybe wasn't a need for a centralized learning system. Because there were all these web 2.0 tools out there, and that they could pick and choose different things that they that they want to add and connect with one another and make their own networks and make their own learning. I think it's also very tightly tied to the kind of like the myth of the autonomous learner was part of that, which also fed into some of the MOOC conversation that came in 2011. Right. But, um, but yeah, I feel like a lot of that it's a there's a, there's a parallel wit between the formal learning environment in the informal learning environment. And I think that informal learning is maybe not a it's not really paid as much attention in the chapter as I'd like to see.
17:36
I think in 2011, I was actually sort of living what autumn was talking about. Because I had started the formal Ph. D studies. I was studying mobile learning. And in the summer, I got drawn to over Twitter, I got drawn to this thing called mobi MOOC, which was a connectivist MOOC on Mobile Learning. And it meant that that's where I did my first real academic collaboration. I wrote a collaborative paper. And it was quite a a transformative experience.
18:12
And so that was sort of the the heart of that connectivist MOOC, it was before the big Stanford x. So,
it sort of was that bridge. I think. I also wanted to highlight other things that were happening in 2011. We just got the iPad to just which was transformative after having the original iPad. Right. But we were tablets were still new technology back then. But mobile was was was still was pretty hot. At that point in time, and I think now it's sort of just been it were mobile was a special thing, then it's now a incorporated it just yeah, we don't think of it as something separate anymore.
19:02
But yeah, I think that that for me, in 2011, it was really the reaching out and creating my personal learning network. And Twitter was a key part of it as well. For me, it's like that's where I met people. That's where I actually met all of you.
19:22
I was just a quick jump on the technology side, just to say that the tool that you brought up the iPad to this is discussed in a previous version of web 2.0 was 2006. But the iPhone made a difference to make mobile get started, it was 2007. And so I'll just say those timelines kind of make sense of where this comes from. Even though we had blogs before this and video was before that, it really wasn't as I want to, the word of warning is is accessible, but it wasn't really available because it's not accessible to everyone. So it was a bit more limited to who could participate and have that opportunity. Thanks for sharing that Rebecca.
20:00
I'll say that I think some of that came, and maybe I don't, I'm totally just talking out loud here. I'm curious what other people think if I'm totally off base, call me on it. But I think it may be some of that came because we were learning that way. The technologists, the designers, the innovative faculty members, we had all these tools all of a sudden, and we were like, wait, oh, my God, I can connect with this educator in Egypt, or Canada, or Germany, and all, you know, all of these people who, um, I have something in common with, now all of a sudden, I can connect with them. And distance isn't such a barrier anymore. We were learning that way. And so the myth became that our students would learn that way. And I think the reality ended up being that students at that point in time, were not ready, they I think they might actually be a little more ready nowadays. But at that point in time, the students that we were working with weren't necessarily jumping into those environments, broadband wasn't as ubiquitous as we would like and was, we'd hope it's still not. But I think that's where that myth came from was the fact that we were learning that way as educators and as professionals.
21:18
2011 was for me the the these I remember, the summer of 2011 was the the year when I started out in this whole thing. And we started at a small university in northern Germany, we started out thinking about how we want to enhance and facilitate learning online, basically. And it was later on the 2012, the year of the MOOC. And we tried to weave in some more connectivist approaches into higher education, online courses, basically. And then at least in Germany, that was kind of a novel idea. And we tried to work our way around that and connect connectivist learning approaches team based project based learning approaches to credentialing online. And I, lots of what I read in this chapter was quite sounded familiar, because we were thinking about how people can use flicker, and how can we actually make sure that they were the ones who actually, I don't know, created this image, this graphic? How do you assess who worked on what in which environment and all those connections, and then all those thankings basically drove us in what we did back then. And it's interesting to think back to that, because now it seems so far away. And the questions that we ask around those environments seem so different than the from connected to the ones that we're talking about right now. So before I joined this podcast, I just this recording, I just finished the podcasts, with Brian lamb, and Terry green, and then Brenda Clark, on the teacher and against surveillance. And those are completely different questions than the ones that at least we in northern Germany, were asking in 2011. And I think, looking back, we have to take that also into account somewhat, when when we assess what what we did back then, and what kind of technology we had and what seemed novel or new at that time.
23:14
I love that you brought that up Christian because Tannis I talked in a previous episode of between the chapters around connectivism, because we were in a different place in time, and we didn't have the awareness and knowledge that we have now. So thank you for mentioning that because I think we are asking different questions about these environments and tools and technologies. I'd love to hear a little bit about your experiences with supporting a virtual community and working on quote unquote, with pls or PL ns, if you want to pivot to talk with that, that'd be great.
23:45
Yeah, I can start and then everyone else can jump in, of course. So I mean, you invited the five of us specifically, because we are the co-directors of something called virtually connecting, which actually you are there at the inception of and going back to what autumn was saying about informal learning, and then how connectivism allowed people to connect with you from all over the world. What happened to me in 2013, and 2014, after connecting a lot with people on Twitter and getting close to them that way, is beginning to realize that these people actually meet each other face to face at conferences a lot. And I'm not there at those conferences. I'm virtual most of the time, even the times where I thought I could get institutional funding to go there are a lot of different reasons logistical, financial, social, that I couldn't go. And so it seems like there's a lot of equity, but there actually isn't. There's the illusion of equity on a certain level. And then beyond that, there's a lot of inequity happening in terms of how you can continue to develop those connections with people when you meet each other at conferences several times a year and things like that. And so Laura and I, Laura Pasquini and I were on the organizing committee of 84 online, which later became OC innovate. And it was one of the conferences I really wanted to go to and I became like, The unconference virtual co chair, and Rebecca, and I was telling Rebecca, I'm so upset that I'm not going to this conference, I don't mind missing the presentations that I'm co presenting, I can join virtually, but I'm missing chatting with people, those hallway conversations that people have, and they build community. And Rebecca said, I will be your voice in the room, I will connect you through my phone or iPad or laptop to people. And that's how virtually connecting started. And it was all about connecting people to have conversations when they were together. And there were people who were virtually not there who wanted to be part of that space. So we sort of created this learning environment out of nowhere, basically, that was that is hybrid. And, and I don't know, I'll let others talk a little bit more about that. But it just brought brought people whose voices normally wouldn't be heard at conferences into the conversation, like straight into what was happening there.
25:54
And so, um, all of this was happening in 2015. And the thing that was happening at the same time that I believe, I believe Helen was part of that I'm not sure about Christian was riser. 15. And so yeah, we Helen's naughty. I was in rice. Oh, 15 along with my head, and Rebecca, all of us were in rice. Oh, 15. We were participating. This was a connectivist MOOC run by Dave carmy. That happened on the open web, Dave would put out a prompt and a bunch of people from all over the world would respond with blog posts or videos or mashups, those kinds of things. And, um, yeah, all
26:34
the sudden,
26:35
I was hearing, um, I was hearing about a Maha. And, and I was hearing about Maha, you know, kind of lamenting that she couldn't go to this conference. And, you know, seeing Rebecca respond. I'm not sure if this I guess this was happening on Twitter. It's so funny, you know, these conversations are happening. And I can remember the conversation in my head, but not necessarily remember the environment. Going back to what's more, we wrote a blog
26:58
post, we wrote a blog post, the conversation we had.
I remember that periscope came out, like the week before the conference. And so we had been practicing. And that actually had been the first time I had talked to him in person, like in person. synchronously, was in the lead up to 84. Online, and I was talking to her using we were using Google Hangouts. This was even before hangouts on air, actually, we were using Google Hangouts. No,there was hangouts on air, there was Hangouts. That's how we recorded it and posted it to YouTube, remember,but that's how we were using. We got there at that conference. Right. So we hadn't we have to? Yeah, because at first, no. downloads, no handouts. Yeah. existed before that. But yeah, the downloading was too slow in Egypt to upload again, it would take like six hours. So we decided to use, I think it was why we chose also Google Hangouts On Air rather than zoom at the time. The first session we had was on zoom, because I couldn't get through the Hangouts on air to work, but it's right forever. So we decided to use Google Hangouts On Air because it could stream directly to YouTube. Now, you know, zoom paid version will do that. But Google Hangouts On Air was the only free thing that would allow you to livestream to YouTube. So that everyone else could participate, or at least watched the conversations that we were having.
28:22
It was it was interesting how we evolved into that technology, though, like the technology wasn't the purpose. The purpose was the connection and the people. And you know, the idea sparked from I was attending, I was living in California, but still attending meetings in Ottawa. And so one of my colleagues would bring me in on her phone, sort of like the FaceTime on your phone, and I was that virtual person. And that's sort of where it came from, of like, Oh, I can just bring man into the Congress into the conference. But it just it, it kind of blew up at that point. Because it everybody wanted to see see my have much more than just the people that were at the conference, right? Like, we realized that we actually had an audience. And that actually was part of the ballooning.
29:14
And I'd like to say that it was part of the building of that network. So you connected physically on site with people at the conference, who then became part drawn into the network, and people who were virtual. I was one of those that that became drawn into this network and then it as as conferences and as events evolved, it's it seems to snowball into this this global collaboration of who's going to which conference and and who can we talk to that we wouldn't have talked to and this is how autumn and I ended up you know, face to face conversations with Brian Alexander and and in A car with a printer, right? That was one of the things that was so transformative for me being the on site person. I didn't know very many people. And it was through my has connections that I got to know people. And you know, when I'm sitting there, you know, interviewing the keynote speakers with in that same room. I'm like, how,
30:24
how is this happening?
30:26
It happened on the virtual end to mine. One of my favorite stories is actually with Martin Weller. We're like, we were at all and I was the virtual buddy. And I'm running this session with metta and Rebecca and Martin Weller. And Martin's talking about a blog post that he wrote, and I jump in. And I'm like, so Martin, can you tell us where your blog is, and everybody kind of chuckles a little bit because everybody knows who Martin Weller is, except for me, it's the first time I'd ever I didn't know that his blog was super famous, and that he'd been writing about this stuff for years. So it was good, because that was part of the recording thing, because there's probably other people out there who don't know who Martin Weller is, I'm not the only one. But in that particular room, at that particular time, I was probably one of the only people who didn't realize that I was, you know, talking to somebody who was, um, you know, we've been doing this for a really long time. And it was huge for my professional development. It was huge for like, helping me to better understand the bigger conversation about what was going on.
31:30
The background picture on virtually connecting Twitter account is from that conference, that session that Autumm is talking about. There's Rebecca myself, Martin Weller, and Martin Huxley gathered around a little phone, because it was the only place where there was internet and the whole conference. So that's just because this is Martin's chapter and autumn mentioned this. I,
31:52
well, I want to actually just ask you all to describe what virtually connecting is. So I will say like Autumm, I'm asking for a point of curiosity, some of our listeners probably have no idea what the heck you all are talking about. So there is a hybridity and effects and we know what it's it's evolved into for some of us, but for someone who's just coming fresh and new, what is it Christian? What is virtually connecting?
32:17
That's an easy one. No, it's actually not. And I think one of the things that people first thing that it could be when when they check out the site, at least that's a comment that we usually get is, is this technology? How can I use this in order to to make it work at my institution at my conference, and then what is needed? I think the the best way to describe it, at least from from where I'm sitting is to say that virtually connecting is a community of some educators, some learning technologists, however, they would self described themselves, of people who aim to make conferences a bit more accessible and a bit more connected both on site but mainly to people who are not able to join or who did not join for whatever reason. And we do that with a community of people. And quite I learned this, I think in 2016, and ongoing with with quite a system that is iterated and and kind of iterated and nuances every every now and then. Aiming to give voice and space and time to people who would usually not be heard at a conference like that. And we basically do that with different tools, different technologies that have evolved over time, sometimes due to changes by providers, sometimes due to people suggesting that something else might work in a better way. But the the main gist is that at a conference, the the experience for somebody on site or online would be that you join an informal conversation, much like a conversation that a conference that you would have over coffee or tea and a break. And you talk about the main strands and the main themes, maybe of the conference, or what your experience your personal experience at this conference has been like. And I think everybody who has joined one of these sessions are most people I hope, at least have somewhat similar stories to tell with how they connected to this community of people and autumn told hers. Maha has one Rebecca has one. Helen has one. Everybody who's deeply involved in this network kind of has personal connections to that and also personal connections to the people running this community and keeping it afloat. I think that's that's why I smile when I got the invitation to join here along with with all the others because I think virtually connecting is an interesting example of a personal learning network. And maybe it's especially in that regard, not an environment.
34:58
I love that definition. Thank you, Christian for clarifying. I will say, you all were doing this well in advance 2014 we're planning Maha you and Jesse for justice domal and then get bring you virtually with Rebecca in 2015. Like you are well beyond your rate for this pandemic, all y'all bringing people together in a hybrid way, and people were sneaking up on video. So a lot of your work is on site and video in some format. I'm not sponsored by anything, so I'm not going to mention any of them. That's not my thing. On this podcast, I will say, it's been cool that you've opened doorways and things that you've mentioned was purpose first, global collaboration, forging connections and curiosity. So even not knowing someone who cares, like no one's internet famous. So like bringing people together to talk about the things that really interests them, and the meaningful spaces and places like the hallway conversations you'd have at the meeting or conference in the side chat. That's what I loved about it. So y'all have some fun things that you do. What does it mean, though, to be having these like learning networks and and creating spaces and places for people to connect this way?
36:11
I think one of the things that it occurred to me that it was it was challenging academic gatekeeping in ways that Twitter alone was not doing Twitter alone was doing a little bit of that. But it wasn't invading, not invading, not in the worst possible way. But sort of subverting a little bit. What was the cliquishness, and the closeness of conferences, even though we have had critiques that we are also a bit clickers like we're open like anyone can join, but saying anyone can join doesn't mean that people will join. And we've learned over time to do intentionally equitable hospitality to include people in and to, especially women and minorities and people of color. When you say anyone's welcome, you'll get a lot of white men saying, Yeah, I'm Welcome. I'm coming. And then women need to be reached out to personally Oh, hey, you, Laura, would you like to join us? You know what I mean, like that kind of thing we've learned. And there's just one small thing I want to say. And then I'm gonna let others talk a little bit more about intentionally equitable hospitality, I think, because that's the key thing that I think we've come out of it that we think has value beyond the specific context of virtually connecting and into generally, equitable online learning and hybrid learning. But the one thing that is less visible to you because you're not deep into the community, but you're on the on the margins of it, is that beyond what you're seeing in the video, there's a lot of asynchronous and semi synchronous communication happening, like on slack on Google Docs, and things like that to plan things. And it takes so much planning because when you do something hybrid, there's a level of spontaneity, but to be able to include other people, you need to let them know when it's happening. So they can join you, right. And so it's trying to find the right person who's at the right conference, who wants to connect to the person who is virtual, who wants to be at that conference, and someone has to announce the blog post, and someone has to tweet it. So there's a lot of different roles and functions to make it work. And not all of the network is visible and public.
38:02
Essentially, you talk about I'm going to ask a question about intentional, equitable hospitality. But I will say, the invisible labor that goes beyond what you all do to support a community, and in these personal learning environments and networks is critical. So you have hit the nail on the head there, Ma, because I think we don't recognize how much intention, intentionality and how much effort and time and resources go into some sort of support. I don't know. How did you want to tell us a little bit about I'd love to hear more about this intentional, equitable hospitality. This is the best term I've heard so far are these episodes. So please tell me about this.
38:41
It's just just as everyone was talking, I go back to something I wrote, after I started connecting with virtual, virtual connecting, and I'd read a post by Seth Godin. And he talked about raising use, the people you connect with, raise your average. So if you're in a room with really smart people, your average raises because you're engaged in these conversations. And I remember writing and thinking we said, it's not about raising my average, but it's about finding the people and the conversations that really help collectively raise humanity from from the depths of wherever you are. And I think in terms of virtually connecting and and that intentionality, it's about finding and building relationships and conversations with people that matter. And it's not the you know, the the Twitter stars or the the, the social media influencers that that matter but it's the person, the individual who who is new to the to the space or new to this, this this spot and For me, in the work I do with teacher educators, it's really helping them find their own network, find their own spaces, and build their, their, their connections with intention, and finding the people who have the same passions that they have. So if you're, you're into dog walking, you find people who are dog walkers, wherever they may be in whatever social media spaces have a student who said, He's, he's on a, like a reading genre that is, is quite unique. It's like, Well, where do you connect with other people who read that same genre? It's, it's, you know, it's raising your own awareness of other people and their interests and passions.
40:50
I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, we put the link we add that's.
40:55
So, another thing that came out of virtually connecting, that is more visible than the invisible labor that we were talking about, but still not as visible as some of the, like, actual conversations and video calls that we would do the recordings of those calls, that kind of thing was the scholarship that we would engage in. So there's all this work and all this pre planning that's happening to make these conversations happen. And then we get into these conversations. But we're all academics rights, we're very self reflective, we're thinking about what we're doing the practices that we're engaging in, the practices that we are employing the tools that we're using, we're getting feedback from a wider community that Matt was talking about, saying, You're saying that you're, you know, you're trying to break down these cliques, but you're becoming a clinic in doing that, um, and we didn't like, like, I think some, some folks who were maybe not as critical or who weren't as connected, um, would maybe be able to pass some of that off. But one of the cool things that I loved about being in virtually connecting and being part of virtually connecting was that, um, you know, we would, we'd be like, Alright, well, let's think about that. Let's do some reading, let's talk together and publish a paper about this. So we did link to the published paper that we have, where we define and kind of explore the idea of intentionally equitable hospitality. And, Laura, you can put that in the shownotes, I think it is a huge piece of what's coming out of virtually connecting, right, it's more than just these kind of conversations that we have, which of course, have a lot of they're very important have their own merit, but that self reflection, and then publishing of what we learned from doing this for, you know, multiple years, I think, is something that I hope anyway, has benefit has larger benefit that maybe we'll you know, even go on a little bit longer.
42:55
I was giving a workshop to an institution recently, they're doing hyflex. And my institution doesn't do hyflex. But I think virtually connecting really prepared me for high flex, because what is missing in a lot of these high flex models is that you're expecting one professor to be teaching people into different places. And virtually connecting has a very unique model, where you have an onsite buddy and a virtual buddy, who is a virtually connecting volunteer. One is on site, taking care of the on site people and one is the virtual, taking care of the virtual people. And then the virtual on the on site, make sure to connect with each other and make sure that everyone's voices get heard. Sometimes the on site person to be equitable, will shut up a white guy who's talking too much. And this is one of the things that, oh, that seems rude, but actually, well, that person is probably taking up a lot of space in his life anyway, and the people who are in this conversation, we're gonna focus on those furthest from justice, and give them space to speak, because they almost never have time to speak, they never have space to speak, and they're probably never going to be at that conference, or they're rarely ever going to be like, someone like me who's powerful in all kinds of ways, but I only ever go to like one conference a year because I can't afford to go more than that invited, you know,
44:08
you beat me in that conference number Maha. So, um, I will define high flux really quickly. And I will put a link in the show notes, simply some people on sites in a classroom brick and mortar, wherever you call it, and some people virtual instructor led that are in the interweb somewhere. So it's a mock version of that. So I'll put a link to that good, good call it to define. We've already given some suggestions of what's missing and what's in the chapter. But what are some questions that maybe we can ask not just Martin but the community at large as we think of personal learning environments, or networks or communities that we haven't really considered back in 2011 that we should ask now.
44:46
Well, I'll just quickly say that, um, the point that I made earlier about, you know, educators and academics simply engaging in this way, in informal ways to connect with one another and At that point in time, I'm not sure it just wasn't hadn't been around long enough. It just kind of dropped into people's laps. But I wonder if some of the stuff that we're seeing on tik tok, for instance, if some of that is happening, like, I have a young person in my life and she says all the time, I learned this thing on tik tok, I had a great conversation with her about the difference between sex and gender. That was like, Where did you learn this? I learned it on tic tac, and she's not afraid to say she learned it. She learned it on Tick Tock. Um, and yeah, I wonder if some of the informal social medias that are happening now are lending themselves to learning in new ways that, you know, where the environment and the community are kind of coming together? I don't think that went away. Right? We just kind of changed the conversation around it. But I think it's still out there. And I wonder if it's different now than it was in 2011.
46:00
I wanted to say that that one of the things that I'm always thinking about is how with all of these new spaces, and more people aware of the new spaces, how do we keep them or make them intentionally equitable?
46:14
Right?
46:15
What can we do, as educators to to model what it means to create
46:23
equitable spaces,
46:25
I was thinking about this all summer. And I realized that a lot of educators now because of the pandemic having to go online, they have no idea how to do build community online, they, you know, people tend to think, oh, I've got the tool, I'm on zoom. So I'm, I'm synchronous with people, I'll put them in breakout rooms, they'll be in small groups, and everything will be fine. But it doesn't work like that. And this intentionality intentionally educator, hospitality thing is really hard to do. And it's really hard to explain without people experiencing it. So what Mia, Autumm and I did over the summer, is we built a set of resources of how would you build community online with specific activities that you can do, and we would select a particular activity and bring a few people around, and we'd act it out as if we were students that we do a topic that's relevant for faculty to show it happening, you know, and then when you finish talking about it to talk about adaptations, what would you do? If you had a student who couldn't turn their camera on? What would you do if you didn't have breakout rooms because your institution didn't have a particular tool that had breakout rooms, for example. And so I think the best thing is to experience it and then learn from it and reflect on it together. But in the next best thing is to watch a video of someone doing it and discussing and reflecting on it. And then try it yourself. So that's that's the sort of resources I put in the chat. There. There are community building resources, they come out of equity unbound, which is one of the communities that a lot of people here are also part of, and an organization called ONE AG, which is, which works on higher education globally.
47:55
And I'd like to just echo from that the fact that there are communities like equity unbound, and virtually connecting, that work openly, that model and show how we go through these processes and how we struggle and make mistakes and, and pick ourselves up and, and I think that is that all of these become all we are Oh, open educational resource resources for people to learn from Tick tock, a resource that people learn from blogs, Twitter, social media, spaces, are places where we can learn from each other. But if we don't talk about it, if we don't talk about some of those issues and problems, in whatever spaces and places, nobody's going to learn that you're, you're made this huge gaff. Like how do you pick yourself up from that and because we all do them even going back to virtually connecting and, and saying people didn't want to turn their mics on or didn't want to talk universally connecting session, and making that okay, but then giving them opportunities to talk when they're ready. So it's, it's, you know, that negotiation and, and doing it openly.
49:15
I will just add that I would like to urge people to do something that their book really enables them to do, which is to look at the history of the things and the conversations that we're talking about. I know I didn't in 2011 2012, as much as I would have needed to. I noticed that plenty of people nowadays don't look back as much as they should. And I think it's it's a constant struggle not to let people get away with ignoring the past that the history of these technologies that we're working with, but I think being more relentless, and that is something that I would like to see. Which is why I liked how we challenged the The idea of the personal learning environment versus networking and all that kind of thing. And we need to do that more and more often even, even though that I know that this group doesn't need that reminder from me at all.
50:17
Well, this is helpful for us to share with the community. It's all that you've given suggestions, all that you said about learning as you go and failing and fixing it. And changing is also important and on thinking about being intentional and purposeful with our personal learning networks or environments is really critical. So I want to thank you so much for the time, the resources and all that you've shared with the virtually connected community, but also on this podcast episode, I really hope that people can dive in. I've had so many show notes coming your way y'all forget excited. So thank you so much, everyone. I appreciate it.
50:51
Thank you, Laura. This was lovely. It was lovely to see you all together.
50:56
Thank you so much, Laura. Appreciate it. Bye everyone. Great seeing ya.
51:00
See you. Oh.
51:03
You've been listening to between the chapters with your host Laura pasquini. For more information for to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of Ed tech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca