I attended OER16, my first OER conference, but did not present. I had my own side room, just off the main drag, where I could provide respite from the main programme and entertain the Wiki curious.
Mostly I fired out tweets, recorded sessions and observed. And, it has to be said, had a great time doing so.
This year’s OER17 Conference was a different kettle of fish. I felt there was a lot to say, and be said, so I ill-advisedly submitted four sessions (I retracted a fifth on ‘Wikimedia vs. the Right to Forgotten‘).
Martin Poulter: Putting Wikipedia and Open Practice into the mainstream in a University at OER17 (Own work, CC-BY-SA)
Thankfully, my colleague Martin Poulter came to my aid to assist, and improve, on two of these sessions (one about goats and one about Wikimedia games) and in the end I’m glad we went for it this year because, between Lucy Crompton-Reid’s brilliant keynote and fab sessions from Alice White, Stefan Lutschinger, Sara Mörtsell, Martin Poulter and Navino Evans, I think the Wikimedia presentations played a really positive role in this year’s conference after what has been such a low year in politics. But maybe I’m just biased.
And our biases were laid out in the open this year, I think, because the theme was ‘The Politics of Open‘ and politics is, no getting away from it, deeply personal. ‘Shouting from the heart‘ was the mot juste. Perhaps because of this, or the steady supply of coffee and biscuits, the conference did seem that much fuller of warm embraces, smiles and laughter as much as critical discourse. People being good-natured with one another, huddling together in dark times, espousing what they held to be true. And this was not so much bonhomie as ‘bonfemie’ (doubtful this will catch on) because the conference had such a surfeit of brilliant articulate women forming its backbone with an all-female list of keynotes and plenary speakers. (The Arsenal fans in the pub next door would have appreciated such a strong backbone to their side no doubt.)
Lorna Campbell – The Distance Travelled: Reflections on open education policy in the UK since the Cape Town Declaration (Own work, CC-BY-SA)
I still need to catch up on Thursday’s talks but here’s what I observed:
I observed passion (Lorna Campbell’s blistering first talk on UK Open Education policy left scorched earth in her wake and her second ‘Shouting from the Heart’, invoking the Declaration of Arbroath, had her choked and us fair greetin’).
I observed cool logic (because logic is cool and, from what I observed, there are no greater purveyors of undeniable reasoning than the three M’s: Martin Poulter, Martin Weller and Melissa Highton).
Handy definitions from Melissa Highton’s talk – ‘Brexit, praxis and OER redux – why not being open now costs us money in the future.’ (Own work, CC-BY-SA)
I observed fun and playfulness in our Wikimedia Games session (which exposed Lucy’s competitive side) and Charlie Farley’s Board Game Jam. The #LILAC17 Credo Digital Literacy award-winning Charlie Farley no less.
Passion. Logic. Playfulness. Qualities that, to my mind, are what education should be about.
Godwin’s Law (redefined) meant that Trexit had to be discussed at some point during the conference while calls to action and calls for solidarity were also asked and answered (“Let’s make copyright right right now“, “Repeal the 8th” and “#IWill” for instance).
‘Get your smart phone out!’ – Lisette Kalshoven, and Alek Tarkwoski fixing copyright for teachers and students at OER17 (Own work, CC-BY-SA)
And we came out of the two days feeling pretty upbeat that there may actually be a way through the woods, out of the “unenlightenment” and into the bright future of a Viv Rolfe and David Kernoghan chaired #OER18.
(I could be wrong but there may even have been a moment of demob happiness around the room watching David rise out his seat to announce we could call him #OER18 co-chair).
No mean feat anyway after a grim year.
In this respect, I think Maha Bali’s keynote was an inspired choice and really set the tone for the whole two days. If politics is personal then the act of gift-giving is personal too; imposing your choices on someone else; whether it is the ‘gift’ of an open educational resource or the ‘gift’ of your elder brother buying you a Pixies CD for your birthday when he had the only CD player in the house and you’d never heard of the Pixies at that point. (He gave me a cassette copy in the end and kept the CD).
I’m grateful to Maha for the reminder of my brother’s wiliness but also that the best quality an educator has (beyond passion, logic and playfulness) is empathy.
Being able to empathise with other learners and considering how they can best access learning materials and the kinds of barriers they come up against is critical in OEP. You may think you’re being inclusive but we are too often trapped in our own worldview, traveling those same over-trammelled thought pathways; unable to see that our solutions aren’t really solutions at all or understand, or even acknowledge, the challenges of access or licensing others face; the obstacles they may have to overcome; the risks they may have to take.
“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.”
― Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
So that’s my takeaway:
Be less goat.
Be more empathetic bear.
Cheers to Josie, Alek, Maren and the rest of the ALT team.
Link to the summary of the Wikimedia related sessions at the Open Education Conference.
Related post:
http://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/wir/2017/04/12/wikipedia-in-education-if-not-now-then-when-oer17/