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Category : Virtually Connecting

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Digital Citizenship, Digital Environments, Digital Identity, Live Streaming, Media Studies, Surveillance, Virtually Connecting

The Zoom Gaze

Note: On December 7th I expanded my thinking on the concept of the Zoom Gaze into a full-length article with Real Life Magazine which you can find here https://reallifemag.com/the-zoom-gaze/ 

I’ve been doing video conferencing pretty intently since 2016 in connection with my Virtually Connecting work. This work has been technical, social, and critical. It has compelled me to ask questions around power, voice, and visibility. As the whole world distances from one another physically in fear of a sickness which could be nothing or could be death, those who have the means use this technology as a way to simulate normality. But all of this is anything but normal.

I’ve been thinking about the power of looking, seeing, and being seen – of speaking, listening, and being heard – of touching, feeling, and being felt. That last one is tricky and the one in which the physicality is problematic but as an act of emotion seems to come through from time to time in this virtual space – or perhaps we just yearn for it so much that the approximation is close enough.

There has been a lot of talk about not forcing students to turn cameras on and I advocate for this. I advocate for this out of an attempt to create equitable spaces as I know that not everyone can show their face/space. That video takes more bandwidth and so there is a technical inequity that privileges those with speedy internet and fancy equipment. Also, it is cultural in that we don’t just show our faces but we show our places and sometimes that is problematic for a variety of reasons. 

Even with this, as we begin the fall term I cannot help but think about the power dynamics at play in all of this. Gaze has a history and has been evaluated from multiple angles including the gaze as pure power such as in surveillance with Foucault’s panopticon and as racism in hooks’ the oppositional gaze; gendered analysis in the male gaze comes from Mulvey and the feminine gaze from Butler, and nationalized in the imperial gaze of Kaplan. 

My understanding of Gaze is limited but it seems to me that in all of the constructs of it above that the viewed is greatly impacted by the seer. The one who is being looked upon changes their behaviour, as well as their sense of self, because of the viewer. In our current time, in the “age of COVID-19”, what does it mean for so many of us to be under the Zoom Gaze? What does it mean for a teacher to see some of their students and to not see others? 

It is wonderful to give students the option of turning their cameras on or not but are there underlying power dynamics (unconscious, implicit, and unintended) of being seen that still create inequities in these environments? Are teachers unconsciously tuned in to faces, expressions, body language in such a way that privileges students who are privileged to have fast bandwidth, nice cameras, and good microphones? My gut tells me yes. 

And so “allowing” students to not have their camera on in our class session may seem like the super nice thing to do and a way to make your classes equitable but I’m coming to feel like it is actually the least that you can do. 

Here are my questions (which I don’t have answers to):

  • What is Zoom Gaze and what does it look like given different pedagogies and functions of technology?
  • How do we recognize the power structures within the Zoom Gaze?
  • How do we challenge the Zoom Gaze power structures to not perpetuate inequities?
  • Are there overlaps between Zoom Gaze and the development of parasocial interactions/relationships? 

Featured Image by Михаил Прокопенко from Pixabay 

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Conferences, Live Streaming, Open Education, Open Web, Virtually Connecting

Going Clear: A Call for Conversation around the Ethics of Mobile Live Streaming from #OER17 and Other Events

Last year I read Dave Eggers’ The Circle, a dystopian novel about technology, social media, and society gone wrong. By the end of the novel the lead character is engaging in a process called “going clear” where she is live streaming her entire life save sleeping and going to the bathroom. It is pretty creepy. I’m not ready to go clear but I like to do live streams from my phone when I’m attending conferences and I want to evaluate my usage because I do think that this technology can be overreaching and even dangerous. I’m interested in the ethical pursuit of technology in my work so I think about this stuff a lot.

My work with Virtually Connecting has made me sensitive to things like making sure when we go live in a public hallway that we have a wall behind us and not a walkthrough – to be sure that people who are passing by do not get caught in the livestream. But it is more than just visuals – live stream can pick up background conversations and other audio that others may not want out there too.

There have been calls for me to live stream from #OER17 and I’m thrilled to do it. Maha asked Martin Hawksey if it was okay to do personal mobile livestream and he said he had concerns about the Wifi bandwidth but as long as presenters were okay with it that was fine. I have a good data plan that I can use in UK so I think I can still do it and not bog down the conference wifi. Battery life is more of a concern to me than bandwidth at this point.

But I’m wondering about those ethical concerns of live stream not just conference sessions but also social time.

Consent is huge for me. During a scheduled conference session I can ask the presenter but I think I might also ask the presenter to make an announcement to the audience that the stream is happening.

I’ve had wonderful experiences live streaming social situations. I’ve had great circumstances where it was just a lot of fun for everyone involved and people watching have told me that they love it and that it makes them feel like they are really a part of the conference. However, consent can be tricky with a group of people. I’ve had situations where even though I’ve announced that I’m going live not everyone in the group caught that and if we are in public what about strangers who might just wander into my shot?

There is also something important about addressing the camera. Talking to an audience even if no one is currently watching. It is a hospitality thing but really an ethical concern about the background audio for me. There are lots of beautiful visual elements that can be fun to live stream without putting my face in the camera and saying “hey look at this”. But to just start up a recorded live stream without directing the audience’s audible experience means that you are publicizing the ambient sounds, with I’m fine with if it is birds chirping or street music but feel a little concerned about for background conversations.

What else should I be thinking about as I consider live streaming from #OER17? Much of this is an experiment for me but how do I do that ethically? What technology should I use? What is the best way to confirm consent? How do I empower people to say no? Has anyone else done this from a conference? What ethical concerns do you have? It seems to me that live streaming is a great tool for open education but what are the ethical implications?

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Virtually Connecting

The Paradox of Inclusion: Reflections prior to presenting at #OER17

Some of us have been accepted to present at OER17 reflecting on Virtually Connecting (VConnecting or VC) as an approach to open and inclusive conferences. The name of our panel is Breaking the physical presence barrier: Virtually Connecting as an approach to open, inclusive conferences. I am absolutely thrilled to be able to present with Martin Weller, Maha Bali, Sue Beckingham, Mia Zamora, and Rebecca Hogue and to be able to travel to London to be there in the flesh (it will be my first time in the UK). The date of the conference will mark the second anniversary of Virtually Connecting and there are plenty of questions about how to sustain or even grow the movement.

I joined VC just as I was finishing my Master’s work in EdTech, and it has lent itself very nicely as a continuation of my studies. Through this work I have been able to attend conferences from around the world virtually and have conversations with those who are working and researching some of the latest aspects of our field. I see VConnecting as wonderfully inclusive but I know that is not everyone’s perspective. There have been plenty of criticisms and even all out attacks on the work that we do. I have come to find the aspect of inclusion stated in our manifesto to be a paradoxical and confusing one. I am excited and nervous about doing work in this area. I realize that this work needs to happen if we are to continue forward but I find it deeply uncomfortable. I’m thankful for the opportunity to dig deeper,face this uncomfortableness, and attempt to find some clarity on these matters.

Methodology

I’m hoping for this post to be a sort of hybrid of a research paper and a blog post. We obtained IRB approval from the American University of Cairo before conducting this research so the research is more formal than most of my blog posts. However, I will not be doing a comprehensive review of the data and much of my thinking in this area are still developing so there will some thinking out loud. Considering that this research was conducted for a panel for OER17, I could not think of a better way to put my initial thoughts out in the open and ask for feedback than to publicly blog about my initial thoughts.

Three focus groups were held via Google Hangout/YouTube Live over a seven day period with twelve different participants. Participants were chosen who had prior experience with VConnecting and care was given to choose those who had diverse perspectives in terms of the different roles that they have held with VC: virtually or onsite, guest or participant, and even those who have indicated that they participate by listening to the recorded conversations. Because inclusivity was central to the researchers’ interests and because past criticisms around inclusivity were known to the researchers, we were careful to include those who had pointed out problems or had various criticisms around inclusivity in Virtually Connecting. These attitudes and perceptions of VConnecting held by the participants were determined by referencing a 2016 survey, prior informal conversations, and public communications such as tweets and blog posts.

Conversations were scheduled for one hour though focus group three did go on for two hours. Prior to the meeting all participants were made aware and gave consent to the fact that that the conversations were being recorded as an unlisted YouTube video. After the meeting further consent was obtained by all participants to publicly link to the videos and to reference them in further reflections around this research.

Participants in Focus Group One

Laura Gogia

Jamison Miller

Joseph Murphy

 

Participants in Focus Group Two

Nadine Aboulmagd

Sheri Spelic

Bonnie Stewart

Harriet Watkins

 

Participants in Focus Group Three

Kate Bowles

Chris Gilliard

Carl Moore

George Station

Audrey Watters

A common set of questions were referenced for all focus groups, though in practice the question order and delivery varied slightly from group to group. Groups one and three were led by Maha Bali and I led group two. The researchers did not create a formal interview plan prior to the focus group sessions but each session proceeded with an intention from all researchers that we were there to listen more than talk. Not all researchers were present for all sessions though I was present for all sessions. I further reviewed the recordings in preparation of this post.

This research specifically focused on the first two items of Virtually Connecting’s manifesto:

  1. We are motivated by a desire to improve the virtual conference experience for those who cannot be present at conferences for financial, logistical, social or health reasons. This often includes unaffiliated scholars, graduate students, adjuncts, moms of young kids, and people from developing countries or countries far away from where most academic conferences are held.
  2. While our aim is to be inclusive, we recognize that inclusion is elusive. When others point out to us ways to be more inclusive we try them. We are trying to both support the development of social capital for people who cannot attend conferences, and to generously do so as widely as we are able. We try to welcome and create space for new people to participate. The way we have expanded means many who were participants are now part of the team and this creates more space for new participants as we widen our circle

Discussion

I am not going to discuss responses to the full list of questions here but rather focus on three main themes that I found of particular interest that emerged from the conversations.

In what ways is Virtually Connecting inclusive?

In what ways is Virtually Connecting exclusive?

What are some ideas for the future?

I will not be able to reference every participant in this post but for the ones that I do reference I will include a time stamped YouTube link to the moment in the video that I am referencing. To the best of my ability I will contextualize the reference so as to give the best depiction of my understanding of that quote.

Us and them

During focus group two Harriet Watkins speaks about how the recordings allow for a layer of inclusivity to those who cannot overcome the barrier of synchronicity. Harriet mentions that she has listened to tons of VC session recordings when she has not been able to participate in real time. She says “I appreciate that the inclusivity extends beyond the real time event when it is happening” and states that she is interacting with the dialog while she is watching.

However, in juxtaposition to the idea of the recordings being inclusive, in focus group one Laura Gogia reflects on how by being a community that has come to know one another Virtually Connecting often exudes an informal fellowship that sometimes uses specialized language to communicate. She points out that this familiarity can be intimidating for new people and that recording someone who is struggling to fit in could be uncomfortable. She imagines how someone who has never had experience with VC could feel like they are not part of things and points out that the joining can be perceived as “high stakes” for several reasons, one of which is the recording.

I found this contrast between Harriet and Laura to be of particular interest. A few months ago in a post that I authored for the Digital Pedagogy Lab Blog entitled The Praxis of Virtually Connecting I reflected on a similar contrast. How when I was first joining VConnecting the recordings contributed to anxiety (as a part of general social anxiety of meeting a bunch of new people) while I was in the session but also served as an opportunity to go back and listen where I might not have been able to do so because of that anxiety.

This is just a small example of how when I consider the prospect of inclusivity in this research I find myself in paradox. In one case the recording is bringing in people who could not make it at a specific time and in another it might be driving people away who would otherwise join at that specific time. I cannot find a way to reconcile this particular paradox. I try to be a strong proponent of those who like to listen and I can’t imagine cutting them out by not doing the recordings. I suppose we could offer some sessions as recorded and some as not but it feels like that is always going to be a problem.

The inclusivity paradox is deeper than just the choice of recording or not at its heart it often comes back to the very fact of our existence. We have often been criticized for being a community. For knowing and liking one another. Some say this camaraderie can be intimidating for some, hindering our ability to bring in new people, while at the same time it is something that holds us together.

Jamison Miller seemed to see both sides. In asking what ways VC is inclusive Jamison talked about VC “piercing the bubble” of those who are at the conference by bringing in outside perspectives. However, when asked about how we are not being inclusive he also saw how a casual and informal tone can seem intimidating for those who are not already on the inside of a community.

Yet, Joe Murphy says that what has been most useful to him has been the opportunity to make personal connections. How do we reconcile the fact that we are a community with the fact that some people will feel outside of the community because of the very things that make us a community? The only answer I have here is hospitality. To welcome people in, listen to their needs, and try to be accommodating. Do this research to better understand ourselves, try to reflect, and be mindful of these things.

Inclusivity vs Dismantling Privilege

`In focus group three we found the term inclusivity itself to be a troubled term and started to explore the term “dismantling privilege”. This opened up a discussion started by Kate Bowels about the prestige economy and if VC could challenge privilege while being a part of the conference. The question: “is it harder to be critical because you’ve been included” came up. Chris Gilliard, with Audrey Watters agreement, answered in a personal way which was outside of VC but which I think begs some interesting questions. Chris argued that there was a designated role for some (in this case himself) to be critical as presenter or keynote at the conference. Could VC also be perceived to have a designated critical role at the conference? Do we already? Could this critical perspective help us to better “dismantle privilege”?

Yet there is also an ongoing criticism around a perception of VC working within the privilege economy. I’ve talked with Chris Gilliard about this in the past and he brought it up during the focus group. Quick disclaimer – I have always felt that VC was an assault on the idea of stardom, because of the very reasons of “high stakes” joining discussed above. The idea of stardom evokes in me a concern for image and asking someone to join a conversation with strangers, in a hallway, that may not be sanctioned by the conference organizers, that will be broadcast over the Internet and recorded seems like a potential threat to image and face to me.

I do see the other side. I see that there is a privilege economy that VC takes advantage of when we ask those who are keynoting the conference to come and speak with us. When we put their pictures on our blog post header and promote the date and time that we will be speaking with them we are playing into that. Audrey Watters noted how this marketing makes her uncomfortable but notes that it is the same uncomfortableness that she she feels when she is marketed as a keynote. I have to wonder how many of these criticisms of VC could also just be applied to the general conference culture. I have to wonder if it is VC’s duty to overcome all of these?

Rebecca brought in the Audre Lorde quote “you cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools”. I challenged this by remembering during DigPed Tressie McMillan Cottom saying that the quote was over exaggerated and that you do need some tools. That we always have to use the master’s tools “to some extent”. Maha seemed to agree with this sentiment. (Disclaimer: my quoting of Tressie is completely from memory. I quickly reviewed the video of her keynote from DigPed looking for that particular statement but I could not find it. Apologies in advance if I have misspoke). After we broke it down a bit Rebecca also saw the other side from a patient perspective stating that the patient needs the doctor’s expertise but also needs the doctor to hear about their lived experience. I’ve always felt like the marketing was a sort of a necessary thing that we had to do to play the game but it has never been the foremost thing for me. Most of the “celebrities” that we’ve met I didn’t even know before VC. I’ve been very grateful to VC for introducing me to the work of some amazing people.

Another barrier of inclusivity is often drawn between those who are at the conference and those who are not at the conference. The first point of the manifesto is that we are there to enhance the virtual conference experience. In my mind this is our primary constituency. However, it is questioned that those Who are at the conference on ground have to take time out to meet with the virtual people. I can see how that possibility exists – especially for speakers and conference organizers who are already busy. The suggestion is that perhaps this is disruptive to their on ground/in the flesh experience of the conference. However, George Station mentioned in focus group three that he found the VC experience to actually enhance the onsite experience by having a window to people outside of the conference. Once again enter the paradox, it is also pointed out a few times in several of the groups that VC allows for a small group to go off and have some time with the keynote speakers. It is noted that this is not fair for others on site who would often not get that option.

Challenging or Promoting?

I find these particular overlapping messy point about access to academic stardom and celebrity alongside power structures of onsite vs virtual of interest and feel that I need to unpack it more. Here is where I go much less research paper and more thinking out loud blog post style.

I have often seen many attending conferences rush to the front of the room to get a few moments with the speaker be it a session speaker or keynote speaker. This is not as possible at really large conferences where the speaker prepares and retires to a backstage area with a green room of sorts. Those are usually the kind of conferences where the stage is lit up like a rock concert. However,I have only ever seen this at the largest of corporate sponsored conferences and find that this is often not the case.

Often, the stage is some risers in a hotel ballroom and yes there are a few hundred people present but when the speaker comes off stage they are just coming off the riser not escaping to backstage privacy. I will say that in seeing people approach speakers either before or after a talk often they just spend a few moments with them and then break away. I have never noticed anyone take a speaker aside and have more conversation with them for another twenty to thirty minutes the way that Virtually Connecting does but I have also never followed and studied a situation like this. I’m not sure that it is not happening. Perhaps this does happen but we just don’t see it because it is not broadcast live and recorded.

I want to challenge the idea that this is a problem for Virtually Connecting. First, I’m not sure that we have any proof that this does not happen face to face. Second, if it does happen face to face I think that it is a good thing. If the speaker wants to go off and have a conversation with some of the participants what is wrong with that? I would think that this could be insightful for the speaker and the participant to debrief and grow from each of their perceptions of the talk that was just given. I’m still unclear why this would be considered a problem if it were to happen in the flesh and so I have a hard time with criticisms of doing it virtually. If VC can facilitate conversations to these ends and contribute to the commons through broadcasting and recording that conversation while we are doing it I feel it is all the better.

Yet I see the paradox. I see how the community can be a barrier to itself. How the recordings can bring people in and yet still shut others out. How the celebrity can simultaneously be challenged and perpetuated. I’m struggling with how to resolve these paradoxes. I feel very strongly that the first step will be to identify them and articulate explicitly on which side our intentions exist.

Conclusion

There is a lot to unpack from these videos and these conversations. This post is just a first attempt at getting some first impressions down on the page for further feedback and reflection. I’m hopeful that the other researchers on this project, others in the VC community, and even those beyond will see this and have some further thoughts.

In terms of next steps Sherri Spelic’s idea of VC trying to bridge the gap between those in K-12 and higher ed is something that I am always struggling with and would welcome. Also Bonnie Stewart’s idea of growing to be more inclusive of those that are wanting to be more resident online is something that resonates with me.

I am hopeful that there will be more reflection and more feedback in the months that follow. Please join us by responding to this post in the comments or with your own post, writing about your own experiences with and impressions of Virtually Connecting, watching the focus groups (linked above), or attending our presentation at OER17 in London on April 5th.
Image Credit CC0 obtained from Pixabay

Image metaphor The Law of Included Fragments 

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MOOCs, Open Web, Rhizomatic Learning, Virtually Connecting

Further Defining LOOM: autonomous persistence in relation to ethos

I was asked to be part of a panel discussion at the Winter Symposium on Digital Literacies in Higher Education as a part of my work with Virtually Connecting. This time I not only had distance as a barrier but also time – I had a meeting scheduled at the same time.

The panel was on networking and digital literacies so we were talking about how Virtually Connecting is a learning movement; how we use networking as a way to learn about digital tools together in community. To illustrate this point I told the history of how I got involved with VConnecting which is tightly tied to #Rhizo15. I could have gone back even further because I found #Rhizo15 through Hybrid Pedagogy and I found Hybrid Pedagogy because of the #MOOCMOOC MOOC but I only had 5min.

Some of the other folks on the panel asked me to tie it back to the idea of LOOM which I wrote about a few months ago and it was nice to articulate the Little Open Online Movement again. In doing so I found that the concept grew in my mind a bit. It was in the rethinking of “Movement” that I found growth.

In this particular articulation of it I again stressed the “Little” and the “Movement”. Little being important because you can’t have meaningful project with 10K people. I’m reminded of all the little projects that broke off in the many MOOCs that I was in as evidence of this.

As I had stated originally, “Movements” are not events; they don’t start and stop at defined points the way that courses or twitter chats do.  I still think that this is a key to describing online movements.

But then I added a new nuance to the description of a movement this time; the idea of autonomous persistence: No one is there or continues to be there because they have been told to be or because they have negotiated some kind of pay off – not that there isn’t a pay off. I attribute this to the biggest definer of a movement (which I had included in the last definition) – the ethos or character behind the group. Because the group has defined itself in some way it stands for something, and a kind of  personality has arisen from this.

This relationship between autonomous persistence and ethos was an interesting one for me to consider. I think that autonomous persistence of participants and the ethos of the group are tightly tied. It is not that the participant has to even agree with the ethos to be autonomously persistent. Just that there has to be interest and reciprocation between the two.

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MOOCs, Open Education, Open Web, Rhizomatic Learning, Virtually Connecting

#MyDigCiz as Critical Experimentation in Opposition to Best Practice: Self-Reflection After #DigPed PEI or why I thought you might care about my soup

It was 2007, I was just finishing up my BS degree in communication technology when I received a google alert on my name one day. Honestly, I had felt a little vain when I set it up but I saw how this could be helpful especially considering the uniqueness of my name.

Someone had written a blog post and mentioned me!

I didn’t have a blog and really didn’t know any bloggers so this seemed really strange. I discovered that the post was about Twitter as a tool and explored how people were using it. I was on Twitter. My supervisor at the time had said that it was something that I should check out and so I created an account and started tinkering with it a few months prior.

The blog post was a rant about the best ways that people were using twitter and comparing how they should not use twitter. Two accounts were highlighted and an example was made out of them – your’s truly was the prime example of how to NOT use twitter.

I remember being pretty mortified, I think I killed my account for awhile, I think I changed my name when I eventually reactivated it. After some time I finally got a little mad. I mean I was a student. I was new to this online platform and so was everyone else; it had only been around for a little over a year. The whole thing was a big experiment as far as I was concerned. So I tweeted some boring stuff. There are worse things in the world. I ended up tweeting a link to the offending post stating “I guess no one cares about my soup”.

I’d like to think that I’ve come a long way in my use of twitter. But I still use experimentation in dealing with new tools and I’m sure that I’m not using tools as intended at any given time depending the context. But I don’t think that I should stop doing that. I may look silly sometimes and I may come off the wrong way but I learn a lot in doing it and then I write posts like this one sharing what I’ve learned… and…  I think that is valuable. I’m not just experimenting in a vacuum. I am thinking about context, I am thinking about different vantage points, and I am thinking about how my uses impact others. But I am experimenting.

Still, I’m prone to getting sucked in by that voice of authority stating the right way to use tools. It is a strange dichotomy. This post is largely about me trying to work that out.

Right now there are a ton of things converging and diverging in my world. I’m just back from the #DigPed PEI conference where I took the digital literacies track but it is also the last two weeks of #DigCiz and Maha Bali has charged us all to define what digital citizenship looks like for us and on whose terms are we encouraging it using the tag #MyDigCiz. These two things together have me taking a hard look at what I am doing and questioning some of my practices in terms of being a person in the flesh and on the internet. I’m realizing that #MyDigCiz has a lot to do with critical self-reflection and continually trying to understand connections. At the same time I’m realizing that experiments are risky and not just to myself but to others.

I mean I am luckier than most. I have a self-reflective nature and a community of scholars that help me to build digital literacies and consider multiple contexts regularly; it’s called Virtually Connecting. As a community we are in almost constant dialog about what is ethical and what is not. How we can elevate voices that don’t get heard. What is working technically and how we can adjust environments for better connections. We are thinking about what is happening in the background when we go live and record. Who might walk into the frame and do they want to be live on the internet. It’s not perfect. We too are experimenting and learning. But we are also thinking critically, adjusting, and persisting.

You’d think this stuff was old hat for me. But it is not. I’m constantly readjusting.

One of my favorite moments at #DigPed PEI was the twitter chat. I didn’t do much tweeting. Those of us that were more experienced at twitter grouped up and gathered in the big open room – the Market Square. There were these loungy couches around the perimeter but some of us gathered in the middle and began a verbal in the flesh conversation/online twitter chat. I loved this moment so much because it ended up being a great liminal space. Those of us who gathered in the center of the room took time to talk but also time to read twitter and to tweet. There was tons of “dead air” interspersed with bits of verbal conversation. It wasn’t a show or a presentation, there was no front of the room, it was a conversation among people in the flesh who were on the internet at the same time. It was beautiful for someone like me. People jumped in from that outer ring from time to time while others were just quietly on their computers. The verbal conversation was a great mix of people with varying levels of experience in terms of presenting/attending conferences but like I said most were pretty established with using twitter and other forms of social media. Out of this conversation, a few key questions (particular thanks Audrey Watters) have led me to remember how I’ve developed certain methods around tweeting but also helped me to question some of my approaches as well.

I share a fair amount on the web. Not as much as many on Twitter but more than most in the world. I often filter other people through me via my tweets and I’m sure I deviate from their intended meanings – I am my own person after all. I live tweet many keynote speakers and session presenters. After doing this for awhile and being self-reflective about it I realized that there was a lot to be said for context. Hearing some snippet of what a speaker has said out of context can convey a completely different meaning. Then I have to ask where does my interpretation of what a speaker has said start and what they actually said (or what they meant in a particular context) end – and how does the random person who encounters that tweet perceive it?  What responsibilities do I have to the content, the connections, and the speaker? What if I hear something wrong and share something that creates confusion? What if I start a conversation between some people that are going to hate one another? What if I say something in public that will hurt someone? If any of this happens how do I atone for this? Will I even realize it?

Upon this realization I remember making a conscious choice to stop using quotes, for the most part, in these kind of tweets. I did this on purpose. My point in not using quotes is that I’m taking some responsibility for the content of that tweet. I don’t want there to be a perception that I’m quoting directly – unless I do but it is rare in the scope of my tweets. This is my little indication that I’m doing the best I can in 140 characters to interpret and not mimic. But that’s not written down anywhere – that is not a best practice – that is an Autummism… but the thing is I’m not sure anyone “gets” that but me. I think many people assume the quotes. They assume that I’m word for word transcribing the talk. I don’t know how to assert that I’m a human and not a recording or broadcast device. I’m not trying to be a journalist, I’m not trying to be a camera, I just want to be a person who expresses her experience and uses social media to process that experience… more on that in a bit.

Until a few months ago I also used to never put the handle of the speaker in each tweet. I would send out one tweet at the beginning stating who I was hearing and interpreting but all subsequent tweets would not reference the speaker. But then there is a problem with attribution and does it look like I’m spewing the speaker’s rhetoric on my own? After getting called on this it might have been the first time I googled “how to live tweet a keynote speaker” (or something of the like) and low and behold there were a set of “best practices” that sure enough stated that you should tag the speaker in each tweet. So I started doing that.

Yes! Best practice to the rescue. Now I can finally start using Twitter right.

But now that I look back I realize that many of those articles were geared toward folks that were doing some kind of media production, were trying to sell something, or were interested in hitting a specific analytic. Wait!… That ain’t me babe. I’m not sure that I’m the intended audience of those articles but I didn’t get that at that time.

The thing about “best practices” is that they are problematic in that they strip nuance out of these contextual experiences. During our conversation some noted that this tagging in every single tweet basically sent the speaker a barrage of notifications which could be annoying. Furthermore, these had the potential to start side conversations that resulted in even more notifications. These side conversations are complicated by the “meaning problem” that I started to outline earlier. Because a meaning which is based on an interpretation by the person reading the tweet, in the context of the interpretation of the person who composed and sent the tweet, can be very different than the intended message of the speaker. It feels like you are almost asking for trouble. This problem is going to be present regardless I guess but my beef is with the “best” in best practice.

Who is that best for again? And how is the “best practice” better than my experimental Autumm practice? It seems either way the vulnerabilities persist.

Another tool I have started using is mobile live streaming and I think this does a good job of taking some of the problems I just discussed off of the table. It is pretty clear when I am on camera and when the speaker is on camera and the speaker just gets to speak for themselves. This technology is fairly new and there are a ton of best practices on the web mostly geared at video and sound quality and creating an experience for the virtual audience. The problem with the live streaming over tweeting is that I don’t live tweet a speaker only for the other people on twitter who may read those tweets or for the speaker themselves – I do it for myself too. I gain perspective considering those multiple contexts and constraints. It keeps my mind engaged in a different way than if I were listening without writing or even if I were listening and taking public or private notes. I know through my work with Virtually Connecting it is not about creating a great experience for a virtual audience as much as it is about creating a reciprocal experience between those on each side of the camera. Or at least that is what it is about for me and others that I surround myself with… I suppose this is where digital citizenship comes in. 

I don’t just use social media and the public internet to channel other people who are speaking at conferences. I don’t just use images, video, and text to speak to an audience. I experiment with these things to learn about myself and the world around me. To explore multiple contexts and points of view. I have public conversations about topics that no one has easy answers for so that I can learn, maybe not the right answers but to perhaps be able to ask better questions, in community. I reflect on my experiences based on various forms of feedback that I receive and I make adjustments. I try to do better. This is not a research project, this is not reporting, this is not a course… this is a part of who I am.

And so when Sundi Richard and I started to ask questions around the idea of digital citizenship, having public conversations using video chat and Twitter seemed like second nature. When we decided to do it again a few months later we purchased web space and gave a home to some things like a schedule and an articulation of the context in which we were interested in talking about digital citizenship. By that time I had also found time to read Rhizo14: A Rhizomatic Learning cMOOC in Sunlight and in Shade by Jenny Mackness and Frances Bell and it gave me pause. I was in Rhizo15 and found the facilitator Dave Cormier to be attentive and deeply concerned for those that were experimenting with him around a complex topic for which there was no clear easy clear cut answer. However, this paper painted Dave as having control and influence over the group but neglecting the needs of those that were not having a positive experiences. That some participants had learned a great deal in the course but that others had been somehow damaged (the paper seems unclear to me on what this damage was and even feeling deeply embedded in Rhizo15 I’ve never figured it out) and that the facilitator should have had more control or something.

So, I wondered if our little #digciz project should have a disclaimer of sorts, perhaps a set of standards, or a defined code of ethics. I knew that we would never reach the scale of Rhizo14 but I saw no reason why we should not be concerned by the same ethical implications. I wanted to be clear that I was concerned about all those that were going to choose to engage with us but that at the same time that there were some dangers inherent to being on the public internet and that we would not be able to control every connection. That I have a life outside of #digciz and that I would not be able to watch 24/7.

I proposed this to Sundi and we created a page for this but we really struggled with articulation. Eventually, we decided to let the community own it and during the first week we would encourage the participants to build this statement themselves. Our first Twitter chat was more active than either of us had imagined but no one seemed interested in building such a statement. The page remained blank. We continued discussing digital citizenship anyway.

I think this was right for us and for the group that we ended up getting. We could have put on the breaks and refused to continue till we defined a disclaimer, list of ethical points, or a statement of some kind. But we didn’t. We decided to keep experimenting.

I think we all struggled with coming up with some set of standards for several reasons. For one we are a pretty new group and I don’t think that group members have even really defined what they wanted from the group. As a community comes together and solidifies I think that they sometimes feel a need to define themselves, but that takes time. For instance I had a hand in composing the Virtually Connecting manifesto and point to it often when defining that work. But I also think that our approach to subject of digital citizenship had something to do with this. We were bypassing some of the best practices on the subject and instead asking questions that were more complex and so reducing it back to a simple statement or a list of some kind just didn’t seem right.

As for me, I think that #MyDigCiz is somehow rooted in a sense that by creating a list of rules and practices we might give guidelines to some but that those guidelines will not speak for all. That like online, as in the flesh, the complexities around how we live and how we impact each other have more to do with deep fundamental attitudes surrounding relationships, empathy, and an ability to see multiple contexts than they do with following a list.

Of course the rub is that not everyone is ready to be self-reflective digital citizens. And so sometimes we create best practices, community statements, codes of ethics, etc. because we have to start somewhere. I think these are especially important for instance when dealing with young children and I don’t want to be condemning of those efforts (I understand that perhaps I have come off as hypercritical in the past) – they are important and needed – I just think that there is another conversation that is not really being discussed. I guess my point is that I think the best practices are not working by themselves and that we need more.

One thing that I did take from the Sunlight and Shade paper was that online courses including, and maybe especially, MOOCs are not going to be an enlightening experience for everyone…  I think we knew that but research often tells us things that we instinctively know.

What is becoming really clear to me is that none of this is happening in a vacuum. I see the use of public, social, digital, tools changing and shaping all of the time. I see them used to commit atrocities and then in other cases used to shine a light on atrocities. I know technology is not neutral but I also know that people’s use of technology is not neutral either. We are learning from each other and shaping the way that we affect one another through the use of these tools. I see the free experimentation of the use of technology when done with what John Dewey referred to as the “habit of amicable cooperation” as an affront on formulaic prescribed best practices that may only be best for sales numbers and media clicks. I know that the idea of citizenship is a problematic one and that digital citizenship is an even more problematic. However, I think that we have a better chance at finding a way to live together by developing an ability to see connections than in being able to follow the rules.

~~~

My next stop in this journey will be the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute at University of Mary Washington and there will be lots of ways that you can participate virtually from Twitter to Virtually Connecting and I’m sure I will live stream a bit. However, I do want to encourage you – if you can by any means – attend in the flesh. I think that this is going to be one of the foremost learning events of the year if you are interested in getting past the hype and taking a close look at your own practice of teaching with digital tools.

Image Credit CC-BY-SA 4.0: Autumm Caines, Market Square UPEI 

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Virtually Connecting

#OLCInnovate Fishbowl: So what’s Virtually Connecting all about anyway?

This Tuesday through Friday, June 19th – 22nd, I will be attending, presenting, and Virtually Connecting at the OLC Innovate conference in New Orleans. I’m excited to take the lead on our presentation Fishbowl: So what’s Virtually Connecting all about anyway? on Thursday the 21st at 11:15 am in Oak Alley (4th floor) of the Sheraton Hotel. If you are at OLC and would like to come by it would be great to see you or if you are virtual you can view the hangout portion of the  presentation here, here, or here.

There are a bunch of us that are presenting including Maha Bali, Whitney Kilgore, Alan Levine, Rebecca Hogue, Apostolos Koutropoulos, Patrice Torcivia Prusko, and Andrea Rehn. We will have some participants that are more experienced with VConnecting including Sundi Richard and Susan Adams who both just stepped up to take on more responsibilities on the virtual side of this conference.

What the heck is a fishbowl?

Virtually Connecting is all about informal small group conversation. The struggle was to find a way to adapt what we do into a larger group formal presentation. Rebecca was the one who suggested the fishbowl exercise. In this format, circles of chairs are set up around a smaller group at the center who are having the conversation. The larger group is there to listen while the center focuses on the conversation.

Fishbowl_diagram_172

Our twist will be that it will not just be a regular conversation going on in the center but a Virtually Connecting session. We will be joined by Laura Gogia and A. Micael Berman as our onsite guests to explore questions around the ethos of the OLC conference.

So how is it going to work?

I’m taking sort of a meta role on this session along with some others in our team. I’ve put together a slide deck which I will embed below and I will give a short 5min presentation/lightning talk at the beginning while the virtual and onsite buddies are getting connected.

Alan will be our virtual buddy for this session, he will be welcoming our virtual participants, waiting for us to connect onsite, and will ultimately take the VC session live on the Internet.

Whitney will be our onsite buddy and will be connecting with Alan and welcoming Laura and Michael as they arrive onsite.

As the conversation is happening Rebecca, Andrea, Patrice, and I will hang out in the audience taking pictures and quietly answering any side questions that people might have.

After about 20min or so we will open it up for Q&A on the topic or on Virtually Connecting as a movement. Audience members can come forward and jump into the recorded session or we can relay them if they don’t want to be in the livestream.

Some questions I have…

I’m really not sure if the facilitates at the Sheraton will be able to accommodate a circle. So, we may have to be more lecture style depending on the shape of the room. I hope that works out okay.

I’m hoping that Whitney can connect to the hangout on her laptop while I run the presentation from mine and that the switch to the projector (and the OLC live stream) can be seamless between them with just a cable switch when the moment comes… but I’m really not sure.

So, this session is not completely fool proof. But that is a part of what VConnecting is all about – not knowing all of the answers beforehand and not knowing exactly what you are going to say or how things are going to turn out. Of course in the case of a formal presentation we have to structure things a little more but that is such a part of who we are that it can’t go away completely.

… And of course – the why.

What is the purpose of this fishbowl session. Well, for me there are several.

There is of course that core conversation between those in the session about the spirit and culture of the conference. I’ve been watching as Laura has been doing amazing work with creating digital adventures at the conference through the PlugIN lounge. Michael brings us a conference history, as I understand, he has been a part of participating in this organization for some time – I don’t completely understand all of the iterations of this conference myself so I’ll save my questions for him for the session.

Of course we also want to explain what Virtually Connecting is and why it is so important. Why would you want to give access to those that are not present at a conference and to those that maybe have not even paid anything? Why is informal conversation important as a part of the virtual conference experience and how do you even do it? How is participating in Virtually Connecting a form of professional development?

I’m not exactly sure we will get to dive as deep on those big questions about VConnecting as I would like, with everything else that we have going on, but I do plan to touch on them a bit. At the very least we will be giving an example of what VConnecting is and how it works, we’ll have a great conversation with some really interesting people, and we’ll have some fun. It is our birthday after all 🙂

If you are at the conference we are in Oak Alley (4th floor) on Thursday the 21st at 11:15am CDT.

If you are not at the conference there are lots of opportunities to connect with Virtually Connecting. All dates and times of our session are listed on our website.

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Death, Digital Identity, Love, Virtually Connecting

My Virtual Life: becoming a real buddy with a nod to the Velveteen Rabbit

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be virtual?

Over the last year I spent a lot of time expanding my virtual self. Now, I had a virtual self before last year but there is no denying that, for me, during #rhizo15, and then after, as I started getting more involved with Virtually Connecting, that I really started to do more and more and just Be online. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and this post is just me doing a little reflecting.

A common thread that I have sensed in the undercurrent of it all is this sense of being “Real” as in “In Real Life”. When we talk about meeting in-person vs meeting virtually we often refer to the face to face experience as “Real”, and I’m not sure I agree with that. This is not the first time I’ve thought about this. I worked through this a few months ago with some folks online and started to prefer the term “in the flesh” rather than “in real life” for my own interactions that happen face to face. One of the things that I like about life in general is the ability to work through my ideas in conjunction with others. Online allows me to extend the reach. Does it allow me more diverse voices to interact with? Jury is still out on that one. I’m thankful for the voices that are counter to my own and for the challenges that they bring. I encounter challenging voices online but I encounter them face to face too. I’m thankful for them all. Online transverses space and time better – I’ll give it that.

Over this past year I learned about and how to use a bunch of new technologies. I connected with and learned from people all over the globe. I fell in love and got my heart broken. I made a ton of new friends. I got (and continue to get) called out on some stuff that I was getting wrong… and that stung (stings) but I’m better for it. I traveled and I got to meet some of those people that I was connecting with online at #dLRN15 and #AACUgened16 and some other conferences. I have to say that it has been a pretty rich experience overall.

Did it hurt? Sometimes.

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become.

I started my journey in edtech as a non-traditional student, tech assistant in an office of academic technology at a community college. I did a lot of grunt work and I really wasn’t really sure to what end (It is not that it was not being pointed out to me just that I was greener than most). I just knew that I liked people and I liked technology and that edtech was paying attention to the mixture of the two where many other fields were just being pushed or pulled by them.

I was kind of lost for a long time and not sure what I was going to do with myself. I got another degree. I put myself out there. I landed a gig. It was in an IT department. It was at a university.

And then there is this idea of ontological design. This idea that our environment shapes us. Which seems pretty common sense and I’m not sure that we really need a fancy name like “ontological design” to describe it. But I’ve come to find affinity with fancy names and long titles just as I once had an affinity for disclaimers – I may still I’ve just decided for some reason not to use one here. But in the meantime I got another degree.

And after all of that – after all of that! I now feel kind of like a baby and that my eyes are just now starting to open. It is almost enough to give up, and I would… if it were not that I’m just beginning.

It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’

~ All quotes from: The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be real? What does it mean to be virtual? What does it mean to create something of beauty – something that might inspire others?

I’m not sure about the answers to these big questions. I’m pretty sure that no matter if we are living online or if we are living face to face that they are still important big questions that are not going anywhere anytime soon.

I started reading this book the other day that is all about how our virtual lives are stealing away our face to face lives. I’m considering exploring this in community because seems, to me, more of a problem of environment in general than a matter of “face to face vs online” or “Real vs. virtual”. But still, I think this book makes some good points about presence and focus – it just blames technology instead.

But who knows if I’ll have time. After all #rhizo16 starts on May 10th… that’s the rumor I heard anyway… you never know with those rhizomes.

and

I still owe Maha Bali that death post from last year… but I just can’t bring myself to write it.

😉

Photo in the public domain in the United States taken from Wikimedia Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

 

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MOOCs, Rhizomatic Learning, Uncategorized, Virtually Connecting

A call for more #HumanMOOC discussion groups. Or. The very human problem of access with more thoughts on the Interpersonal Multitudes Barrier (IMB)

So I planned this participant led discussion inside of #HumanMOOC. In terms of process I tweeted that I wanted to do this and asked who else might be interested. With those that responded I opened a DM channel and configured a time. Then I advertised the time on the tag to see if I could get others involved.

But then I got this tweet

And it brought up such a little flurry of thoughts in my head that I had to blog about them.

My first reaction was a pretty human one… I’m not an organizer of #HumanMOOC. I can’t please everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m not responsible to please everyone.

Then I thought “that was a pretty selfish reaction”.

Upon reflection I can see this process is filled with possibilities of inequality.

  1. Those that answered may have done so because they already knew me – feeling more comfortable responding to someone familiar.
  2. They had to of seen that first tweet so they would have to be paying attention in the right place at the right time.
  3. I did offer 12 Noon EST as a suggestion and it just happened to work for others but it was based on my own subjective availability.
  4. I’m more comfortable doing this because of experience with Virtually Connecting and others may not be.
  5. I’m sure there are a ton more – I am planning for the hangout to be conducted in English (cutting out everyone who does not speak English). I am going to live broadcast it and record it (cutting out a large number of those that will be uncomfortable with that for whatever reason). The list goes on and on…

These all seem to fall on limitations of access, experience, and participation… probably other things too. Yes it is true the sun does have a part to play here (or perhaps it is the old archaic beliefs that accentuate the sun’s importance) but those are hard to overcome and trying to impact that is hard with small incremental reward over long periods of time. The real question is what can we do provide more access, experience, and participation to everyone.

Because I’m of this romantic notion that the more diverse perspectives we can intersect with the better we are as (a) people.

We got the time zone thing worked out and then Maha tweeted this

Of course this is the Interpersonal Multitudes Barrier that I have been talking about. I know this may have a nicer name and be fleshed out somewhere in communication theory elsewhere (please let me know where I’m looking for more info on this). But it is the basic idea that as you add more people to a discussion you loose that interpersonal connection a little more. Maha seems to be keenly aware of this. This is another barrier to group dynamics. In this case is mediated in a Google Hangout by the fact that the technology limits you to 10 participants.

And after all of this it turned out I misunderstood Maha in the very beginning. 

Because she started with my name I thought Maha was addressing me but I think she was just trying to start her own participant discussion group.

Ah Ha!! That is the answer. For more people to do what they can to bring people together. I love our #HumanMOOC way-finders as they are calling themselves (organizers, profs, teachers etc…) but they can only do so much and they have already done so much. This is our learning experience. Let’s claim it.

There are so many things that are standing in the way of us all talking to each other. The sun, the IMB, lack of experience with the technology… it goes on. But if more people tried to do these things maybe it would break down these barriers. We could offer groups in more timezones and in more languages. Maybe try different technologies other than GHO to see what limitations are going on there.

I’m more of a subjectives girl myself but check it out… I also notice that demonstrating uses of an interactive tool is a competency in the #HumanMOOC syllabus… so huh… go figure.

I say start a #HumanMOOC discussion group of your own and see where it goes.

P.S. I will say that the garden has some dangers out there so this call is not without possible downfalls. Remember the other part of Maha’s tweet where she said she wished that there was a way for people to just jump in and jump out.  The only way I know to do that is to publicly tweet the join link. I’ve done that in the past and it has been bad with someone who we had never seen before coming in cursing and talking about things that were not relevant. Not horrible … but it could be worse.

Still, it is hard for me to condemn this process. Last year I saw a tweet from Sean Micael Morris with a link to a hangout. I thought it was a view link but it turned out to be a join link. I joined though I mostly listened. This Dave guy showed up and reminded me about this rhizo thing he does. At the time I had only heard about it peripherally. I joined and participated. Yeah… that kind of made a difference.

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Open Education, Open Web, Virtually Connecting

The Connecting May be Virtual but the Authenticity is Real: #digped From Afar with Virtually Connecting

Cross-posted on http://virtuallyconnecting.org

Photo Credit Bowin Chin: People Connecting
Shared with Creative Commons Licensing NC-ND

 

Before we get started I should come clean and say that I have never actually tried one of those virtual conferences. I have been on both sides of webinars and streamed lectures enough that I imagine them to be lacking in the way of participation. You always hear that going to a conference is more about connecting and networking and that the virtual conference offerings cannot give you that. I suppose most virtual conferences are fine for what they are but it is not what I would imagine as participatory or social – I feel like they lack something in the way of authenticity.

My virtual experience for #digped was not like that.

I have to say it really outdid any of my expectations for a virtual experience. I should be clear that it was not the kind of experience you might think of when you see a conference offered “virtually”. This was never really “offered” to me; I paid no fee for a virtual registration, I was not provided with instructions on how to login, or given any special credentials or a link to follow. Heck the video stream of the keynotes (which were advertised as a maybe) did not even work. So what made the difference?

A huge part of my experience centered on getting more involved in Virtually Connecting (@VConnecting).

I was reminded about the event few days before the Lab/Institute began when I saw that Maha Bali (@Bali_Maha) and Rebecca Hogue (@rjhogue) were planning to do some VConnecting sessions for it.  I started talking to them about it and expressing interest in participating virtually. I had participated in some sessions for HASTAC and I knew it would be a good way to get a glimpse of things on site. They gave me the schedule and I signed up to participate in a few hangouts.

On the first day of the conference I got into things by sending this tweet which was pretty well received.

This tweet started to get a small number of favorites and retweets and at first I just thought that was cool. However, at some point I remembered that my first interaction with VConnecting was because Maha reached out to me after I faved an announcement about an upcoming session. Mind you I did not reach out to Maha with a reply or mention to say “Hey I really want to do that please count me in”.  While that may have been on my mind I did not say it; I was at this outdoor concert, camping, and did not think that it was something I could participate in at that moment. However, based on my fav Maha reached out to me and invited me in and when I explained where I was she gave me advice about connecting via the mobile app. She made the experience accessible and friendly for me.

So, getting these favs and retweets on this particular tweet was my WWMD (What Would Maha Do) moment. It also reminded me about Maha’s recent conversations around hospitality and how it had spurred my own thinking around digital citizenship. So, I started reaching out to those that were favoriting and retweeting (well those that I could tell were not already at the Lab/Institute) and seeing if they wanted to join up as virtual participants and sending the yes’s over to Maha or Rebecca.

This set a trajectory for me and before I knew it I was in full swing with the program for the whole week. I found myself in some of the planning backchannels which was awesome and somehow ended up co-hosting as a virtual buddy with Apostolos Koutropoulos (AK) (@koutropoulos) for the final day. In the end, I was in a VConnecting session every day except the one day that Alan Levine (@cogdog) hosted which was a bummer but I had the broadcast on in the background while at work and caught bits and pieces. That authenticity also showed up for me as I got to collaborate with our onsite buddies Andrea Rehn (@Profrehn), Lisa Hammershaimb (@merryspaniel), and Sarah Hammershaimb (@S_Hammershaimb). With all of the planning and organizing I felt like I got to know them and I felt connected to the onsite event. We were participating in the event in a different way but we were participating and it felt more authentic and real than I can ever imagine watching a broadcast could.

I think a big piece of the authenticity around VConnecting is that it is far from perfect. Especially in the live broadcast the sessions are exceedingly human; prone to awkward pauses, last minute changes, overlapping conversation starts, and all of the awkwardness that quite honestly triggers my social anxiety when meeting a new person for the first time. I’m struggling to define it but it reminds me of some kind of flip or hybridization on context collapse as Michael Wesch defined it for recording web video. Though it is recorded it is also live and in a social situation. I’ll be honest the experience is not always comfortable in the moment but I think that there is something to be said for being given the opportunity to look those contexts in the face and try to make sense of them. It is this sense of opportunity, humanness, and spontaneity that brought authenticity to VConnecting and VConnecting brought it to #digped and I got to jump on board for the ride.

Just like in a face to face experience when you go to a large gathering of professionals you will meet a lot of people but find that you might connect at a deeper level with others. The VConnecting live sessions allowed me to talk to some amazing presenters whose work I really admire, however, I found that the off air interactions were extremely rich. It is hard to plan and organize something with a group of people and walk away not feeling that you know each other a little more. Again, I can’t see how you could get that from watching a live stream no matter the chance to tweet a question and have it relayed by a moderator.

The pre and post show interactions and the planning logistics that went into creating each session were an opportunity to connect on a deeper level with many people that I otherwise would have never known. Some of these people I had met before through VConnecting or through other online interactions but for some it was my first time meeting them. Particularly, I think my relationship with Maha, Rebecca, and Andrea was deepened from all that communication and interaction. The laughter and silliness that ensued while AK and I tried to record a trailer for our session is something that makes me smile even while I recall it to write about it here.

After #digped we all got together in a hangout for a debriefing session; Virtually Connecting is still in it’s infancy having only launched earlier this year. It is still growing and defining itself but we were able to clarify some roles that need to be filled for future events and there is a call for more members now. If you can’t attend a conference that you really want to go to I would highly recommend seeing if VConnecting will be there and if so jumping in to see how you can participate with them from afar.

We are currently planning to be at several ed tech conferences including the altc conference in Manchester UK in September and the dLRN conference at Stanford next month. If you are organizing an event or conference contact VConnecting about bringing them onsite to your event – it will give your virtual participants an experience that cannot be replicated.

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MOOCs, Open Education, Virtually Connecting

Connecting Virtually – Considerations from a Virtual Participant

What is Virtually Connecting?

Recently, I had the privilege of being able to participate in a couple of Virtually Connecting hangouts;  an experiment set up by Maha Bali and Rebecca Hogue. What is Virtually Connecting?

Well, for a while now bigger Ed Tech conferences have been streaming sessions, sometimes for a price and sometimes for free. It is great because you can tune in and watch sessions that you are interested in and sometimes they even have a place where you can type in a  question and a moderator will relay your question to the presenter.

But let’s be honest, sessions are only one part of the conference experience.

A huge part of the conference experience is that person that you bump into in the hallway who just happens to be doing similar research or someone that you end up sitting with at a shared lunch table who last year implemented that same technology project that you are working on right now. It is those serendipitous little connections that just sort of happen.

How do you attempt to replicate that virtually?

Well… this is how it happened for me.

I was attending the Nelsonville Music Festival in Nelsonville Ohio, the first multi-day music festival I have attended in a long time, trying out my new 2 person Big Agnes Mountain Glo tent as accommodations for 3 nights and making food on my old propane 2 burner camping stove. Not bad data on the cell service but not the best either.

Nelsonvilletent

This is my attempt to replicate my situation/internal dialog/conversation with Maha Bali:

…Oh look a tweet from Maha about a hangout with some people from the HASTAC conference. I’ve always wanted to go to that conference; looks like a blast. I bet that hangout would be a blast; wish I could play but I am on my way to see this band – hiking the path from the camp site to the festival grounds – I’ll just favorite the tweet to show Maha my support.

Oh… DM from Maha ‘do I want to join the hangout’. Yes! I do want to join the hangout but I’m at this thing without all my tech – I only have my phone. What? There is a Google Hangout app? ‘It starts in about 90min’. That would give me some time to gather some things; earbuds, power cord, find a quiet place… Okay I’m in at least to try…

What was it like?

Well you can see for yourself:

But let me give a little more.

So, the majority of the labor for a thing like this falls on the virtual host and the on-site coordinator who together work out times, onsite location, technology set-up, etc. As a virtual participant you really get the sweet end of the deal – you just get to drop in. I ended up being a virtual participant in three of these sessions over the next few weeks with Maha as the virtual host each time.

They were Hangouts On-Air so besides the people in the hangout who are participating there is the potential for a whole other audience that might be tuning in and they are recorded so others might be tuning in later. I had at least one experience with someone blogging about our conversation after the fact when Simon Ensor reminded me about the magic of technology. I thought it was a wonderful way to extend the conversation.

Overall, it was a great experience each time. I got to meet some really smart people including Mia Zamora who I’m encountering again as she is helping to facilitate #CLMOOC. I also got great insights to some conferences (HASTAC and DML) that I have been wanting to check out for a while.

The spontaneous nature of the thing encouraged that serendipitous energy and each time it really did remind me of bumping into someone at a conference to chat over coffee – that thing that is so hard to replicate in virtual conference offerings.

I will admit to a bit of social anxiety, which people say I hide pretty well but it is there.  I was meeting people that I had never met before and who’s work I was not really familiar with so in the beginning there was a little bit of anxiety. However, Maha was a great host and did a wonderful job of getting everyone acclimated and it was easy to feel comfortable once things started rolling.

If you get a chance to be a virtual participant I would highly recommend the experience. It is a wonderful way to broaden your network and connect with some people that are doing good work in the field. The Virtual Connecting website also has suggestions on how you can run your own Virtually Connecting sessions if you want to give it a try.

Here are a few other blog posts and articles that describe the experience from the other sides:

Articles from Maha and Rebecca in Hybrid Pedagogy and in The Chronicle Of Higher Education’s Prof Hacker blog.

Insights from Alan Levine and Andrea Rehn on being an on-sight participant

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