1

Preparing for OER17

Packing Pile by Frances Bell  CC-BY-NC-SA

I seem to have been preparing for OER17 for a long time, seeing as this is my eighth post tagged OER17 . I am setting off on Tuesday morning, and I am really looking forward to meeting old friends and new people whose names are on great submissions.  The programme is very rich and bodes well for stimulating ideas and discussion. I know I am not the only one who is finding it difficult to choose which sessions to attend so I am hoping to catch up on some of the ones I have missed through hallway conversations and the Twitter stream.

Even people who want to participate remotely have various options. The  three hashtags that I will be inhabiting are #OER17, the conference hashtag;#critoep , a hashtag that some of us are hoping will aggregate the wonderful critical work at the conference; and #femedtech, the hash tag for a newborn network that we hope will grow at OER17, hence the stickers that I am packing. If you think you might be interested in femedtech, check out the hashtag and our website http://femedte.ch. We also have an informal get together planned at lunch on Wednesday 5 April, watch out for more details on the hash tag.

I am going to attend the three keynotes, and I’m aiming to live blog them so more of that later. I am also chairing three sessions which will be a great pleasure.

1500 Wed 5 April – 3 presentations in the Institutional Politics theme: Exploring International Open Educational Practices, Advocating for Open: The role of learning support professionals in changing practice, and Critical pragmatism and critical advocacy: Addressing the challenges of openness

10.30 Thurs 6 April A workshop in the Open Party theme: Histropedia – Building an open interactive history of everything with Wikimedia content

13.45 Thurs 6 April – 2 presentations in the Participation and Social Equality theme: Reclaiming the social justice agenda: MOOCs, openness and community orientations and The trade and the gift: open education and economies of academic labour

And last but not least, I am contributing to two sessions myself:

I am part of a great panel Staying open: sustaining critical open educational practice in a time of walls and borders with the very lovely Sheila MacNeill, Vivien Rolfe, Josie Fraser, and Kate Bowles. From writing the abstract to creating the panel session activities, this has been an amazing developmental and relationship-building experience, and for that I thank the panel members. I hope that our session, that includes plenty of time to listen to and involve our participants, can play a part in opening up the existing critical discussion around Open Educational Practice. #critoep  can provide traces of this journey.

My own presentation Being Critical in and of Open Educational Practice , another #critoep  contribution, concerns a particular passion of mine that reflects other sessions such as Laura Czerniewycz and Catherine Cronin’s , namely that the exclusion of digital, and particularly how it is provided and accessed, from our critical gaze is mistaken. We need to apply our criticality even if we have roles that involve advocacy. Digital platforms and networks should also be the subject of critique. I blogged my ideas prior to the presentation and will report back on the contribution of participants as I indicate in my slides.

And finally, my personal learning goal for OER17 is to learn more about Wikipedia. Since I attended Wikimedia UK AGM last July, I have wanted to do some Wikipedia editing. Since we have 2 Wikimedia UK Trustees, Josie Fraser and Lorna Campbell, and the Chief Executive, Lucy Compton-Reid, attending OER17; and several sessions including drop-ins, I should be able to achieve that. We are also considering holding one or more feminist Wikipedia editathons at Femedtech.

It’s all going to be great 🙂