I had a whale of an idea for a roundtable presentation for the first meeting of the Open/Technology in Education, Society and Scholarship Association (OTESSA) in 2020. It was going to be a conversation informed about how I dug into making my own online homework system throughout the late 2000’s and the 2010’s, and lessons that could be taken from that experience and the benefits of making that content available to share.
The grandiose idea was that I’d get people who worked similarly in disconnected fashions together in the same room – perhaps even with some folk who provide infrastructure for open education – and have a serious conversation break out. I had a collaborator for the conversation lined up and everything. It would have been great.
The conference was scheduled as part of the Canadian Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences in May of 2020.
Hey, guess what the pandemic canceled?
I got a place in the program for the parallel meeting of OTESSA in 2021 but the online nature of the conference (and the correspondingly limited attendance for the online meeting) wasn’t going to facilitate anything that resembled the kind of roundtable discussion that I’d originally planned. So I transformed the context of the conversation into a sort of online poster.
And, because this work is centered on a meeting connecting the open practice of using technology, I shared the poster for all to see and appreciate. It’s hanging at https://homework.aftonopen.com/.
The conversation I’d planned turned into a narrative – of my own experience building my open tools in isolation, connecting with the open education community, and the realities of the past pandemic year making me rethink the benefits of freely sharing and centralizing resources.
I hope you’ll have a look and read my own narrative, If you have any similar narrative to share, let me know; the blog is open and can be contributed to. I’ll toss it into the open again when the fall comes around, too.
Another fine mess. 