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VPL Biennale 2024
The #VPLBiennale concluded last week in Kilkenny, Ireland, after two jam packed days of lightening talks, panels and concurrent sessions. The organizers came from different countries and organizations and this was a noticeable strength that resulted in an attendee list from 31 countries, a diverse set of topics that broadly covered inclusion, policy, recognition, validation, micro-credentials, badging, to name a few. It was a delight to run into people I’ve met at OER, CAEL, and EPIC and more than a handful of Canadian counterparts. At the last Biennale I was newcomer to validation of prior learning (VPL) and left Iceland with a better understanding of importance of validation systems, how they operate…
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Microcredential Framework (where the centre is recognition)
It’s interesting to me that the last time I actually blogged was a summary of the Epic 2022 conference. I had completely forgotten that I had taken such detailed notes, which is one of the things that I appreciate about having a blog for these things. In the past couple of years I’ve shifted some of my attention from the open education world to the RPL/VPL/PLAR world. Here in BC this is known as prior learning assessment and recognition, while in other jurisdictions it’s known as the recognition of prior learning or the validation of prior learning. Thanks to Epic, I’ve come to understand the broader umbrella as recognition. In…
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#ePIC22 conference – Day 2
#ePIC22 Day 1 Day 2 was the day I noticed this helpful poster, which lays out the value of the recognition ecosystem that badges permit. The recognition of individuals and professionals are more likely to be discussed in our higher ed contexts here in BC, and I like that the notion of social capital, human capital and confidence capital were included as part of individual benefits. Less discussed here in BC are the bottom two: communities and regions/provinces. The inclusion of these as part of the badge ecosystem offers some interesting avenues for discussion and dreaming, and Day 2 would offer some tangible examples of those. Day 2 started with…
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ePIC22 conference – From Open Recognition to Empowerment
This was the 20th year of the ePIC conference, a relatively small international gathering of French and English speaking participants who have been coming together around open badges and open recognition. This year’s theme – Open Badges: From Recognition to Empowerment – pulled together an impressive list of keynotes and speakers and refreshingly didn’t make tech a star of the show, which is often what happens with many other conferences that involve some sort of innovation or ed tech component. In 2020 I participated in the COVID pivot online version of ePIC and was introduced to the concept of community based open recognition. This was a very interesting idea for me, and one…
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OpenEd Week @KPU
I had the privilege of being one of the keynotes at KPU’s Open Education Week, a fantastic day that was co-organized by KPU, UBC, Douglas, SFU, and BCIT. There is nothing better than following a student keynote, and Aran Armutlu kept our attention on the things that matter in open…students and affordability of higher education, while also touching on the impact of open pedagogy. He talked about his first experience as a student discovering his course used a zero cost textbook and since the instructor, Jennifer Kirkey was also in attendance it was a really nice shout out to instructors doing good work and the impact it has on students.…
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#OER18
I’ve had a few days to percolate over the amazing experience of #oer18. I attended this conference for the first time last year and #oer17 was so transformative that I opted for another round of a small conference in an interesting venue with lots of provocative and critical conversations about open. This year didn’t disappoint, and I was so energized by getting to spend time with some amazing and smart women doing great things in this space. Locating our discussions in a more historical context: There was a strong current of history at this conference, which was convenient for Viv and I who were presenting on the historical branches of…
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#OER18 and some historical branches of open
I’m headed to #OER18 in a few days where I’ll be presenting alongside Viv Rolfe (with contributions from Tanya Dorey-Alias who sadly can’t be there) on the historical branches of open. We connected about this last year, having a shared fondness for things that we forgot about open and it’s various branches or tentacles, and our short presentation will delve into a few of them namely open classrooms, open pedagogy, and self-directed learning. As I stated in this post from a couple of years ago, Viv really kick started this at Open Ed a few years back, and it inspired me to look into the history of open pedagogy. The…
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A few moments from ICDE 2017 #worldconf17
I skipped Open Ed this year to attend the ICDE World Conference in Toronto. The last time I attended ICDE was eight years ago in Maastricht. I brought my daughter, who was 5. She got sick in the bathroom 15 minutes before my presentation, then sat on the floor and did crafts while I presented. (Somebody took a photo of her which still lives in the conference archives. Check out that mom-purse full of kid stuff). Of the things that I remember, the conference was held in a very nice venue but there was no food at all for the four days. I remember being impressed by how it was…
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The gem of a conference that was ICICTE 2016
Image by Gorg Malia, cartoonist, instructional technologist, and one of the incredibly interesting ICICTE organizers and attendees. A couple of weeks ago I had the great privilege of being the keynote speaker at #ICICTE 2016 in Rhodes, Greece. I’ve got a couple of posts planned about the keynote and what I learned from the great presenters there, but first want to share some thoughts on what I thought made this conference a really fantastic 4 days. I’ll admit to having had a fair bit of conference fatigue for the past few years. In the past 15 years I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a lot of ed tech-related conferences and the…
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Ed Tech, you need to try harder: innovators, keynotes, connected learning and connectivism
I’ve become accustomed to ignoring distilled lists of anything these days on Twitter, but the Chronicle article on 12 innovators has inspired me to reflect on my largely discontented reaction. I don’t dispute that these people are deserving of their nomination, but the 12 best list is symptomatic of what I feel are some disturbing realities in our beloved ed tech field. In explaining the selection of these 12, Jeff Young, presumably from Chronicle explains in the comments: We relied on reporting — talking to our sources — as well as people at conferences whose ideas appeared to be gaining traction. We also looked at social-media and blogs. Essentially we wanted…
