by I was really lucky to be able to join in with the Virtually Connecting peeps earlier today, not once but twice! The first was a ‘hallway’ conversation session and then a second session about the Virtually Connecting concept at the MELSIG Media-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group Digital Placemaking event … The MELSIG write up on their website says that the event will ‘consider how learning space becomes learning place through the use of digital and social media in and out of the classroom‘ how exciting is that!
I’ve participated in a couple of Virtually Connecting sessions before ( I’d highly recommend them) but I didn’t actually realise what a ‘ hallway’ conversation was – The amazing @Bali_Maha later explained this to me as a ‘casual conversation with no pre-planned topic ‘ – obvious to other people no doubt but I hadn’t twigged !
Anyhow, there were a lot of familiar faces (@andrewmid @alexgspiers onsite @mweller @WarwickLanguage @sensor63 @friedelitis @sarahjfc @Bali_Maha ) and a couple of new faces that I’ve not had the pleasure of connecting with before, sadly we couldn’t see the audience but felt their warm and friendly faces through the ether! We also missed @suebecks who had been due to join us but was unable to at the last minute.
We talked a lot about the welcoming and friendly space that is afforded by Virtually Connecting – Sarah @sarahjfc likened it to a ‘ kitchen table’ sort of space – this really resonated with me.
a warm, friendly, cosy, kitchen where you can just wear your slippers and your fluffy fleece
Taking Sarah’s idea of the kitchen table this conjured up for me Virtual Connecting as a warm, friendly, cosy, kitchen where you can just wear your slippers and your fluffy fleece ( which of course in my case is bright pink), put the kettle on and have a rather nice cup of tea and a biscuit … ( Oh and there is probably a sleeping dog and a couple of cute kittens wandering around but that might just be in my version of events … ) dunk it in your tea and not worry about making any mess….
I also got to meet @tundeva who shared with us a snippet from the presentation that she gave at the event earlier in the day which was using the ‘Greenhouse’ as a metaphor for electronic assessment and how online assessment allows people to share how they are marking – I thought that was such a great metaphor – we use online marking on the PG Cert HE at Swansea and I have found that I have learned a lot from my colleagues by seeing how they mark and give feedback etc.
You can watch the YouTube recordings of the events below or visit Maha’s blog as she types REALLY quick and pretty much had written her blog before I had made my coffee 🙂 and if you check out the Digital Placement hashtags #melsig and #SIGCLANS you can follow the proceedings of the various happenings …
One thing that I was really interested in at the Digital Placemaking event was the TWALK that @andrewmid mentioned . The ‘ Twalk’ was apparently taking place just as we went off the air….
I wasn’t sure exactly what that was but having had a quick look I understand that the TWALK was basically an hour long ‘walk and talk ‘ event where various people got to experience different places around the campus and then tweeted at different ‘viewpoints’. ( more about that here)
What a fab idea … check out the facilities at Edge Hill on this tweet …
Lovely social space here at Edge Hill #SIGCLANS #twalk pic.twitter.com/EqAtbjWNoP
— Andrew Middleton (@andrewmid) May 31, 2017
If I had engaged my brain beforehand we could have done a #twalk here at Swansea … never mind next time eh…
I expect there will be some storify’s later related to the #twalk which I will look forward to seeing later 🙂 In the meantime here is a great blog post from Chris Rowell that gives a good summary of what is involved
