Lightning Talk: Open Learning Experience Bingo

Opening slide for a lightning talk on Open Learning Experience Bingo given by Nate Angell on 11 Dec 2020, with vintage bingo number balls in the background.

On Friday, 11 December 2020, I gave a lightning talk organized by Creative Commons about the ongoing collaborative project for a bingo “game” to surface and discuss the many different ways that educational experiences can “open” beyond traditional practices. You can access the presentation for my lightning talk, which references back to many resources here … Read more

Karen Cangialosi: On Empowering Students to Open Knowledge Practices

I just attended Achieving the Dream’s first Teaching and Learning Summit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The Summit had four tracks, each focused on a specific domain of teaching and learning:

  • Open Educational Resources: Beyond Cost
  • Guided Pathways: Ensuring Students Are Learning
  • Culturally Responsive Practices: Leveraging Knowledge for Equity
  • Adaptive Courseware for Early Success

I participated in the adaptive courseware track — guided by participants from Every Learner Everywhere — where I collaborated with the good folks at Houston Community College and other community colleges in Florida, Ohio, and Texas that are adopting adaptive learning platforms to improve student success.

The buzz at plenary sessions and mealtimes convinced me that participants in every track were as deeply engaged in the practical details of transforming teaching and learning as we were in the adaptive learning track. We had an incredibly productive couple of days together, making connections across disciplines and geographies to see how we might implement adaptive learning tools for various courses. These adaptive tools promise to enable students to take personalized learning pathways for knowledge and comprehension — speeding past what they already know and identifying where they might focus — while also enabling teachers to spend more time on higher-level, active learning, helping students apply, analyze and synthesize concepts.

Enter Karen

After all that wide-ranging, hands on work, the highlight of the gathering for me was when participants from all four tracks came together for a closing, plenary keynote from Karen Cangialosi on open pedagogy. Karen gave us all a truly remarkable experience.

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XOXO: Not an Echo Chamber

Plexus Engine report on XOXO

Plexus Engine report on XOXO

The XOXO festival opened last night in Portland with a party at Holocene, but in reality the crowd started to gather first on twitter, where following the #xoxofest tag showed attendees en route, finding each other on planes and trains, and generally setting a mood of giddy anticipation for the event. Even the sun showed up, tricking first-time visitors into thinking they had landed in nirvana (reality check next February).

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Back Fence: @xolotl, @rael & @jshardison

This last April I had the privilege of telling a story on stage at Back Fence PDX, the innovative storytelling event brought to us by @melissalion and Frayn Masters at Portland’s Mission Theater. At Back Fence, regular folks get up on stage and each tells a true, personal, unrehearsed story that lasts no longer than … Read more