The People’s Open Education Jam or, Say it with a GIF

This Friday I will be co-presenting with Graham Atwell at the  Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM’15) in Porto, Portugal.  The talk is something we kind of half-baked up at EDEN15 this past April in Barcelona, and we have been playing with over a couple of months. I really love where we are now, and it’s all Graham’s fault!

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We will be collecting ideas from conference attendees over the course of the three-day conference and mix them into a presentation. My addition to the presentation was to use a Google form to have them isolate a specific topic they want to discuss in a sentence or two, and then find a GIF to illustrate the idea. In other words, have them say it with a GIF! who wouldn’t want to make a GIF slide for our talk, right? Groovy!

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So, that’s what we are going to do. And, indeed, some of  submissions have already started coming in, and I love what they’re doing. For example, we got a submission from one attendee who wants to explore accessibility for learners and educators, noting the following:

Open education should try to transcend the barriers to education such as poverty, access to technology, access to a stable internet connection, not being able bodied, access to transport etc, as well as administrative issues like not being on the ‘approved’ list of resources or being blocked by the firewall.

A big and very important topic, and what is even cooler is the metaphor and GIF this person chose to make her point. Dealing with accessibility in education is like “being a large Alice unable to get through the tiny door into Wonderland.”

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Or another example where a participant sees open education “as an opportunity for teachers’ professional development.” She goes on to say:

I would use the role of textbooks to show how copyrighted resources and business has disempowered teachers. Constructing OERs and opening up education are the opportunity for teachers to take control over the curriculum and thus, over their own teaching. I am very hopeful about this and the uptake of Open practices is a real opportunity that we cannot miss anymore. So, since I am hopeful about this new opportunity my gif could not be any other than the enamored one 😉

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How awesome is that? I am already convinced this will be the most animated closing keynote ever given on European soil, and we only have ten submissions so far. Want to be part of GIF presentation history? Well then, submit a topic around opened education that is near and dear to your heart? What’s more, try and map it on a metaphor that can then be illustrated with a GIF to drive the point home?  Not gonna be at TEEM’15? No problem, open is as open does, and participating from afar is one of the great joys of open. The form is below, help us make the People’s Open Education Jam (POEJAM) a completely awesome (and hopefully weird) experience!

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