Thanks to Maha Bali for inviting me to take part in a webinar conversation about connected learning and contexts. Maha is one of my first MOOC friends when I jumped in last year, and she is the most generous and wide-reaching person. It was great to meet everyone and chat about contexts in learning – just scratch the surface really – great to meet new people, and talk to people I’ve known from online networks face to face (so to speak) for the first time eg Maha, Simon and Tanya (who’s from Sydney). Together we represented many contexts across geographical, cultural, linguistic and professional borders.
Of course, all participants are part of connected learning networks which can be discovered through their links below:
- Maha Bali (host) – Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning & Teaching at the American University in Cairo (AUC), located in Cairo, Egypt
- Shyam Sharma (host) – Assistant Professor of writing and rhetoric at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, NY
- Asao B. Inoue – Director of University Writing, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington-Tacoma
- Tanya Lau – eLearning Instructional Designer from Sydney, Australia
- Tania Sheko – Teacher Librarian at a 9-12 secondary boys’ school in Melbourne, Australia
- Simon Ensor – English teacher at the Université Blaise Pascal Clermont Ferrand in France
Lenandlar Singh was unfortunately unable to attend. His list of conference papers indicate he would have been a fantastic addition to the conversation.
Shyam and Maha were hosting and did a great job despite technical issues and Maha’s daughter waking, and thanks to Liana for her excellent support as we all connected to the hangout. I know Terry Elliott was watching and tweeting and I know that others were too, asking questions in the #clmooc and #connectedlearning Twitter spaces.
The video and storify (summary of related tweets) is available on the Connected Learning website as well as additional links and resources shared by participants.
I discovered that one of our French teachers comes from where Simon is located – Clermont Ferrand. She is very excited about that and would like to make contact with him. We are thinking it would be fun to connect our students in way similar to the way he already does through CLAVIER.
