{"id":5176,"date":"2015-09-16T16:04:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5176"},"modified":"2015-09-17T10:05:32","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T09:05:32","slug":"expanding-and-extending-conversations-at-altc-via-vconnecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2015\/09\/expanding-and-extending-conversations-at-altc-via-vconnecting\/","title":{"rendered":"Expanding and Extending Conversations at #altc via @vconnecting"},"content":{"rendered":"

We co-founded Virtually Connecting<\/a> as a way to enrich the virtual conference experience for those unable to physically attend conferences. We appreciate conferences like #altc and #hastac that livestream keynotes and and we find the Twitter streams from conferences really useful. Virtually Connecting builds on these by creating a space for virtual participants to speak directly with people onsite at the conference, including prominent presenters like keynote speakers. We use laptops or mobile devices and the free, simple technology of Google Hangouts on Air and invite virtual participants to join in. See the Playlist for #altc here: http:\/\/www.tiny.cc\/altcvc<\/a><\/p>\n

While any confident person could walk up to a keynote speaker and have a conversation with them onsite (many people tell us they usually cannot do this), we feel virtually connecting can expand that conversation so others can join virtually, watching live or later. Our \u2018onsite buddy\u2019 makes new connections with people onsite as they set up these meetings, and often continue the conversation after the live session. When others from all over the world join virtually, they extend the conversation beyond the limits of those physically present. A one-hour keynote (usually delivered mostly one-way) becomes a continuing conversation others can watch later.<\/p>\n

This year at #altc we got to know Steve Wheeler (Associate Professor of Learning Technologies, Plymouth University, UK) and his student co-presenters, Becca Smallshaw and Kate Bartlett more in the hangout with them; we had a conversation with Jonathan Worth (Senior Research Associate, Newcastle\u00a0University Open Lab, UK) which ended with an action-step to ask Cory Doctorow (journalist and science fiction author) to share ideas with us for ways to enhance literacy about privacy to kids under 10. We also had a pre-keynote discussion with Laura Czerniewicz (Director of the Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CILT), University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa) and Catherine Cronin (Educator & Researcher, National University of Ireland,\u00a0Galway, Ireland) on inequality. The sessions are imperfect: sometimes conference wi-fi drops off, as it did during our session with Martin Weller (Professor of Educational Technology, Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, UK), but virtual participants usually continue discussions until onsite participants can return. Sometimes, virtual conversations continue after the onsite participants have signed off.<\/p>\n

While we are taking a small number of people away from the onsite conference for a short time, we are leveraging the powerful networks onsite and sharing some of the atmosphere and quality conversations with people online in a sort of guerilla \u2018un-conference\u2019, to hack a term Martin Weller used when we hung out with him. These are meetings that focus on connection, not content.<\/p>\n

Even though we do it anyway, networking of this sort is enhanced when conference organizers support the initiative by announcing what it is to people onsite (as the organizers of Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute did – playlist below<\/a>).<\/p>\n