CSSE, CATE, TATE & OTESSA – coming together

Posted on by

This is a reflection on my experiences this past week with attending the Congress Conference at York University. This was my first in-person conference since pre-pandemic and my first time at the Congress event. Since it was held at York University, I was able to bank on the hospitality of my daughter and son-in-law who live nearby. Not only did the provide a much needed room for rest and relaxation, they also provided the daily transportation to get to and from the event. The five days were filled with connections, conversations, and learning. The first two days were pre-conference events which allowed me to ease into the conference with smaller groups and longer sessions – half day workshop/conversational style sessions that helped build deeper connections to people in both the Technology and Teacher Education (TATE) and Canadian Association of Teacher Education (CATE) groups. Since I was co-chairing the TATE conference, this provided time for me to put names with faces while I dove into some of the interesting activities (robotics and moon-rover programming).

The OTESSA group divided the conference into virtual days, on-site days, and then back to virtual sessions. This allowed for a variety of combinations and ways to engage with content, conversations, and session formats. For the in-person sessions, it was great to meet some familiar people, have deeper conversations about topics of interest, as well as connect with new voices and ideas. The bonus was the dedicated building site in which to congregate. The drawback was that the building was on the opposite corner of the university campus from the other CATE and TATE sessions, which I was also planning to attend. The distance, and the 30 C temperatures were inhibiting factors in attending the events I had included in my conference app and calendar.

two chairs beside a round table in a classed in section of a room with shuttered windows

The program included three sessions where I was scheduled to speak.

  • My first session was a round table event where I planned to share my PhD dissertation findings. I had printed out 11×17 coloured copies of the graphics I had created for the dissertation – the Sprirals toward Literacies; Phenomenology; Crystallization; and the Gyroscopically MDL images. This was booked as a 20 minute session with three others also scheduled to speak at the round-table within the scheduled time-slot. I knew this would be a brief snapshot of the writing I had done, but it afforded me a chance to get some much needed feedback on what I had created and how I had gone about doing the dissertation. The effect of this session was exhilarating! The feedback was tremendous.
  • My second session was an OTESSA panel where a group of us shared our open educational experiences as a GO-GN member. This allowed me time to reconnect to the work, learning, and people I have engaged with during my dissertation. It allowed me an opportunity to share some of the intentional decisions I have made along the way to share openly and seek feedback on not only the productions, but on the processes and presentations, particularly those at the OER conference events.
  • The third session was scheduled at the end of the day and, despite being prepared and ready to speak, no one attended other than the tech support person who get things set up for me. Since she was a York student in the computer sciences department, we had time to chat about course work, computer programming, and the perspectives of futures in educational technologies. While there were bits and pieces I shared from my session, this was a free-flowing conversation that led us both to new places and new insights. Not a bad way to engage!
  • An additional bonus was the Virtually Connecting session that was rapidly planned, scheduled, and conducted with on-site and virtual participants. This was the first VC session post-pandemic and was a great way to reconnect with others in the Virtually Connecting network. You can read more about this session and watch the archived video recording on the Virtually Connecting website.

My Reflection: Keep things organized as you go, don’t rely on remembering after the event. Keep things organized in one place, don’t rely on finding what you want if you’ve got things stored in multiple locations. Keep of list of people you meet and their contact information, don’t rely on the conference app or social media locations to find folks again after the event is done. Revisit and record the information after the event is done so you can go back to remember key ideas and bits of wisdom to bring forward into whatever comes next. Find ways to keep it all coming together.

Image attribution: Steve Halama steve3p_0, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons