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My first MYFest session for 1923 is with Mays Imad who presented last summer too; it's exciting to see her again!

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the animals chose the squirrel to be their king

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I missed out on MYFest in June of 2023, but I am excited to be able to participate in the July and August events. And..... there will be readers theater! I just sent up a script-frame that we can use for collaborative writing based on two really sweet animal folktales from Angola as retold by the great A.O. Stafford: Who Will Be King?

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screenshot of video in a Padlet post / slideshow view

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I've still got lots of work to do, but I really like how a Padlet slideshow can capture the MYFest program, event by event. As soon as I get back from Oklahoma trip, I'm excited to jump back in and keep developing this. Meanwhile, here's why I have so far: MYFest Overview.

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I just realized I should make a link here to the little Padlet I made for the MYFest Reflections (separate from the SPLOT), and I exported it as a PDF to upload here!

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Ecocycle slide: Birth, Gestation, Maturity, Creative Destruction

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Well, here it is August 30, and I think it was our last Zoom of MYFest22, and it was a good one: Ecocycle Planning as we go forward. I really liked having all the slides for people to annotate individually and in groups. And it was just so great to see so many friends old and new from the summer there in the Zoom room. :-)

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screenshot of Anna's post showing spiral doodles

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I was so excited to get a notice about a new blog post at the Reflections SPLOT that Alan set up for MYFest. And it even had spirals! and ripples! You can read Anna's post here: The Wonder That Was MYFest22.

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Prince Blockhead cartoon with bee, duck, and ant

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I feel sooooo lucky here: Heather and Alan made a Daily Create based on the Readers Theater Scripts, so there were illustrations from Sarah, Kevin, and Sheri ... that was so much fun to see. The one I've included here in the post is from Kevin: The Queen Bee is such a great story and even though it is Grimm, not a lot of people know it. He got all the animal helpers in there!

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animated gif that explains the features of SPLOTs

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Heather and I both agreed that the best way to ease people into WordPress is by using a SPLOT so that they can start writing immediately and see their writing online right away... then, if they are curious, they can learn about the WordPress backend and see how those writings are part of a WordPress blog set-up. I've used SPLOTs before, and I wrote a lot of posts in the MYFest Reflections SPLOT, but I had no idea how to set one up. Luckily, though, Alan Levine has written super-friendly instructions for how to do that. So..... I made a SPLOT. In fact, I made two, plus a generic one that I can keep on cloning in my Reclaim account ad infinitum. I am so glad I finally learned how to do this, and it is all thanks to MYFest! (and to Alan!) (and Heather!) (yay!).

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photo of Sanchez building on UT Austin campus

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So today was a great day! Heather's office is literally across the street from me (I can see the Sanchez building from my balcony), and today we brainstormed about their Reclaim DoOO and some things that we could do together to help promote web publishing and OER with UT faculty and students. It felt SO GREAT to be on a campus at the start of a semester with all the new-semester vibes going on. It is only because of MYFest that I learned Heather is right here across the street... so just imagine: without MYFest, I could have been right here, not even knowing there was exciting stuff I could be doing with someone working in an office just a few minutes' walk away. I'm excited to see how I can help!

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This was a fun coincidence: the Daily Create for today was to share a rainbow photo, and literally yesterday I saw a rainbow for the first time in ages, and took a picture. So here is the rainbow seen from my balcony. I am taking it as a good sign of things to come! :-)

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picture of a rabbit with names of rabbit in different languages

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Wow, I did a TASK party (first time for me!), and it was so much fun. I think this was the last MYFest event (???), so I am glad it was such a totally fun and creative experience. One of the tasks I did was about "interwoven communities," so I drew a rabbit (well, kind of sort of) and wrote the names that the trickster rabbit has in stories from Africa to the Caribbean to the US. I'd like to make a fancy version of this someday; it was really fun to make. Plus I learned amazing new Padlet tricks from how they used the Padlet for that event. Wonderful in every way!

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I didn't have a MYFest event today, but I did attend a wonderful webinar from Library Futures about fandoms and the idea of fan fiction and "transformative" works... and then Dawn shared the Zines presentation at Twitter today, so that was a nice coincidence! Maybe you will want to make your own zine; Dawn explains it so clearly: Zines Are for Everyone.

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So grateful to Tony and Irene for AMAZING workshop this morning on growing and saying goodbye. There was dancing. There was drawing. It was wonderful. And my favorite song was this one by Peggy Seeger: Everything Changes.

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Peggy Seeger 'Everything Changes', live at Band on the Wall

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photo of Fynbos: South African shrubland at Wikipedia

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We had our Dreaming Futures session this morning, and I was excited to have a chance to share metaphors from nature in my Twine Dreamscape. For so many years the metaphors I used for networks and feedback came from the world of engineering, but I think it is both more liberating and sustainable to use metaphors that come from nature there... and nature was there first, long before human engineers arrived on the scene. In the discussion, I learned the term "fynbos" which is an Afrikaans word for the shrublands of the South African Cape. We were talking in the chat about burning down higher ed... and then Daniela brought up the way that fire is an expected part of some natural systems, with plants designed to propagate specifically under fire conditions. We have so much we can learn from nature, and we need to start learning that NOW.

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So this is not exactly MYFest-related, not directly, but thanks to getting used to Zooming in MYFest, plus feeling brave and bold in general, I signed up for two classes a couple weeks ago: a Folklore and Resistance class at Charterhaugh online folklore school, and a Postcolonial Surrealism writing workshop with TJ Benson at LOLWE. Both of those converged on tricksters last week, and I ended up writing my first-ever actual short story. Yeah, it' still full of folktales, but it's also my story. Here it is: Tricksters Bring the Sun in Heaven.

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Michael K. Williams Dancing House Music in NYC Park

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spiraling fractal in pink and blue colors

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I wrote up some detailed notes about the Twine design. Partly so that I won't forget what I did (sometimes I get into the Twine "zone" in my mind and it's all totally clear, and then a few days later I look at my Twine and have no idea how I built it), and also so that if anybody else wants to jump in ... which would be great! ... they can do that. Here are the notes: Twines and Fractals.

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screenshot from the Twine game with dandelion

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Working on Twine is just intoxicating. I started this morning and couldn't stop working; it's so intense but so fun at the same time. I finally decided it was enough to call it "done" for now... but I tried to build it in a really structured way so that it can keep growing. Fractal: like a fern. Ready to iterate. Here's the game: MYFest Dreamscape.

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Inspired by amb's Emergent Strategy and her use of the emblems from the folks at Complex Strategies, I've decided to try building a Twine space, a kind of bio-dreamscape for people to explore and learn more about these metaphors. I hope I can sketch it out tomorrow (Friday) and then fill in the framework over the weekend. I haven't done a Twine since last summer, so I'm excited to see what happens! :-)

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collage of photos: Gloria Anzaldua, Ashley Bryan, adrienne maree brown, Ocdtavia Butler, Grace Lee Boggs

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I had so much fun making my fantasy dinner party that I decided to queue this up as the prompt for tomorrow. I hope other people have as much fun with it as I did! Post here: MYFest Fantasy Dinner Party.

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Oh my gosh, why did no teacher teach me how to make zines when I was little???!!!
all my school maladjustment would have been solved!!! but better late than never: thanks to Dawn Stahura, I learned how to make an 8-page zine today! You can see a photo of the little book above, and here is a picture of it spread out. If I were in a classroom where students could make these and share them with each other, and also make them collaboratively, I would definitely be doing this as an activity. And I plan to make sure to show every child whom I happen to meet how to do this. Fold-fold-cut-accordion: presto! You have a book!

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slide from Trayle's Cultural Humility deck

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I had such a good time during Trayle's presentation, and she did something that I truly appreciated: she described the slides, like verbal alt text, and it really helped me to pay more attention to the slide details and to think about how the design of the slide was part of how it conveyed the meaning. I wish I had learned that technique in the past! I don't imagine I'll be doing many presentations in the future, but if I do, I want to do that the way Trayle did today! Here's a link to the slidedeck: Cultural Humility.

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Statue of a crow tengu: human body with a bird head and wings.

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Our final Readers Theater session is coming up on Tuesday, and I wrote a new script today: The Old Woman and the Tengu.  It is my favorite script that I've written so far, so I really hope people want to read this one. Here's a Crow Tengu from Wikipedia. :-)

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So today was just super-extra-fabulous: there was a MYFest session with Helen Nde today AND there was a wonderful Twitter Spaces later too. Getting to hear stories from Helen twice in one day: that is a super-extra-fabulous day!!!!!! I don't have the video yet to snag a screenshot but here's a photo from an event announcement. :-)

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So excited to learn about Loretta Ross during the STEM session on Thursday... all 3 meetings of that track were super-productive. It was definitely not just about STEM, and one of the themes of the whole project was that setting STEM apart as if special/different is not helping to move us forward to justice and equity. Here's Loretta Ross's site: LorettaJRoss.com.

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Activist. Public Intellectual. Professor.
Welcome to working alongside me, Loretta J. Ross, to learn what Calling In is and how we can use Calling In to fight against White Supremacy.
Hope to see you in the movement!
Sign up for Calling In: Creating Change Without Cancel Culture starting on October 18-November 10.

ACTIVIST

I joined the women's movement in 1978 by working at the first rape crisis center in the country and learned about women's human rights, reproductive justice, white supremacy, and women of color organizing. I also researched and fought hate groups such as the KKK in the 1990s, and I founded a national center for teaching people about their human rights, and co-founded SisterSong. I want to share what I've experienced with emergingactivistsin hopes that you will join the transformative human rights movement that has changed the world.

I testified at a hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Reform for Examining the Urgent Need to Protect and Expand Abortion Rights and Access in the United States on September 30, 2021. Catch some highlights below and the full proceedings here.

I am a principal partner with14th Strategies Consultants, a public affairs strategic agency dedicated to helping organizations, universities, and corporations live up to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Our team features experts on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Public Relations and Brand Management, Fundraising, and Strategic, and Organizational Development. Get in touch with us if you need support or guidance in any of those areas.

PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

I speak, train, consult, and lecture on many issues including Reproductive Justice, Appropriate Whiteness, Human Rights, Violence Against Women, and Calling In the Calling Out Culture. If you're interested in having me as a speaker, get in touch! If you are a media contact, please reach out.

You can view many of my media appearances here. I have appeared on CNN, BET, "Lead Story," "Good Morning America," "The Donahue Show," the National Geographic Channel, and "The Charlie Rose Show." I've been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, CBS Sunday Morning, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Oprah Winfrey Radio, among others.

PROFESSOR

I currently teach about the call-out culture and white supremacy as a professor at Smith College, but I wanted to find a way to make my courses accessible to more of you! We are now in the planning stages for future courses, so sign up to the mailing list to be sure you hear of those!

PODCASTS

I have my own podcast, Dred Feminist with Loretta J. Ross but I've also been invited to be on a number of other podcasts. Some notable ones appear here.

BOOKS

Coming soon! Calling In the Calling Out Culture published by Simon & Schuster. To hear when it releases, please!

Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice , by Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena Gutiérrez. The first-ever book on Reproductive Justice published in 2004.
"Teaching Reproductive Justice: An Activist's Approach," in Black Women's Liberatory Pedagogies, eds. Perlow O., Wheeler D., Bethea S., Scott B. (eds) Black Women's Liberatory Pedagogies. Palgrave Macmillan, (2018)

United States Social Forum, Building Movements Award, 2007

Family Planning Associates, Champion of Reproductive Justice Award, 2007

Federation of Haitian Women, Fanm Ayisyen Nan Miyami, Marie Claire Heureuse Leadership Award, 2007

NARAL Pro-Choice Georgia, Blazing Arrow Award, 2006

Feminist Women's Health Center, Stand Up for Choice Award, 2005

National Center for Human Rights Education, First Mother of Human Rights Education Award, 2004

SisterLove Women's HIV/AIDS Resource Project Award, South Africa, 2002

Georgia Committee on Family Violence, Gender Justice Award, 2002

DePaul University Cultural Center Diversity Award, 2001

American Humanist Association, Humanist Heroine Award, 1998

Top 100 Feminists for 2020 by Ms. Magazine

Woodhull Sexual Freedom Network, Vicky Award 2017.

National Women's Health Network Barbara Seaman Award for Activism in Women's Health 2015

Foundation for Black Women's Wellness Legacy Award 2015

Women Helping Women, Revolutionary Award, 2011

International Black Women's Congress, Oni Award, 2010

Delta Sigma Theta, Pinnacle Leadership Award, 2008

Black Women's Health Imperative, Community Health Activist Award, 2008

Women of Color Resource Center, Sister Fire Award, 2008

Sisters of Color United for Education, Denver, CO, 2008

Women's Medical Fund of Philadelphia, Rosie Jimenez Award, 2007

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Welcome to working alongside me, Loretta J. Ross, to learn what Calling In is and how we can use Calling In to fight against White Supremacy. Hope to see you in the movement! Sign up for Calling In: Creating Change Without Cancel Culture starting on October 18-November 10.

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John Henry by Julius Lester; book cover by Jerry Pinkney

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I learned something very interesting today: thanks to Bryan Dewsbury in the STEM session today, I learned about John-Henryism. That is a folktale I know so well, and which means a lot to me (it made a huge impact on me as a child), but I had never heard about this use of the story: "John Henryism (JH) is a strategy for coping with prolonged exposure to stresses such as social discrimination by expending high levels of effort which results in accumulating physiological costs" (from the Wikipedia article). This is definitely something I want to learn more about.

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I got up super-early (at least for me) this morning to be ready for 7AM and 8AM MYFest sessions, back to back, and they were both so good, totally resonating with each other. Now I want to do a project for Dreaming Higher Ed Futures (in my copious spare time ha ha ha). I really enjoyed the spiral notebook exercise we did.

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screenshot of Reflections posts in Inoreader

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So today was something super-exciting for me: I got to add the Reflections posts into the MYFest Inoreader network I created at the start of the summer. There was some activity there from the Padlets and a few blogs... but now I hope there will be lots going on! When I taught my classes at OU, there were hundreds of student posts in Inoreader each week... and if anybody is curious about how all that works, I have tons of detailed step-by-step information about networking RSS sources (blogs, and also Padlets, Diigo, and more) here: Summer2020.LauraGibbs.net. You can see the MYFest stream for the summer here (including the new Reflections posts, plus activity at the Padlets and other things): MYFest RSS stream.

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session slide with roulette wheel and randomizer link

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There are now 30 prompts in the randomizer, so it is starting to feel truly random! Plus the emails with the daily prompt start up tomorrow. I'm nervous and excited... to me, this is what learning really feels like. I never truly got used to Zoom this summer, but this idea of create-and-share is for me what education is all about, and I'm excited to see what people create and share! Prompt Randomizer

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I can't believe it's August already! I just put up the ballot for people to vote on the Anansi Book Club: I am so curious what people will pick. I'm always happy with whatever books we end up with, since I enjoy them all, and this club has been such a great excuse for me to spend a week with each book, getting to know it even better. Here it is: August Anansi Book Club Ballot.

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it's a bit clunky and weird, but the prompt randomizer now has 17 prompts, and I'm excited for how this is coming together. Hopefully we'll have more prompts this weekend too; I have a few more i know I want to add :-)

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For MYFest Curation coming up in August, I helped to create a webpage and the prompt randomizer to go with it. Now I just need to fill up the randomizer with prompts tomorrow!

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Thanks to Mays Imad's workshop today, I learned about reparative humanism building on the work of Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, and I really want to read her book: A Human Being Died That Night: Confronting Apartheid's Chief Killer. It's at the Internet Archive too!

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Such a fun and thoughtful presentation from Christy and Rissa: it's like the flipside of the storytelling our grief workshop, which was about the weight of grief... this was about the lightness we can allow ourselves by resting and recuperating. Here's the slidedeck.

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Today I started doing audio recordings of the Readers Theater scripts. It's the best way for me to proofread the scripts, and you never know when audio might turn out to be useful to someone else too! So, for example, here's The Chicken and the Crocodile.

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Francolin photo by Koshy Koshy at Flickr.

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I wrote a new script, gearing up for our Readers Theater in August. This one was really fun because I combined two different versions of an African folktale into one: Mother Partridge and the Snake.

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I had so much fun with this week's Anansi Book Club book, and the final book for July is by one of my all-time favorite authors, Julius Lester: How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?

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Whoo-hoo! We got a day/time for an August Readers Theater that works for Maha, Jim, Heather, and hopefully Mia... and I hope there will be others who want to join us! Jim and I are going to work on a version of Turtle Knows Your Name together too, yay! Details about the session: Readers Room.

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6 cat pictures ranging from great to totally stressed

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I really enjoyed the Emancipatory Pedagogies session today, and the discussion about pandemic stress and its impact on students made me remember the stress check-in and venting thing I did in the pandemic year of 2020-2021 when I was still teaching at OU. Here's the form. :-)

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Wow, I just saw this beautiful video that Brighid made based on a story a student wrote in Swahili. How wonderful! She used Canva to make the video; I'd like to learn how to do that! The Clever Monkey

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I am so excited: Helen Nde is now on the MYFest calendar for August 5. We'll be doing a conversation about her work on African storytelling and African ways of knowing; it will be such a great follow-up to the Dark Matter y La Facultad series! Here's her website: MythologicalAfricans.com

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A collaboration between Mythological Africans and the amazing Monstrum Team!

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i'm excited about the new Anansi Book Club book for this week: it's a story of the trickster Tortoise from Nigeria, as told by Tololwa Mollel, a children's book author from Tanzania: THE FLYING TORTOISE.

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Change of Seasons by Dianita Ceron artbydianita.com

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The final session of Dark Matter y La Facultad was on Friday.... I am so sorry for that series to be over, but it was absolutely fantastic; every session had its own vibe, and there were different people in attendance (with some regulars too!), but each time it was a mind-expanding heart-opening experience. I am so grateful to Felecia and Heather for the work they did in creating this track and all that they shared with us.

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Okay, complete absolute total fangirl moment: Amitav Ghosh saw the tweet where I mentioned how Great Derangement had inspired the second session of our microfiction workshop, and he retweeted... which means Christina's Twitter stories are really out there in the world now. What a great feeling!!! (And if people have not read Ghosh: read him!!! Of my many favorite authors, I suppose he is my favorite-est).

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We did such a fun metaphor exercise in the Dark Matter y la Facultad workshop today!
I wrote about a coaster:

my coaster whirls like a wheel of the year.
I didn't see it at first...
but there they are:
the spokes of the wheel radiating outwards,
spinning around and around,
are the weeks,
one after another after another,
never ending,
from solstice to equinox to solstice to equinox.
how did I not know that all eternity was there there,
right there on my coaster,
sitting on the desk
but spinning forever in time.
I looked, but didn't see.
and now that I have seen it,
I will always see it.
how my coaster is a vortex of time
and we are all revolving inside it.

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I'm excited (but also nervous) about our readers theater for Wednesday. I hope people come! Most of the plays take 6 or so readers: fingers crossed. I had so much fun preparing these scripts, and it is just the beginning of more to come, yay! Scripts.LauraGibbs.net

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Session TWO of Storytelling happened! Like always, I was super-nervous, and I made a bunch of Zoom goofs like always...... but I think it worked: WE WROTE. So, for me, that means it works, and I am so grateful to Alan for giving us the idea to focus on climate change as a writing topic. That is something that I going to be of great value to me going forward I know. Here's our slidedeck.

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Today I wrote a new script for Readers Theater, based on a character request from Jim: I rewrote the traditional story of the tortoise racing against a faster animal (often an antelope) to be about a cheetah instead! I had so much fun writing it, and I hope that the readers theater people will like it too: Cheetah Races Tortoise.

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I was so happy about the books from the Dark Matter track that I was able to add to the Padlet Bookshelf... so many books I want to read. I read the La Llorona book (it's in both Spanish and English!), and I loved it!

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Another AMAZING Dark Matter session on Friday! LeRoy Saiz was back (I am so inspired by his work), and the special guest this time was RexyLaFemm who was there to talk with us about TAROT as a way of knowing: Tarot for the Revolution! And we also shared our experiences with other ways of knowing; I've never been in a Zoom meeting where we got a chance to interact in such a personal way. It was a small group, and Heather and Felecia are such great facilitators. I am excited for what comes next!

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17th-century illustration of Aesop's fables: Zeus and the Turtle

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Thanks to the chance to write a first draft of this origin story in the Dark Matter workshop on Wednesday, I turned it into a script today, including a unicorn too (that was a special request from Jim!): Zeus and the Turtle. This was a very therapeutic story for me to work on also since I've been thinking a lot about the themes in this story, aspiring to be a happy turtle in my (new) shell. :-)

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I am so happy with how the workshop went today! Doing workshops is soooooo NOT my thing, but working with Alan and Mia made it so fun and easy, and I loved the live writing that we did: the Padlet came alive with 6-word stories, and doing the Story Doodles in real time was super-cool (for DPL we did them asynch, but doing it at the same time like that was totally fun, and of course they are still available for doodling asynch also). Plus after the session Alan pushed us to think about how to really extend what we did this week into some important stuff next time; I hope we can do a good job with that too! Here are the slides.

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Wow, I cannot even begin to describe what this first session of Dark Matter was like. We wrote stories, shared stories, and got a beautiful introduction to indigenous education with LeRoy Saiz, learning about Nahuatl wisdom. I am so excited for the next session!

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slide from Creative Chaos and Counterstories

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I thought the workshop today was absolutely wonderful: we made a collaborative poem together and performed it. The experience reminded me of Kwame Alexander's crowdsourced poetry on NPR, and we did it ourselves!

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I had so much fun today creating some new randomized writing prompt widgets for the MYFest Workshop coming up on Wednesday (eeeek! so soon! how did that happen???). My take on microfiction is that it's easier to do when you start with the plot and characters and all you need to do is bring them to life, so I like working with folktales and myths: I never get writers block that way! Here are the prompts I've made so far: Fables and Origins.

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There's going to be another readers theater next week, and there was a special request for bunny rabbits, so I did a script today based on one of my favorite Brer Rabbit stories: Brer Fox and the Little Rabbits.

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I didn't have any MYFest events yesterday, but I worked on  the Proverbs website: Hector has done a Spanish proverbs slideshow, so now we have both Latin AND Spanish slides, so I was able to really bring the website to life by embedding those slideshows on the pages. I keep thinking about this summer project as a MYFest project... I know it's not directly related, but if I didn't have MYFest to carry me through this very strange summer in my life, I know I wouldn't have the focus and inspiration I need to get all this work on the proverbs done, and it is so much fun! Proverbs.LauraGibbs.net

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These are not the grades you're looking for...

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SO MUCH FUN, and great discussion too, at Rissa's second ungrading workshop today! I made a meme. And Heather made a thread!

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I love learning about new books this way, and from Christy and Rissa's presentation on Storying Our Grief: H.E.R.O., I learned about some new books that I added to our Bookshelf Padlet. Stripes and Giraffes are new to me (I knew about The Dot already, I am so glad we read Ish together in the session because that is the one book on Christy's list that was NOT at the Archive!).

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I absolutely loved the session on Storying Our Grief. I was a little nervous to do this one (and I did cry in the breakout), but it was so amazing to be sharing my story about moving and leaving a house (and a life) behind, when the other two peopel in the group were at different stages of moving too, so that's what we talked about. And using the H.E.R.O. framework to react to stories, including our own stories, was so powerful! Yay Christy and Rissa!!! Here's a link to the fabulous slidedeck.

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By adding this piece to the proverb project, I feel like I am really good to go for the rest of the summer, with a plan that will carry me forward for July and August, yay! So now I really am ready for July to arrive (I would not have said that yesterday ha ha). It was fun making the slides, which I can also share at Twitter, and I hope to do another slideshow tomorrow too, yay! It's all here: Latin Animal Proverbs.

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I created another set of Latin proverb games today! Now I've got the game-creating technique set up really nicely so, after writing the commentary (that's the hard part), I can create all the games in less than an hour. Making games and writing plays are my creative #MYFest22 projects, and I am having so much fun with them BOTH. :-)

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Prepping for the Friday Zoom, I discovered something really fun: I did a kind of "illustration commentary" for Won-Ldy Paye's Talking Vegetables... I did that because of people who said they couldn't attend the session, but then as it turned out, the Zoom was uncooperative (I couldn't share screen and talk...?), so I was even more glad to have written the commentary, and now I am inspired to write more of them. It was quick and easy, and I"m sure it could be useful too!

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book cover of Stories of Africa and video of Gcina Mhlophe

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Well, today was just a whirlwind from start to finish, but I did manage to get this week's Anansi Book Club post going: it's Gcina Mhlophe's Stories of Africa! It's the final book of June for Anansi Book Club... when I think to how MYFest still has the rest of June plus July AND August, wow, I'm just amazed by all the events I'm getting to participate in and learn from. (Today was Tim Fawns in the morning and then Global OER in the afternoon!)

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I wrote my favorite script so far... and it's about a frog-princess, not a frog-prince! Here's the script: THE PRINCE AND THE FROG.
The image is from Pixabay.

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Thanks to Jamiella Brooks's workshop on anticolonial pedagogy, I learned about this Kenyan author; one of his books is at Internet Archive so I added it to our MYFest Bookshelf, and I know I will have to read more of them too. Here's his website.

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I've also been having so much fun this week with the current Anansi Book Club selection: Talking Vegetables... it's a Spider story from Liberia! I'm hoping maybe we will read this book together in the Reader's Room session for MYFest later this week.

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My other big summer project is working on Latin and Spanish proverbs with my friend Hector Tapia (he speaks Spanish and also does Latin)... and I did the first set of Latin proverb games today. I am really excited about how it is going to work; you can see it all here: Proverbs.LauraGibbs.net

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The first session of Rissa's Ungrading as Emancipation track was fantastic. I've known Rissa for a long time, but there was so much new that I learned from her presentation. Plus we started up a padlet for Ungrading, and people have already shared lots, and I know there will be more to come. So exciting!!!

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Led by Rissa Sorensen-Unruh

Ungrading is an important topic of conversation right now in higher education circles. Why? Traditional grading systems have been shown to be statistically invalid, unreliable, and oppressive, particularly to students who face systemic inequities. Ungrading provides a path to liberation in the classroom through pedagogical practices that can begin small. Come join us and learn more about what ungrading is, how we integrate it into our classrooms, and how it transforms our classrooms into more equitable spaces.

Track

Ungrading as Emancipation: Theory and Practice

Track: Three 2-hour Zoom workshops on June 17th, June 30th, and July 15th from 1pm-3pm EDT each day (although all of this may be modified by the participants during the first session). More sessions may be added as participants require. Asynchronous components will be conducted via Slack from June 13, 2022-July 22, 2022.

Asynchronous

Ongoing Chat on Slack

June 13, 2022 – July 15, 2022 on Slack

We will use this space to reflect and process our learnings from the workshops. Some discussions will be community building. Some discussions will be prompted and some will not.

Mark Your Calendar

Workshop

Ungrading as Emancipation: What is Ungrading and how is it emancipatory?

2-hour workshop on June 17, 2022 at 1pm EDT

This beginning workshop discusses what ungrading is and how it is an emancipatory pedagogy. While every workshop in this track will be emergent based on participant participation and agency, the workshops will have major themes, and this one is an introduction to ungrading.

Workshop

Ungrading as Emancipation: Practicing Ungrading in Our Classrooms Using Reflective Practice

2-hour workshop on June 30, 2022 at 1pm EDT

This workshop will build on our introductory discussion on what ungrading is to contextualize how we practice ungrading in our specific classrooms. While every workshop in this track will be emergent based on participant participation and agency, this workshop’s major theme is a reflective conversation about how we can enact ungrading in our classrooms.

Workshop

Ungrading as Emancipation: Building an Ethics of Care Framework as a Basis for Ungrading Practice

2-hour workshop on July 15, 2022 at 1pm EDT

This workshop will build on our introductory discussion and classroom practice reflections to collectively ideate what an ethics of care framework would look like for ungrading. While every workshop in this track will be emergent based on participant participation, this workshop’s major theme is the discussion and ideation of what kinds of learning theories and ethical frameworks undergird ungrading.

Beginning Resources

Post navigation

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Yesterday I got to learn about OERCommons thanks to a great session in the Open Learning track. I am really excited to jump into their site and start exploring, and also to start adding materials. There was only one African folktale resource... so, I can help with that! :-)

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After all the inspiring presentations about open education for MYFest over the past ten days, it was very dismaying to learn yesterday that Course Hero is now hosting OER from Lumen... and then, on the same day that I learned about that, I learned that the amazing Audrey Watters is stepping back from her critical work in ed tech. You can read about it here and here: The End. Audrey has been there pretty much for all of my career as an online educator... I will miss her voice, but I totally understand her reasons for moving on (similar to the reasons why I quit my job earlier than I had ever imagined)... as she says at the end of the post: "I have to put this decade-long project to rest so that I can move on to something that doesn't consume me in its awfulness and make me dwell in doom." And part of that doom is seeing Course Hero gobbling up Lumen OER, all so that venture capitalists can take their profit and move on. Audrey warned us... and she was right.

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read

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from my friend Eli Luberoff, the founder and CEO of Desmos. It was news I'd been anticipating — dreading, really — for some time: the startup had been acquired. Amplify was buying its curriculum division; the calculator part would become a free-standing public benefit corporation. The subject of the email from Eli said "good news," and I don't mean to imply that it isn't a good deal for him, for his employees, for his investors, or for Desmos users. But for me, well, it was a sign of something else altogether. (That said, let's check back in in a few years and see how this all has panned out, okay?)

For a long, long time, if anyone asked me if there was any ed-tech I liked — and I would get this question a lot, often asked as though it was some sort of "gotcha" — I'd reply in a heartbeat, "Desmos." I adore Eli; and Desmos has always had a great team, including, of course, the incredible Dan Meyer (who I also adore, even though I blame him whenever I chose the slowest check-out lane in the grocery store.)

I loved that Desmos' free online graphing calculator subverted the $100+ graphing calculator racket — a racket controlled by a couple of manufacturers and a handful of standardized test companies.

But even more than that, I loved that the spirit and culture of the company, which despite providing an instrument for math, was not strictly instrumentalist. This is absolutely a rarity in ed-tech, where almost everything is touted for its supposed productivity, efficiency, time- and cost-savings, student or learning or behavior management. Better, cheaper, faster, smarter — those are the values that most folks in ed-tech like to tout. And yes, I'm sure plenty of teachers used Desmos that way. But that wasn't the intent of Eli or Dan or even necessarily the design of the instrument, the graphing calculator. Kids made art with Desmos; kids made art with math; and with the Desmos curriculum, kids deliberated with and about math, a learning practice that runs counter to this firmly-held belief we have that math, unlike other fields of knowledge, is merely about getting a right or wrong answer and that the best way to develop and wield mathematical knowledge in school is to fill out worksheets as quickly as possible.

Desmos never bent its design or its trajectory, even in response to the most mundane usage, towards what are these common practices and pedagogies of ed-tech: "we can help students do their homework faster" or "we can help teachers automate their grading" or "check out our features that showcase some bullshit metrics that our investors like to see."

Now that the company has been acquired, I don't have an answer when someone asks me that "gotcha" question. You got me: "Nope. There's not a goddamn thing." And that certainly means it's time for me to step away from ed-tech for good.

I’ve already taken time away from this site to grieve the loss of my son. I’ve taken time away to write and promote my book. I’ve repeatedly told myself that I’m just tired from all of it — death, the pandemic, [gestures widely] etcetera — and that eventually my passion will return. But I don't think it's going to. It's time to move on to something else. I cannot, I will not be your Cassandra any more.

This site won't go away — I'll still pay for the domain for a while longer, at least — but the HEWN newsletter, the Patreon, and all Hack Education-related social media will. You'll be able to find my latest writing on my personal website. Remember blogging? Yeah. I'll do that for a while until I can figure something else out. I have to put this decade-long project to rest so that I can move on to something that doesn't consume me in its awfulness and make me dwell in doom.

Written by

Audrey Watters

Published 15 Jun 2022

Credits

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A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from my friend Eli Luberoff, the founder and CEO of Desmos. It was news I’d been anticipating — dreading, really — for some time: the startup had been acq...

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I made this blog with Padlet because I knew I wouldn't have time to blog every day during #MYFest22, but I also wanted to record at least something every day about what I am doing and learning. Padlet to the rescue! If you are interested in creating your own Padlet blog (free account lets you create 3 different padlets!), I've written up some tips here: BLOGGING WITH PADLET.

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As I accumulate new posts about blogging with Padlet, I'll add links here to this index:

If there are topics you want me to cover or questions that you have, leave a comment here, or ask me at Twitter (@OnlineCrsLady).

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As I accumulate new posts about blogging with Padlet, I'll add links here to this index: If there are topics you want me to cover or questions that you have, leave a comment here, or ask me at Twitter (@OnlineCrsLady).

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(the lion leaps into the well: plot spoiler!)

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And yes, I wrote another script yesterday! I am so glad to FINALLY be back into a good creative writing groove (when my life went all topsy-turvy in March, I couldn't do this kind of writing... but thanks to the Daily Creates, I jumpstarted my creative engine, and now I am ready to go go go). Here's the script from yesterday: The Lion-King and the Rabbit. (The illustration by Boyd for Dutton's edition of Bidpai.)

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I was also really excited to learn more about EdTechBooks: I had shared one of their books at our bookshelf earlier (Feminist Critical Digital Pedagogy), and it was so cool to learn about the platform behind it -- lots of great features, inspiring goals, and some serious talk about sustainability too. I really want to give it a try for a project that is not focused on a book publication but instead wants to maximize the affordances of the web which goes far beyond print. They also go by this URL: https://equitypress.org/

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Learning for Everyone,
Publishing for Everyone
We Provide Free Educational Publications by Diverse Authors
View Library

Explore More
Browse the Library

Best for Students

At Equity Press, we believe that knowledge should be free, and that educational technology should lead the way! We provide high-quality books to learners at zero cost. Each year, we save learners hundreds of thousands of dollars, all while providing robust learning experiences.

Best for Teachers

Teachers can experience peace of mind knowing that students have access to high-quality books from day one of class. In addition, most of our books can be remixed, meaning that teachers can edit, rearrange, and add content to the books to meet student needs.

Note that each book is released under its own license, and some books include chapters or other content that may be released under different licenses.

Best for Authors

The Equity Press platform allows authors to get their open educational resource (OER) books published and to reach a larger audience. The platform is packed with features, including an intuitive interface with simple editing, PDF downloads of every book and chapter, detailed analytics, and much more! All for free!

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Learning for Everyone, Publishing for Everyone We Provide Free Educational Publications by Diverse Authors View Library Explore More Browse the Library At Equity Press, we believe that knowledge should be free, and that educational technology should lead the way! We provide high-quality books to learners at zero cost.

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I did four hours of MYFest Zooming yesterday (I guess that's a personal record for me!), and I learned about so many inspiring people and projects. The most eye-opening for me was the Kolibri Project from LearningEquality.org ... wow!

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Today was a super-busy day but I managed to write another script:  The Python, the Baboon and the Rabbit. This was really fun for me to do because I had earlier done a 100-word version of this folktale, so now I got to expand it and tell it more detail with the personalities of the animals coming through. Here's the 100-word version. (The python photo is in that short version.)

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Today was exciting: I set up my Readers Theater site. I now have 3 scripts, and I figured 3 was an appropriately folkloric number to start a collection of Folktale Readers Theater scripts. This is the project I wanted to do for MYFest... and now I'm doing it! Scripts.LauraGibbs.net

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I really enjoyed the session on feminist pedagogy yesterday, especially Tanya Elias's metaphor about kamiks versus mass-produced boots: Lessons from Indigenous Sewing Practices. As we got to talking about the LMS, I remembered this fun podcast convo that I got to participate in with Brenna, so I wanted to share that here too: Between the Chapters: The LMS ... part of the brilliant 25 Years of Ed Tech audiobook/podcast project.

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Today I learned about an AMAZING project by Canadian students: Liberated Learners. It's available as an interactive Pressbook (lots of H5P, so cool) here: Liberated Learners. I'm uploading a copy of the PDF version to the Internet Archive so I can put it on our bookshelf too.

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We're starting the next Anansi Book Club book for June: Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe. This book has been a gateway to African storytelling for so many readers over the past 35 years; I hope some people from MYFest will want to take a few minutes to read it and share their thoughts. :-)

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I absolutely loved Karen Costa's workshop on Emergent Strategy (I MUST READ THIS BOOK... and Holding Change also)... and she shared this genius acrostic which I had never heard before, so I made a graphic for it: DESTRESS: Don't Ever Start Trying to Run the Entire Solar System
(and such great synergy because the Daily Create for today is an acrostic create!)

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I loved the Open Learning session this morning and one of the participants shared this OER publication as an example of open, so of course I uploaded it to the Internet Archive when I saw it was not there already. I hope I can inspire people to upload their OER to the Archive likewise.

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I had fun with today's Daily Create, ha ha. I used a recipe generator to make it. I posted it at Twitter too.

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With help from Rebecca and Maha, I was able to add a page to the website with all the MYFest padlets viewable at a glance! I hope that will lead people to explore them, and also suggest ideas for any new ones they would like to see.

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I wrote a little Padlet How-To to help people making links in Padlet posts (the editor is admittedly a little weird): Padlet Links.

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For the Daily Create today, I thought about what color notebook to choose as I start my new summer project (I chose purple!)... and I also brainstormed about the project with my proverb collaborator. I'm not going to say anything specific yet, but there are going to be some super-cool things happening as we go wild with proverbs this summer!

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I also published the blog post today for this week's Anansi Book Club selection: The Village of Round and Square Houses, written and illustrated by Ann Grifalconi. Did you know there are volcanoes in Cameroon? That's what this story is about: the story of a volcanic eruption of long ago.

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For the Daily Create, we were given a photo of paths diverging, so I imagined a kind of connecting/sharing map for MYFest (inspired by Maha's similar creation)... and I blogged about it here: Daily Create - Two Roads Diverged.

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For today's Daily Create, we were asked to think about fame... and a hat. I decided that my hat of fame would be a conjurer's hat full of rabbits: you want me to pull a rabbit out of a hat? I offer trickster rabbits from around the world but especially Africa and the African Diaspora. (Those are 100-word stories... and,  yes, there will be a microfiction workshop in July for MYFest: maybe you will decide you like 100-word stories to! I LOVE THEM.)

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I really had fun with the Daily Create today; you can read the ballad I wrote about the dragon who shaped this fantasy land here: THE PLAINS OF MAUG

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Perhaps some MYFest people would be interested in joining in with our Anansi Book Club: all the books are just a click away at the Internet Archive, and we're voting on the June books now. More info at the website: Anansi Book Club.

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I did my first daily create for MYFest today! Admittedly, it's still not quite June yet, but I could not resist this Daily Create! I used the snail to tell a new version of an old Italian folktale, and I recorded the audio too: The Man Who Came Out Only at Night.

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It's still just May but I'm excited to get started NOW. And in the spirit of summer, here's a fun video from Maati Baani with Vidya Vox: Summer Love.

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Summer Love /Eri Aali : #MaatiBaani ft. Vidya Vox (Choreography by Kings United & Karmagraphy) |