So, BYOD4L is over and again it was a huge success.
This bite-size course runs over 5 days and focusses on the 5 C’s – Connecting, Communicating, Curating Collaborating, and Creating.
As a Qualified Nurse I am familiar with many C words as the three year vision and strategy for nursing, midwifery and care staff, (Compassion in Practice 2012) outlines 6 C’s, which are regarded as fundamental values. These 6 C’s are – Care, Compassion, Competence, Communication, Courage and Commitment.
Whilst the C’s are somewhat different (except for communication) I would argue that care, compassion, competence, courage and commitment are all needed to enjoy and get the most from BYOD4L. Certainly as a facilitator I needed to take care (and care about others), be compassionate to others, try and show competence (though many participants were much more competent than I am), be courageous (in trying out new tools) and certainly a level of commitment.
Commitment was a challenge for me this time as I was unavailable for the first two days. I was trying to engage where I could but limited time did not help. I started on day 3 with enthusiasm and with an eagerness to catch up. The benefit of this course is that all the materials are there for the 5 days and it is easy to dip in and out, this is one of the many positive aspects of the course!
I noticed that there were many facilitators supporting the participants and how quickly the participants were supporting each other. There were many creative and imaginative blog posts, Google+ posts and Facebook posts. The experiences of participants and facilitators were great to see and I take away a lot of ideas (again).
The titter chats were again an amazing flurry of discussion and fun, and from this I have also agreed to host a twitter chat again in the near future with a colleague whom I met last year.
In the Thursday evening twitter chat there was a suggestion of creating a BYOD4L poem, an example of how creative the course can be. The challenge was to collaborate on this and try and produce a poem by hrs. the following day. I found myself somehow involved and before I knew it had contributed to the final version. I don’t consider myself a poet but am proud to have been part of this.
Here it is
In the digital jungle
Reaching out into the chaotic, swirling abyss
Feeling that e-learning can be so hit and miss
I want to avoid device apathy and neglect
But what does it mean to really connect?
So onwards we go
But where, do we know?
Wouldn’t it be great?
If we all started to communicate
Curating a task, can be quite unfamiliar,
belonging in museums, art galleries and similar.
With mobile devices we curate a different way
Sharing resources with scoop it and Mendeley
Five brief days, so short and sweet
In Twitter and Google we gathered to meet
Inspired to explore, discuss and create
Minds now expanded; an enlightened state
Knowledge isn’t just facts
Or historical acts
Its cerebral energy we state
When we start to create
But this isn’t the end!
We now each have a valuable PLN to tend
Our #BYOD4L community will continue to grow
Help us reach out to let others know
Contributors
1 Sam Illingworth
2 Neil Withnell
3 Ian Guest
4 Peter Reed
5 Carol Haigh
6 Sue Beckingham
(The poem is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence).
Finally, I would like to say a huge thank you to the organiser of this course – Chrissi Nerantzi and Sue Beckingham, two remarkable individuals who work tirelessly for the development (and enjoyment) of others!