We are @Vconnecting at #OERcamp17 on Jun 23-24

Please scroll down to the end of this post if you want to find out how to join us in the sessions at #OERcamp17 in Hamburg. 

In 2016 the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany launched a government funding programme which seeks to foster the widespread use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Germany (BMBF, 2016). In order to facilitate networking among the funded projects but also to make the wider public aware of the potential of OER for open education, four geographically distributed OER unconferences (known as ‘barcamps’ in Germany) , – called OERcamps – will take place in 2017. The OERcamps build on a history of German barcamps that started in 2012 and a shared understanding that these barcamps are meetings where participants can discuss, share and jointly create (digital) materials and practices designed to foster open education in German-speaking countries. Unlike some unconferences which target specific audiences, such as Higher Education or K-12 (in the US), the OERcamps will bring together educators from all sectors of the educational world, seeking to promote cross-sectoral communication and collaboration. Hence, #OERcamp17 will be an event with all kinds of projects around Open Educational Resources in various forms, but also the different practices that many identify as Open Pedagogy. 

Up until now the OERcamps were mainly face-to-face events, though occasionally participants covered workshops via Twitter or in their blog posts. The Hamburg #OERcamp17, taking place on 23 and 24 June, seeks to open up this approach and become more inclusive for remote participants. Christian Friedrich (@friedelitis) and Martina Emke (@MartinaEmke) will be Virtually Connecting’s onsite buddies at this event. They will also facilitate a session designed to raise awareness for this grassroots community movement and provide opportunities for live exchange with the Virtually Connecting community. If you are interested in joining, please let us know in the comments. 

We are planning to have two sessions with folks at the OERcamp in Hamburg, Germany. Our onsite buddies for both sessions will be Martina Emke and Christian Friedrich. The Virtual Buddy of this session will be Ken Bauer and our onsite guests will be the fabulous Anja Lorenz and Axel Dürkop. This will be a ‘regular’ Virtually Connecting session with a live conversation between onsite and online participants.

 

 

In the second session of Virtually Connecting with OERcamp17 onsite buddies Christian and Martina will invite virtual folks to participate in their conference / un-conference session “Open Communities in Exchange: Virtually Connecting”. The Virtual Buddy for this session will be Alan Levine a.k.a. CogDog.

 

 

Find a short announcement and a video interview (both in German) by the conference organizers as well as a German blog post about VConnecting on the conference website.

How to join us

We try to provide multiple entry points to a conversation. Here are the most common ways to connect:

Virtually

If you’d like to join us virtually and engage in the conversation with folks onsite, please leave a comment under this post and we’ll be in touch or tweet at us: @VirtuallyConnecting @friedelitis @MartinaEmke #OERcamp17

If you’d rather watch the conversation without engaging live and streamed over the Internet, there are ways to make that happen to. You can either watch live (check the embedded videos in this post) and tweet at us if you want to. You can also watch the recording whenever you like to. You will be able to find it here as well.

Onsite

If you’d like to join us in Hamburg onsite for any of the two sessions, please leave a comment or contact either Christian or Martina (or both), who are the onsite buddies for these sessions. @friedelitis @MartinaEmke  #OERcamp17