#BYOD4L, a honeymoon collaboration? @melsiguk

Is too much too good to be good? image source: http://farm1.staticflickr.com/79/272777927_6f5df1b3cb.jpg

I am travelling to London early in the morning but my mind is overflowing with excitement about yesterdays and today. Can we be in love with a project or does this sound bizarre?

BYOD4L is all coming together now and it is going to happen soon.  Our BIG day is Monday the 27th of January 2014. After an extensive period of hard work since November 2013, millions of DMs on Twitter, Google doc notes (and only one or two synchronous online gatherings), we, Sue Beckingham and I, are now getting ready to experience our open creation or magical open box. For me this is the next step in exploring open educational practices and playing with pedagogical approaches to find ways to make learning happen in open learning ecologies.

We are not alone. All our lovely and extremely generous volunteer facilitators are with us. I am truly amazed how we have worked together so well from the very beginning. Even after our family grew we really managed to glue. It was a social glue and our passion for learning, teaching and  experimenting that brought us together and kept us together.

We all have different expertise and seem to complement each other really really well. Our collaboration has grown and I am so so happy about what we have achieved together. We have been open and honest with each other and support each other really well. We are there for each other and I am positive that we will stick together throughout the course. Is this a honeymoon collaboration that will last?

BYOD4L is a truly collaborative project. We will all be reflecting on our experience and share these with participants and each other so that we can also learn. We see ourselves as co-learners and will immerse ourselves with our participants into the magical world of learning. We will learn together, with and from each others. We are  excited about this course. This was confirmed by our facilitators last night during a hangout.We are also nervous as we don’t know what is going to happen and if this experiment is going to work and how.

Our main focus is to be there for our participants, for each other, to make learning happen, for all of us. We don’t have answers. We are curious and interested in exploring questions and finding answers together with other teachers and students. We are all learners, right?

Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves. (Palmer, 2007, 11)

I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.