Tag Archives: openlearning17

Open Participants, Syndicated

Open All Night – Tuesday March 6 for #openlearning18 & @udgmural

Reading Time: 1

I’ve got an exciting evening lined up tomorrow (Tues March 6) a and I’m just gonna share the links here.

First up, I’m co-facilitating a week on Open Access with Sue Erickson as part of #openlearning18 (more details here), including annotating Peter Suber’s book http://bit.ly/oa-book and hanging out with Peter, Thomas Nkoudou Mboa and Ivonne Lujano on Tues at 3pm EST/8pm UTC/10pm Cairo time. There’s room to join the hangout if you like. Let me or Sue know.

Right after that (4pm EST/11pm Cairo) , Robin DeRosa and I are hanging out with the UDG Mural folks doing work at the U of Guadalajara in Mexico (Tannis Morgan, Grant Potter, Alan Levine). Details here.

So I’m basically open all night until midnight – see you there!

Syndicated, Virginia Group

A Conceptual Framework?


I participated in OpenLearning17 and am back for OpenLearning18.  Why you ask?  Because I learned enough last year to articulate better questions this year.  Last year, I went in somewhat blind.  (There might be something we can learn as teachers here
about the experience of our students.) This year, I have a much better sense of what’s in store for me and how to get the most out of it.

To prepare for Week 1, I read the excerpts from Doug Englebart, “Augmenting Human Intellect“.  When I’ve read it before, I found it to be powerful but abstract.  This time around, though, I saw it as a conceptual framework for OpenLearning18.  Which is to say, my experience last year helped me understand what Englebart was saying in 1962.  And what Englebart said, has informed me about what we will be doing starting tomorrow.

Image Credit: Alex Handy from Oakland, Nmibia – Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart Uploaded by Edward

Featured, Syndicated, Virginia Group

In the Open, Vulnerability is Essential, Agency is Everything and the Network is the Classroom

I’ve just returned from ELI2018, where a few of us presented on the OpenLearning ’17 experience and took the opportunity to promote OpenLearning ’18. My colleague Gardner Campbell, Hub Director extraordinaire and leader of our motley crew gave me the opportunity to talk about my “Novice to Node” experience in OpenLearnimg ’17. I started that journey with no blog, no Twitter presence and no experience in a networked learning environment. In some ways, I had no business being a facilitator for OpenLearning ’17, but it some ways, I was best guide for fellow newbies and my newness to it all gives me a unique perspective among my colleagues on the steering committee. And besides, not knowing how to do something is not a valid hurdle for me. I figured out how to do it by doing it. I learned through trying to teach others.

There were some tweets from audience members in the session that called out my pithy personal learning outcomes from the OpenLearning ’17 experience. I had my 5 seconds of fame as they were liked and retweeted, but I think they may have been misinterpreted as lessons learned from one specific week. I want to be clear about this– these are takeaways from my entire experience over the duration of the course. These ideas evolved over a 15 week period (don’t worry, OpenLearning ’18 is just 8 weeks!) when I was focused on learning about teaching and learning in the open.

So now that I’ve cleared that up, I’d like to explain a little more about what I meant in the session at ELI2018.

Vulnerability is Essential

If you can be vulnerable and in the moment, you can make connections between ideas and you can make connections with other learners in this networked environment. The network is the classroom and the more time you spend in the network, the more experiences you will have and the more you will learn. Vulnerability and authenticity are important traits for leaders, and I would argue for teachers as well. They are certainly important traits for learners, but it can be hard to admit what you don’t know, especially if you are used to being an expert in your field.

Having just returned from a conference, I find the conference scene a useful metaphor. If you go to sessions, but talk to no one there or in between sessions, you are going to have a more shallow experience than if you strike up conversations in the hallways and over meals. It requires putting yourself out there, but the reward is significant. If you engage on Twitter with others at the conference, you might have an even richer experience.

The Network is the Classroom

The same is true for connected learning–to get the most out of the experience, you need to connect, not just with the readings, but with the other learners in the network. And ideally, you get the opportunity to connect with people who are another step further out from the course you are engaged in. You begin to build your network thought the connections you make in the course, and then you make connections with their connections (it’s like those shampoo commercials from the 70s and 80s–and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and that’s the power of the network).

But back to vulnerability. Think about times when you have really made a connection with someone, not over something superficial (like shampoo…), but over something meaningful. How did that connection happen? One or both of you probably shared something personal, something that was important to you, something you’ve been thinking about for some time. That’s what can happen in the network if you open yourself up to connecting in that deeper way, but you do have to put a piece of your deeper self out there. The network IS the classroom. It’s where the learning happens. To be part of the learning experience, you need to be in the network, connecting with others.

Agency is Everything

Agency is about having a choice, and in the connected learning environment the choice is for the learner. The learner decides whether to do all, some, or none of the readings in a cMOOC. The learner decides whether to participate in the synchronous activities offered and at what level (are you lurking in the Hangout, or are you engaging in the chat?). Each learner’s experience will be different based on the choices they have made. Agency is empowering. It also lets us make decisions about our privacy. Perhaps you don’t want to join Twitter because you are concerned about how your information will be used. You can choose not to participate in that way. Your experience will be limited by that choice, but the choice is yours to make. Open pedagogy takes further steps to give students agency. Students might have a voice in how the syllabus is shaped or in the tools they use to complete an assignment. Perhaps they even have a choice in which assignments they will complete. Again, each learner’s experience is unique based on their decisions and what learning opportunities they choose to experience.

And a little about time management for cMOOCs

For me, I choose it all. My only limit is time and I have been amazed at how much time I can create when I adjust my priorities and my habits. So when I’m in the cMOOC, I will take a break from social media that is not connected to the experience (sorry, Pinterest and Facebook), and I will engage on Twitter over my morning coffee, but I will filter for #OpenLearning18 and focus my experience. I might write a blog post over several mornings or evenings (this one was begun in an airport and finished in my office). I will find ways to fit this experience into my days and nights because it is important to me. I know I will gain valuable insights from connecting with others in the network. It’s worth the small sacrifices and adjustments to my routines. For 8 weeks, I can change my lifestyle and it will change my life for the better.

Here’s how to join OpenLearning ’18: http://openlearninghub.net/the-stream/ 

We’ll get started on Sunday, February 4th. I look forward to connecting with you!

Open Participants, Syndicated

Association for Learning Technology ALT Winter Online Conference

 image from pxhere CC by

I got up early (1 am in Oakland, California!) to participate in this year’s Association for Learning Technology Winter Online Conference.  I could only access one of the day’s Blackboard webinars, confirming what I’ve heard about Blackboard, but got to participate in a tweet chat. I hope tomorrow the technology is up to the task. Otherwise, the irony may become toxic.

Open Participants, Syndicated

California Sociological Association Annual Conference

Network Map of Nugan Hand Ltd private bank and connections by Mark Lombardi.

I was recently in Sacramento, California, at the annual meeting of the California Sociological Association. Two years ago I attended the meeting in Oakland, where I live. I again saw none of my sociology teachers or classmates from any of the four Peralta Community Colleges. I did run onto William Ochoa, a former colleague and Senator in the Associated Students of Laney (Community) College, now working on his Master’s degree in Sociology at Mills College in Oakland, California.

I attended all seven sessions of the two day conference including; the Popular Culture & New Technology panel, the Community College Roundtable, Critical Perspectives in Education, The 2016 Presidential Election Revisited panel, Making Sociology Matter, Social Movements and Sociology: the Big Picture. The panels included many interesting presentations and many I attended were student driven. The highlight for me was an unusual and memorable presentation by Frank Roberts from Mt. San Antonio Community College on his project to unify the major theories of sociology. The last session of the conference, there were only five attendees which allowed a lively and prolonged discussion.

PP slide by Frank Roberts

First Roberts mapped Donald Brown’s Anthropological catalog of 369 “Human Universals” traits to Robert Nisbet’s “Unit Ideas of Sociology” using an Excel spreadsheet. Balancing Nisbet’s conservative, community oriented approach, Roberts added sociological Agency to Community, Sacred, Authority, Status, Alienation units. This accounted for many personal and creative traits. Then Roberts mapped these six unit ideas to the three major sociological theories: Structural-Functionalism, Comfit Theory and Symbolic Internationalism. I imagine the resulting integration of sociological theories can be used to describe and possibly clarify many intersectional positions. This is an idea I will continue to reflect on and try to use in my future sociological studies.

The official theme of the California Sociological Association annual meeting was “A Legacy of Sociology”: the keynote presentation was “Who rules America?” by William Domhoff, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His latest work is as co-author of Studying the Power Elite: Fifty Years of Who Rules America? (Routledge 2018). Dr. Domhoff summarized his long career in researching America’s elite and focused on the rise of think tanks (and policy discussion groups) in influencing policy and politics. This corresponded with the waning of Marxist theorists’ influence in academia and resulted in a lessening of criticism of corporate influence. Dr. Domhoff didn’t mention Louis Powell’s 1971 memorandum for the American Chamber of Commerce, “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System” but I couldn’t help wondering how Dr. Domhoff would characterize its influence. He’s inspired me to read the book that started this line of inquiry, C. Wright Mill’s 1956 book The Power Elite. Researching the interlocking nature of corporate directors, first with excel spreadsheets and now with powerful computers running social network analysis software, Dr. Domhoff has tracked how corporate power has fragmented from being centered in banks to a more distributed system of endowed academic chairs, corporate funded policy groups and think tanks, foundations and emerging industries. Dr. Domhoff concluded optimistically; there’s a new wave of power structure researchers using larger databases and the final chapter of the story of “America’s Power Elite” has not been written.

Network Map of World Finance by Mark Lombardi

Open Participants, Syndicated

Why Open Matters

A global network of social media and open resources, including Liberal, Radical and Conservative educational “canons.” Remix by MCW

A retired American scientific glassblower, I started on my career journey at a California community college after I graduated from high school. On a whim I signed up for a glass class, the teacher was a ceramicist and designer who wanted to experiment with glass so we built the equipment, made the glass and learned together how to play with this fascinating material. I soon left college to learn more about glass. It never occurred to me to go to Alfred University like my teacher had, I sought out working glassblowers and made myself useful. Eventually I ended up in Silicon Valley making high intensity lamps and LASERs. I have worked with researchers, engineers and artists and no one ever asked if I had a college degree.

In the History of the Open University Lord Perry of Walton, OU’s first Vice Chancellor is quoted on his motivation to take the job of creating the open University in 1969:

“It wasn’t that I had any deep-seated urge to mitigate the miseries of the depressed adult; it was that I was persuaded that the standard of teaching in conventional universities was pretty deplorable. It suddenly struck me that if you could use the media and devise course materials that would work for students all by themselves, then inevitably you were bound to affect – for good – the standard of teaching in conventional universities. I believed that to be so important that it overrode almost everything else.”

Returning to a California community college during the Great Recession, I found that little had changed regarding the standard of teaching and mitigating the miseries of workers was not even on the agenda. Protecting the institution during a time of budget cuts along with the jobs of the faculty and staff were the highest priorities. Despite the fact adult learners make up nearly two thirds of California’s two million community college students, there are no programs to support the taxpayers that need to retrain during capitalism’s down cycles. Night and distance students fare even worse with financial aid offices, libraries, advisors and technical support staff that all work bankers hours.

I managed to graduate even after falling into the “Community College Trap” and am now designing my Individualized Studies Bachelor’s degree. As a distance student, I’m finding the same structural problems a the University as the community colleges. Open matters to me because I’ve learned to use other institutions, social media and the world wide web to gather the resources I need to learn what I choose. I intend to create an Open Heutagogy anyone with an data connection can use to gather free and open resources to create their own learning program. I think as the world economy continues to limp along and higher education divides into training for the masses and private education for the children of the elites, self directed learning will help the working class and those left behind learn what they need to build a diverse, sustainable and cooperative local economies. While the elites will still run the Universities and reproduce the managerial class to run the global economic and military empires, perhaps openness will help the rest of us survive.

Open Participants, Syndicated

My College Degree as a Digital Humanities Project

Digital Humanities by Craig Bellamy CC BY-NC-SA 2.0


I’m developing a new model for adult learners so they can avoid the experience I had while trying to improve my skills at a Community College. Combining Self-Directed Learning, Computational Thinking, Digital Pedagogy, Open Education and Open Social Scholarship theories with Open Education Resources (OER), Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and ePortfolios, I intend to create a free platform for any adult learner to document and reflect on their diverse learning experiences. I think simplifying all these dense and often conflicting learning theories into an approach (Praxis) any adult student can use to design their own self-directed education pathway will be useful. (Heutagogy)

I’ve been working on these ideas for three years, starting with attending a presentation by faculty from Evergreen College in Washington on integrating individual courses’ homework assignments across institutional silos. That led me to eportfolios as a way to collect all types of evidence (digital objects) of learning. Learning about tagging and metadata for discoverability on the internets, I observed the need for a controlled metadata vocabulary to allow searches for emerging patterns. These new ways of looking at one’s learning has the potential to suggest new constructions of learning experiences and new areas of research.

I belong to the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) and have attended their conferences, including a session at this year’s 8th Annual Forum on Digital Learning and ePortfolios at the 2017 AAC&U conference in San Francisco. The ePortfolio Forum is jointly sponsored by AAC&U’s project, VALUE: Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education; the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL), the association of ePortfolio professionals; and the International Journal of ePortfolio (IjeP). At this year’s AAEEBL Conference I joined the Technology Special Interest Group and convinced them to take on my idea for an ePortfolio Ontology as their first project. I’ve also joined the Association for Learning Technology, the UK group to “advance education through increasing, exploring and disseminating knowledge in the field of Learning Technology for the benefit of the general public.”

The Hurley Information and Technology Convergence Center at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Photo by MCW


I recently realized that my idea of ‘finishing a Bachelor’s degree while using Free and Open Source Software to create a learning eportfolio on my own domain and blogging about it in public’ is a Digital Humanities project. In 2016 I attended the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute at the University of Mary Washington, VA, home of ds106 and the Domian of One’s Own initiative. I learned about UMW while attending the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria, BC, where I took Critical Pedagogy and Digital Praxis in the Humanities from Jesse Stommel and Chris Friend. This year I took two courses during DHSI to support my project; ‘Open Access and Open Social Scholarship’ and ‘TEI and Metadata.’ That led me to explore metadata ‘triples’ which led to the concepts of graph databases and ‘faceted’ searches.

Lincoln as a boy reading at night. Library of Congress CollectionNow I want to learn how to integrate a FOSS graph database (Neo4j?) with FOSS curation tools (WP, Omeka, GitHub?) to utilize the power of humanities computing and the semantic web to document and reflect on my learning experiences. And then document my reflections and be able to do faceted searches of everything I’ve created together with everything I’ve curated into my database. I need to learn to appropriately tag all these digital objects with metadata so that they integrate seamlessly with the semantic web. Hopefully this can be automated to a large degree.

My plan is to structure my Metro State University’s College of Individualized Studies Bachelor’s degree as a Digital Humanities project using an eportfolio to document, reflect on and publish my learning. Which tagline do you like: Learning in Public or Learning Out Loud? Or suggest another.

 

Open Participants, Syndicated

In the Valley of Hearts’ Delight

Bronze bust of DeWissant by Auguste Rodin

 

I caught a ride to Stanford yesterday to discuss eportfolios with Dr. Helen Chen. We didn’t get a chance to talk at the recent Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) conference in Portland. My friend had an appointment at Stanford Hospital and being early for my meeting, I walked over to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. I wandered around the Rodin sculpture garden and then sat on the cafe patio to wait for the museum to open.

Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University

 

I signed into the free wifi and checked my phone to see if the orientation hold had been lifted on my account at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. One morning at the AAEEBL conference Paul Wasko had introduced me to Marcia Anderson, the director of Academic Advising in the College of Individualized Studies at Metro State. She encouraged me to apply that day in order to be enrolled for the fall semester. Metro State was founded in 1971 as a ‘University without Walls’ “serving adult students by recognizing demonstrated learning gained outside the classroom” while working toward their higher educational goals. I applied and during the one day I was home from Portland before leaving for a weekend training in LA, I went online and had my transcripts sent. From all of the eleven colleges I have attended!

Ocean Park No. 94 by Richard Diebenkorn

 

The email had arrived, inviting me to register for “Educational Philosophy & Planning” the foundation class all Individualized Studies students take to create their personal learning plan. I had been working with Jane Kreuger, my admissions advisor, and Marcia had contacted Dr. Tedder, the Chair of Individualized, Interdisciplinary and Life Long Learning in the College of Individualized Studies, and convinced him to enroll me in his already full class. I went to the website, selected the class (the override worked!), finished enrolling, went to the payment site and paid my fees. I still had five minutes before the museum opened so I called Jane and told her I was sitting on the Cantor Arts Center patio at Stanford and had successfully enrolled using my phone! It was Friday afternoon in Minnesota and classes begin the following Monday.

Glassblowers hand torch

 

I toured the main exhibit, Creativity on the Line: Design for the Corporate World, 1950–1975, and had lunch on the patio; a Cobb salad and iced tea. (only $20!) I was reminded by the planes overhead, that on Friday afternoons the private jets leave San Jose International Airport every ten or fifteen minutes. I then saw the Modern & Contemporary exhibit and some of the main collection, Object Lessons: Art & Its Histories, before meeting with Helen in her office in Wallenburg Hall.

Hoover Tower and Wallenberg Hall at Stanford University

 

We discussed my ‘controlled vocabulary (ontology) for eportfolios and the semantic web’ project (the reason I joined AAEEBL and went to the conference in Boston two years ago) and I shared that the AAEEBL Technology Special Interest Group had decided to take on this project. I also shared my newest project: creating a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) stack for any learner to have the tools to create a lifewide eportfolio, on their own domain, to collect their lifetimes of learning. It all come together after I learned about semantic triples in Beyond TEI: Metadata for Digital Humanities at the University of Victoria, BC, during this years’ Digital Humanities Summer Institute. But that’s another story. Helen asked if this had anything to do with “Linked Data”, so I took out my phone and showed her the picture I had taken earlier that morning.

Recent additions to book pile on my desk

 

As far as I can tell (I’ll never have a degree in Library and Information Science nor Computer and Information Systems), having an ontology and using semantic triples are the basis for the latest graph databases, being able to discover fellow researchers on the internet and structuring one’s eportfolio to take advantage of ‘faceted’ (semantic) searches. It’s my theory that creating a properly structured database for an eportfolio of one’s lifetime of learning projects and products can lead to perspectives only made possible by computing. These unique clusters of data should help generate the deep reflections that are central to eportfolios function of supporting lifewide learning.

High-intensity short arc mercury vapor lamps used in the production of computer chips

 

Aint digital technology amazing? I’m glad I spent most of my glassblowing career supporting California’s computer industry. I regret that the term ‘Silicon Valley’ is now being used in place of ‘predatory venture capital.’ What we workers created in Silicon Valley has linked together the entire world (with some areas and peoples yet to be connected). Workers are not responsible for how their products are used, nor who buys the companies we work for. Capitalist predation is a centuries old problem. I look forward to using these new technologies and sharing FOSS platforms with everyone, especially under served adult learners. It was a good day in the (former) Valley of Hearts’ Delight.

Seaweed by Georgia O’Keefe

Syndicated, Virginia Group

My trip to Digital Pedagogy Lab’s 2017 Institute

Welcome to the new home for my blog–my own domain! I set up this domain while I was attending the Digital Pedagogy Lab 2017 Institute at the University of Mary Washington. I will continue to use this space to think and tinker with ideas about connected learning, and more broadly higher education and libraries.

At DPL, I attended the Networked Learning and Intercultural Collaboration track and was excited to meet Maha Bali, one of the track’s facilitators, with whom I had collaborated in the spring. Maha and I co-directed the Open Access week of learning in the OpenLearning17 cMOOC. Since Maha lives in Egypt and I in the United States, all our collaboration was virtual, using Google Docs and Google Hangouts. I also enjoyed getting to know Kate Bowles, Maha’s co-facilitator for the Networks track, and all of the colleagues who were in this track throughout the week. The week revolved around philosophical discussions about building connections across identities and cultures, authority versus agency and intersectionality. We had many discussions attempting to define and redefine constructs. My notes are cryptic, so it’s impossible to try to capture the thread of the conversation.

I also attended two workshops during the week. The first was a workshop about Respecting Students in Digital Pedagogies by Chris Guillard. He introduced his work on digital redlining and challenged us to consider what we ask our students to give up when we use commercial technologies in the classroom. To paraphrase Chris, don’t enter students into any relationship with technology where they don’t have control over the relationship. Chris had us pick apart a syllabus to locate the places where students’ were being asked to put their privacy at risk. Related to this were discussions about surveillance capitalism and extractive data. Chris also alluded to these ideas in the final keynote he gave with Maha Bali.

The second workshop I attended was on Decolonizing Rigor in the Classroom. Ashleigh Wade presented some ways of providing students with assignments that give options beyond writing and she discussed how writing is often privileged over other forms. Thanks to some hands-on time with a partner, I decided that I would offer an infographic as an option for an assignment in our Roadmap to Research course the next time I teach it, and I will encourage my librarian colleagues to do the same. Students could be given the option of creating a traditional presentation, or an infographic as their assignment. I would also have them evaluate infographics in class as it relates to thinking about how information is presented and citing information accurately.

As is typical of other conferences I’ve attended, the in-between conversations were incredibly valuable–the lunches, the hallway conversations, the chats during the reception. My network is larger and richer for having made these connections during the Institute. I even met some individuals I had connected with online in OpenLearning17, including fellow Faculty Collaborative Steering Committee member Laura Gogia. That was definitely a highlight! There is something really special about having face to face time with someone after having collaborated for months in virtual space. In fact, I noticed lots of hugging and gentle touching at DPL (the hand on the shoulder or arm, the fist bump, etc.). It’s as if we had to touch each other to be sure that the physical connection was real. I have the impression that many of the attendees had connected via Twitter or other online spaces and I think many of us were grateful to finally have that face-to-face connection.

I’d love to tell you that I came away with clear ideas that will shape how I move forward, but I don’t think it’s that kind of learning experience. I hope that the philosophical discussions I participated in will re-emerge as I run into ideas in my day to day work with students and faculty. I hope that I will come to conversations of connected learning and digital pedagogy with a better understanding of the complex issues involved. What do we need to think about when we ask students to connect, particularly through a specific platform? Platforms are political, extractive, and limited. What choice are we really making when we select a platform and for whom are we making that choice? Are we sure we have the right to make such choices for our students? What about the choices they have already made for themselves? Are they aware of what’s involved in those choices? What’s the best way to help them understand what it means to live and work in the open? These are the ideas that resonated most with me.

So in the end, I left with more questions than answers, but I think that’s what was supposed to happen. What happens next, well, time will tell. Watch this space for more tinkering with these ideas.

Open Participants, Syndicated

Upcoming Hangout – #101OpenStories for #YearOfOpen

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’m really looking forward to this hangout happening Tuesday July 25 at noon my time (6am EDT/11 BST). Watch below (or use this link)


Jenni Hayman did a great job organizing this one. It’s a pretty diverse group: Sukaina Walji who is British but works in South Africa (notable for her ROER4D work), Catherine Cronin who is originally from New York but works in Ireland (we all know her PhD is about open ed), Maha Abdelmoneim (Egyptian who has worked in different places – mostly outside academia) and myself. 

I don’t want to burn my story, but writing generally helps me organize my thoughts… And if I had to summarize my open story… It would probably fall into several different points, so I’ll just mention them here and expand during the hangout, as I’m also looking forward to listening to others’ stories.

  • Openness as an attitude that isn’t tied to online necessarily 
  • Becoming pro open access (including illegal kinds even though that doesn’t really count as open access) by necessity at times when saved me
  • Openness as a need for myself as a professional in my particular circumstances 
  • Openness as a critical approach that is more collectively than individually focused, as many (tho not all!) of us who are open are marginal in some way – and thinking of Virtually Connecting and how it shifts the power in academic conferences (I hadn’t been planning on mentioning it, but I’m glad it occurred to me while writing this – so that hopefully I mention it then)
  • Risks of openness – watching other women and minorities take those risks, what it means in my own Egyptian political context as well
  • Mabel’s garden (story Teresa Mackinnon shared with me) and how building the wall in the garden to protect flowers ends up preventing sunlight – but how this metaphor is beautiful but still flawed, as not all the walls around us are of our own making….

Thanks again to Jenni Hayman and the team working on 101Openstories and to #YearOfOpen – this is the second hangout in a series. And anyone can contribute in writing (or probably whatever format?) to 101openstories.org, including you! And check out stories already there!