It’s over already?

For me, The last day of the conference means attempting to get in what I can before flying home. Participants start to exist abruptly, so these things tend to end with hurried goodbyes. Several of my colleagues had to take earlier flights out to catch rerouted flights to avoid a storm. Fortunately, as noted by Prof. Melanie Sage, “one of the best things about technology is its power to facilitate real-life relationships & bring us together in physical spaces as pals having already done relationship work” (https://twitter.com/melaniesage/status/984909789170929664). I concur with this. So much of my work with my colleagues at this and other conferences comes from the use of distance-aiding technologies. Getting the work done, developing interventions, and providing leadership social work education…everything relies so much on the critical understanding of the same technologies we use when we teach students. It’s not simply parallel process; it is the process.

For this final post on the conference, I sought to curate Twitter to share some themes. Spotify is no more, so I thought I’d try something here: choose some general categories and repost relevant tweets.

Now, what I would love to do is organize tweets by the schedule, so readers can find the relevant images and comments for each session. That’s just not practical…after sleeping in on Saturday, I realize my usual deadlines are approaching.

So for this post, I’m going to curate by subjects that in my experience make up the parts of a meaningful academic conference:

The research: presentations that covered some form of study, review, intervention or analysis.

The ideas: impresssions and analysis of the status of distance education and where it’s going. Some of these posts could easily fit under the category of research.

The design: presentations that addressed some form of classroom, curriulum or program design.

The applications and tools: presentations that cover specific applications and tools that can enhance the learning evnironment and outcomes.

The people: Selfies, presentations, gatherings, group photos…I attempted to add them here.

The locale: San Antonio has so much to offer. This was a category very much lacking in Twitter posts. Maybe people didn’t share their after-hours dining using the #SWDE2018 hashtag? I hope we can do more sharing of the community around us next year.

MAJOR DISCLAIMER: These are in no particular order, other than each category follows the timeline of the program by day, more or less. I looked for posts that provide enough context so readers can glean the meaning of each post on its own. Also, my categories here are admittedly open and vague. I may have posted a tweet that fits better under Research than Design.

Also, to get the most comprehensive picture via the Twitter platform, simply search #SWDE2018 in Twitter. All I’ve attempted to do here is to apply some form of categorization.

Also, final disclaimer, I’m sure I’m missing some really good stuff. If you happen to read this and want to add something, send me a DM at @spcummings

Research

Ideas (The Think Tank)

Design

Applications and Tools

The People

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