IPDA Ireland hosts slow chat on Risk, Resilience and Response-Ability in Remote Teaching and Learning
May 18, 2020
In response to the Covid19 lockdown, IPDA Ireland hosted a slow chat on Friday 3rd April 2020 titled ‘Risk, Resilience and Response-Ability in Remote Teaching and Learning’.
Click the image to view the programme.
The following questions were posed to participants:
- What do we, as educators, need in out toolkit so we can teach, learn and collaborate in an online space?
- What do we know now that we wish we knew 3 weeks ago?
- How have educators responded creatively within the online space in response to the current educational climate?
- How can we create a culture of shared learning and support as we continue navigating within the digital space?
A reflection on the slow chat by Rachael Byrne
Early on within the lockdown due to Covid19 in Ireland, in March 2020 the IPDA Ireland Committee held its first online ‘Zoom’ meeting. Whilst all in attendance shared ideas and hopes for IPDA Ireland, we were reminded of our new circumstances as we interacted with our colleagues on the screen instead of in-person. As individuals involved in education, this was one of many new digital engagements experienced in recent times and would become the new norm for our professional interactions for the foreseeable future.
With differing levels of comfortability with such platforms, interfaces and exchanges, we decided we wanted to engage with others who were coming to terms with new realities impacting their professional experiences. We hoped that we could encourage the sharing of ideas and resources, whilst unpacking of some of our thoughts around what it means to teach, learn and collaborate in an online space, under the challenging circumstances within which we collectively, if only metaphorically, found ourselves.
To these ends, the third IPDA Ireland Twitter SlowChat, titled ‘Risk, Resilience and Response-Ability in Remote Teaching and Learning’, was held on Friday April 3rd 2020. Drawing on our differing experiences of teaching, learning and engagement within online spaces, myself and Carrie hosted and posed a number of questions over the course of the day. These related to knowledge, creativity and the cultivation of positive shared learning cultures to support one another in this new educational realm.
There was great engagement on the day (IPDA Ireland earned 21.4K impressions, received 100 likes, 32 retweets and 47 replies on Twitter) and through frank discussions around challenges encountered by educators in these trying times, for me what stood out primarily, was a shared passion for, and unwavering acknowledgment of the necessity and value of education for all. Understandably, this was met with a steadfast drive to seize every opportunity to support learners of all ages. This manifested in collaboration between colleagues, uptake of professional learning opportunities, and utilisation of a range of both familiar and previously unknown software within myriad new spaces.
Arguably, we are all engaging in a sustained period of personal and professional learning as we navigate this new reality. Yet, what is paramount in this instance, isn’t adherence to strict, measurable learning goals and targets. Instead it is our well-being, our capacity to support, communicate and collaborate with others in whatever way we can, and our ability to look ahead to a time when we bring these holistic, if also somewhat immeasurable, learning outcomes with us to a new, post-Covid19 world.
Twitter analytics from the slow chat
