Reflections on the 2017 Digital Media and Learning Conference

It was my first time attending the Digital Media and Learning conference.

Then, I found out that it was actually the last year that the event would be held. Starting next year, DML will partner with the Connected Learning Summit, an entity associated with MIT. The merged conference will rotate each year from the East Coast (at MIT) to the West Coast (at UCI).

Still, I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this year's event.

SketchNotes from the DML Conference

Once again, I attempted to grow my sketchnotes skills. I still draw like a five year-old. But, I know that the only way to get better is to get more practice in, accompanied with additional resources to help structure the ways in which I attempt to build my skills.

Some of the attempts I made at DML are below, along with a few notes about what I took away from the sessions.

I wasn't familiar with Danah Boyd until attending DML. She's certainly someone now who I won't soon forget. Her presentation was called Learning All the Wrong Things. She described her plans for her talk as follows:

“I will interrogate some of the darker sides of networked media engagement: media manipulation, strategic harassment, and youth radicalization. And then we'll think through different kinds of interventions – and the unintended consequences of good intentions in a world where the internet mirrors and magnifies the good, bad, and ugly.” – Danah Boyd

You can view her keynote online (starts just after the 10 minute mark), as well as listen to the big announcement at the beginning of the video about their doing away with the DML conference and what is to come next.

Another person I had never heard of before DML was Esra'a Al-Shafei, “a Bahraini civil rights activist, blogger, and the founder and executive director of Mideast Youth and its related projects, including CrowdVoice.org.

I found her entire talk compelling and especially appreciated her descriptions of the ways in which music is amplifying the voices of those who would otherwise not be heard.

Another inspirational session was put on by two gifted individuals (Gabe Lyon and Edge Quintanilla) from the Chicago Architecture Foundation. They shared about DiscoverDesign.org, an “online platform where students, teachers, and mentors come together to design solutions for the real world.

Other Inspiring Sessions

There's only so much sketchnoting I can do before I wonder if I shouldn't give up hope. In other DML sessions, I took notes furiously and bookmarked items voraciously.

Elizabeth Lawley, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, gave a fantastic session entitled: Fork Your Syllabus, You Slacker: Using GitHub and Slack to Collaborate with Students (and Colleagues). She created some amazing supporting materials that are worth exploring.

Another well-documented session that is worth visiting is the page built by Remi Kalir, for his session called: Annotating DML. Remi is going to be on the podcast soon and I'm looking forward to learning even more from him.

There's so much more I could share about, but I need to head to bed to get ready for day one of the Open Education 2017 conference tomorrow.

Yes, it is quite the busy couple of weeks with conferences, but I really wanted to take advantage of these being so close to home. In the meantime, consider checking out some of the videos from the DML conference. Especially energizing are the ignite talks, which are just five minute presentations on a wide variety of topics.