As I’m preparing for OER24 (so excited!!!) I wanted to write a blog post about my presentation coming up to get my thoughts together. I’m keeping the blog train rolling.
I’ll be on the ground representing Reclaim and the EdTech team. We have some fun things planned leading up to the presentation (check Reclaim.tv on March 22 and 26) and a fun impromptu Radio Stream with Maren (speaking of I need to make sure my computer can run AudioHijack!) on Day 2 of the conference.
This will be my first OER since they picked back up in person! These conferences (besides Domains and Reclaim Open, of course) always hold such a fond place in my heart. It’s where I did my first presentation as a young professional in 2018 in Bristol (I wish I’d posted a blog about this), announced Reclaim Video in 2019, then presented again in 2020 over Zoom. Then teaming up with ALT to provide OERxDomains21!
I am beyond excited to head over to Cork, Ireland to catch up with some colleagues and present all the goodness that Reclaim’s done over the last year and as we’re looking into the future for 2024 and beyond.
As we continue to navigate an ever-changing work life (especially after the pandemic, which is crazy to think this happened 4 years ago), have you noticed that work is continually becoming more demanding? Especially as educators or those in the Customer Service realm, projects become more time intensive, deliverables need focus, and customers have increasingly difficult questions.
I’ve even found that I’m constantly moving from task to task on my to-do list and that my day is filled with things that need attention immediately. I’m focusing too much on the day-to-day operations of the company, keeping my head down to get the work done. Is anyone else feeling that way?
Project Management is one thing, but putting the intentional time to explore new tools on the web and even researching that difficult question from a client is another!
It can be difficult to find resources that provide learning new tools/software/products in an easily digestible way, from self-paced learning to workshops and other events. What’s more, these resources are often behind a paywall, or only available live. Or they’re highly technical where you have to practically learn another language to understand, who has time for that?
That’s where Reclaim comes in!
As a company with a large EdTech background, we get it. We understand how quickly tools are changing, requiring you to learn more. Heck, I’ve even been working through learning Ghost as Reclaim’s been working through our monthly Roundup newsletter, and even exploring our Cloud infrastructure when I can.
I’ll talk about more of what Reclaim’s been up to over the last year in a bit but, I do want to focus on some other groups who’ve come before us!
Groups Before Us
We’ve taken a lot of inspiration from groups before us, like Catherine Cronin, Mia Zamora, and Maha Bali with Equity Unbound. “Equity Unbound is an emergent, collaborative curriculum which aims to create equity-focused, open, connected, intercultural learning experiences across classes, countries and contexts.” With their initiative, you’re able to explore emerging topics like AI in the classroom and Digital Wellbeing. Users can asynchronously run other topics in their classes as well. A perfect example of open, connected learning happening around the world! This community shows how you CAN tackle equity and equality in a way that helps connect people around common themes.
Maha also co-founded Virtually Connecting, a group that provides a virtual option to conferences for those who are not able to attend conferences in person. This group utilizes live streams, recorded videos, and video calls to include virtual participants and encourage the discussion on social media. I’ve always admired groups that include some sort of virtual option in their presentations.
There are also the Open Education Interest Groups (OpenEd SIGs) as well! Run through ALT, the group has been around for well over 10 years, and become a staple in the OER community as well, and has proven ever more valuable in the last few years. Now I only just found out about this community and you bet I was subscribing to all the ListServs I could! Members of this group continue to an active part in the OER community.
And even groups like ds106 continue to pave the way through open communities worldwide. Combining traditional classroom offerings and an asynchronous workflow is important to provide an open space for us to continue learning. #4life
What Reclaim is Doing
So now, where does Reclaim come in? Well, let me tell you! Over the past two years, we’ve created our EdTech team, working with educators to develop their institutional capability. We’ve focused on community building first, building in teaching as we go. We want to help you reach your goals!
From workshops to short classes, community chats, live streams, and more, we’re focudsing on professional development and building capacity for each tool. Personally, working with the EdTech team has almost forced me to put professional development on the calendar, so I can be prepared to teach you!
Within our work, you’ll see we’ve been intentional on how we’re presenting the work. We wanted the courses, workshops and Chats to be as accessible as possible for participants. We understand schedules are busy, and you may not be able to attend a full workshop or the weekly flex course sessions. So we create a watch site for each Workshop and provide links to the the published videos. We also archive the videos on our Peertube instance so you can binge all the content.
We built out a community landing page as a one-stop shop for all visitors to get in touch with Reclaimers and see the professional development offerings! We maintain a Discord server for anyone in our community to join and chat. We’ve organized it so folks can focus on their specific interests, and topics, and even join in on the event conversations!
Continuing with professional development, we offer workshops on WordPress Multisite administration and Domain of One’s Own throughout the year. We run month-long flex courses, for specific topics. We’ve covered Open Publishing Ecosystems, WordPress, Ghost, and an overview of our Cloud-based products. The flex courses consist of 4 weeks of learning, where we come together to discuss and reflect on each week’s topic. Stay tuned for our April course, on Ghost!
We’ve built an all-inclusive calendar to help keep you up to date on all the happenings at Reclaim. You can subscribe for updates and even register for the events.
And if you’re a fan of written content, we’ve got you covered too! We maintain a blog to announce these events, post important updates to the company, and include some fun topics along the way. We send out a Monthly Newsletter showcasing what the team and community have been up to over the past month. (Also built in Ghost).
What’s Next
With all of these tools ready to go, you may be asking yourself, well what’s next Reclaim? And that’s super exciting because we have some new products to share too! First, we’re going back to our WordPress roots with ReclaimEDU. After more than 10 years of supporting digital projects for colleges and universities around the world, Reclaim Hosting is pleased to offer our higher education partners the option of hosting their campus .edu in the cloud. Offering high availability servers and failover options, you can take comfort and know that Reclaim has your back!
We also realize that sometimes simplicity is better– and you just need WordPress, either through a simple new site or a long-standing WordPress multisite. So we created ReclaimPress! ReclaimPress is a cloud platform that is specifically tailored to hosting WordPress sites. It provides your site with dedicated, fast, and scalable hosting at an unbeatable price, all the while living in an easy-to-use dashboard. It’s simply put, WordPress hosting. We’re excited to announce our beta program starting now! Feel free to sign up and start testing.
(ReclaimPress is officially launching the beta
Because we’ve put the practice in, to progress our professional development in intentional ways, we’re able to provide the top-notch support to help you get where you’re going!
RE: the question – “…head down to get the work done. Is anyone else feeling that way?”
I think it hit around Fall 2021 after everyone went hybrid (vs. full remote), that was the tsunami wave that’s grown steady each semester afterward with no let up. But the PD I get from Reclaim 1.)Discord 2.)Roundup 3.)TV 4.)Employee blogs has been a help, definitely. I don’t run/manage any of the software covered, but that’s fine, I’m still learning about all the OSS packages. And that’s rewarding.