#digped

Daniel asks the ID DigPINS group this week:

Reflect on a social/community site that has been transformational in your work as an ID.

I’ve reflected about becoming more active in open online spaces here. One influence that I have not gone into depth about is the #digped community, with Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris at the center. These used to be my favorite Twitter chats, and to be honest, I miss them. The prompts were thoughtful and the community was large enough to get a diverse conversation going.

I set up a TAGS Explorer on February 1st, 2016. I know there are others who did so before then, but it was a nice way to see who was participating. As June 4th, it reports 90, 336 tweets, but it no longer updates.

There was a point when I could still load the data visualization, and it looked like a pulsing swarm. Jesse and Sean announced the ending of the #digped chats with a prompt to others to explore and push boundaries. It was like breaking up the swarm, the lovely numbers, to go out and do in other spaces, grow in other places. I have yet to ask them if they have seen their call manifest or is that even possible?

But it was in those chats that my work as an ID changed its focal point. I moved away from what I thought I SHOULD be doing to questions about what I was doing and why? I think these are important questions for everyone, especially in education, because they give us a way to connect. In the same way that we want students to be engaged with what they are learning, we should be engaged with our work and the people around us. Although others of course did not automatically change the way they perceived me or my position, I started to at least know how I wanted to be part of the higher ed community.

This is timely in that I’m headed to DigpedLab in Fredricksburg Virginia at the beginning of next month, which follows my experience with #digped. I look forward to being on the hashtag again!