Episode 26- Season Two Recap
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:33 Welcome to episode twenty-six. In this episode, I will recap some of the things that we talked about since last September in Season Two and give you a bit of an overview of where you will find me this summer if you’re looking to talk about more accessible pedagogy and connected concepts, as well as when you can expect Season Three of Accessagogy.
0:54 I spent some time contemplating how many more episodes to do for Season Two before calling it the end of season, and I knew that beginning, you know the beginning of May and certainly by June folk are very much into conference season or basically unplugging for the summer at least in North America. And so I thought a 16 episode Season 2 was a nice extension of the 10 episodes that I did in Season 1 and that way I don’t run into more holidays here in Canada and I can take mid-May to Mid-August to think about all the great things that I want to talk about in Season 3. So look for Season 3 sometime towards the end of August.
1:39 This issue about where to end Season 2 was kinda forced on me a bit when a friend noted a couple of days ago that my podcast episodes had stopped playing on my website. And so of course I looked into it and I discovered that the plugin that I had been using since the beginning of the podcast had somehow changed overnight, as it does, on the back end, and additions that were needed for it to work properly and create the RSS feed couldn’t be done any more. So that forced me to do a bit of a work in thinking about a work around that you’ll notice on the website now. But that will change for Season 3 as I try to find something that actually works.
2:20 So this brings up a great point actually about accessibility and pedagogy because sometimes we get used to a particular ed tech or a particular strategy that has worked well for us only to find out that the tech is going to be put behind a paywall, or disappear completely like what happened with Jamboard leaving, you know, whiteboard eduspace filled with infinite scroll inaccessible products like Miro, for example. Working in accessibility and accessible pedagogy means always looking for and looking at updates, always reading the news about what next ed tech thing is going to disappear. And it’s that kind of work that really isn’t noted in any of the workflows that we support, yet it’s crucial work in order to ensure inclusion. And so there certainly will be more products and more opportunities to talk about in this next season of Accessagogy.
3:19 Season two was rather an expansive one. We started off with conversations about social media and talking about things like plain language, and publishing, and mentorship which is something that I’m going to be focusing on, or I have been focusing on a lot and I’ll return to in a bit, as well as group work and feedback. And I tried to end the season with topics like time in higher education, and some ways to reflect on how we can expand our accessibility work to give it a more international scope. So far the most popular episodes this season were the ones on social media and plain language, then followed by the one on ableism in publishing, which is not surprising.
4:05 This summer I’m lucky to be able to go to a few conferences, mostly because they are either online or because they are closeish to where I live so I can attend. So if you’re interested in chatting with me and my clear mask, for those who read lips, because those conferences are still not inclusive nor do they really think about the folk they’re excluding from those spaces, here is where I will be.
4:32 So in May, at the end of May, May 27 and 28 I’ll be attending the Accessible Canada Conference online. I’ve put together a presentation for that conference on accessible mentorship that takes some of the ideas that I discussed in episode 16 this semester or this season and expands on it a bit.
4:52 At the beginning of June I’ll be attending SALTISE which is in Montreal where I’m facilitating a workshop with my friend and colleague Josephine. I’m really excited about that. Our workshop is entitled, Supporting Accessible Pedagogy: A Choose Your Own Adventure Technology workshop, so if you’re at SALTISE in June, please do join us.
5:13 In the middle of June I will be at STLHE [stil-e] or STLHE [stel-e] or STLHE [s t l h e], people say it many ways. I’m sure that my STLHE adventures will become its own podcast episode in Season 3 so look out for that. I’m giving a paper at STLHE with my colleague Rebecca on accessible student produced content and supporting inclusive assessment design when thinking about using open educational resources or OERs. This is research that we have been doing over the last few months and so if you’re really interested in that or inclusive assessment, OERs, pedagogy you should really join us to hear about what we’ve discovered in our research.
5:59 And then on that same day at least so far, on June 13 in the afternoon I’m co-facilitating a workshop with my colleague Kosar entitled, Using Drama-Based Practice to Explore Pedagogical Preconceptions, and I’m looking forward to sharing space with folk as we work through how drama-based practices can support inclusive pedagogy.
6:20 And if you are not going to be attending any conferences and I completely understand why, for all the reasons that we’ve mentioned already in this podcast around the lack of accessibility and the sheer cost of participation, but you’re looking for something to participate in this summer virtually, I’ll be facilitating another disability reading group from May to June oh actually from May to August this summer over Zoom. We determine the time when we will meet as a group usually using a Google Form, but it’s usually in the evenings or on a Sunday depending on folks’ availability and it runs for an hour every other week. We usually also determine what we’re going to be reading a group, but for this summer we will be reading Amanda Leduc’s Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space, because it has been a runner up many times in the list of books to read and summertime just seems like a good time to be reading something like this. So if you’re interested in being part of that reading group, please fill out the form that’s on my website that I’ll link to it as well that’ll be open for another week or so, to help us determine a time. And the description of the book I’ll also put in the show notes so that you’ll have that there if you’re interested in learning more about Amanda Leduc’s book.
7:41 So that’s it, that’s episode 26 and the Season 2 finale of Accessagogy, with a bit of a Season 2 overview and what to expect from me and the podcast over the next few months.
7:54 Remember as well that I also want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So, even over the summer months, if there’s anything that I mentioned here, or anything else that you feel that you want to discuss or want me to discuss please feel free to let me know and I’ll add it to my list of topics that I’ll cover in Season 3.
8:13 So if you have any of those ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d like me to address in the podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I will try to include as many suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 26 of Accessagogy, for those of you in the northern hemisphere have a great summer, and I hope that you get to have a little bit of break over the next few months and I hope that it’s meaningful time for you. For those of you who do not get to have a break over the next few months, and know that I see you, and know that I have been that person, and know that I’m also going to be teaching over the summer, so I am one of you as well, doing other work, because the work does not stop, even if the podcast is on a break for a bit over the summer months, I still see you. So happy summer and thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today?