I won’t reveal the finished square just yet. I’ll share this when I see it again, in the midst of all the other squares crafted and created by others in the FemEdTech community, coming from all parts of the globe. I look forward to this event as part of the OER20 conference in London England in early April. I am humbled by the stories and amazed by the voices sharing openly about their #FemEdTechQuilt experiences as this Quilt of Care and Justice is created.

This quilt square is representative of the layering of blues and greens of the open spaces of the Canadian landscape. I envisioned long walks through tall grass, hikes along forest trails, the open fields of my childhood, dappled evergreen woods covered in layers of snow and ice, the blue of summer lakes, and undulations of waves lapping the shore. Adding a few beads and buttons represent the magic of first snows and snow covered hills.

My vision of blues called forth the logo from Virtually Connecting – itself a modified representation of a painting created by my mother where I see heads turned toward each other in relationship and conversation. Virtually Connecting is such a place where relationships and conversations exist in an ethos of care – with intentionally equitable hospitality (Bali et al., 2019). The logo recreation on my quilt square is left without the lettering, not because it isn’t important, but because I wanted the focus to be on the faces, as representative of the people in conversation, not the text that binds many ideas or people together.

Finally, I added the contrasting colour – ten, red, heart-shaped buttons. I decided to gather the buttons strategically around the logo as representative of the limitation of 10 people in a Google Hangout, that is no longer a constraint. The heart shaped buttons are representative of the ethos of care held in these Virtually Connecting spaces, despite the barriers and boundaries imposed. Technology has it’s own barriers, but within Virtually Connecting spaces conversations and laughter often flourish beyond the screen.

Reference

Bali, M., Caines, A., Hogue, R. J., DeWaard, H., & Friedrich, C. (2019). Intentionally equitable hospitality in hybrid video dialogue: The context of Virtually Connected. eLearning Magazine. Retrieved from https://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=3331173

Shared by: Helen J. DeWaard
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