MYFest 24 Schedule

In this first of three sessions, we explore the use of threads, threaded crafts, and fiber arts within the educational landscape. As educators/learners from diverse backgrounds and experiences, we engage in discussions about the integration of threads in our educational practices and beyond, specifically addressing the following key questions: 1) Have you ever incorporated thread-based activities into your teaching/learning, or outside of educational settings? 2) In what contexts have you utilized these activities? 3) For what purposes have you used threads, both as a metaphor and in actual practice? Building on both literature and real-life experiences shared by the facilitator, we explore how various educators have creatively incorporated fiber crafts in both educational and research contexts. This discussion will pave the way for an experiential activity involving finger weaving/knitting, allowing participants to experience firsthand the multisensory and interconnected nature of learning. This approach goes beyond cognitive functions, exploring how deeper learning intertwines with social, emotional, and embodied experiences — what we perceive through the tactility of working with threads. Note: For this session, please bring a skein of yarn or a similar thread long enough to use in our hands-on finger weaving/knitting activity. Get ready for a fun, active, and collaborative experience! Session recording now available!

This 1-hour workshop will address how AI has been used for audio deep fakes, but can you identify one if you heard it? Meanwhile, like all areas of generative AI, the audio field is exploding with options. We’ll survey the AI for audio and podcasting toolbox and we’ll play around with some of those tools.

In today’s technological landscape, where Generative AI and deep learning (as a subset of machine learning) are reshaping how we interact with information and each other, we explore the concept of deeper learning and how it fits within the educational landscape for both learners and educators. In this second session, we build on our experiences with finger weaving/knitting from the previous session to examine how the embodied metaphor of acquiring and practicing a fiber craft is linked to deeper learning. This form of learning, while serving as an umbrella term for competencies of 21st- century learners, is also described as emerging at the intersection of mastery, identity, and creativity. Throughout this session, we also explore the value of incorporating tactile activities into educational settings, discussing how educators can use multisensory approaches to learning with their students. Our goal is to balance the traditional focus on cognitive skills with more holistic, hands-on learning experiences, thereby re-humanizing education in our increasingly AI-driven world.

There has been renewed interest in making academic content more accessible in recent years, in line with new legislation like the European Accessibility Act, but it’s important that this content accessibility is matched by increased equity for disabled people working in the industry. The Toolkit for Disability Equity aims to fill this gap, by addressing the needs of people working in the scholarly communications industry. Modelled on prior C4DISC Toolkits for Equity projects, the Disability Toolkit is something different: an interactive, easy-to-update online hub providing access to high-quality and accurate resources, curated and vetted by knowledgeable people, that both people with disabilities and those wanting to successfully recruit, hire, and retain them can use to help achieve those goals. Like other C4DISC Toolkits, the Disability Toolkit is openly available and offers good search capabilities, topic and format filtering, and a variety of resource types (text, video, audio) with accessibility affordances. We will present and discuss the Toolkit's first iteration, which includes resources, an FAQ, and personal stories. Attendees will also learn about the current work underway to expand the Toolkit. Participants will come away with a better idea of how they can help make the scholarly communications industry more disability-confident, as individuals, teams, and organizations.

Weaving Deeper Learning through Reflexivity: In this final session of our three-part series, we shift our focus to the role of reflexivity within the context of deeper learning, using the metaphor and practice of tapestry-weaving to explore how we can integrate our experiences, knowledge, and insights to create a holistic meaning, much like a weaver who constantly evaluates and adjusts their work to create a whole tapestry of multiple separate, but interconnected threads. Key topics of discussion include: 1) The concept of reflexivity and how it compares to reflectivity. 2) The role and importance of reflexivity in education for both educators and learners. 3) Practical strategies for incorporating reflexivity into teaching and learning practices. In this session, participants will be invited to engage in exercises that mirror the weaving process, enabling them to “thread together” their experiences from all three sessions to create a holistic view of their learning journey. We also explore how reflective and reflexive practices can be applied in diverse educational contexts.

In this session, we will look at different models of disability and examine how they impact our approaches to and understanding of accessibility. We will spent time developing a lexicon, or language, of disability and accessibility. The session will provide an opportunity to reflect on the idea of praxis (defined here as values-informed practice) and work towards laying a foundation for our own praxis of accessibility. The session will be a combination of theory, discussion, and reflection. It is appropriate both for folks new to conversations of accessibility and folks who have an established accessibility practice as everyone will be invited to start from where they are.

In this session, we will explore the current AI moment with participants from an entangled pedagogy perspective. We begin by sharing how this moment might [...]

In this session, we will examine accessibility as a design consideration, building on the social model of disability. Although this is the second part in a 2-part series, participants do not need to have attended part 1. This session will start by briefly re-orientating folks to the key concepts of accessibility, disability, and praxis introduced in session 1. We will then examine design bias and spend some time reflecting on our own biases (everyone has them!) and how they inform our educational practices. Each participant will work towards developing a personal accessibility toolkit consisting of a collection of individual practices that align with our own values and teaching or work context. By the end of this session, participants will have some accessibility tools that they can implement in their own educational context.

Join us for a session to share your reflections on your experience in MYFest24 and envision together future Equity Unbound offerings for the community.

Session Postponed. New Date and Time TBA. Join Maha Bali & Mia Zamora to explore the spectrum of a "socially just praxis" related to their current research. We will invite participants to reflect and share their own stories of acting as: Ally, Advocate and/or Activist. We will discuss and reflect together on how we can move towards "Collective Socially Just Care". Note: This session is part of a track but you can attend it on its own without attending the full track.