“Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.”

Oscar Wilde

I’ve had many conversations over the past several months. Nothing that concentrates on anything in particular. Nothing that stands out as revelational. In the grand scheme, it’s talking, together, to touch on everything or anything that moves my thinking and learning forward.

Understandably, conversations evolve, iterate, erupt and dissipate in unexpected ways. When my best intentions are to dive deeply into a conversation and build my understanding, these positive plans get derailed by serendipitous, everyday events. The results are gaps in my memory of how conversations start, how I engage in these conversations, or even how they conclude. Just what did I talk about on April 8th? Where was I when conversations on May 15th happened? Sometimes it takes a full stop, retrospective analysis and an honest review of your conversational timeline to get a handle on things. This is my effort to track back in order to elevate some conversations. I’ll need to remember to write so I can reflect after conversations happen, as a way to better elevate those conversations and fill in the missing memories of times I’ve talked about topics of importance.

As I prepare for upcoming conversations at conferences, organized and arranged by Virtually Connecting colleagues and co-conspirators, I’m humbled to listen to and elevate voices – not just the vocalizations, but crafty writing too, since text can echo of voice and thinking. These conversations don’t always include my voice, but my internal dialogue about these external conversations become connected threads ‘between‘ my voice and that of others. Here are some of the spaces and places where I’ll attempt to elevate conversations through Virtually Connecting:

• Domains 19 – organized by Reclaim Hosting to extend conversations about a wide variety of topics https://domains.reclaimhosting.com/announcements/
• eTUG 19 – a grassroots group of ed tech users in the British Columbia post secondary education
• NAMLE 19 – National Association of Media Literacy Education

Podcast productions are ways to elevate conversations. When I can listen to these curated conversations, I learn. I’ve become a fan of many podcast collections in the previous months since driving long distances has impacted my everyday life. There are so many conversations found on the VoiceEd.ca podcast collection that it’s hard to hear them all. Here are my current favourites:

• Personal Playlist with Noa Daniel
• OnEdMentors – where seasoned and new teachers come to dare, share and show they care
• Getting Air with Terry Greene
• I Wish I Knew EDU with Ramona Meharg
• Mediacy with Neil Andersen and Carol Arcus
• Shukes and Giff with Canadian educators Kim Pollishuke (@KimPollishuke) and Jen Giffen (@VirtualGiff)

A few other podcasts that continue to expand my thinking and entertain my brain:

• TIDE Podcast with Doug Belshaw and Dai Barnes
• Teaching in Higher Education with Bonni Stachowiak

Of course there are many, many other podcasts to elevate conversations – some suggestions from Bryan Alexander have caught my eye e.g. Some Podcasts I’m Listening to in 2018. There are conversations to elevate, even if it’s your own internal dialogue, or external voiced revelations. These need to be remembered and reflected as ways to elevate you’re thinking.

What’s your favourite conversation that need elevating – post a comment to let others know.

Image attribution: Photo by Tom Hill on Unsplash