I have been seeing a lot more conversations about how we don't usually own our media anymore and that everything has slid into a subscription model. Gone are the days of CDs (well I still have my massive collection from the 90s and early 2000s because once a DJ always a DJ), now we pay to listen to songs on demand. Folk are now more than ever returning to buying physical books instead of ebooks because if your ebook reader subscription system decides to go bankrupt, you still will have Wuthering Heights in your home.  The idea of tangible media and tangible artifacts is something I think ..read more

Honestly there is so much that could be written about this week, and yet at the same time nothing at all, you know? So instead of focusing on what is and could be I want to write a bit of a shorter post this week and publish it early because I genuinely want to crowdsource what to do about a conference proposal situation I have discovered. So there is this education conference that I have always wanted to attend because to be honest they desperately need more conference papers on accessibility, accessible pedagogy, and disability. Almost all mentions of "access" in previous conference schedul ..read more

This week was a hard week. I am not sure how many times I have started this blog with that sentence or some sort of version of that sentence. I changed what I was going to write about in this blog at least 3 times this week. First I was going to write about being annoyed by ed tech bros who don't read LinkedIn posts carefully and think that any response to a post by a mutual about generative AI is an open invitation to be accosted about their cool new product that will make disabled life better "we promise." Then I was going to write about something tangentially connected to that which is how ..read more

This may be a bit of a shorter post because it is the long weekend here, and I have family responsibilities at the moment. However, I wanted to take a few moments to stop and reflect on ideas around priorities and pedagogy and how we can continue doing what we are doing in higher education spaces acting like the everything is fine house on fire meme. I called this week's blog not a cardiologist because that is my new favourite saying now when folk try to put some kind of forced time pressure on certain things or make it seem like everything is an emergency when really what is a real emergency ..read more

This is of course not what I wanted to write about this week, but here we are. And I am sure some of you selected the link to this blog hoping to find out what article I am talking about. The thing is I am not going to link to it, because that particular article is not really the point and the clicks is what they want anyway. As we know even if you are coming across this blog post in 5 or 6 years, there will have been another 10 or more articles just like it every year since this original post saying the same thing and needing the same kind of response I am going to try to give here. So the th ..read more

I am writing this on a train stalled in the middle of eastern Ontario because there is some sort of fire on the tracks. This is a perfect example of the kinds of "find time for writing" that I have done throughout my time in academe. I had set up time to write this blog now because I knew that I would not have time to do it other wise this weekend, but this train car is also old and with a crappy seating set up which means I don't have the space that I usually need or appreciate to write. So all of this to say I will probably keep it short this week. You need to be comfortable to frame things ..read more

Today's blog may be a bit shorter because I actually think my brain needs a break from all the thinking today, but I wanted to share something that I have been thinking about since last week that has larger pedagogical implications. Last Saturday I went to Toronto to go to the Disability Pride March, and it was lovely to be in community with folk and to see friends that I had not seen in a long time (over a year and a half at least) because when you move so many things change. It was a very warm day and there was continual reminders of hydrating, supporting others in ways we could to make the ..read more

 Remarks as part of Event2024 NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA Conference “Doing diversity work can mean passing “diversity” around, both as a word and in documents” (Ahmed, 2012, 29) Praxis: “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it’ (Freire, 1970, 51) I acknowledge that 10 minutes will probably not be enough to say all the things and feelings that I have felt over the last few weeks about my participation in this panel and the important things I feel we should be talking about here, but hopefully we can take some of these ideas up in the question time or you are welcome to contact m ..read more

As most folk who go to conferences know, it is really hard to sort of transition back to non-conference space and time after doing a few of them this time of year. It is always nice to connect with folk that I have not seen in a long time, either virtually, or in-person with my mask. These conference moments are great opportunities to reflect on all the great ideas peers are putting forward, and the work they are doing- too often work that is not recognized in their own spaces so they have to come to conferences and say it out loud to others. But is also a reminder of who could not be there in ..read more

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about the dangers that come from the familial in our educational spaces. This plays itself out in different ways so I will try to elaborate on what I mean, but I want to emphasize the familial in a couple of ways. The first is what happens when everyone knows everyone else (often too well) in smaller higher education institutions. The second is what happens when one becomes too comfortable with one's pedagogical content or pedagogical choices in educational spaces. And the third is something that I have spoken about before which is what you should b ..read more