On May 15, 2019, long before COVID-19 took the conference world digital; I was sitting in an office thinking about the Master's Capstone project I needed to complete to earn my M.Ed. in Curriculum and Teaching. I wanted to pick a project that could have a real impact. While studying education, I became passionate about critical pedagogy and access to education, so after seeing The Public Archeology and PressED Twitter conferences, I came up with this project, The Popular Culture and Pedagogy: Twitter Conference.

 

The intent was to join The Public Archeology and PressED in challenging the conference status quo in terms of communication, diversity, and inclusivity. So why popular culture? Because it can break down cultural, socioeconomic, and language barriers when we create a space to ask how we can use this tool in our teaching, it deepens the critical pedagogy component at the heart of the Twitter conference movement. The hope was for it to allow for practical guides and discussion to form so that educators of all grade levels may reach the students many think are unreachable. ​I think it is safe to say it did that.

 

Although the capstone project, was what I hoped would be the first of many, once the #POPC2 call for papers came around educators were burnt out by COVID-19 and submissions were too low to put together a full conference.