2026-2027 Conversation Series for Connection and Collective Learning
A year long professional learning experience for educators, community members, and other thought leaders in K-12 and higher education to connect, reflect, and grow alongside one another as we navigate a rapidly changing digital world.
WHAT IT IS
You are invited to join URI's Digital Learning Exchange for a free, year long conversation series flexibly designed to energize and celebrate educators, librarians, digital media professionals, youth, and their families. In a special kickoff session beginning on July 14, 2026, we will set the context by reframing current challenges, exploring your questions and concerns, and asking what support we need from one another to move forward with purpose and care.
Across a series of online and in-person gatherings (see the calendar below), the Exchange will provide space for deeper conversations around digital well-being, productive digital communities, agency and empowerment, relational approaches to education, and meaningful civic engagement in face-to-face and digital spaces. Through panels, collaborative dialogue, and shared examples from youth, educators, families, and members of the community, participants will move from reflection to action—considering not only what comes after generative AI, but also what practices help young people build digital agency and engaged citizenship.
Additional sessions may be added throughout the year as our reflective conversations spark new ideas and generate new questions. The year culminates in a celebration of learning and sustainability planning in Summer 2027, strengthening an ongoing community committed to shaping more human-centered, connected, and empowering digital futures. Together, across our different roles, we can build a more connected, creative, and just digital future. We can't wait to see you!
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
GOOD NEWS! We are happy to announce that we are able to offer PLUs for the entire conversation series (1 PLU for each hour attended). We will keep track of the meetings you attend throughout the year and issue you a certificate for the number of PLUs you earned in June, 2027.
QUESTIONS? Email Kara Clayton at kara_clayton@uri.edu
DLE SESSION 2
Sept. 21, 2026 6:30-8:00pm EST
(8:00-8:30 pm extra conversations)
Practicing what we teach: Building a culture of well-being.
In this session, we’ll battle burnout together by exploring what it means to build a culture of care, connection, and support. Panelists Shelley Wolfe, Tim Molina, Hayley Lochotzki, and Angie Hartley will share approaches to well-being for students and educators across elementary through post-secondary settings. They hope to spark conversations about setting healthy boundaries, cultivating human-centered connections, and processing vicarious trauma. Then, participants will have time to reflect, exchange experiences, and learn together in small groups.
This session is for educators and community leaders ready to put on their own oxygen masks first so they can better support others. We hope you'll join us!
Explore related digital resources before or after the session.
About the panelists:
Shelley Wolfe is Executive Director of Cambridge Community Television in Massachusetts. Tim Molina is Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio Texas. Hayley Lochotzki is a doctoral student in the PhD in Education program at the University of Rhode Island. She also coordinates URI's Office of Global and English Language Programs and she is a public school teacher of multilingual learners in an urban community in Rhode Island. Angie Hartley is a certified yoga teacher as well as a 4th grade teacher of multilingual learners and an instructional coach in Cranston, Rhode Island.
WHAT'S HAPPENING AND WHEN
FIVE REASONS WHY IT MATTERS
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Connecting Through Community and Reflection
We all need sustained spaces to reconnect with one another, reflect on emerging challenges, and collectively make sense of living, teaching, and learning in a rapidly changing digital world. -
Cultivating Human-Centered Digital Well-Being
Healthy participation in digital spaces requires attention to balance, relationships, care, and the social and emotional dimensions of life online for both youth and adults. -
Building Agency, Empowerment, and Digital Citizenship
Young people thrive when educators and parents help them develop the confidence, critical capacities, and civic awareness needed to participate thoughtfully and responsibly in digital communities. -
Learning Through Dialogue, Collaboration, and Shared Inquiry
Meaningful professional learning grows from ongoing conversation, collaborative problem-solving, and the exchange of perspectives among educators, youth, families, and community members. -
Shaping Sustainable and Equitable Digital Futures. As technologies such as generative AI reshape our world, we must work together to design more connected, empowering, and sustainable approaches to teaching, learning, and civic engagement.
READY TO LEARN MORE?
Register for URI's Seminar in Digital Literacy by Sept. 1, 2026
Join our mailing list for updates
LET'S BUILD A MORE CONNECTED, CREATIVE
AND JUST DIGITAL FUTURE.
