blogging | Open World

blogging | Open World
Open World
Lorna M Campbell
Seated Woman Blogging, after Albert Reuss
” by Mike Licht, CC BY 2.0 on Flickr.
I was supposed to be running a workshop on blogging for my Digital Skills, Design and Training colleagues this week.  For various reasons, that won’t be happening but I wanted to collate some of the links I’d planned to share so I don’t loose them and in case they’re useful for others.
As the social media landscape has become more and more toxic and fragmented, people are increasingly seeking other channels to share their ideas and practice, connect with their peers, and build community.  As a result, there’s been a welcome resurgence in blogging, newsletters and small-scale podcasting over the last year or so.  These forms of communication are less tied to specific social media platforms, giving creators more control over their work and who they share it with.  At times like these it’s been really encouraging to see familiar communities and independent voices reemerging across the web.  So if you’re new to blogging, or if you just need a boost to get started again, here’s some resources that might help.
Reclaim Hosting Blogging Community of Practice.
An informal community of practice for academic bloggers.
“Now, we
believe
academic blogging is not just for the holidays or indeed the odd conference, but for life (#4life), and that is why we are setting out to support a new community of practice for all education bloggers out there looking for a bit of support and motivation along the way.”
The community has a Discord server that aims to:
share blogging tips and inspiration via the channel;
collate open resources and contribute our own;
organise monthly live sessions with guest presenters;
encourage everyone to share blog posts, what works for their blogging practice or what is stopping them from blogging.
(Blogging) Challenge Accepted
by Maren Deepwell. A lovely post by Maren about what inspires her to blog.
You should get a blog
by Hugh Rundel. A brilliant post that answers almost every conceivable question you could ask about blogging. `
CPD Webinar Series 2025: Thinking about blogging?
22 April 12.30 – 13.30. This webinar, led by members of the
#altc blog team,
will provide some practical guidance on getting started with blogging.
Blogging About Blogging
by Alan Levine.  Many wise words about blogging from one of the best bloggers out there.
From the archives
Have No Fear: Learning to love your blog
. I wrote this blog post years ago to address some of the common fears and anxieties about blogging.  It was quite popular at the time and I think it’s still really useful.
Blogging to Build your Professional Profile
. These are the resources for an old digital skills workshop I used to run on academic blogging.  All the links are way out of date but some of the content, particularly around
benefits of blogging
privacy, openness and licensing
, and
writing for blogs
, is still pretty relevant.
And lastly…
I want to finish with this lovely quote from Alan Levine, which perfectly captures what I think is so important about blogging.
“…it’s the writing out loud that makes me feel best, the part of the process before I click “Publish”, not what happens after. Anything after is a bonus.”
I [still] blog therefore I [still] am
by Alan Levine.
It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to share an end of year reflection in January, I always intend to do this in December, but it never happens, so January it is. I’ve been in two minds whether to write one this year though because 2024 did
not
go as expected.
View from the ward
At the beginning of the year I woke up one morning and couldn’t feel my hands properly. That was the start of the rapid onset of a bewildering and debilitating range of symptoms. After numerous scans, tests, and two hospital admissions, I was eventually diagnosed with a
rare autoimmune disease
. It’s not curable, but it is treatable, with a lot of medication and mixed success.  I’ve been lucky to be more or less fit and healthy for most of my life, so to suddenly lose the ability to do so many things that I previously took for granted has been challenging to say the least.  I can no longer dance, sew, or wear my fancy shoes, writing is a challenge, walking is slooooow some days, and traveling any distance without assistance is difficult. Having to slow down has forced me to recenter and I’m still trying to figure out what life will be like from this point on, who I’ll be when I can no longer do so many of the things that make me who I am.  There’s very little data about how this condition is likely to progress, hopefully things will improve once we get the medication right, but who knows?  I’m just trying to take it as it comes.
Despite all of the above, I’m still working with the
OER Service
at the University of Edinburgh. I’m immensely grateful to my colleagues for their support, and to my managers who have put adjustments in place to enable me to keep working from home. I really miss going over to the office in Edinburgh, but the four hour round trip is beyond me for the time being. I never thought I’d miss that Scotrail commute but here we are.
OER24 Conference
MTU Cork
At the beginning of the year, before things took a turn for the worse, I went to the OER24 Conference in Cork with our OER Service intern Mayu Ishimoto, to present a paper on
Empowering Student Engagement with Open Education
.  It was great to be there with Mayu and there was a lot of interest in her experience as a student working with the OER Service. The highlight of the conference for me was undoubtedly Catherine Cronin and Laura Czerniewicz’s inspiring keynote,
The future isn’t what it used to be: Open education at the crossroads
, which explored their own lives and experiences as open educators and the possibilities generated by their profound and timely
Higher Education for Good
.  You can read my reflection on the the conference here
OER24: Gathering Courage
. Also! MTU has some really interesting architecture.
Their Finest Hour
Their Finest Hour
project came to an end in June with the launch of the University of Oxford’s
online archive
of 25,000 new stories and artefacts from the Second World War, all of which have been shared under open licence.  I’m very proud that our
Edinburgh collection day
gathered and contributed 50 stories and many hundreds of photographs, thanks to the incredible work of project intern Eden Swimer.  You can read Eden’s thoughtful reflection on his internship here
Reflections on ‘Their Finest Hour’
.  I nominated Eden for an ISG Recognition Award in September and was delighted that he won the award for
Student Staff Member of the Year
Learning Analytics
A fair chunk of my time last year was taken up with setting up and acting as business lead for a new learning analytics project. As part of the university’s
VLE Excellence
programme, the project aims to identify the learning analytics data available in Learn and other centrally supported learning technology applications, and enable staff and students to access and use it to support their teaching and learning.  It’s a long time since I’ve been involved in anything related to learning analytics so it’s been interesting to get my head back into this space again, particularly as the project is focused on empowering staff and students to access their own learning analytics data..
EDE to DSDT
In October we had a small restructuring at work and my team moved from Educational Design and Engagement (EDE) into a new section, Digital Skills, Design and Training (DSDT). I’ve really enjoyed working in EDE over the last 5 years, and we’ll continue working closely with many of the services there, but I’m also excited about the opportunities the new section will bring.  I’m particularly looking forward to working with our Wikimedian in Residence again and exploring new open textbook projects with our Graphic Design Team.
AI and the Commons
I’ve been dipping my toes back into the murky waters of ethics, AI and the commons and have written a couple of blog posts on the ethics of AI in relation to
OER
and
contested museum collections
All the other stuff…
Because my health has been so ropey, I’ve had to step back, hopefully temporarily, from most of the additional voluntary work I do, including assessing CMALT, sitting on award panels, contributing to City University of London’s MSc in Digital Literacies and Open Practice, and attending policy events.  I really miss the connections these activities used to bring so I’ve been trying to focus more on reconnecting through social media networks….
…which has been “interesting” given the hellscape of most social media platforms these days. I’ve barely used facebook for over a decade, though I still have an account there, primarily for finding last cats (long story). Twitter was always my main social media channel, I’ve had an account there since 2007, and it’s where I found my open education community. Seeing twitter degenerate into a fascist quagmire has made me so angry, however it was still a wrench to leave.  In March we mothballed the femedtech account, I stepped back from my own account later in the year, before finally deleting it. This was one of my last retweets. It seems fitting.
I’ve been slowly migrating to
Bluesky
and
Mastodon
over the course of the year and it’s been great to start building new and old communities there. I like the different pace of the two platforms.  Bluesky feels like the place to keep up to date with news and events, while Mastodon provides space for slower, quieter, thoughtful conversations.
This enforced slowing down, together with the changing social media landscape, has also prompted me to start blogging again. I hadn’t abandoned this blog completely but I’d definitely got out of the habit of writing here regularly. It’s been good to take the time to think and reflect again, and to try and express some of that reflection in words. At the end of the year I wrote a post about
Slowing Down
which really seemed to strike a chord with people. Across all these different spaces, it feels like little dormant shoots of community are reemerging. We need these human connections now more than ever.
Beginnings and Endings
On a personal level September was a month of beginnings and endings. My daughter went off to university and it’s been great to see her stretch her wings and find her people. It’s also been illuminating to see the university’s systems from the student side.
In September we had to say goodbye to our beloved cat Josh.  He was magnificent, and he was my best boy, despite his habit of going round the neighbourhood scrounging for food and pretending to be a stray. He turned up twice on a local lost cats facebook group.  The shame.  I miss him terribly.
Josh 2014 – 2024
I also had to say goodbye to our family home in Carriegreich on the Isle of Harris. This was my grandparents and then my father’s home and I spent a lot of time here during my childhood.  This is where I learned how to cast a line, set an (illegal) net and row a boat, collect the eggs and feed the sheep, tell a guillemot from a razorbill, pick up Russian klondykers on the ancient shortwave radio, and keep an eye out for the grey fishery protection vessels sliding out of the mist.  It’s where I spent hours wandering over the croft and the shore lost in other worlds. I very rarely remember dreams, but I still dream about this house and this shore.  We had hoped to visit the house one last time, but sadly that wasn’t possible because Josh was so unwell.  We said goodbye to Josh and to Carriegreich within the week.
Carriegreich
To try and make some sense of where I am now, I’ve been re-reading Ursula Le Guin’s
Tehanu
.  It’s always been one of my favourite Le Guin books, I love the writing and the pacing and the fact that it centres the experiences of an older woman finding her place and her power in a changing world through the different phases of her life.
“Tenar sighed. There was nothing she could do, but there was always the next thing to be done.”
I’m not sure what I’ll be doing next, but I am sure there will always be something to be done.
I’ve already written an overview and some thoughts on the
ALTC keynotes
, this post is an additional reflection on some of my personal highlights of the conference.
I was involved in three sessions this year;
Wikipedia belongs in education
with Wikimedia UK CEO
Lucy Crompton-Reid
and UoE Wikimedian in Residence Ewan McAndrew,
Influential voices – developing a blogging service based on trust and openness
with DLAM’s Karen Howie, and
Supporting Creative Engagement and Open Education at the University of Edinburgh
with LTW colleagues Charlie Farley and Stewart Cromar.  All three sessions went really well, with lots of questions and engagement from the audience.
It’s always great to see that lightbulb moment when people start to understand the potential of using Wikipedia in the classroom to develop critical digital and information literacy skills.    There was a lot of interest in (and a little envy of) UoE’s
Academic Blogging Service
and centrally supported WordPress platform,
blogs.ed.ac.uk
, so it was great to be able to share some of the open resources we’ve created along the way including policies,
digital skills resources
podcasts
blog posts
, open source code and the blogs themselves.  And of course there was a lot of love for our creative engagement approaches and open resources including
Board Game Jam
and the lovely
We have great stuff
colouring book.
Stewart Cromar also did a gasta talk and poster on the colouring book and at one point I passed a delegate standing alone in the hallway quietly colouring in the poster.  As I passed, I mentioned that she could take one of the colouring books and home with her.  She nodded and smiled and carried on colouring.  A lovely quite moment in a busy conference.
It was great to hear Charlie talking about the enduringly popular and infinitely adaptable 23 Things course, and what made it doubly special was that she was co-presenting with my old Cetis colleague R. John Robertson, who is now using the course with his students at Seattle Pacific University.   I’ve been very lucky to work with both Charlie and John, and it’s lovely to see them collaborating like this.
Our Witchfinder General intern Emma Carroll presented a brilliant gasta talk on using Wikidata to geographically locate and visualise the different locations recorded within the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database.  It’s an incredible piece of work and several delegates commented on how confidently Emma presented her project.  You can see the outputs of Emma’s internship here
Emma Carroll, CC BY NC 2.0, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
I really loved Kate Lindsay’s thoughtful presentation on
KARE
, a kind, accessible, respectful, ethical scaffolding system to support online education at University College of Estate Management.  And I loved her Rosa Parks shirt.
Kate Lindsay, CC BY NC, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
I also really enjoyed Claudia Cox’s engaging and entertaining talk
Here be Dragons: Dispelling Myths around BYOD Digital Examinations
.  Claudia surely wins the prize for best closing comment…
Claudia Cox “I came here to slay, I hope I did that today” *APPLAUSE*
#altc
pic.twitter.com/6OWDTsECgm
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell)
September 3, 2019
Sheila MacNeill and Keith Smyth gave a great talk on their conceptual framework for
reimagining the digital university
which aims to challenge neoliberalism through discursive, reflective digital pedagogy.  We need this now more than ever.
Keith Smyth, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
Sadly I missed Helen Beetham’s session
Learning technology: a feminist space?
but I heard it was really inspiring.  I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been able to hear Helen talk, we always seem to be programmed in the same slot!  I also had to miss Laura Czerniewicz’s
Online learning during university shut downs
, so I’m very glad it was recorded. I’m looking forward to catching up with is as soon as I can.
The
Learning Technologist of the Year Awards
were truly inspiring as always. Lizzie Seymour, Learning Technology Officer, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland at Edinburgh Zoo was a very well deserved winner of the individual award, and I was really proud to see the University of Edinburgh’s Lecture Recording Team win the team award.  So many people across the University were involved in this project so it was great to see their hard work recognised.
UoE Lecture Recording Team, CC BY NC, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
Without doubt though the highlight of the conference for me was Frances Bell‘s award of
Honorary Life Membership
of the Association for Learning Technology.  Frances is a dear friend and an inspirational colleague who really embodies ALT’s core values of participation, openness, collaboration and independence, so it was a huge honour to be invited to present her with the award.  Frances’ nomination was led by Catherine Cronin, who wasn’t able to be at the conference, so it gave me great pleasure to read out her words.
“What a joy to see Frances Bell – who exemplifies active, engaged and generous scholarship combined with an ethic of care –being recognised with this Honorary Life Membership Award by ALT.
As evidenced in her lifetime of work, Frances has combined her disciplinary expertise in Information Systems with historical and social justice perspectives to unflinchingly consider issues of equity in both higher education and wider society.
Uniquely, Frances sustains connections with people across higher education, local communities and creative networks in ways which help to bridge differences without ignoring them, and thus to enable understanding.
Within and beyond ALT, we all have much to thank her for.”
I confess I couldn’t look at Frances while I was reading Catherine’s words as it was such an emotional moment.   I’m immensely proud of ALT for recognising Frances’ contribution to the community and for honouring her in this way.
Frances Bell, Honorary Life Member or ALT, CC BY NC, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
And finally, huge thanks to Maren, Martin and the rest of the ALT team for organising another successful, warm and welcoming conference.
Not content with liveblogging the ALTC keynotes, gasta sessions and AGM, I’m also going to be taking part in two presentations and one panel.  Yikes!  So if you’re interested in learning why Wikimedia belongs in education, how to develop an academic blogging service based on trust and openness, and supporting creative engagement through open education, why not come along and join us 🙂
Wikipedia belongs in education: Principles and Practice
Tuesday Sep 3 2019, 2:45pm – 3:45pm, Room 2.14
Lucy Crompton-Reid, Ewan McAndrew, and Lorna Campbell
This panel session, featuring short presentations and audience Q&A, will outline the thinking and research that underpins Wikimedia UK’s education programme, present some of the work that’s been delivered as part of this programme over the past few years, and discuss opportunities for future educational partnerships. We’ll also highlight the ways that you can get involved in this work at an individual and/or institutional level, and the benefits of working with Wikimedia in education.
Supporting Creative Engagement and Open Education at the University of Edinburgh
Thursday Sep 5 2019, 12:15pm – 1:15pm, McEwan Hall
Lorna Campbell, Stephanie (Charlie) Farley, and Stewart Cromar
This joint presentation will introduce the University of Edinburgh’s vision and strategy for OER and playful engagement, showcase examples of some of the playful approaches we employ, demonstrate how these help to foster creative approaches to teaching, learning and engaging with our collections, and reflect critically on researching their effectiveness.  Come along and see real world examples of how supporting openness and playful engagement at the institutional level can foster creativity and innovation, and gain inspiration about how these approaches could be used in your own contexts and institution. You’ll also be able to pick up one of our free “We have great stuff” OER colouring books!
Influential voices – developing a blogging service based on trust and openness
Thursday Sep 5 2019, 2:00pm – 3:00pm, Room 2.14
Karen Howie and Lorna Campbell
This presentation will reflect on the first year year of the University of Edinburgh’s new Academic Blogging Service.  We worked closely with academic colleagues, to take a broad view of the different uses of blogs, including reflective blogging, writing for public audiences, group blogging and showcasing research to develop a new academic blogging service that launched in October 2018. The service incorporates existing tools (inc. those built into our VLE and portfolio platforms), improved documentation, new digital skills workshops and materials, and a brand new centrally supported WordPress platform (blogs.ed.ac.uk) to support types of blogging that were not well catered for previously. The philosophy of our new blogging platform was to start from a position of openness and trust, allowing staff and students to develop their own voices.  Come along to learn more about our Academic Blogging Service and find out about the free and open resources we developed along the way.
Learn more.
Look forward to seeing you at ALTC!
As part of the University of Edinburgh’s
Academic Blogging Service
, I’ve been teaching a workshop on
Blogging to Build your Professional Profile
.  This workshop has run once a month since September last year and I’ve also presented tailored versions of it to various groups around the University, most recently to student interns who are working with us during the summer.
In order to make the workshop materials as open and reusable as possible, I created them on a WordPress blog running Alan Levine’s fabulous
SPLOT Point
theme. This proved to be a smart move because it means it’s really easy to update the materials as I’ve gained greater understanding of which topics are of interest and concern to colleagues around the University.
One topic that I’ve always felt the workshop materials didn’t adequately cover is the drawbacks of using social media.  During the workshop I point colleagues towards the University’s
Managing Your Digital Foot Print
resources, and in the section on
Amplifying your Blog with Social Media
I always make the point that social media can be a hostile environment for women, people of colour and marginalised groups in particular, however I didn’t have anything explicitly covering this in the course materials. Three things have prompted me to address this.  Firstly, a female colleague who spoke to me in private after a workshop to ask about using pseudonyms on social media as she had legitimate concerns about her privacy and safety.  Secondly, a male colleague who explained to me during a workshop that it’s not
just
women and people of colour who experience harassment online.  (This is true, but it does not negate the fact that there are specific gendered and racist aspects to online harassment.) And thirdly, this
article
by Katherine Wright, which I recently read, about how twitter can be a hostile environment that “can and does have serious repercussions for women and other marginalised groups.”  Wright goes on to say:
“Given the severity of the gendered and racialised pushback many experience in the public eye, and twitter specifically, all training on social media or engagement should start with this. It is a responsibility of our employers and us as individuals who care about whose voice is heard.”
So in order to start addressing that responsibility the workshop page on
Amplifying your blog with social media
now includes the following note of caution:
Although using social media, particularly twitter, can be a great way to amplify and disseminate your blog posts, it’s important to be aware that social media can be a hostile environment, particularly for women, people of colour and marginalised groups, who may experience targeted harassment.  You should never feel obliged to engage with social media, particularly if you feel unsafe or attacked.  Your online safety is of paramount importance.
blogs.ed.ac.uk allows you to choose whether to make your blog posts available to the general public, to EASE authenticated users only, or to keep them completely private. It’s entirely up to you.
All users should exercise caution when disseminating potentially sensitive or controversial topics. A blog post that may not be controversial in an academic context could resulting in unwanted attention or abuse if it circulates widely in the public domain.
Further advice and guidance is available as follows:
Managing Your Digital Footprint:
Resources for Educators
University of Edinburgh
Social Media Guidelines
getsafeonline.org:
Online Abuse
There’s a lot more that could be said on this topic, but that would be the subject of a whole other workshop. I’d be really interested to know how other institutions and organisations are addressing this aspect of e-safety, so if you’ve got links to any guidelines, research or practice, please do let me know.
This
PressED Conference
talk by @lornacampbell and @emcandre explored how @EdinburghUni’s Wikimedian in Residence and Academic Blogging Service have used WordPress SPLOTs to develop sustainable open licensed digital skills development resources on engaging with @Wikipedia and blogging to build your professional profile.
#PressEdConf19 Supporting Digital Skills with SPLOTs!
I’ve been rather neglecting this blog recently, ironically because I’ve been busy blogging about blogging on other blogs :}  The University of Edinburgh launched a new
Academic Blogging Service
, including a centrally supported WordPress platform,
blogs.ed.ac.uk
, last year and the service has really taken off.
In addition to our workshop
Blogging to Build your Professional Profile
, as part of the roll out of the service, Karen Howie (Digital Learning Applications & Media) and I have been curating a
Mini-Series on Academic Blogging
over on the
Teaching Matters
blog. The series features reflections on different uses of academic blogs from staff and students across the university.  Together with Susan Greig (Digital Skills) and Daphne Loads (Institute of Academic Development), I wrote a post on blogging for professional accreditation
Blogging: What is it good for?
The post reflects on my experience of using my blog to create and evidence my CMALT portfolio, while Susan and Daphne discuss how blogging can be used to support CMALT and HEA accreditation.
We’ve also recorded two podcasts as part of the series; one on
How Blogging can be used as an effective form of assessment
, and another on
Blogging to enhance professional practice
, which is a conversation between Karen Howie, Eli Appleby-Donald (Edinburgh College of Art), James Lamb (Centre for Research in Digital Education) and I.  Though I’ve recorded lots of webinars, this is the first time I’ve recorded a conversational podcast and it was a really fun experience!  Karen made a great “interviewer” and, perhaps surprisingly, Eli, James and I managed not to talk over each other all the time.  Although all of us have quite a difference experience of and approach to blogging we were all very much in agreement that blogging can be a great way to enhance professional and academic practice.
The week before last I had double blogging; on Wednesday afternoon I gave a talk as part of a panel on “Using Social Media to Engage Research End Users” for colleagues in the College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences.
Thank you
@EdinburghUni
for today's Learning Lunch. All about using social media to engage research end users. Brought to us by an all female panel currently rocking social media. Thank you Clare de Mowbry, Jen Ross
@LucyHunterB
@LornaMCampbell
#womeninacademia
pic.twitter.com/kdxAGW07DC
— Marissa Millar (@Marissa_Millar)
May 8, 2019
Then later in the evening I joined
Girl Geek Scotland
to give a talk on professional blogging (
slides
) as part of and event on “Your Online Self:  How do you make yourself stand out from the crowd?” Girl Geek Scotland are a network and community for those working and studying in creativity, computing, enterprise, and related sectors in Scotland. As most of the participants are working and building careers in the commercial sector it was quite a different audience to the kind I usually experience and it was really interesting for me to reflect on the affordances and tensions between using blogging and social media to develop your personal profile and to market a personal brand.  Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for the whole event so I missed the discussion sessions later in the evening but Anne-Marie said that there was considerable interest in using blogs for personal development, so I’ll take that as a win.  Now all I need to do, is get my own blog back in order!
Thank you to
@girlgeekscot
@iZettle
and speakers
@LornaMCampbell
@ShannonMcEnroy
@SoozYoung
for an extremely interesting and informative event tonight about how to present yourself online. Im inspired to knock the dust off this twitter account and tweet again!
#womenintech
pic.twitter.com/qWqzkdJpw7
— Katharina Bitzan (@katharinabitzan)
May 8, 2019
This is the transcript of a talk I gave last week at the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine’s Post Graduate Tutors Away Day at the University of Edinburgh.  Slides are available here:
Opening Online Learning with OER
Before I go on to talk about open education and OER, I want you to think about Ra’ana Hussein’s inspiring video where she articulates so clearly why participating in the MSc in Paediatric Emergency Medicine has been so empowering for her.
Ra’ana said that the course helps her to be better at her work, and that she gains knowledge and learning that she can implement practically. It’s enabled her to meet people from diverse backgrounds, and connect with a global community of peers that she can share her practice with.  She finds online learning convenient, and tailored to her needs and she benefits from having immediate access to support, which helps her to balance her work and study commitments.
I’d like you to try and hold Ra’ana’s words in your mind while we go on and take a look at open education, OER and what it’s got to do with why we’re here today.
Continue reading
February and March are always busy months for Open Education and this year was no exception, with the University’s Festival of Creative Learning, Open Education Week and International Women’s Day all coming back to back.
Niko is unimpressed…, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
The fun and games kicked off with
Festival of Creative Learning
in mid February.  My OER Service colleague Charlie ran a really fun and thought provoking
23 Things for Digital Confidence
workshop.  The workshop challenged us to explore how we engage with technology in creative ways and we also got to play with some really cool augmented reality toys.  Oh, and there were dragons!  I took them home but I don’t think my cat was very impressed :}
Later in the week I helped to run a
Get Blogging!
workshop with Karen, Lila and Mark from DLAM, which guided students through the process of setting up a blog on
Reclaim Hosting
and provided them with some pointers on the benefits of blogging and topics they could write about.  I don’t usually get to work directly with undergraduate students so it was a really rewarding experience.  Their enthusiasm was infectious and it was great to see how proud and excited they were to leave at the end of the day with their very own brand new blog.  The fabulous feedback the students left was just the icing on the cake.  My slides from the day are here:
Why Blog?
At the beginning of March we celebrated
Open Education Week
, I’ve already written a
post
about the activities we planned over the course of the week, and they all went really well.  We curated eight blog posts from staff, students and graduates on the Open.Ed blog over the course of the week, each bringing a unique perspective on engaging with open education. You can read a round-up of of these posts
here
.  I particularly like this quote from Martin Tasker, our very first Open Content Curation Intern, who is now building a career as a software engineer.
“In an age where where the world is both more connected and less trusting than ever, the onus is on institutions such as universities to use their reputations and resources to promote open education. As well as benefiting the public, it benefits the institutions themselves – there’s little better in the way of marketing than having potential applicants having already experienced some learning at your institution.”
I’ve often quoted Martin’s Open Content Curation
blog posts
when I talk, and I’m sure I’ll be quoting his Open Education Week blog post,
Reflecting on the Importance of Open Education
, too.
My daughter’s contribution to International Women’s Day, CC BY SA, RJ McCartney
International Women’s Day fell at the end of Open Education Week and Information Services marked the event by hosting a Women of Edinburgh Wikipedia Editathon and naming the Board Room in Argyle House after
Brenda Moon
the first woman to head up a research university library in the 1980s, and who played a major role in bringing the University into the digital age
. I spent part of the day updating the Wikipedia entry I’d previously written about
Mary Susan McIntosh
to include information about her work as a Women’s Rights Advocate campaigning for legal and financial rights for married and co-habiting women, defending the right to sexual expression, and arguing against censorship of pornography.
The following week I was off down to UCL for their
Open Education Symposium
.  It was a privilege to be invited to share the University of Edinburgh’s strategic approach to Open Education, and it was great to hear about some of ways that openness is supported across UCL.  I particularly enjoyed hearing a group of Arts and Sciences BASc students reflecting on their positive experience of engaging with Wikibooks.  Their comments reflected those of our Edinburgh student who have participated in Wikipedia assignments and editathons.
Somehow, in amongst all that, there was also several ALTC submissions, the launch of
femedtech.net
, and my daughter’s 13th birthday.  How the hell did
that
happen?!
Today marks the start of
Open Education Week
, the global celebration of the Open Education movement.  Last year my OER Service colleagues and I didn’t participate in Open Education Week as it coincided with the
USS Strike
so this year, we’re making up for lost time and we’ve got a whole pile of activities and events lined up.
Open.Ed Spring Newsletter
We’ve published our latest Open.Ed newsletter to coincide with Open Education Week and to highlight events we’ll be running over the course of the week, along with other open activities and initiatives going on around the University.  You can read the latest edition of the newsletter here:
Welcome to the OER Service’s Spring Newslette
r, and find back issues of the newsletter here
Open.Ed Newsletter
Open.Ed Blog Series
Over the course of the week, the
Open.Ed Blog
will be featuring a series of posts from students, staff, and open education practitioners from across the University of Edinburgh, covering a wide range of topics including Masters level OER assignments, Wikipedia and Translation Studies, tools for creating OERs, and much more. The series kicks off today with one post by me on
Sustainable Support for OER
and another by Jen Ross on
Digital Futures for Learning: An OER assignment
Supporting Open Education and Open Knowledge at the University of Edinburgh
On Tuesday 5 March at 12.00-13.00, the OER Service will be hosting a free and informal lunchtime webinar during which we’ll be sharing our approaches to supporting Open Education and Open Knowledge at the University of Edinburgh.  Come and join me, Stuart Nicol (Education Design and Engagement), Ewan McAndrew (Wikimedian in Residence), Charlie Farley (OER Service), Rachael Mfoafo (EDE) and Anne-Marie Scott (DLAM) to talk about supporting open education through digital skills development, playful approaches to copyright literacy, embedding Wikipedia in the curriculum, and open approaches to MOOCs and distance learning at scale.  The webinar is free and open to all, joining details are available
here
Decolonise & Diversify the Curriculum with OER
This one-hour workshop on Tuesday 6 March at 12.00 – 13.00 will explore what it means to decolonise and diversify the curriculum with EUSA VP of Education Diva Mukherji. My lovely
OER Service colleague Charlie Farley will also demonstrate how creating, using, and sharing OER can be one avenue towards diversifying and opening up curriculum materials. The workshop is open to University of Edinburgh staff and students, further information is available
here
And of course I’ll be blogging and tweeting on the
#OEWeek
hashtag and hoping to catch some of the other fabulous activities going on over the course of the week too.
Daffodils in George Square, CC BY, University of Edinburgh
Recent Posts
On the threat of mass redundancy
OER25 – Stepping back and speaking truth to power
Copyright and Cartoon Mice – Gen AI Images and the Public Domain
For those about to blog
2024 End of Year Reflection
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