Being a pen pal was something I got into as a child. In my family it was usual to send postcards from our camping holidays in Greece or Spain to family and friends in Germany. I made friends on these holidays, often from other countries, and as we exchanged tearful goodbyes at the end of each summer, addresses were swapped and letter writing commenced. I had a good pen pal in Luxembourg for a long…
Maren Deepwell Posts
Last night I dreamt about AI and roses, and in my dream I was blogging, so here I am, trying to capture the thoughts I had during the night. Thanks to Joe Murphy and Tom Witherspoon, whose inspiring chat at yesterday’s Blogging Community of Practice meeting truly inspired me, I am here pressing publish on a draft, saving the world one half baked idea at a time. What’s happening in the title of this blog…
This week wraps up another year of teaching at the University of Oxford. Summer is here, and my work with the Digital Capabilities team takes a break over the summer, before Michaelmas Term starts again in autumn. For the first time since I started this year had more in person components, including two days of fully in person sessions with cohorts from across the university. Getting to work with such a diverse range of people…
I recently took part in a leadership development programme, Leadership in Higher Education and Artificial Intelligence: A New Paradigm. The programme was designed with an international cohort in mind, and it was great fun to work with leaders from across different countries and from a whole range of Higher Education institutions. My session was inspired by Global Trends Towards Flexible, Hybrid Working and its Impact for Digital Leadership in Higher Education, a report commissioned by…
In sweltering heat the sun shone through the longest day of the year, and I used the mid year point of the year to reflect on the past six months. Here on my blog the posts and podcasts have been stacking up, whilst over on my work domain coaching, consultancy and courses have been in full swing. This post brings it all together, gathering all the gold dust ready for summer and the next six…
I often talk about blogging, but this post is different. This is a thank you to two writers whom I have been following for a long while, and whose work continues to inspire me. Julia Harrison First up, is Julia Harrison, a North Carolina-based artist, anthropologist, and educator, whom I met when I was studying Anthropology at UCL. Julia’s work is all round awesome, and I am a regular reader of her blog, and a…
This year, sadly, is the first time in a long time that I’ll be missing out on the OER Conference. I have blogged (a lot) about this very special event before, including a literal love letter to the conference in 2023, and a postcard from OER24 in Cork last year. The line up for OER25 looks fabulous, headed up by two wonderful Co-Chairs, Louise Drumm and Sheila MacNeill, and tantalising keynotes Helen Beetham and Joe…
Keynote invitations don’t come much more fun that the one I was excited to accept for this week: the Open University’s annual conference for its community of associate lecturers and other staff. When I first got the email, I knew I made to make it happen because these are the people I love to work with most! This conference, which attracts close to 500 participants and covers two days (in May and June respectively), is…
After a week away I have returned to my desk to write (freshly inspired thanks to the museums of Amsterdam). Progress on the book this month has been better, and I have found a new rhythm: read, run, write. Repeat. It helps me to read more to feed my creativity and find inspiration, and I am lucky that my recent haul of books from the library has been plentiful in both. The running gives me…
Inspired by Kin Lane’s post Having a Career I recently posted my own career story, and this blog post exchange inspired me so much that I reached out to Kin to record a conversation for the podcast. And so, two humans and two dogs assembled online to do just that. We chatted for an hour, and the conversation was so thought provoking! In addition, meeting the one and only Poppy R Lane (follow her on…