On the train on the way to Edinburgh to the OER16: Open Culture conference I was past York and heading North when the sun came out. A while later the train tracks approached the coast and I looked out at the sea for the first time in months. A wide blue sea under an open sky. In the distance LEGO-brick like shapes of container ships appeared as we neared the shipping lanes and in the brilliant sunshine we…
Category: leadership
One project I am currently involved in is a course on FutureLearn called Blended Learning Essentials. In this short blog post I want to think about how this course, or others like it, can be used as tools for change. A bit about the course This is an open course about using blended learning for vocational education and it runs for a total of 8 weeks in two parts. The first part covers the ‘essentials’…
It’s been nearly a year since I wrote my first post on leadership as an open practice, inspired by the 2015 OER conference. So in this post I want to reflect on how my experiment is going, what progress I have made and what’s next. Where it all began… In April last year, I wrote : “I’d like to try and adopt open practice in my role and connect with others who do the same.…
Recently I was accredited as a Certified Member of ALT (find out more here) and the key component of the scheme is a peer-reviewed portfolio. You can build your portfolio in almost any format provided that it is accessible to assessors and follows the required structure. I chose to build mine using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) and here I’d like to reflect briefly on the experience: Why use GAFE? My main reasons were that…
This is the time of year for reviewing personal and professional development, for reflecting on achievements and set goals for the following year. In short, it’s time for my annual appraisal process. This will be my fourth in a leadership position and each year the process has evolved depending on the needs of the organisation and myself. What we have found works consistently: 360 degree feedback: that includes everyone who reports to me, those whom…
As part of finishing my #CMALT portfolio I have been working on completing a section on communication. The example I am using is leading a small team in delivering an online conference, in this case ALT’s first wholly online winter conference in December last year. Some of the things I have been reflecting on re communication are: delivering live events when you are not all in the same place and using online communication methods to…
Snapshots from my presentation as part of a panel at OEB15, 3 December 2015 in Berlin. You can also download the entire presentation (CC-BY) OEB15_MarenDeepwell_2015 (1).
I’ve been working in my #CMALT portfolio. Given that I haven’t yet submitted it for assessment (it’s not quite finished) you might rightly think that a blog post about sharing it is a little premature. Of course you are right – and I won’t actually share it until it has been assessed and (hopefully!) passed sometime in the future. But my intention to share it openly has definitely shaped how I have approached things and…
Compiling my portfolio for submission for CMALT, ALT’s peer-based accreditation scheme, has been a long term project. Originally I started in 2011, but I didn’t complete it. Now I am close to finishing and planning to submit my portfolio (finally). As part of the process, I have made drawings for each section of the portfolio, usually one per section. The first few drawings I made close to a year ago, but I am still adding…
Earlier this week I spent two days in Cardiff at the #oer15 conference on Mainstreaming Open Education. I was able to ask one of the keynote speakers, Sheila MacNeill, a question and I asked about what she would like to see happen next to help further openness. Her response was ‘getting senior decision makers engaged’ – and that got me thinking. What would I like to see happen, what would I want, not in my…