Next Friday, I am having a Strategy Away Day – pandemic style. In past years, when I need time to really focus on strategy, I was often able to take an afternoon or a whole day and spend it with some members of my Board, colleagues or external contacts, having conversations over coffee or whilst walking in a park. My first mentor Margaret and I often spent hours walking through whichever city we met in,…
Maren Deepwell Posts
One of my strategies for getting through lockdown/pandemic burnout is to have a lot of green in my workspace. I can see at least six plants from where I sit each day. Some of them are good at cleaning the air, some grow in intricate pattern and some grow in interesting shapes. Having discovered that I love succulents, I went about finding a local supplier and thanks to the wonderful Blasus Succulent Emporium, which is…
It’s finally January 31st – and I am still standing. Things continue to be bleak, and whilst I am lucky that COVID hasn’t killed me and neither has boredom… work continues to feel like it’s busier than ever! In cheering news So… it’s time to celebrate the positives of this month, starting with the best musical moment of the month: Off downtown with the wonderful @debbaff what a fab voice and a fabulous song #tunesforHawksey…
Three years ago this week, we closed the door on our last physical office space and moved to becoming a distributed team. Since then, we have chronicled the journey we have been on as an organisation and as a staff team in regular blogposts, podcasts and conference papers, starting with this post from February 2018. A year on, in January 2019, I reflected on how the move changed things in this blog post and we also recorded a podcast. Last…
This is the last of the conversational blog posts (cross-posted here) between Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell) and an opportunity to reflect on the past year. Our ALT Staff team will continue to blog about the journey as a virtual team and we look forward to what 2021 holds in store for us. But for now, we want to recognise Martin’s contribution as over the past three years, over dozens of posts and…
Ever since the phrase “new normal” became part of our vocabulary, I’ve struggled to figure out what it means. Over the past year, it’s become clear that when in comes to Learning Technology, COVID-19 has created many opportunities. So whilst it’s not all bad news, it’s certainly not normal. Not today at least. Before I started my working day today, I was on the phone arranging volunteer responders to pick up medication for my parents,…
I am really excited (just like Jim Groom), because something special is happening in April… as OER meets the Domains Conference in what I hope will be a really awesome two days! Cue ALL the hashtags, #OERxDomains, #OER21 and #Domains21. It’ll be a lot of work to pull this together and I am thrilled that we have a whole team of Co-Chairs to make it happen: Heading up the Domains strand are Lauren (Brumfield) Hanks…
I was delighted to contribute to the VocTeach FE Symposium – Aggregating High Quality Online Educational Resources for FE organised by the Open University alongside experts including Bob Harrison, Vikki Liogier, Caroline Wright and John Domingue. VocTeach FE Symposium kickstarted a broad community around this issue related to supporting the aggregation of high quality learning resources for online FE education. Specifically, we will bring together FE educational experts and practitioners, EdTech experts, awarding organisations and…
Like everyone else, I found last year very tough indeed, even with several key advantages: I have years of experience in my role; I had weathered other crisis before this one and I knew how to manage some of what 2020 threw at us; I had successfully led the transition to us working online a few years ago and we were thus able to continue our work with less disruption than many others. I am…
Every few years, usually a year ahead of when a new strategy is due, I undertake a thought experiment. I imagine what it would be like to apply for my job afresh and sometimes in my head and sometimes on paper, I write out a new statement of why I want to be the CEO of ALT, what I bring to the role and what my vision is for the organisation going forward just as…