Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • #EdTech blogging ice breaker… or how to blog my way through a crisis

    I love blogging. Over the past few months I have been finding it hard to find the words. I don’t just want to blog for work, I also want to blog for fun. I want to allow myself to be curious… . I want to give myself permission to just think about things without my voice being dominated by news headlines, risk registers or fear.

    And that is when I came across this post: The Ed Tech Metaphor Generator and I had a play generating my own metaphor challenges in the search for blogging inspiration.

    This is the first topic contender:

    http://metaphor.edtechie.net/

    The next one I generated was: “What does gardening tell us about lecture capture?”, which got me thinking, and then I clicked the button again and…

    Use the development of New York graffiti styles as a metaphor for blogging

    …this heading was born. I am going with that one!

    First up, because it gives me an excuse to urge you to read The City We Became! If you aren’t familiar with the work of N.K. Jemisin then you should definitely have a look and immerse yourself in the worlds she has built in her books. I was a big fan of the THE BROKEN EARTH series and I am about to start reading the The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms series, but The City We Became was the first book I bought when the lockdown started and I couldn’t put it down even though it was far from cheering:

    Every great city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got six.

    But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

    http://nkjemisin.com/

    But graffiti is all about the fabric of a city and this book certainly captures that. It’s also about the life of a city, its stories, and that way we loop back to blogging.

    I also came across this article recently: Graffiti Is Back in Virus-Worn New York which makes for an interesting read (and beautiful photos of new graffiti in New York which are definitely worth a look).

    From the South Bronx to East New York, a new generation of graffiti writers has emerged, many of whom have never hit a trainyard or the inside of a subway car. But like early taggers who grew up in a city beset by crime, grime and empty coffers, today’s generation is dealing with its own intense fears over the devastating effects of the coronavirus on communities and the economy.

    “Does art dictate the times or do the times dictate art?” said John Matos, 58, a graffiti writer known as Crash who started out in the 1970s. “Before now, the streets were sanitized, with pieces that were cool and nice, and done with permission. Now, we’re back to the roots.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/graffiti-nyc.html

    A bit like the EdTech Emergency Radio which has been filling the airwaves #ds106radio as a response to dealing with fear and isolation, emergency blog posts fill social media with helpful tips, practical advice and accounts of what happens when you face such odds as everyone is this year.

    Yet beyond that there is more coming out of the posts, sometimes anger, sometimes hope. A reflection of our times.

    Maybe the circumstances which enable a new generation of graffiti writers to find their voice on the streets of New York will also give space to a new generation of blog posts and conversations. I for one am grateful to have found a pocket of time and inspiration to ponder something different for a while. Thank you, EdTech Metaphor maker 🙂

    Next time… “Use quantum physics as a metaphor for blogging.”

  • How we survived a pandemic: Part 5 – Virtual team meeting ice breakers from the ALT Staff Team

    This is a conversational blog post (cross-posted here) between Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell). We are using this approach to create some space to think together in ‘unprecedented times’. 

    This month’s post is a bit different from the usual, as we celebrate a team effort of inventing ice breakers for our weekly team meetings, which take place for an hour every Wednesday morning. We’ve got everything from “share your four-legged friends” to “lockdown recipe swap” to “pandemic playlist” to “humble brag” to “Pictionary Jam” and more.

    Thank you to our colleagues Jane, Fiona, Debbie and Emma-Jane, for giving us permission to share these ideas in the post for this month.  

    September!

    Maren: Since the start of July we have been rotating chairing our weekly team meetings. We have a shared document that we use as an agenda and each week we ask someone to volunteer to chair next week’s meeting. I have been delighted by how much everyone has contributed to our weekly meetings, bringing their own personality and style to the proceedings and I feel this new way of chairing the meetings has been an excellent addition to the way we work. One of the things we have started doing is ice-breaker activities to start the meeting, and I look forward to them each week. In this post, we are going to share examples of these starting with animal corner: For this activity we were asked to “share your four-legged friends here if you have one, or any animal that makes you smile!” . Another favourite of mine was to ask everyone: “What has been your favourite recipe discovered during lockdown?” through which is discovered Freezer Vegan Breakfast Burritos and Ottolenghi – Feta and oregano fries! 

    Martin: Rotating the chairing has been a lot of fun, particularly seeing how others bring their personality to proceedings. My favourite activity has to be “Musical Mayhem” where we shared a link to “whatever song or piece of music that makes you feel alive !”. This ended up with a very eclectic mix of songs and also gave a sense of what made our team tick, covering tracks from the Bee Gees to N-trance. As well as pets, food and music the ice breakers are also nice ways to catch up with how everyone is generally doing. As the second wave of the pandemic comes crashing down on us, whilst increased measures don’t impact my homelife as much as they do for others, the knowledge that while I rarely have friends over to see us, knowing that currently we can’t feels a little suffocating. Making the start of team meetings more variable I think has ultimately created some very rich and fun social engagement. Have you got any other favourite ice-breakers and what do you think the impact has been?

    Maren: It’s been interesting to see how little tech is needed for a very effective activity. In many cases a verbal prompt or question such as sharing box set or movie recommendations or finding out which Hogwarts House you belong to (our team includes someone from every house…) has stimulated rich conversations for everyone in the team. One aspect of our shared activities, comparing plans for an upcoming Bank Holiday weekend in August, for example, is that we learn more about each other’s local contexts. That might be a simple thing like sharing what the weather is like or indeed whether there is a local lockdown where we live or something a bit more personal, like what the kids are up to, which parent is having a birthday and what treats someone is planning on baking. I found out about a new kind of pizza oven as well as learning more about how two of our colleagues who are doing PhD are getting on with that. Each weekly activity has helped us combat cabin fever and the fact that we all miss each other. Since we become a virtual team in 2018 this is the longest period any of us have had without seeing someone they work with every day and that is a big deal! Talking of big deals… you provided a prompt for a team meeting in August that sparked some really great conversations – do you remember? 

    Martin: Ah yes the “Humble Brag” activity where I invited our team to share “a thought or memory that you go to for virtual air punches?”. There were a very interesting range of responses to this, which like “Hogwarts House” stimulated some nice conversations. Afterwards I did however feel that this was also a bit of a tricky activity as it perhaps forced people to reflect back on a time when the world was in a very different state, particularly given examples included things like flights and organised running events. Perhaps reminiscing isn’t such a bad thing … I don’t know, thoughts? Whilst tech hasn’t been the focus of these activities where it has been used has been a lot of fun. One of more recent activities was “Pictionary Jam” where we had a round of pictionary each drawing on a Jamboard (an interactive whiteboard app available in G Suite). I’ve only used Jamboard a couple of times in the past so the activity was also a fun bit of CPD to learn about this tool together. Plenty of other whiteboard tools for others to try this out and if a Pictionary game isn’t handy there is a website for that at http://wordrawapp.com/online_generator.html. With our colleagues showing off such great chairship and ability to find fun and interesting activities I feel increased pressure when it is my turn to find something for the start of our meetings … or is that just me?  

    Maren: For me it’s the other way round. I hadn’t realised how much work and thought I had to put in chairing the meeting week in week out and now I feel less pressure as we are jointly working on making each meeting work. I also think everyone is gaining more insight into why it’s important to prepare and actively take part. It’s up to us as a team to make our team meetings work and I have been delighted by the result of rotating who leads the meeting. I hope that it will help everyone realise how much each individual is achieving as well as how much progress we are making as a team, and that is especially important just now, with things being so uncertain. As you say, it’s not always a wholly positive thing to compare the here and now to previous experiences, and this new way of running team meetings feels like a positive addition to this year instead of being a slightly less fun version of a face to face meeting we may have had before. But now that the pressure is on… and I think it’s your turn to chair next week’s meeting… what have you got in mind to wow everyone 😉

    Martin: Well for our weekly family video calls (pre-covid they were voice only) lately we’ve been having a quiz. As part of this the winner is quizmaster the following week. As I aced the Scottish trivia quiz last week it’s my turn to come up with the questions. I’m feeling a little reuse coming on, my call with my parents being an opportunity to test drive a set of questions for the team. Whilst our team icebreakers have also been mostly low tech inspired by our ‘Pictionary Jam’ I thought it would be nice to try out one of our partner organisation tools, particularly if it is something we want to use at the ALT Online Winter Conference. To that end having looked at the Vevox quiz tool and the recent leaderboard feature I think it might be interesting to dip back into the competitive streak within our team … what can go wrong.

  • Home-worker… care-work… self-care.

    Home-worker… care-work… self-care.

    Last year I wrote a post about how working from home can lead to doing a lot of housework. I reflected on how working from home made me feel like I had been landed with all the domestic and care work and I explored ways in which I reclaimed a better balance.

    A year on, and several big life changes later, seemingly everyone is now working from home and finding any kind of balance is an even bigger priority.

    Working from home in these turbulent times poses some unique challenges for sure, but many of the issues I encounter are already familiar, they have just been amplified by what’s happened.

    Home-work/life balance

    A year ago, avoiding doing too much or unnecessary housework seemed like a big challenge and the strategies I used were simple: setting aside time to do chores rather than doing them as I see them, learning to ignore things that aren’t urgent, reminding myself of sticking to my working hours… . Just now, I need these strategies more than ever, because everything that’s happening in the world of educational technology seems urgent and there is an emergency all of the time.

    Sticking to my working hours, not trying to do more than I am able to handle… making my work space as good as it can be. Sounds easy but all of these are hard to actually stick to.

    I have bought myself some new plants, bringing a bit of the outside world to my work space and I am adjusting my set up to suit the different seasons. I have moved my desk closer to the radiator for example… 🙂

    I was permanently home-based before this year, but even as a permanent home-worker I need to find ways to be effective as a CEO as my circumstances change and adapt to what is happening in the world around me. This year, this means being consistent about unplugging myself from work.

    When it comes to technology sticking to working hours is even more key for me, because there is never a time when the emails and notifications stop. So I stop them. I have a dedicated screen on my phone for work related apps, so I don’t see them when I am not working. I switch off push notifications. I don’t have work emails on my phone and if I do want to log in I need to manually type in a very long complicated password. For me, that is an effective deterrent.

    Whilst I haven’t found a way to set an out of office for DMs, I effectively provide one for myself, in that I copy and forward DMs that come in via various platforms when I am not working to my work account.

    Care/life balance

    A few years ago I was a carer for my mother, who has cancer. Fortunately my mum is well just now, but for a number of years juggling being a carer and working as well as having a life was a difficult balancing act.

    This year, there is a large volume of different kind of caring needed, and I find myself struggling in spite of my good intentions.

    I am really heartened by the absolutely amazing things so many people in educational technology have been doing day in, day out. I see you, I support you, I salute you.

    In my own way at work and beyond work I have done what I can to contribute to those efforts and I am grateful to be part of communities that make such a positive difference to so many in a very difficult time indeed.

    I care. And there is a limited amount of time, energy and brainpower with which I can act on and express that care.

    So I need to prioritise and take a step back from being online and present every day, every week. This is an instance where I won’t permit the blurring of my work life and my life outside of work further.

    I had a week off work last week and a week largely off social media. And that made for a good, healthy change. There is a crisis. But sometimes it just has to wait and be contained within its boundaries.

    Home-work/self-care balance

    I read an interesting article this morning which explored how people who live in Nordic countries mentally prepare for the literally darkest times of the year and there is one paragraph of the article in particular that resonated with me:

    Surrounded by Norwegian positivity, Leibowitz soon found her own mindset shifting; she learned to love long walks with a headlamp to guide her path. And rather than yearning for sunlight, she came to appreciate the “soft, peaceful” appearance of the city in the darkness. “When it was snowing, I would always try to go out and enjoy the fresh snowfall.”

    And that got me thinking about what the equivalent of a fresh snowfall will be for me as a home-worker this winter, as I continue to work through this crisis in the colder, darker months and return to localised lock downs here in Wales, which will restrict all aspects of my life.

    Here are my initial ideas:

    • make a point of having at least 1 walking meeting outside each week, talking on the phone;
    • learn how to look after my office plants better and learn more about them;
    • protect my boundaries between work and care work and me time, to guard against burn out;
    • try lots of different herbal teas;
    • avoid scheduling meetings so that I can still get out for 1-2 long walks in daylight each week;
    • give myself permission to have a duvet day when I really need it.

  • My CEO Report, September 2020

    My CEO Report, September 2020

    Dear Members

    Since my last report to you in June, much has happened in our community and the Association. From senior leaders to new recruits, everyone in Learning Technology has been working flat out to prepare for the start of the new academic year and continuing to cope with the impact of the pandemic. 

    Whilst it is gratifying to see the importance of the profession coming to the forefront in many organisations across sectors, the challenges we continue to face are enormous and the stakes are high for staff and learners alike. 

    Even without the usual preparations for our Annual Conference, we have had an exceptionally busy few months supporting Members, sharing expertise and providing input to policy makers. 

    Here is a quick summary of key developments:

    • ALT’s Annual General Meeting on 24 June 2020 was well attended and Members met ALT’s new Chair, Professor Helen O’Sullivan, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education), Keele University and President, David White, Head of Digital Learning at the University of the Arts London. Members welcomed ALT’s Annual Report and audited accounts, which you can also view on the Charity Commission website. 
    • ALT has supported Members launch the Open Covid Pledge for Research in Education which has gathered support from over 150 signatories, including UCU, Creative Commons and a growing number of institutions and researchers. I urge you to sign the pledge and support it if you can;
    • ALT is also providing input to UUK’s Task & Finish Group in Transnational Education as well as Jisc’s Learning and Teaching Reimagined initiative, for which the next workshop hosted by ALT is on 16 September;
    • ALT’s first Summer Summit meanwhile attracted 281 Learning Technology professionals from 24 countries, providing access to resources and new research which will soon be  available to all Members and the wider community. 

    To support Members through the start of the new term, we have a full programme of events and activities planned for autumn, including: 

    We are seeking input from Members to ALT’s response to the Sir Michael Barber Review of Learning and Teaching Online, and if you would like to contribute, please email me ceo@alt.ac.uk .

    Looking a few months ahead, we will be holding our usual Online Winter Conference, which this year will celebrate the Learning Technologist of the Year Awards. By popular request we are establishing a very special community award for all Learning Technologists, so save the date. On Thursday, 17 December everyone is invited to collect their award at our virtual awards ceremony!

    Dr Maren Deepwell
    Chief Executive
    ceo@alt.ac.uk

    This post was re-posted from the #ALTC Blog, see https://altc.alt.ac.uk/blog/2020/09/chief-executive-officer-report-september-2020/

  • How we survived a pandemic: Part 4 – Virtual pizza nights and other distributed team social activities

    How we survived a pandemic: Part 4 – Virtual pizza nights and other distributed team social activities

    This is a conversational blog post (cross-posted here) between Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell). We are using this approach to create some space to think together in ‘unprecedented times’. 

    For regular readers this is a slight departure from our regular ‘Virtual Teams’ posts (you can read those on our Virtual Teams summary page) taking a broader view of work whilst midst global pandemic. 

    In this month’s post we share our reflections on socialising when you are a distributed team. We share our experiences of our first virtual pre-conference pizza night and look at some other social activities that remote teams might like to explore to maintain some sanity in the middle of a pandemic. 

    August… 

    Maren: August has always been a super busy and exciting month at ALT as we, normally, gear up for our Annual Conference. This year, we have been gearing up for our first ever fully virtual summit and I have been enjoying the mounting excitement both in our team and in our community. I have been amazed how many people are able to engage with the event despite how much they have going on both at work and at home. Pretty much everyone in Learning Technology is overworked, exhausted and coping with the challenges of living through a global pandemic. It’s been particularly special to see hundreds of participants from 22 countries signing up, making time and joining in. In our staff team, too, we have been finding ways to preparing for a large virtual event and its delivery from home, with most of us still home-based with more family than usual and very much still in various levels of lockdowns. I have blogged about my thoughts ahead of the event, that I miss meeting colleagues in person, but also some of the lighter upsides such as more shoetweet possibilities and no conference chicken. You normally travel with suitcases filled with laptops, cables and other tech… how has your summit run up been?

    Martin: Most of my preparation for the Summit has been similar to our other face-to-face conferences. Our event websites have always had a social aspect to them but we have looked at enhancing this with some extras. As my main role at face-to-face conferences is online delivery the project plan for the Summit was very familiar. The biggest change is probably swapping what equipment I can transport to what I have to hand and for the Summit mission control this meant I could benefit from lots of additional screen space. 

    ALT has a long history of delivering online only events and the ALT Winter Conference has been held entirely virtual every year since 2015. One of the challenges of online events, similar to remote teams, is creating those social networking opportunities. We’ve used the ‘virtual cafe’ model in all our online events, using a video conference space for participants to drop into. This model in itself has been improved over the years and now we provide a dedicated meeter and greeter to make sure there is always a friendly face. For our last couple of events Jim Groom and Co. and Reclaim Hosting have hosted virtual karaoke nights for us. These are always fun, but I was also struck by how the Summit karaoke night was also an opportunity for those informal conversations you often get at face-to-face events and because the live stream was still going there is a recording of that moment captured in Jim’s KaraOERoke Post-Mortem. I have to confess I’ve mixed feelings about there being a recording and deliberately not played it back to hear the dumb things I might have said, but a clear example of the network effect. I’m interested if there was anything at the Summit that gave you a sense of social connections?   

    Maren: I found the event really good for connecting with people, many of whom I haven’t been in touch with for months and also newcomers to ALT. I started blogging before the event, and that in itself sparked a lot of DM and Twitter conversations. I am fortunate that part of my job is to be at all the plenary sessions and welcome speakers, so I got a lot of conversations with wonderful speakers that way as well. Often I have been in touch with someone via email or calls for months before actually meeting them on the day, so that definitely helps. I also did a fair bit of #shoetweeting and that also sparked a lot of fun and connections, on a lighter tone than just summit chat. My favourite element of the conference social programme is hard to pick, but given my… er…. Reluctance when it comes to KaraOERke, I think it’s either the quiz or the online radio shows. Both really enabled me to play long or listen along with others, and in many cases meet new people either within the dedicated space or on Twitter. Within our team, we have a lot of backchannel chat during events and this year we even had a virtual pizza night via our watercooler chat and I loved that. Running this virtual event felt more like a shared experience for us a team this time round. Fortunately, the pizza wasn’t virtual! I think we have really grown into a collaborative team for online events over the past 2 years. What are your thoughts on this? 

    Martin: I really enjoyed turning one of our face-to-face team traditions into a ‘virtual pizza night’. Using text chat also felt less intrusive, meaning I could juggle personal commitments with engaging with the team. It was also nice to have this whilst one of the Summit social activities, ALT Members Radio, was going on as there was an opportunity to share a moment together and also enjoy some banging tunes. I feel these moments, along with some of our more informal team activities like remote birthday afternoon tea, are useful ways to support remote team health and wellbeing. I’m left wondering if and how other teams deal with this. Doing a quick search of tips and suggestions I’m struggling to find examples of things the ALT team doesn’t already do and it’s interesting to see the number of times some of the activities we do like ‘written feedback by post’, informal chat channels, virtual coffee breaks are referenced elsewhere. Like all guidance I think the key is not what the ‘experts’ tell you to do, but how these ideas are implemented. Personally this is where I think ALT and you as our CEO have been particularly good at navigating the line between formal and informal, not making people feel pressured into doing something they feel encroaches on their personal space or would make them feel uncomfortable. I’m interested to hear if there are any suggested remote team activities you’ve come across and thought ‘we are definitely not doing that’?

    Maren: You mean besides karaoke!? In my experience even the most basic activities can quickly become exclusive, eg activities that require you to have a shared cultural background or general knowledge, access to outside space, particularly foods or treats (dietary preferences are a big factor). I came across an activity as part of the unbounded (link) resources for online community building that involved telling a story related to one’s name and I immediately thought.. oh gosh, I wouldn’t know one! Meanwhile, in the past couple of months we have started to share responsibilities for chairing our weekly team meetings and I have been delighted with how much things have changed for the better as a consequence. Every member of staff takes turns. I especially like that everyone has invented team activities to start the day with… and each one, from animal corner to sharing recipes, and from sharing humble brags to movie recommendations has been successful and fun.  It’s been nice to see different personalities shape the tone of our meetings. It has also saved me a huge amount of time and effort most weeks, and given everyone more practical insight into what goes into chairing a successful meeting. A lot of folk have been socialising online more than I have this year and one thing I haven’t tried online is cocktails or a pub night. I don’t think our team is a party team, but at big events we have gone out together. I am not sure how I’d feel about that, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough – how about you? 

    Martin: Outside of work I’ve been to a virtual social get together with old colleagues which we did instead of a traditional face-to-face meetup at the Edinburgh Festival. Not the same experience but it did mean one of our colleagues who moved to the US was able to join. With a smaller team with very diverse interests harder to find something we would all be interested in doing. Reading How Ars Technica’s tech-savvy staffers conduct happy hours in locked-down 2020 it was interesting to see the range of online social activities that are available including everything from poker, RPG to virtual ‘rec rooms’. It was the later Rec Room, which particularly caught my eye, “a free-to-play social-space app that includes a series of structured and free-form multiplayer games and activities”. Perhaps for the next ALT team social activity we could go bowling, play some table tennis or do a bit of paintballing 😉

  • Summit week (with heart) #altc #altcSummit

    Summit week (with heart) #altc #altcSummit

    It’s been a busy week at ALT HQ as we have been busy with the ALT Summer Summit and this weekend, a much-needed long weekend, has seen me mostly offline, but there is a radio show to do on a Sunday, and that’s led me to blog, too.

    I really liked this heart, that was put up on a farm fence close to the hill, and it seems like an excellent visual jumping off point for reflecting on a summit (with heart). So here are ten tweets from this week #altc #altcSummit:

    It was an awesome event, which gave me a sense of community and connecting, and a sense of hope that I am grateful for.