Maren Deepwell

Category: things I like

  • 2022: My #FemEdTech Year

    2022: My #FemEdTech Year

    Early this year, I shared this post :

    This month a few of the long standing volunteers of our network are getting together to try and re-energise some elements of our community activities. Whilst much has happened over the past few years, activities like the curation of our twitter account and amplifying the posts tagged with the #femEdTech hashtag have been difficult to sustain.

    https://femedtech.net/published/care-and-curation-femedtech/

    Since February then, each month for me started with #FemEdTech, first stepping back into the role of curator myself and also working together with other volunteers to set up a sustainable workflow that would enable others to get involved once again.

    During the course of the year, we updated the information to get involved and the form to sign up, which, if you haven’t yet come across it, is available on the FemEdTech Open Space.

    in April, our first official ‘guest’ curator took the the helm (thank you, Anne-Marie, for being our trailblazer this year) and from then on all months except for June, when I was back in the curator slot, were led by members of the community: Giulia, Clare, Sarah, Catherine, Leigh and Dani, handing over to Lorna just yesterday.

    It was amazing to see individuals giving time and energy once more, to reinvigorate our corner of a social media platform which turned increasingly toxic as the year progressed. Maybe, in future our conversation may move elsewhere, but for this year, our network came back together around the #FemEdTech hashtag. And what a year we had.

    Head over to what’s been published on the FemEdTech Open Space and be inspired by the thoughts shared there: reflecting on collective voices, claiming open education as a feminist space, a pedagogy of cake and… the momentus moment at which many of us were able to meet the FemEdTech Quilt in person for the first time:

    large quilt of multiple colourful quilt squares on dark blue background

    Head over to Flickr to see the photos from the event (this image is by Frances Bell on Flickr) and read more about this wonderful project in the blog post.

    It was a wonderful day which infused me with hope and gratitude and joy, and reminded me of the power of this community and the #femEdTech network and why I contribute.

    Handing over lead curation

    Since January, I have enjoyed acting as lead curator, and now I am grateful to hand over this role to Lorna, who will be at the helm of supporting guest curators for the next period. It’s fantastic to see that after the unavoidable hiatus in 2020/21, the conversation has been re-energised and continues to connect and amplify voices.

    I am already looking forward to signing up for a curation slot in 2023, and to see where our conversations lead us next year, on Twitter #femEdTech and maybe elsewhere, too.

    Posts from my previous stints as a curator

    • 2022 care and curation
    • 2021 still in pandemic times
    • 2020 during the early days of lockdown
    • 2019 my second time as a guest curator
    • 2018 when I first volunteered
  • Small celebrations

    Small celebrations

    A month of sharing what matters.

    Last month I wrote a post about feeling frustrated with a sense of never achieving enough:

    I am embarking on a month of celebrating daily success: every day I am going to note a success and I am going to share it publicly to help hold myself accountable.

    It doesn’t matter to me how big or small a thing it is, from getting out of bed to finding five minute of peace to have a cup of tea, finishing a report or responding to a difficult email. It all counts.

    The kind of successes I want to celebrate and remind myself about are things that matter in my life day in, day out. I am not looking to mark achievement of the organisation I run or evaluate my performance. I have other places and processes for that. This is really about finding some balance in my own perspective.

    To start with, I am going to share a success from each of the past few days, back to the start of the month, and after that I’ll post each day and share what happens.

    https://marendeepwell.com/?p=3466

    Did it work?

    I posted a list of anything that mattered to me, something I felt was important or achieved from the 1st until the 31st July. I posted nearly every day, mostly on Twitter and Instagram and I really appreciated comments from people who shared their own small successes with me (thank you!).

    What I shared falls into a couple of categories: work (7), personal wellbeing (8), work/life balance (7), family (6).

    Most helpful for me was to gain a sense of achieving what’s important to me on any given day, and reflecting on what that was. As I mentioned in my original post, one aim for this exercise was not to be too focused on formal achievement at work, and instead to take a more wholistic view of my days.

    Sharing a success each day felt quite cheerful, and often my daily calendar reminder prompted me to see my day in a different light.

    I also found it fun to see what others were sharing or read the comments and DMs.

    My list of successes

    • 1st July: I went to the beach
    • 2nd July: I completed stage 2 of coach training
    • 3rd July: I ate well
    • 4th July: I cleared my inbox after a week off
    • 5th July: I blogged
    • 6th July: I sorted out a lot of family admin
    • 7th July: I published this post 
    • 8th July: Today’s success is to get work, pro-bono work, family support and life admin all to a place where the weekend can begin… with a long walk.
    • 9th July: today’s success is resting & spending the day largely offline
    • 10th July: picked a new colour to paint my home office
    • 11th July: got a lot done despite the hot weather
    • 12th July: Progressed three big governance projects
    • 13th July: reported the successful outcomes of a project that started in Feb ‘21
    • 14th July: today’s success is to get to work 45 min late… after waking up to domestic & canine chaos.
    • 15th July: had a lovely lunch with a friend
    • 16th July: processed my week with a largely offline day
    • 17th July: signs of growth on the office plants
    • 18th July: –
    • 19th July: got a deckchair in my office
    • 20th July: I did A LOT of work
    • 21st July: cleared the decks at work ahead of a week of family care & support
    • 22nd July: some editing on the book
    • 23rd July: slept till 8:00am
    • 24th July: had a calm and relaxing day
    • 25th July: parental move day 1
    • 26th – 29th July: more parental move
    • 30th July: rested and had fun
    • 31st July: slept until 7:50 am
  • A love letter to #DS106radio emergency broadcasting

    A love letter to #DS106radio emergency broadcasting

    Tomorrow’s the big #ds106 #ds106radio marathong and I can’t wait for 24 hours of broadcasting on my favourite radio station.

    I came late to this great endeavour and only really got into DS106 Radio in 2020, when my friends Tannis and Anne-Marie and I started broadcasting every Sunday throughout lockdown from Canada and the UK respectively. If you’d like to get a flavour for what we got up to, then head over to this post from July 2020 or hear us chat about it in this video Hope on the Airwaves from the OERxDomains21 Conference in April 2021.

    I got a lot from this and many other ’emergency’ broadcasts on DS106 since March 2020. I listened hungrily to voices of distant friends and colleagues, who were sharing their own trials and tribulations along with a varied and inventive playlist of tunes both old and new.

    Last year was a year of loss for many and one of the things the broadcasts have given me a renewed appreciation for, is how each individual in their particular is contending with a whole lot. The pandemic might have stopped many activities across the globe, but it certainly didn’t feel like a break for anyone working in EdTech.

    Anne-Marie and Tannis got me through some of the roughest patches of a very difficult year and we found some respite from the demands of being an adult woman in pandemic times through our collaborative playlists.

    Ladies, thank you for the laughs and tears and love. See you on the airwaves.

  • Reclaiming… my morning run

    Reclaiming… my morning run

    In 2019 I ran three Half Marathons. Last year, I barely ran over 200 miles in total.

    Life happened

    In contrast to many people who started running during the pandemic or upped their miles, I had no energy to keep up with my usual training. A combination of various illnesses and injuries, two house moves and a lot of personal stuff to sort out on top of a very hectic work schedule conspired to keep me from getting miles under my belt. Then the arrival of a lovable and bonkers puppy in March and she has taken up all my outside hours.

    I used to run a lot to get outside, and one of the things I enjoyed the most was to see the sun rise, to feel the seasons change and to move on my feet through the landscape. I do more of that now than ever before, and two doggies to walk means that I get many, many walking miles in. But until the puppy is old enough to join me on my morning jog, I need to find some extra time to fit in running around other things.

    A new motivation

    I started running in 2016 after a few very hard years of my mum fighting cancer. Starting with the first 5k and 10k fundraising races, I got the running bug big time. It never mattered to me that I was quite slow even when I trained hard and then when I got diagnosed with asthma running in the winter months turned into looking like a snowman under many, many layers with an inhaler in my pocket.

    I still kept running because I enjoyed it, to improve my mental health, to cope with stress.

    My life is less stressful these days and my mental health has improved a lot, and I no longer need to prove to myself that I can be a runner. I have medals and t-shirts that show that I can.

    And yet. I really miss my morning runs. I miss the peace it brings to be out early in the day by myself, to have the head space to think about things, plan my day and connect with the world outside of my work laptop.

    The beach at Oxwich Bay (picture) was the deciding factor. It would make an excellent run (at low tide) and I felt inspired. I may not have that bay close by, but I do have a river, forests and canals to jog along.

    Following my feet

    This morning I headed out, and it was glorious. Two miles of joy and contemplation. I left my phone at home. Training for the next Half Marathon is going to get underway without an app or tracking just now. I just want to get out there again and enjoy my morning run.

  • From #MayVinylChallenge to #JuneEdTechChallenge

    This month I have been enjoying playing along with the #MayVinylChallenge (thanks to Simon Horrocks, who helped me discover it), which I think was set up by the Founder of Women in Vinyl, Jenn D’Eugenio. As a side note, Women in Vinyl sounds like a great group and reminds me a lot of #FemEdTech.

    So… I sure I am not the only one who is looking for a bit more fun just now, and I am glad to say that fellow vinyl enthusiast and #altc blog editor David Hopkins is game to take inspiration from this community challenge and create our very own #altc community #JuneEdTechChallenge!

    Get ready to play along from 1 June… 🙂

  • #femEdTech: my fourth year as a guest curator

    Hello!

    It’s my privilege to reflect on my fourth year of volunteering as a guest curator for 2 weeks for @FemEdTech.

    If you haven’t come across it before, I encourage you to:

    The last time I curated the account was just over a year ago, in February 2020. In this post, I wrote about my experience, and the humanity I found in our hashtag, our network. Things had changed enormously since May 2018 when I first volunteered, and also March 2019, my second time as a guest curator.

    Each year, I used my time as a guest curator to reflect on how much our community had developed and grown and it is no different this year – and yet everything is different.

    No time, no energy

    Having time and energy for projects such as this, however important, has been impossible for many since the global pandemic we are still facing began. So if you are one of us who has struggled to keep your head just above water, above a cloud of depression or if you are bone-tired from home-schooling, care or just breathing, then this is especially for you:

    We hear you, we see you and you are just as much part of our community when you can’t engage as when you can. You are welcome here no matter how.

    There is no need to apologise or explain or feel guilty. If you made it through the past 12 months then that’s enough and I salute you.

    Equality matters.

    In these times of crisis, what we care about is important and seeing how many people have taken action to address inequalities in their own context is truly heartening. From fighting digital poverty to championing open knowledge sharing through initiatives such as the Open COVID Pledge for Education, the work everyone has put into supporting each other has been amazing.

    As we prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day 2021, which is something that I care about, I have been reflecting on the theme for this year: choose to challenge (#ChooseToChallenge).

    A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day.

    We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.

    From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge.

    https://www.internationalwomensday.com/theme

    There is a general call to action, to raise you hand, show your support and solidarity, and that is what for me curating the FemEdTech Twitter account is all about.

    Yes, full social, economic, and political equality for women, particularly in Learning Technology, is not the only challenge I want to work for, but it is one that I care about enough to make time and get active.

    So on this #IWD2021, if you can, join us on the #femEdTech hashtag and share what you #chooseToChallenge.

    P.S…. oh yes, and radio

    If you’d like to hear three women who have spent a year of lock down Sundays being silly and supporting each other via chat and tunes on the radio, then you are welcome indeed to join us on 7 March for an International Women’s Day Special radio show on DS106 radio.