{"id":2301,"date":"2019-12-08T10:23:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T10:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marendeepwell.com\/?p=2301"},"modified":"2019-12-08T10:23:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T10:23:21","slug":"2019-its-been-a-femedtech-kind-of-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marendeepwell.com\/?p=2301","title":{"rendered":"2019 – It\u2019s been a #femEdTech kind of year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you don\u2019t think gender inequality (in Learning Technology) is an issue that concerns you, this post is especially for you. Welcome!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those readers who are already interested in this topic, welcome back. It\u2019s been a #femEdTech<\/a> kind of year \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maren Deepwell, Laura Czerniewicz, Helen Beetham<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the last few years I have been actively involved as a volunteer in community efforts to promote gender equality in Learning Technology but this year my day job as CEO of the Association for Learning Technology took on a decidedly more #femEdTech flavour.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, it\u2019s important to acknowledge that gender inequality is certainly not the only issue we are facing in Learning Technology and that there are other forms of inequality and discrimination that we need to continue to address and challenge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nonetheless it remains an issue from the gender pay gap to the gender data gap, representation at conferences and on executive boards, in policy making, on social media and so forth.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I am in a position of relative privilege I can often exert influence over who I work with, who gets invited and who has a voice in what I do. But as soon as I leave my sphere of influence I am back to being the token female speaker on the agenda, the only woman around the table, the woman who gets trolled. Sigh. Sometimes cry. Often shout!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, I am going to share the key pieces of my work on equality in Learning Technology from 2019. I hope they will be useful to you to explore, share, reuse:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My year started at with a talk that brought together the threads of community, openness and equality:
Community, Openness, Equality: a keynote in three hashtags #SocMedHE18 (talk<\/a>,\u00a0video<\/a>):\u00a0Social Media for Learning in Higher Education<\/a>\u00a0conference, 9 January 2019. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Promoting equality in a distributed organisation<\/a>, joint keynote with Martin Hawksey for International Women\u2019s Day, University of the Highlands and Islands, 8 March 2019<\/strong>; this particular talk and the work we presented from the ALT Annual Survey provided a basis for other talks later this year, particular in relation to exploring a gender perspective of the professionalisation in Learning Technology, job roles and changes to this over the past 5 years:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who\u2019s responsible for the future of open?<\/a>\u00a0#femedtech #oer19, contribution to #femedtech Open Space for OER19 conference;<\/strong> this is a short post I contributed to the #femedtech Open Space<\/a> for the OER19 Conference<\/a> in which I reflect on the importance of engagement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“… the only rule is to make use of your voice, to continue to engage and question, not to become indifferent or disengaged no matter how difficult that can seem at times. …It is, for me, a powerful reminder that we each have agency, and that taking part, contributing something that helps others understand our way of seeing the world, our perspective on open, our world view (as a women, as a feminist, as a contributor in my case) is a meaningful and important act.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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UnCommon Women meet up at the Creative Commons Global Summit 2019 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And this certainly isn’t limited to the work we do here in the UK, or even the #femEdTech network, as there are many other communities and projects with similar aims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing this thread and responding to the many requests for further information we received following the talk on International Women’s Day, we ran an online session to share more of the survey work: Webinar: Equality in Learning Technology: New insights from ALT\u2019s Annual Survey,<\/a>\u00a0 with Martin Hawksey, 15 May 2019<\/strong> and I was also invited to speak at a very interesting event on Technology and Education: opportunities and challenges for equality<\/a> at the University of Sussex, 17 May 2019.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n