I am REALLY looking forward to OER24 this year, not least of all because I get to share the stage with Martin as we present out (first ever) short talk on podcasts and radio. If you are curious what we’ll be talking about, you are in the right place:
Read a short summary of our talk
How do you share open practice and foster innovation in Open Education in the age of social media fragmentation? What supports and amplifies peer-learning and knowledge exchange between Open Education practitioners as social media platforms like X become increasingly hostile spaces?
This presentation examines how the changes in social media impact open practice and highlights alternative media of radio and podcasts as a way to share practice and explore ideas.
Podcasts have grown in popularity over the past decade, with many easy to use tools for their production and consumption. In 2022 50 percent of respondents in the US aged 12 to 34 years old had listened to a podcast within the preceding month and 79 percent of U.S. consumers aged 12 years or above are aware of podcasting, up by more than 30 percent from a decade ago. Their use in education is expanding, with Shamburg (2021) reporting that educators have used them to discuss topics in a more informal way.
They thus provide an ideal medium for exploring open practice and experimenting with ideas, formats and topics. Internet radio is not a new medium in open and distance education, and during the pandemic saw a resurgence as educators took to the airwaves on grassroots stations such as DS106 Radio. In this session the speakers will explore their experience of using these two forms of media to develop their own professional practice and explore ways of connecting with audiences beyond spaces such as X and share lessons learnt.
Listen to the preview
Join us as we discuss our presentation at OER24, a conference all about Open Education, 27-28 March 2024, Cork, Ireland. Listen to the preview podcast with Special guest: Martin Weller
In a month today, I’ll be at the OER Conference in Cork, and I am really looking forward to it! I am huge fan of this event, and encourage you to have a look at the programme and register if you haven’t yet done so and are planning to come.
This year I am co-presenting two short sessions, starting with Reclaiming #Edtech4life in Open Education which is a joint venture with Meredith (Fierro) Huffman and Jim Groom. Here’s what we are planning to speak about:
How do you make innovation work when the day job as an (edtech) educator gets ever busier? Where do you find not only solutions to practical problems but someone who speaks your language? When your day job is largely edtech focused and your focus is in practice, not policy or research, it can be challenging to find communities of practice that advocate for open – open in the sense of software and licensing, but also open in the sense that the community is welcoming, open to new ideas, and open to change.
Over the past 10 years our organisation has built a growing community of practice on the back of our day to day business activities. Yes, we are a small commercial company, but we bring a lot of expertise of working in Higher Ed to the table and we walk the walk of open education.
In this presentation we’ll share practical approaches inspired by communities like Equity Unbound and the ALT Open Education Special Interest Group to connect with educators and edtechs from across the US and internationally sharing practice via community chats, micro courses, live streams and radio shows. We’ll share lessons learnt from running a hub for professional development every day of the year, a place in which open educators can engage in anything from trouble-shooting wordpress installations to tinkering with next generation tools. We offer a safe space to explore with peers, to play, to fail and make new connections along the way.
Last week Meredith and I did a community stream all about our prep for the conference as well as sharing lots of the love we have for the event, memories from previous years and giving a bit of a preview of what we hope to speak about.
You can watch the recording below, and join us on the road to OER24! See you there 🙂
Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to my free monthly newsletter:
At the start of the year, I shared my intention to find more joy in music and radio. Music is a great way to brighten up busy days, especially at this time of year. The days are long and grey, the sun is only slowly making a return to early mornings and evening after work. I don’t know about you, but I can use every bright spot I can find just now.
Now, plenty of us listen to the radio or to music as we work, so I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that I, too, love a few tunes to cheer up my Monday mornings. In my case, I have a couple of different ways to enjoy music at my desk:
There’s background beats and meditation music to start with. Whether I listen to Lou Reed’s Hudson River Meditations, the sounds of rain against a window or lo-fi background beats, a calm soundtrack is usually part of my daily routine. My dog Posey settles down in her basket next to my desk as soon as she hears the low music start to flow through my office. She knows that this is the signal that I am going to be lost in spreadsheets or working on a new course design for a few hours.
Then there’s listening to albums and playlists. I usually prefer to listen to vinyl on my record player, which is about 4 feet from my seat. There’re some practical advantages to listen to records rather than digital music: I need to get up every so often to flip the record, which is good for my body. Also, the play time of the record is limited, rather than endless as it would be on a digital platform, prompting a break from work to decide what next to play. I might walk downstairs to get another record and make some tea. It’s a healthy disruption.
I do also listen to digital music, usually playlists, and that can be an excellent way to find the right soundtrack for a particular time of the week. Fridays for example I often listen to beach/holiday themed playlists.
Commercial radio is rarely my choice of listening, mostly because I find the disruptions of talking annoying, but I do love indie internet radio.
Talking of radio, I am a big fan of working radio, playing and sharing tunes with colleagues, and I am very lucky that the folk I work with at Reclaim are into this, too. Cue a lot of afternoons of random tunes on our in-house radio station. To me, it’s a fabulous way to connect with folk across timezones. Especially if you are all distributed across the globe, radio can be a powerful way to connect.
For this blog post there is a special podcast with tunes that you can listen to on Spotify. Alternatively, I have listed the songs in the show notes for the episode so that you can listen along on the platform of your choice. Enjoy!
It’s the time between Christmas and New Year and here in Wales it’s raining buckets. The world is grey and it’s closing in… creating a cosy, liminal space between the old year and the new. It’s the perfect time to listen to music.
Now, I am very lucky to have gotten a record player as a present this year (making us, ehem…. a FOUR record players household. One for the living room, a portable one for travel, and one in each of our offices). It’s a reflection of how much music we listen to and also that we spent a LOT of time at home as we both work from home permanently.
I am REALLY excited about the record player, probably more excited than I thought I would be. I do buy vinyl records but I don’t collect them and I already have digital ways of listening to music in my office, so although I was playing with the idea of getting one, I wasn’t set on it. Now that it’s here, sitting happily between art books and stationary, I love it. I love it because it’s encouraging me to get up, to listen to more music and to indulge in my creative side. The side that buys nearly exclusively new music and enjoys the hope that comes with that. When I was a teenager, I wistfully bought records recorded decades before I was even born. I had a sense that the best time in music had happened before I had a chance to experience it. And although I still enjoy music from previous decades, nowadays much of what I listen to is contemporary. People create incredible things in the here and now.
One of the things I want to do more of in 2024 is to enjoy things, and a couple of weeks ago I decided that as part of that effort, I would focus on buying more new music, and… also to finally get my act together and sort out my own radio set up. I love internet radio and so far I have always been reliant on the kind help of others to make it happen.
So for 2024, the motto is: Vinylcasting, here I come!
I always enjoyed doing radio in the past, and luckily my colleagues in the Reclaim team are always up for a bit of working radio, so I am hoping to get into a regular habit of playing music whilst I am working and sharing new music I like along the way.
Once I have more details, I’ll share them so you can listen in.
Liked this post? Subscribe to my free monthly newsletter:
It’s Winter Solstice today and over the past few years this has become the date on which I write my review of the year. For me, these reflections are a helpful way to wind down from work and move to focus on things away from screens, to get outdoors, walk the dogs and enjoy the luxury of not having a schedule.
Posey, who is asleep in her basket next to me, has been my work companion for much of this year, adjusting to days spent in a room filled with exciting things that *could* be chewed, but that, thanks to the wisdom and patience that being nearly two brings with it, are still mostly intact.
Attentive and highly intelligent, she has learnt our schedule off by heart, and knows exactly when video calls end, when we go and make tea (and go outside while we wait for the kettle to boil), and when, best of all, it’s time to head out for our big daily walk in the woods, along the canal or at the river.
When I look back at what I wrote this time last year, I can’t quite grasp how much has changed and how much has been achieved in the past twelve months. It’s mind boggling. In a good way.
At the same time, it’s been a mixed year for me personally. Great happiness and joy at home were overshadowed by a serious injury that required trips to the hospital for me, as well as much family upheaval and emergencies.
This is why it is especially important to me not to move on from this year without making space to celebrate the milestones of the past year, and to express my gratitude for inspiring and supportive colleagues, collaborators and friends.
No. 1 ALT is thriving at (nearly) 30
This is the first time since 2019, that we look back at a year during which we accomplished what we set out to do! Having spent much of the intervening period in crisis response mode, it’s a huge achievement for our Association to meet the strategic and operational goals we set for the year and, importantly, make real progress on the road to financial recovery post-pandemic.
This year was a year of firsts for us, from the first new hybrid format conferences to the first comprehensive governance review, new partnerships and projects, a new events programme and CMALT course development. I am hugely proud of all we have achieved this year (and the Impact Report that shares our highlights), and especially thankful for all the hard work our staff have contributed, led by our COO, Kerry.
We have also started long-term projects to overhaul some of our infrastructure, policies and practices, making them fit for the needs of a growing and diverse community as we prepare to celebrate our 30th anniversary. ALT was founded in February 1993, and it continues to be my absolute privilege to be part of the work we do as CEO.
No. 2 Leading Virtual Teams
When we closed our office doors in February 2018, we embarked on a new chapter in the organisation’s history, establishing new ways of working. We wanted to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk and… achieve more of our strategic aims with a distributed workforce and lower overheads.
I have led the organisation throughout this journey, weathering the ups and downs of operational transformation, and managing the crisis that hit us along the way. It’s been a huge learning curve for all of us, and we have shared what we learnt along the way in blog posts and webinars.
In this spirit of sharing knowledge, we came together earlier this month to celebrate the book launch of Leading Virtual Teams, with ALT’s Chair, Prof Helen O’Sullivan. You can now access the recording of us in conversation, sharing insights into ALT’s journey to becoming a virtual organisation and the story of how this book came to be and download your free digital copy.
Writing a book has long been a dream of mine, and I am thrilled with the kind comments and feedback I received. Thank you!
No. 3 A year of #femEdTech curation
Since February, 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.
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 conversations may move elsewhere, but for this year, our network came back together around the #FemEdTech hashtag. And what a year we had.
Much of the focus of my work is in Higher Education, but this year, FE, Further Education, took centre stage. Working in partnership with Ufi VocTech Trust, ALT established AmplifyFE. Amplify is a ‘network of networks’ which launched in October 2020 and already connects over 2000 professionals in Further Education and Vocational Education, providing a strong networking community for them to share, collaborate and learn.
I love working in this space, and salute the inspiring colleagues that are part of our efforts. In my first year as CEO I was invited to join the Ministerial working group that published the influential FELTAG report, through which I met many long time colleagues and friends (including Bryan Mathers! A story which I re-told in The True Story of how a Westminster meeting led to… penguins, True Stories of Openness).
Many of us who are passionate about FE share a sense of frustration as unhelpful policy changes and drastic funding cuts continue to threaten this important sector. What happens to professional practice when these changes occur doesn’t often make the headlines, and part of the work we do as AmplifyFE is to chart exactly that: The 2022 community of practice audit covers over 260 communities of practice and provides a full new dataset and key findings, charting important changes to the sector landscape, including which communities have stopped or started their activities. When we launched the AmplifyFE Communities of Practice Sector Audit at the Week of VocTech, hosted by Ufi VocTech Trust, on the 14 November 2022, we had a fantastic response and this project continues to create insightful (and openly available) data that can be used by providers and policy makers as well as individual practitioners.
Thanks to support from our partners, we were able to share our work on a bigger, international stage: Levelling up Learning by Connecting Communities in Vocation Education and Training, a session I presented together with Emma Procter-Legg, at the OEB Global Conference in, Berlin, Germany, on 24 November was a huge milestone for us!
No. 5 The return of travel
That brings us to the return of travel.. or ‘meetings with legs’ and the singular pleasure of connecting with colleagues in person once again. I appreciated meeting my staff again for the first time after too long, to see Trustees and volunteers in person and, most importantly for ALT, to celebrate the return of hybrid events. OER22 was Co-Chaired by the Global OER Graduate Network, and was the first hybrid edition of this much-loved event and a stellar moment of community for us. A highlight for me was a special talk by Dr María Soledad Ramírez Montoya, UNESCO-ICDE Chair and part of the Open Educational Movement for Latin America, Tecnologico de Monterrey. Maria shared the work of the R4C-IRG Interdisciplinary Research Group: Scaling Complex Thinking for All at the Institute for the Future of Education.
My first trip of the year that involved an actual plane (for the first time since 2019) was an inspiring Assessment Hackathon, hosted at the Dublin City University on 25 May. This was closely followed by the run up to ALT’s Annual Conference in Manchester. It was a pleasure to see the conference convene successfully in a hybrid format for the first time. The event ended just minutes before the UK’s national period of mourning was announced, which meant that our community wasn’t able to share output from the event as widely. That doesn’t mean however that there isn’t a wealth of inspiration and resources to share, and I encourage you to explore the recordings from the conference sessions and the voices of the conference we have collated.
No. 6 Looking beyond COVID-19
The return of travel and the experience of hybrid events, reconnecting in person, gave me a sense of hope and looking beyond the pandemic even when the impact of the past few years could still be felt. The publication of Digital Learning in Higher Education – COVID-19 and beyond; which we celebrated with a launch webinar was a milestone on this journey.
I am grateful that I had the opportunity to co-author a chapter (Further non-teaching perspectives on aspects of the higher education sector impacted by COVID-19) with Matt Smith, Interim Head of Primary Education, University of Wolverhampton. It’s been inspiring to see this kind of initiative up close, and to be able to contribute some of the findings from ALT’s Annual Survey to this volume and also in this report on how the profession is changing.
No. 7 Open Voices
It’s been a year that prompted a lot of thinking about openness for me. Early on I was invited to contribute to OEG Voices 028: Looking into 2022 a wonderful podcast hosted by Alan Levine, which came out in February. Alan is a wonderful inspiration for so much of the work in open education, and I always value our conversations and the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from the OE Global community. Both OER22 and then later MYFest, the “Mid-Year Festival” (MYFest) which offered a “recharge and renewal experience” organised by Equity Unbound, offered opportunities to learn and listen which I valued very much. One practice I learnt more about is Intentionally Equitable Hospitality, and it prompted me to reflect more on the spaces with which we engage and how we can critically reflect and act in this context.
Towards the later part of the year I took part in OERCamp22 – zugehOERt 092 auf dem OERcamp: From Open Learning to Open Working, a conference podcast hosted by the one and only Chahira Nouira. Although we tried hard to make it happen, Chahira and I didn’t quite get to quite meet in person this year yet the warmth of the conversation made up for it!
No. 8 Hybrid working adventures
Since the start of the year I had DS106 in my life. As well as more impromptu radio jams with friends, I completed the first season of Remote Working Radio, monthly on DS106Radio. The radio show has since moved to become a podcast, but throughout the year the radio has been a place of joy and collaboration, story telling and listening.
A related project, with the amazing folk at Reclaim EdTech, was to work with Lauren Hanks on Hacks for Hybrid Working, a 4 week flex course in November. It was interesting to learn more about the format of flex courses, which are run regularly each month in the Reclaim EdTech community (check out the events calendar). I have experience of different formats of courses, but I hadn’t come across one yet that uses this format, combination of Discord, blog posts, videos and interactive sessions. With a blend of synchronous and asynchronous element, I love that these course fit around busy schedules, and are available to offer expertise and support when needed.
A highlight of the four weeks was definitely a hybrid working radio show on DS106 radio, for which we were joined by Jim Groom. Chatting hybrid working hacks for an hour was definitely too short! It was also stimulating for me to step into a different role professionally, and getting to focus on the design and delivery of a course. It’s been a few years since I last did that and it was useful to flex those muscles once again.
I also joined the ds106.social server and you can connect with me @marendeepwell[@]social.ds106.us. I do not post the same things across different platforms, so at the moment it’s a mix of reflections/comments on blog posts, pictures and re-sharing what I come across in the fediverse.
No. 9 Becoming a accredited coach
In January I officially started my coach training in order to become an accredited coach, an ICF Associate Certified Coach, via Katie Linder’s Higher Ed Coach Training. With a year of training and practice under my belt, I have started to develop my approach designed for professionals working in the third sector, education and learning technology, with a focus on leadership and career development, managing change and creative problem solving.
Being a CEO is a very rewarding role, which takes up a lot of my focus day to day. Over time, I have learnt that I am more effective in my role if it’s not my only priority. I like to keep learning and keep some hands on practice alongside my executive role. So for most of the past ten years, I have worked as on a free-lance basis alongside my role as a CEO, devoting a day a week to other projects.
I do some coaching with organisations and teams as part of my work for ALT, specifically supporting digital transformation and strategic development. Training to become a certified coach has given me the opportunity to offer some 1-to-1 coaching alongside my day job.
I am looking forward to completing the next part of my formal training in 2023 and become an ICF Associate Certified Coach.
No. 10 A thank you to blogging
My blog has a regular readership in the hundreds, so not particularly huge, and I mostly blog for myself. Sometimes to curate resources to refer to, sometimes to share practical tips, but largely it’s a space for me to think about what I am interested in and share parts of that.
In 2020 I really struggled for what to say. Work kept going, but my professional practice was so dominated by the crisis response, that I found it hard to articulate anything. Since then, I have published a lot on different platforms, but most of it is very much directed at the work I do, focused on projects like my book or specific events.
More recently, with the Twitter/Mastodon conversation in full swing, I came to the conclusion that I need to blog more. To hear my own voice represented here. I started blogging more than 20 years ago and I am grateful that I can continue that practice here, on my own domain.
So my intention for 2023 is to blog more, continue to reflect, learn and listen… .
In the past couple of months I had the wonderful opportunity to work on a project outside my day job. Together with the awesome folk at Reclaim EdTech, and working closely with Lauren Hanks, we embarked on a journey to design and run a four week flex course all about hybrid working.
It was interesting to learn more about the format of flex courses, which are run regularly each month in the Reclaim EdTech community (check out the events calendar). I have experience of different formats of courses, but I hadn’t come across one yet that uses this format, combination of Discord, blog posts, videos and interactive sessions.
With a blend of synchronous and asynchronous element, I love that these course fit around busy schedules, and are available to offer expertise and support when needed.
What the course was about
This particular course focused on a different topic each week, and here is a quick overview quoting Lauren Hanks’ post:
EVENT SUMMARY
For many of us in Higher Ed, hybrid working is here to stay. So whether you’d like to create a better work/life balance juggling being on campus with working from home, or you are looking to move from crisis mode to a way of working that is more sustainable, healthful or simply a little more joyful, this course is for you. Join us to explore hacks to create a better hybrid workplace for everyone.
We are excited to join forces with Dr Maren Deepwell, author of Leading Virtual Teams and each week features ideas to try out, prompts to reflect on and resources with a host of community voices. Here’s our topic list:
What I enjoyed most about the course are two things: firstly, it was super stimulating to work with Lauren, who, like me, lives and breathes the reality of leading a hybrid workforce day in, day out. We had a lot of fun running sessions, designing activities and reflecting on the questions from our participants.
It was a huge learning curve for me to work with a different team, in a new environment, and having such experienced collaborators made it all feel easy and interesting. You can always tell when you are working with folk who know how to work together virtually, and it was impressive to experience that as a ‘newbie’.
The other aspect of this project I really got a lot from was the input from everyone who took part. As well as synchronous conversations happening around live sessions, we had an ongoing chat for the course which brought up thought provoking points every week and activities like a splot site that gave us a glimpse of what other people’s homeworking and hybrid working spaces look and feel like.
We do something similar in my own team each year, and it never stops being useful to see what others’ day to day looks like in reality.
A highlight of the four weeks was definitely a hybrid working radio show on DS106 radio, for which we were joined by Jim Groom. Chatting hybrid working hacks for an hour was definitely too short!
It was also stimulating for me to step into a different role professionally, and getting to focus on the design and delivery of a course. It’s been a few years since I last did that and it was useful to flex those muscles once again.
Look out for a podcast coming soon, in which Lauren and I will reflect together and share our perspectives on Hacks for Hybrid Working 🙂
