Today is a big day! Together with colleagues from all across the UK, I am heading to London. It’s the Week of VocTech, and the annual showcase of everything that’s happening across the sector.
I feel fortunate to be continuing my work as Strategic Lead for the partnership between ALT and the Ufi VocTech Trust even though I stepped down as ALT’s CEO earlier this year. There’re a couple of reasons why: from a personal perspective, I love working in Vocational and Further Education because that’s where I took my first steps from alienated high school drop out to finding my way into further learning. Next, I love being part of a partnership where so much actively happens (and we have achieved much in the last few years). The biggest reason however is AmplifyFE. Yes, it’s a project, yes, it’s working in partnership, yes, there are awesome people involved, and it is also so much more than that: it’s a grassroots community of practice that is connecting the dots between individual practitioners, innovators and industry for the benefit of the learners furthest from opportunity. Since it’s launch in October 2020 (remember that time?) our community has grown to connect 2,700 practitioners.
Over the past twenty years I have worked with lots of projects that tried to achieve what we have done, and my bookmarks bar is a graveyard of moribund communities of practice in which tumbleweeds flourish. So what is the secret sauce of our success?
As we enter our fourth year, here are my reflections:
We connect, we don’t compete
When we first started setting up AmplifyFE, we were very clear that we were building a network of networks, not a new network. This distinction is key to our success: we don’t aim to replace or take over existing networks, we act as a meta network, an overarching connection that links one specialist group with another, one sector event with practitioners who don’t know where to start. We don’t wait for you to come to us. We try to find and come to you.
Part of our mission is to help those who are isolated within their institution or specialist subject, those EdTech or IT teams of one, to connect with people who speak their language and share their concerns.
We put everyone on the map
All of our artwork is created with Bryan Mathers via a Visual Thinkery process. Our community map was one of the first things we developed, and it was born out of a desire to show the communities and conversations that we already knew about and to allow others to (literally) put themselves on the map.
That’s a very powerful message to send. We say: put yourself on the map, and we will help others find you, join in and contribute. We want to map where the conversations about practice are really happening, no matter how informal or niche your interest. In a sector in which everyone is under pressure, short of funding and faced with mounting challenges, let’s connect you with the people who are in the same boat. We are not gatekeepers, we are map makers.
We reflect our community in our research and case studies
We also take a deeper diver into how learning technology and digital tools can be designed and deployed to support vocational learners most impacted by the ‘digital divide’. We explore what key advice can we give to those beginning or continuing an innovation journey in VocTech.
Our Insights Report shares fresh research and case studies that show what makes for truly successful co-creation between vocational educators and digital design project teams. We unpack how we can create effective learning solutions working in partnership with vocational learners to help narrow the ‘digital divide’ for those most in need of workplace skills development. Basically, we find practical examples that show what is the difference between what really works and what doesn’t deliver.
We learn from others
One of the phrases we think a lot about is ‘by the sector, for the sector’. I am always curious about what people mean when they say it. How much do you know about ‘the sector’ to begin with? How do you take part? How do you contribute? And what are you asking in return?
We work with a community that suffers greatly from the ever-changing policy and funding changes starting at top-level government policy, to sector bodies and then filtering down to the local level and to individual institutions. Excellent programmes are launched, and then disappear again 3 years later. Or funding is cut for frameworks and skills training that had been invested in for years.
From the outset, our work with AmplifyFE was designed to learn from that. We wanted to find the data that shows how much the constant changes impact on professional development and innovation. Since 2020 we have collected and analysed this data annually, and published the results in our sector audit.
It’s a fantastic piece of work that really shines a spotlight on the scale of change that Further and Vocational Education has to weather. We learn from that, and we aim to change that.
We use our funding to stay free and open
Thanks to the funding from the Ufi VocTech Trust and the partnership work between the trust and ALT, we benefit from three decades of expertise in how to run an independent community of practice and we can stay free and open to all practitioners to join.
And that brings me to the biggest lesson I learnt over the past three years:
We are here to stay
Building trust is key to our success. Our team (the fabulous Emma, Lynne, Chloe as well as Lou and also others) includes only people who really understand the sectors we serve, who have worked in Further and Vocational Education and often they still do. We are transparent about our aims and also what we won’t do (i.e. commercialise our community) .
Active communities of practice that grow are gold dust. We know from our sector audit how many communities disappear each year, either because no one is active or because of funding or policy changes. Or sometimes simply because a certain social network is taken over by madness. Remember the sector forums that suddenly closed? Or the demonstrator programme that stopped? Or the skills training that was cut? Well, we do, too. And that is why we are here to stay, actively supporting our community and amplifying what is happening across sectors as an independent network of network.
In February I shared the news that I will step down as ALT’s CEO this September to focus on my work as a coach. This is a monthly update on how things are progressing from my perspective, sharing some of the experiences along the way.
Reflecting on the past month at ALT
April had a very busy start indeed, as it was time for this year’s OER Conference. No matter how busy it was, OER23 was a blast, and I loved every minute of it. It was a special pleasure this year as this was my last big event as CEO. If you’d like to read more of my personal take on the conference, then head over to the dedicated post and, check out #OER23 on social media for lots of interesting conversations and folk involved in the event.
The recruitment panel who will appoint the next CEO of ALT is chaired by Professor Helen O’Sullivan. My part was to meet candidates for informal conversations about the role, and I enjoyed these meetings very much. With the interview process now underway, everyone has been involved in the preparations for these and you can feel the excitement, and nerves, mounting a little. The prospect of meeting the new CEO of ALT is now becoming a very real thing. ALT will be announcing the new CEO in early summer and you’ll have the opportunity to meet them at ALT’s Annual Conference this September. So look out for news #altc.
Other than that, my day to day work continues very much as usual. We are busily induction new members of staff, planning for ALT’s 30th anniversary and Annual Conference this September, and I have a lot of travel coming up, too. As well as attending events this month, I really enjoyed seeing my whole staff team in person for a site visit and lunch. It’s a rare pleasure for us as a mainly virtual team to get together in person, and I value those elements of blended collaboration and catching up very much.
What’s else is happening
With so much going on at work, I’m mindful of setting some goals and engaging in activities that aren’t work related: I’m finally getting back to regular running (having recovered from a serious injury last year) and thinking of signing up for some races to have additional motivation.
I’m also really looking forward to joining formal coach training from May, and spending my Saturday evenings with fellow coaches across different time zones. This is the final part of my formal training before I can apply for ICF accreditation, and I am excited about developing my practice further in the coming months.
And… not to forget my side project at the moment, a podcast-based course all about How to Lead Virtual Teams. It’s been fun designing something completely new to me and I am learning a lot as the course develops.
At the moment, a lot of my work is focused on the upcoming OER23 Conference. OER23 is the 14th annual conference for Open Education research, practice and policy is organised by ALT, the Association for Learning Technology, in partnership with UHI, the University of the Highlands and Islands. OER23 will bring together the strong Scottish Open Education movement and international participants to leverage our shared expertise for change in policy and practice. The conference will be co-chaired in partnership with the GO-GN Global OER Graduate Network, connecting emerging researchers and a global perspective with local and national knowledge.
Suffice to say, I am super excited about this event which I have been fortunate enough to help organise since 2015 and which is always a great highlight of my year. This year, I am especially looking forward to heading up to the conference, partly because it’s in one of my favourite parts of the world, the Scottish Highlands, and partly because it will give me a chance to catch up with many friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in a while, including long-time collaborator, Lauren Hanks.
Lauren and I have been talking about hybrid working and leading virtual teams for the past few years, and at least year’s OER Conference we even ran a session together: As leaders of virtual teams, we critically examined what lessons we can learn from open approaches to learning and teaching and how we can use that knowledge in an increasingly virtual workplace. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about why open practice is so important for knowledge workers, and particularly managers and leaders who work in hybrid, distributed or fully virtual teams:
Sharing practice openly to improve practice
A few years now I was fortunate to interview a manager from Google together with my then colleague Martin Hawksey. We spent an interesting hour talking about leading a virtual team, and what struck me (and what’s stayed with me since) is how similar some of the challenges were and the solutions we had each come up with. Similar despite the fact that Google and a small, independent charity with less than 10 employees where clearly very different workplaces.
It struck how easily we forget to share how we work alongside what we do outside of formal training and development. Yes, there is a whole industry out there dedicated to workplace learning, but few of us who work in education or the third sector have a lot of scope to engage with that day to day. More often than not, a project deadline or the start of term looms large, and so we focus on the output of what we have achieved, rather than how.
In order to overcome that challenge, I build into my work routine a moment to reflect on WHY something went well or not, alongside what the outcome has been. For example, if I found a way to improve a workflow or manage my time for a project more efficiently, then I will share that with my colleagues as I go along. That is how “show & tell” time was brought into our weekly team meetings.
I am less interested in the amazing outcome of something than I am in how it was achieved and what made it work or fail. Crucially, I am most interested in sharing those insights to help us as a team and an organisation learn from that, and to help others avoid our mistakes and build on our work.
Hybrid and remote teams often focus on reporting outputs, rather than process, and so it is especially relevant for us working in virtual teams to create routine moments for reflecting and learning together casually.
Opening up space for sharing leadership practice
A really common issue for leaders in this space is worrying about “is it just me who is struggling with this?”. When everyone works from home and all you see is a carefully curated or blurred background with a professional, well-groomed headshot framed by a flattering camera angle, it can be hard to get a sense of how others are coping day to day and easy to feel that you are the only one who is struggling.
Complaining about workload or being busy is in my experience a lot more common than the kinds of problems you experience when you are leading a team or a large project. Performance management, HR trouble, lack of productivity, loss of communication… these are just a few of the issues that commonly challenge us and that can be difficult to talk about.
This is often compounded by working with colleagues who have a large online presence. When you see blog posts, podcasts or social media conversations all sharing exciting updates or personal successes, or when you see those group chats full of cheer and inside jokes rolling past you, then how do you join in? Where is the space for questions about things you are not sure of or worry you are doing wrong?
Open practice in a leadership position is different from sharing things like new publications, or blogging about exciting projects. It opens up a space to share the practice of leading, of managing people, not just the end results.
Modelling leadership with intentional communication
One of the most challenging aspects of leading people or projects in hybrid or remote teams is lack of comparison. In a traditional workplace you’d see more examples of how others lead, what their meetings or one-to-one catch ups might look like, how they deal with difficult situations or simply how they act day to day when at their desk or on campus.
Depending on how hierarchical or closed an organisation you worked for, you may see a lot of conversations happening behind closed doors, or at the pub after work, but even a lack of openness would set some kind of example.
Mediated by technology, tools and platforms, leadership can be a lot harder to observe. There is a lot of communication that you may never be aware of at all, happening in individual or group chats you are not part of, and during meetings certain ways of behaving may be the result of technical issues, lack of digital competency or simply a bad hair day. It’s much, much harder to observe how others lead effectively (or not), and to learn from that approach for yourself when everyone works remotely.
It’s also a lot harder for teams to follow the example of those who lead them, as there is so much that is not visible. You can’t really tell if your Line Manager is working hard or watching videos on YouTube when you never see them. What it comes down to is a much greater need to intentionally communicate to fill in the blanks created by hybrid working. Here are some examples from my own experience:
Tell colleagues what to expect from a meeting ahead of time, and be specific about what kind of engagement you are looking for from them;
Share when you are having a screen break or stepping away from work for a bit, to normalise taking breaks;
Set out a clear format for regular activities like 1-to-1 catch ups, and communicate what’s the same for everyone, so that others can learn from that example when organising their own meetings.
In my last post, I reflected on the benefits of a monthly newsletter as a tool for reflection and monitoring progress. For example, I shared how looking at my blog posts for the month gives me a chance to think about aspects of my work I have enjoyed and want to do more of, things I’d prefer to spend less time on, what I want to focus on in the coming month and what is going on the back burner or stopping all together.
This kind of approach, focusing on what to stop/start or do more/less of is generally helpful, but I find it particularly effective when I review what I have been working on and can use specific examples. Now, in my CEO role, my team and I have started to use Asana last year to support collaboration and reporting across the organisation. I found it extremely useful from the start, but transferring all of my personal to do lists and productivity habits into a new platform has taken some time. As I became more confident in the platform, I found new ways to manage my workload and to review my own progress.
One example of this, is that I have started to use Asana more for my weekly work planning, and I wanted to share some tips about how I do that:
1. Reporting
The reporting menu in Asana comes with a “My first dashboard” set up, and I have used this to set up a personal view of tasks by going into each one of the charts and adding a filter that selects only me as an assignee of the tasks being reported on. This way, I can see all of my tasks at a glance.
It’s the first time in my career that I can analyse my workload at this level of detail, and it’s fascinating to compare my own sense of how things are going and what I am spending time on with what the dashboard view captures. It’s a useful exercise for me to consider what’s not being captured and why.
Most of the time, I find leadership related activities are absent from the reporting. Although I have both shared and private plans that capture most of what I do “think about staffing problem” or “ruminate on difficult email response” type tasks are not always easy to quantify.
2. Unscheduled tasks
One of the key priorities for us as a team in order to make the most of Asana, is to ensure ALL tasks we add have a deadline and are assigned to someone. I get a lot of tasks assigned to me, and using the reporting feature helps me identify the proportion of tasks that are currently without a due date and thus falling off my radar.
I love the discipline and accountability a tool like Asana brings with it, particularly as it helps you capture what you are doing wrong (planning work without giving it a deadline or a lead) as well as what you are doing right. It’s fascinating for me to reflect on why this is happening in certain areas of the work we are doing, as it often points to a lack of communication or clarity elsewhere, which in turn helps me understand what I communicate effectively and what I need to do better to get across.
3. My Tasks
In Asana the Board view of My Tasks is starting to feel more helpful to me. I have set up a “To do this week” section, which I add tasks to at the start of my week. That helps me get a sense of whether my workload is reasonable or not.
I have also set up a CPD section for myself, in which I dump all CPD related stuff. I then have a recurring monthly task that reminds me to review this section. I intend to use this section as a short-cut to complete my CPD list during my next appraisal.
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… .
This blog post is a signpost.. one of many “I am leaving this platform… follow me on here” messages that folk are sharing at the moment in the wake of the continued [insert your own word here] on Twitter. So if you’d like to connect professionally, follow my updates or learn more about my work, here’s where to find me:
Read, listen, subscribe
Monthly newsletter I send out a monthly email newsletter with updates about my work, posts and resources. It’s a handy way to have everything on one place. It’s currently hosted on Mailchimp and you can subscribe/unsubscribe anytime.
Podcast: Leading Virtual Teams Available on a range of platforms and RSS feed, my weekly podcast about home/hybrid working, leading teams online and finding life/work balance with special guests and resources baked in for extra goodness.
LinkedIn: Maren Deepwell Look out for posts about the work we do in Learning Technology, projects, new reports and also recruitment. I also share news about upcoming talks, articles I have written and other #edtech news on here.
Mastodon: @marendeepwell@ds106.social.us I 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 came across in the fediverse.
Instagram: @marendeepwell I take a lot of photos and enjoy sharing the visual aspects of my work. Expect posts about plants and snapshots about hybrid/home office life alongside work projects and coaching resources.
Twitter @marendeepwell For the time being, I’ll continue to share professional updates and posts #altc . Follow @A_L_T for news from the Association for Learning Technology.
