Maren Deepwell

Tag: #femedtech

  • Looking forward to my 12th ALT Annual Conference – completely online

    Looking forward to my 12th ALT Annual Conference – completely online

    My first ALT Annual Conference was in 2009 in Manchester (I missed the first year I was working for ALT because I was submitting my PhD that September).

    Umbrellas, badges, fire alarms.. looking back

    In 2019 we were in Manchester, in the magnificent (and at times chilly) McEwan Hall. 2018 was in Manchester to celebrate 25 years of ALT with custom pin badges and a special gala dinner! in 2017 we took the conference to Liverpool for the first time, and as well as a lot of fun, this year will always stay in my head as the year in which we had a fire alarm during a keynote (I did my best flight attendant impression for that one).

    2016 we were in Warwick, and things took a playful turn with a special conference game. in 2015 we were in Manchester as well and maybe one of my all time favourite keynotes from Laura Czerniewicz. 2014 was the first Annual Conference in Warwick, 2013 was the 20th anniversary conference in Nottingham, 2012 (also in Manchester) was my first conference as CEO, 2011 took place in Leeds, 2010 we were in Nottingham and that year I think it was so wet we bulk bought umbrellas and 2009, my first outing at the conference, was in Manchester with balloons and sweets at the ALT stand.

    In 2020, we were planning to take the conference to London for the first time, and that was the first time we had to cancel our Annual Conference all together. Instead, we held a crisis summit.

    This year, we were determined to hold our Annual Conference, as its such a special event for our Members and our community, so we headed online to make sure it would all go ahead as planned.

    Today, our 2021 Annual Conference is getting underway.

    Custom emoji, treasure hunt and yoga… looking ahead

    It takes to make this conference happen, and planning has been underway for 9 months, led by the Co-Chairs and Conference Committee. Over 150 speakers are running over 90 sessions over 4 days. There are 350 participants from 24 countries coming online, supported by a staff team of 10 and plenty of volunteers, too.

    As everyone who works in Learning Technology knows, it takes a lot of creativity and ingenuity to make an activity online feel like fun – and we work hard to make that happen. To create conference fun online whilst working on a properly robust conference delivery with a difference.

    There is a CMALT Ceremony complete with balloons and custom emoji on the chat channels in the social space. There is a hallway chat (both text and voice) in which folk can hangout in and bump into each other. There is a gala evening with a glitzy film premiere. There is a Helpdesk staffed with a team to help with everything from access codes to finding rooms.

    There is a shop for conference goodies, a community report launch and a treasure hunt, yoga and meditation sessions. Plus a quiz, panel discussions, keynotes and parallel sessions.

    The programme is designed to be rich, but not overwhelming, and there are plenty of breaks, late starts and social activities to drop in to when time permits.

    Say hi!

    DM me on the conference Discord site or @ me on Twitter, or email me if you prefer. It’d be great to say hello and hear from you #altc21.

  • Poseidon, bin collector, judge. What I wanted to be when I was a kid.

    Poseidon, bin collector, judge. What I wanted to be when I was a kid.

    When things are busy, it can be tough to make time and space for YOU. So in order to make some space for ME on MY blog, this is a blog post all about… me 🙂

    Reflecting on ‘career’ progress for want of a better word is an important part of charting your own development, and this is something I have been doing as part of reviewing and updating my Senior CMALT Portfolio. The time frame for updating the portfolio is the last 3 years… but what we I look back 30+ years instead?

    How has my path changed since I first decided on what I wanted to do in life? Well, it all started with.. ketchup.

    Hot dog vendor

    Yep, growing up in what was then West Germany in the 80s made me a child who had a fondness for both, sausages and ketchup. Hence, my first career plan involved (what seemed to me) an endless daily supply of both. Whilst I am glad that this particular plan didn’t work out for me, I am still absolutely a fan of sausage on a barbecue AND ketchup.

    Early school years

    Bin collector: Obviously because of jumping on and off a moving vehicle, which looked like a LOT of fun to me.

    Circus conductor: as you can see from the cover image of this post, a fancy dress party my parents organised for my sister’s 16th (?) birthday gave me the opportunity to try out what it would be like to be a circus conductor, and needless to say I enjoyed it very much. Animals. Travel. Being in charge… what’s not to like 😉

    Poseidon: my fancy dress costume of choice at pre-school, patiently produced by my talented mother from green fabric, green netting and plenty of home-made paper and foil fish as well as a cardboard trident, was Poseidon. I proudly climbed up into the school bus on the day, only to meet rather puzzled classmates, who weren’t quite sure why I was dressed in a green bedsheet covered in fish whilst they wore princess dresses or the armour of superheroes. Still, being of the sea has always attracted me, and I still smile when I think back to that particular outfit.

    Astronaut: in primary school I had an inspiring teacher, who taught us sciences with such enthusiasm, that we not only learnt about photosynthesis, but in my case also got inspired to go into space. Willy was a teacher who welcomed all questions and valued curiosity above all else.

    Later school years

    Horse breeder: I can’t remember anymore which books I read, but for some time during my early teenage years, I was into horses, big time. We had a neighbour with an elderly horse that needed care, and Blacky proved to be an ideal horse for me to spend time with. I was a bit too afraid of riding to really get into it, and not physically confident, but I enjoyed walking him around the paddock, looking after him and… reading books about horses. My fantasy of having a farm and breed horses (ideally somewhere in the Irish countryside) involved wearing wellies, and being outside with horses and dogs. That, minus the horses, is how I like to spend my free time now… only in the Welsh countryside.

    Judge: At some point during the turbulent years of teenage hood, I became very interested in ethics and the legal system. I read a lot as a teenager, mostly books that were far too serious (I still have a full set of Kafka in black paperback from that period) and the idea of being part of something that could help set things right in the world, at least in my young eyes, was appealing.

    College and university

    Once I started college in London, my seventeen year old self discovered a lot of new opportunities and careers. Through my mostly low paid bar and customer service jobs I met people who had interesting, creative careers: cinema projectionists, coffee roasters, art collectors, book shop owners, academics, artists, musicians and many, who were many years older and worked behind the same shop or bar counter as me.

    Artist: throughout my college and undergraduate years, my focus was on my creative practice. It was challenging and interesting and provided me with freedom that subjects like law or science wouldn’t have. I loved art school. I didn’t love selling the work I made. I didn’t end up pursuing a career in art, but the things I learnt, the ways of thinking and being curious, are still very much part of my daily practice.

    Anthropologist: when I returned from a scholarship at the Athens School of Fine Arts, I was looking to do a postgraduate degree, and one MA, in Material and Visual Culture, attracted me in particular. It was a great course that introduced me to a whole new discipline and opened up a world of new perspectives in my head. I was still working in a café and a bookshop during my first postgraduate year, so my time to engage with student life was limited. That changed during my research degree years, when I managed to get a scholarship, and study cemeteries for a few years. My thesis has an intensely practical focus: how to bury people in the 21st century whilst respecting the burial culture of the past. But even I never expected to have a career in cemeteries.

    Learning Technologist: When the opportunity came along to work on a new VLE, Moodle, being introduced in my department at university, I immediately applied for the summer job and spent happy months setting up dozens of modules. That was the start of my work in Learning Technology, and it has lead to me a field that I am still working in today.

    Now

    Every Myers-Briggs test I have ever done described me as someone who is good at making decisions, good at leading, and I enjoy the variety of being in a leadership position that brings new challenges with it every day. I guess it’s no surprise that I will be celebrating 10 years of being a CEO next year, and that is a milestone I am looking forward to reflecting on in my CMALT Portfolio update.

    I am not sure if what I do now would seem like a good thing to the me who wanted to be Poseidon or breed horses. What I am sure about is that younger me would love the dog, and be happy about me writing a book.

  • We are looking for a COO… a look behind the recruitment doors

    We are looking for a COO… a look behind the recruitment doors

    We are currently recruiting for a Chief Operations Officer for ALT, and I couldn’t be more excited!

    It’s always great when you get to grow your team, particularly when there are only seven of you and each individual makes a big impact.

    Why this role, why now?

    We are the leading professional body for Learning Technology in the UK – and we have been pretty busy in the past eighteen months! Learning Technology has never been more in demand and as a consequence the work we do to support our growing community has increased month on month.

    After a year of supporting our Members through the global crisis, we have re-grouped and set out a strategic plan for the year ahead. 2020 was a tough year for us an independent charity as we traditionally generate half of our annual turnover from two face to face events. Thanks to our prudent financial strategy in past years, we had reserves to help us through times of crisis.

    Now we are planning ahead for post-pandemic times. Whilst we have an excellent track record delivering online activities and a lot of expertise in virtual events, we don’t just want to follow our old ways. Instead, we are starting to innovate and that has helped us redistribute our income streams and ensured that we are back to generating the charitable income we need to achieve our mission. Next, we are looking to develop blended ways of doing things and improving what we are already good at.

    In order to achieve that, we have created a new role and are looking to grow our staff team:

    The Chief Operations Officer (COO) is responsible for day-to-day operation of ALT, including technical infrastructure and systems used to deliver ALT’s services to 3,500 Members.  The COO acts as the Deputy for the Chief Executive and represents and advocates for ALT with our key stakeholders across sectors. 

    This is an opportunity to see projects through from conception to completion and play a part in shaping how we work and what we do. You will be reporting directly to and working closely with ALT’s CEO and have opportunities to develop your own skills in running an organisation in an innovative and human way. 

    https://www.alt.ac.uk/about-alt/work-us

    If that sounds like the kind of work you would enjoy, read on.

    An overhead image of a table with laptops on it and other work paraphernalia with a diverse group of people sitting around the table.
    Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

    Who is the team?

    ALT is governed by the Board of Trustees. Working with the Trustees and the wider membership is a small staff team – that’s us!

    For the past few months it’s been all ladies working in the team, and we are making a real effort to recruit the best candidates for each job whilst increasing the diversity of our team, which is a big priority for us (all recruitment and selection is undertaken in line with ALT’s aims and values and in accordance with ALT’s policy on equality and diversity).

    As it stands, we are based in three of the four nations in the UK; three of our team, that is 42%, are currently completing a PhD (and one of us already has hers) and over 40% of the team are either Certified Members of ALT or currently working towards their accreditation.

    As far as I know we have 5 cats and 5 dogs between us, and come Friday plenty of unicorns, too (Fridays we usually celebrate ‘unicorn’ day, a tradition even those of us who are not generally into things that are pink and fluffy have come to appreciate).

    We have a real range of backgrounds and have a former chartered surveyor as well as an expert in Victorian cemeteries in the team. As many of us work part-time, mostly 3 and 4 days a week, it’s quite common for us to have other responsibilities to focus on, be that studies, kids or other interests.

    If you’d like to find out what it is like for us working as a virtual team, read our blog post from earlier this year, celebrating three years as home-workers. Find out what our highlights and lowlights of pandemic working have been and how we thrive as a virtual team.

    You can also read more about how we work via a series of blog posts and an upcoming book on leading virtual teams that I am currently working on.

    A personal note

    When I first started working for ALT, as an Assistant Administrator (Maternity Cover) in 2008, I was just finishing my PhD and I had no inkling that a career in Learning Technology was ahead of me. As it turns out, the field has proven so interesting and challenging that I find always something new to do and to learn.

    The senior team of a small organisation is an exciting place to be. I love the freedom it gives me to make things happen, to be able to respond to the changing needs of our community without having a complicated hierarchy to negotiate. We believe in robust and transparent governance, and we get things done.

    I am proud to be part of a journey that has seen the size of our membership double several times since 2008, and writing our Impact Report 2021 has reminded me of how much we achieve as an organisation and as a team. For me it’s an exciting place to be with a good dollop of life/work balance and a team culture we all benefit from.

    Working for an independent charity with a staff team of fewer than ten people is a very different value proposition than working for a large institution such as a university or a commercial organisation with thousands of employees. For me, it’s a rewarding leadership position that allows me to practice what I preach 🙂

    Maren standing on top of the Garth Hill in South Wales near Cardiff, looking out over summer landscape.
    Not a working day… looking out over Cardiff countryside

    Find out more

    If you are interested to find out more, head over to the ALT website or contact me for an informal conversation.

    Apply by sending us your covering letter and your CV by 17 September 2021.

    All candidates will be notified after the initial short-listing by the end of September and short-listed candidates will be invited to online interviews in October.

    Cover image: Photo by Uta Scholl on Unsplash

  • My March ’21 in 10 Tweets

    March has been full of adventure and as we near the end of the month lockdown rules here in Wales have been relaxed and I look forward to slightly more options to venture away from home… safely. Cause of (cautious) celebration. So this is my March in ten tweets:

    FemEdTech Curation and International Women’s Day 2021

    It was 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.

    My curation slot also coincided with this year’s International Women’s Day and it was fantastic to connect with so many of the colleagues in the network.

    Dog Days of a different kind

    At the start of the month this young lady arrived in my life and this is my first experience of bringing up a puppy. That’s been a completely different kind of adventure, and a welcome one for sure (although not sleeping much to begin with didn’t make work or any other part of life any easier!). Thankfully, she’d settled in beautifully and with the help of a very good dog trainer we are making a LOT of progress (#CEOdogInTheMaking).

    Podcasts and articles published this month

    It’s been a super busy month recording podcasts and writing articles, and I had a lot of really interesting conversations which I am grateful for!

    New beginnings… and an anniversary

    I have been blogging more about leading a virtual team this month:

    What’s best?

    Getting ‘back to the office’?

    Staying with working from home?

    Who decides and what should we base this decision on?

    Having led my team from being office based to working from home with in person elements to working entirely from home for 12+ months with no in person contact, I’ve had a lot of experience with the different options.

    https://marendeepwell.com/?p=2947

    It’s been timely to reflect more on our team, as we have been welcoming new colleagues this month, including another PhD researcher, which means that more than half of the team I lead is currently undertaking research. I am really proud to have such an actively learning organisation!

    The last weekend of this year brought a very special moment as Anne-Marie and Tannis and I marked one year of broadcasting our Sunday Specials on ds106radio. It’s been quite a year… !

    Quick links

  • #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.

  • Finding humanity in a hashtag… my third time curating the @FemEdTech Twitter account

    This month, February 2020, is the third time I volunteer to curate the @femEdTech Twitter account. If you haven’t come across it before, I encourage you to:

    When I curated the account the first time, in May 2018, I wrote about my week as a curator in this post, and I reflected on what’s involved, setting up a TAGSExplorer and other accounts that inspired me.

    The TAGSExplorer View in May 2018
    The TAGSExplorer View in February 2020

    As you can see, things have changed a bit since my first time curating!

    In March 2019, during my second stint at the Twitter deck of the FemEdTech network, I also wrote a post. This time, I reflected more on how people were contributing to what was then a much bigger and broader conversation. I shared examples of how we worked together to grow our network, to spread the word and to raise awareness of the challenges we are yet to overcome in order to achieve greater equality in Learning Technology.

    At that time I had started including information about this in talks I gave, including for example:

    And more of which I covered in a review at the end of last year, celebrating a #FemEdTech kind of year.

    Which is why this time round, reflecting on my time as the account’s guest curator, I want to step away from the hashtag, from the online network and share with you how the network has changed my every work and life, how the work we do translates into the world outside of the Twittersphere.

    Making momentum
    One of the things that you can only really guess at from the online conversation is how much making goes into building any kind of momentum, and I mean that literally. Just now, with the quilt project, you can watch the process of momentum becoming material. But before the quilt, there were badges and signs and letters and stickers, parcels sent across the country and sometimes across the world, to distribute tokens of belonging to this community. Cat memes, photos, blog posts, radio shows, podcasts, artwork, drawings… people create all kinds of things and over time it creates real momentum:

    Meeting strangers
    The other thing that has really changed is to meet individuals who are also active in this network in person. Two years ago when I mentioned this topic, no one had even heard of it. Now, it’s been a while since I last went to an event at which I didn’t have a conversation about it, met fellow supporters, seen badges, stickers or exchanged hugs. Some of us even have the t-shirt ;).

    Photobooth at ALT’s Annual Conference 2019 (Photos on Flickr)

    It’s surprised me how powerful it is to have these meet ups. They act as a catalyst for activities and collaboration well beyond the day on which they take place. They also help to encourage those who give so much of their time and effort to the network, giving me an opportunity to say thank you to someone who has helped me or supported me or someone whom I have only ever ‘met’ on Twitter. It’s powerful to have a way to bring the conversation to promoting equality, it gives us permission to discuss common issues around HR policies, professional development, career progression and collecting data about these things and to share new developments.

    Hashtag and humanity
    Being part of this effort, the work that the hashtag #FemEdTech has grown into, gives me hope that there are more and more people, some of whom I already know and some of whom I will never meet, who take an active role, who make a contribution – and for that I am grateful. I am grateful to those who recommend less visible colleagues for keynotes on the big stage, to those who work to make their events and conferences more welcoming to all, to everyone who helps to amplify the voices of those who are heard less often and those who champion causes like gender equality in their professional practical.
    It is definitely not an easy gig. But for every exasperated, eye rolling, impatient or indifferent listener, I also meet one who does care, who wants to know more, who might get involved.

    It’s often an uncomfortable experience to stand on a stage or sit around a meeting table, telling your audience about injustice, discrimination, about the gender pay gap and inequality. Even if you are able to share positive trends or hopeful new initiatives, the message remains one of “always more to do”. No matter where you look, no matter what kind of inequality you fight for, there is always more to do. We may not all agree on what the most urgent priorities are in our individual, institutional or national contexts, but I hope that we share a sense of urgency, a drive to do better as professionals in Learning Technology, as human beings.