Tag: #femedtech

My week as guest curator of @femedtech

This week I’ve been volunteering as a guest curator of @femedtech. I actively work to promote equality in everything I do, so when the opportunity came up to support this growing network as a Twitter curator, I took the opportunity to help out gladly – but I wasn’t really sure what it would be like, taking over the voice of this kind of account. So one week in and with one more week to go, here is my personal reflection on how it’s going.

Fortunately I had guidance, encouragement and advice from Frances Bell and Helen Beetham from the outset and they shared their experience and advice generously. I liked their suggestion to add my own identity to the account, which I did, and then I started tweeting and re-tweeting and following and.. a few days in everything started to feel a bit easier.

I also set up a TAGS Twitter archive and TAGSExplorer for the #femedtech hashtag, to help chart and visualise the conversation as it evolves:

As you can see, it’s still a fairly small conversation, but it is starting to grow and I found it really interesting to be able to see what is going on.

Another approach I tried was to find and follow accounts with similar values or related ideas, such as @uncommon_women and the @feministintrnet for example and to welcome new followers or volunteers as they arrived. Hello to you all!

With another week ahead, I hope I’ll get a chance to generate a bit more of a conversation and prompt more contributions (tagged as #femedtech) and have the chance to contribute to the development of information for future guest curators with Helen and Frances. My long term hope is that we can help draw together some of the existing initiatives, amplify the voices of those actively working to promote feminism and equality in Learning Technology and connect more people with each other. There are certainly enough challenges out there to be tackled, so let’s hope that we can help connect the dots to make a stronger movement.

Note: this post was updated with a better TAGSExplorer view and links (thanks to @mhawksey)

13/05/2018
#femedtech #OER18 #OER17… because equality matters for all of us

If you have been following the reporting on the gender pay gap in the UK, then this has been a sobering week indeed. You can search for the reports from different employers here. I have had a look through many of the education providers and sector bodies that I work with and the scale of the ‘gaps’ highlighted in some of the reports is staggering. Not a surprise, given my day to day experience of the sector, but still – staggering.

As a chief executive I have reflected much during this week on how we can change things across the system. There are so many aspects to the problem that there is definitely no shortage of things we should tackle and there is much to do in relation to the professionalisation of Learning Technology.

But on a more personal note this has also reminded me of how important it is that we continue to work towards achieving greater equality – in all its forms. So with a large international conference on openness in education just around the corner I hope that there’ll be much to learn and discuss from different, global perspectives. I also want to help give a voice to this conversation together with colleagues, and make sure that we consider equality in the context of openness.

Powerfully, Catherine Cronin spoke of criticality, equality and social justice at OER17 in London last year. In the closing plenary we were asked to respond to a call to action… #Iwill #OER17 and many participants in the room and on social media joined in, making their voices heard and sharing their aspirations, making a commitment to taking action. I think it’s time to renew our vows to take action #OER18.

05/04/2018
Open Education Week #femedtech

Next week is Open Education Week and in preparation to giving a keynote at the launch of a new ALT Members Group in Northern Ireland on International Women’s Day on 8 March, I have been revisiting my talk on equality and open practice that I gave last year. The talk specifically discussed the potential of Member Groups in creating greater openness and promote equality.

Over the past year, I have seen, supported and been inspired by a pletora of work being done all across sectors to promote equality, for example the Feminist Internet project, Kelsey Merkley’s @UncommonWomen campaign and the continued growth of the #femedtech community to mention only a few.

With this year’s OER conference just over a month away (if you haven’t yet had a look at the programme, you should…), it feels even more important to champion open practice for the cause of equality – open practice that empowers diversity and inclusion such as we saw discussed during #engageMOOC on Twitter recently. Open practice that fosters criticality and builds confidence, that helps better reflect the work that is being done for which there are no awards, such as the lessons we learn from managing change or failure.

04/03/2018
Big challenge ahead: talking about equality #iltaedtech17 #femedtech #oer17 #altc

This week I am looking forward to giving a short talk at the EdTech 2017 Conference, the annual conference organised by the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA). This year’s theme is TEL in an Age of Supercomplexity: Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies.

The event has what looks like a great programme. My own focus is on exploring how openness can be a tool for Learning Technology professionals to promote equality. I am going to look at three specific examples of this, starting with work that’s happening close to home in the ALT Member Community and in particular our local Member Groups – illustrating this with the visual thinkery created for ALT by Bryan Mathers. The other two examples I want to talk about are the emerging FemEdTech network and the voices still echoing from the OER17 conference. I’ve shared my slides below and I look forward to the conversations and feedback in response to my contribution – and a special thanks to Catherine Cronin who has already provided me with some very helpful comments!

Below is the full transcript of my talk:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you how individuals are taking action to promote equality in Learning Technology, equality in our profession and across sectors – equality for individuals and within institutions.

Equality. We are facing a big challenge. Looking around this room everyone among us has witnessed inequality in some form. On a global scale policy and strategy are necessary to address some of the most fundamental challenges that stand in the way of greater equality for all – but what I’d like to explore is how taking action on a personal basis, taking action as part of our professional practice, can make a difference. Make a difference through openness – openness as in for example sharing OERs, using open licencing, through open governance and open practice at all levels.

The first example is the work of ALT’s Member Groups, and also Special Interest Groups who share their practice and collaborate openly, all across the UK and beyond. Aligned to ALT’s aims the Learning Technology professionals who are active in these groups share the values we have set out as a community and sharing their experiences, both failures and success. These groups, by being inclusive and community-led, have contributed to making our membership more diverse and their work continues to contribute to strengthen equality in our profession.

Now, the emerging femedtech network is a new initiative that is led by Learning Technology professionals who are taking personal action to promote equality and to do so through open practice, conversations and events. It’s an important effort to create a safe space that is also open and inclusive. We want to celebrate and extend the opportunities offered by education in/and/with technology – to women, and to all people who might otherwise be disadvantaged or excluded. If you haven’t already, I urge you to look at the work that this network is beginning to undertake.

My last example are the voices still echo-ing from the OER17 conference convened earlier this year by Josie Fraser and Alek Tarkowski. Josie, Alek and the organising committee made a concerted effort this year to create a more diverse, inclusive programme with a distinctive all female keynote line up and a programme that inspired a lot of critical reflection and conversation long after the event – and indeed that conversation is still going on. Catherine Cronin, who was part of the closing plenary at the conference, later reflected that the themes of criticality, equality and social justice were at the heart of OER17. It was a powerful example of many individuals taking action together – through openness – and making a difference.

Days like today give us that opportunity, to reflect on how we, as individuals, as a professional community, can take action to achieve greater equality through openness, to harness technology to do so – and then to go and make a difference.

31/05/2017
Input welcome: promoting equality in Learning Technology through openness
I am working on a slide deck to give a short presentation at the upcoming EdTech2017 conference (1-2 June, Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland)on promoting equality in Learning Technology through openness. The proposal I submitted already includes a number of examples, but the inspiring (and still growing!) list of blog posts following the OER17 conference has made me consider what else I might include. In particular, there are two aspects of my talk I am going to be researching further and if you have any suggestions or references any input is most welcome:
- “Where are we now”… in terms of equality in Learning Technology. I am thinking both about the edtech sector in general and the way in which the use of technology for learning, teaching or assessment can help promote equality;
- Reading and ideas for good practice. As this is a short talk I’d like to include a list of where to go next so that participants can follow up further.
If you can contribute any references or other ideas, please leave a note in the comments or via Twitter to @marendeepwell . Thank you.
24/04/2017