Category Archives: blogging

Blogging to Build your Professional Profile

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Last month the University of Edinburgh rolled out a new centrally supported Academic Blogging Service, which provides staff and students with a range of different blogs to support professional development and learning, teaching and research activities.  The service has already been hugely successful, with almost 200 new blogs created in the last four weeks.  My colleague Anne-Marie has written a lovely post about the service here: A month of Blogs.Ed

I’ve been blogging for more years than I care to count and my blog has been hugely important in supporting my career and my professional practice.  So much so, that I reflected on the significance of my blog in my CMALT portfolio, which is also hosted here, and I presented about Using WordPress to build an online academic identity at last year’s PressED Conference.  So I was really pleased to be asked to develop a new digital skills training workshop on Blogging to Build Your Professional Profile to support colleagues at the University.

Because we like to practice what we preach, I’ve created all the workshop resources on a WordPress blog running the SPLOT theme developed by Alan Levine.  The SPLOT was Anne-Marie’s idea.  I’ve been a fan of SPLOTs for a while but this is the first time I’ve used one and I think it’s the ideal format for presenting online resources like this.  The workshop covers using blogs to build your professional profile, writing for blogs, group and syndicated blogs, privacy, openness, copyright and licensing, and amplifying your blog with social media. It also includes practical guidance on setting up a blog on the new blogs.ed.ac.uk service, provides links to additional training courses running by the University, and examples of some fabulous professional blogs to provide inspiration.  There’s far too much material here to cover in a one hour workshop, but the beauty of the SPLOT format is that workshop participants can access all the course materials at a single URL, work through them at their leisure, and refer back to them as needs be.

And because we believe in spreading the love and supporting OER and open practice, all the workshop materials are CC BY licensed so you’re welcome to take them away and adapt and re-use them.  All the lovely header images are from a collection of  Architectural Drawings by William Henry Playfair, and they’re available under CC licence from the University of Edinburgh’s Image Collections.

If you’ve got any comments or feedback on these resources I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Blogging to Build your Professional Profile

thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/professional-blogging/

Looking forward to ALTC live tweeting

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The ALT Conference is just one week away and I’m looking forward to reforming the ALTC Social Media Supergroup with Martin Hawksey (on live stream) Richard Goodman (on media tweets and replies), Chris Bull (on photography), Scott Farrow (on camera), and me (on keynote live tweets).  This will be the fourth year that we’ve provided social media coverage for the conference and it’s always a rather daunting, though very rewarding task.  Although I regularly live tweet any conferences and events I attend, live tweeting the ALT Conference keynotes in an official capacity is a rather different affair, as it’s important to ensure tweets are as factual, neutral and representative as possible.  It’s quite a different experience from tweeting thoughts and comments on my own account. This is something that I reflected on in my CMALT portfolio.

Sometimes it’s hard not to be a little overwhelmed by the responsibility of live tweeting ALT’s prestigious keynote speakers, all of whom have made a significant contribution to the domain of learning technology.  This year is no exception and I have to confess that I’m thrilled and just a little apprehensive about live tweeting three women who I have admired enormously for many years and who have had a significant impact on my own career as a learning technologist.

Maren Deepwell, CEO of ALT, needs no introduction; under her guidance and leadership, ALT has become an active and inclusive organisation that represents the interests of its members and truly espouses its core values of participation, collaboration, openness and independence.  As a CEO leading a national organisation, Maren is also a personal inspiration to me and to many other female colleagues, and her commitment to supporting and promoting the work of women across the sector is always to be admired.

I’ve known Amber Thomas for many years and was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with her on the UKOER programme between 2009 and 2012.  Amber provided the technical vision and strategy for UKOER and we worked closely together when Cetis delivered the technical support for the programme. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was Amber’s vision of OER that shaped my own early thinking around open education.  Amber always has a clear vision of the affordances and limitations of education technology and brings a thoughtful and thought provoking approach to everything she does.

I haven’t yet had an opportunity to meet Tressie McMillan Cottom but her work has been recommended to me so often and she is spoken about so highly by so many women who I greatly admire that I’m delighted to finally be able to hear her speak in person. I really hope I can do justice to capturing her opening keynote.

This year I’ll also be live tweeting the Gasta session chaired by Tom Farrelly of ILTA and featuring contributions from Donna Lanclos, Debbie Baff and Clint Lalonde. The abstract tells me that

“Gasta means “fast, clever, quick, smart” and in that spirit this session will involve active audience participation”

I suspect keeping up with this one will be a challenge!  Say a prayer for my fingers folks :}

Maren Deepwell, Lorna M.Campbell & Rich Goodman, ALT C 2017, CC BY, Chris Bull Photographer.