Putting your best foot forward with #altc

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[This post was previously posted on the ALTC website.]

What to expect from the ALT Conference’s social media channels and how to get involved.  

The ALT Conference is almost upon as and we’re looking forward to welcoming delegates to the city and University of Edinburgh.  Edinburgh is a wonderful city to visit at any time of the year, but we appreciate that traveling to attend conferences is not always practical or possible, so in order to ensure that the conference is as accessible and inclusive as possible, ALT provides a range of online channels to enable you to participate in the conference remotely.  Frances Bell has already written a really helpful post on how to participate in the conference online.

In addition to watching the ALT conference livestream, and signing up for VConnecting sessions, you can engage with the conference through ALT’s social media channels and the #altc hashtag, which is already hotting up as delegates prepare for the conference. 

The ALT Conference has always had a really lively and engaging social media presence, which draws in participants from all over the world. I’m delighted to help facilitate this as part of ALT’s social media team, along with partners in crime Rich Goodman (@bulgenen), from the University of Loughborough, and photographer Chris Bull (@chrisbull1980).  My role is to livetweet the conference keynotes from ALT’s official twitter account @A_L_T, while Rich will be tweeting Chris’ photographs, which really capture the buzz and energy of the conference.  You can see Chris’ pictures from last year’s ALT Conference on ALT’s flickr channel, and in keeping with ALT’s strategic commitment to openness, they’re all Creative Commons licensed. 

CC BY NC 2.0, Chris Bull for the Association for Learning Technology on flickr

I’ve written several blog posts over the years about my experience of live tweeting the ALT conference, and in my CMALT portfolio I reflected on the difference between tweeting for ALT in an official capacity,  and tweeting from my own personal account:

Live tweeting in an official capacity for events such as the ALT Conference requires a different approach to live tweeting from my own personal account.  When I live tweet on behalf of an event organiser I try to keep my tweets as factual, neutral and representative as possible. It’s important not to misrepresent the speaker or inadvertently tweet anything that might bring the organisation into disrepute.  If I’m tweeting personally, I tend to tweet the points that interest me, adding my own thoughts and comments along the way.

The ALT Conference has a justifiable reputation for the quality of its keynotes, and this year is no exception.  Although it can be a little daunting, it’s a real privilege to livetweet such inspirational speakers.

It’s hard to overestimate the influence Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) has had on the learning technology community in the UK, through her blog Social Media for Learning, the weekly #LTHEchat twitter chat, and the open online course Bring Your Own Device for Learning. Sue brings a nuanced and critical approach to the use of social media in teaching and learning and is generous in sharing her practice and experience with the community. 

I heard Ollie Bray (@olliebray) speaking many years ago when he was Head Teacher at Kingussie High School and I remember being really intrigued by his inspirational approaches to teaching and learning and innovative use of technology and social media, so I’m really looking forward to hearing about and livetweeting his recent work connecting play and education at the LEGO Foundation. 

I’m particularly thrilled to hear Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer), as I’ve followed him on twitter for some time and I’m a huge admirer of his work.  Just a few weeks ago I was following the Digital Pedagogy Lab, co-founded by Jesse, on twitter and though I only dipped my toe into the incredibly rich stream of tweets it was a really rewarding and thought provoking experience. 

Whether you’ll be with us in Edinburgh or joining us remotely, we’d encourage you to get involved with the ALT Conference online. You can do this by:

  • Following the official ALT twitter account @A_L_T / https://twitter.com/A_L_T 
  • Following the conference hashtag #altc
  • Tweeting your own comments, reflections and pictures on the #altc conference hashtag. 
  • Sharing your photographs online, remember to use the #altc hashtag and add an open licence!

You don’t need a twitter account to read @A_L_T’s tweets and to follow the #altc tag, but you do need an account if you want to retweet and comment. 

And of course no ALT event would be complete without the occasional #shoetweet! 

#altc #shoetweet, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell

So put our best foot forward and join us in Edinburgh and online for #altc

Professional Blogging: Acknowledging social media harassment

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As part of the University of Edinburgh’s Academic Blogging Service, I’ve been teaching a workshop on Blogging to Build your Professional Profile.  This workshop has run once a month since September last year and I’ve also presented tailored versions of it to various groups around the University, most recently to student interns who are working with us during the summer. 

In order to make the workshop materials as open and reusable as possible, I created them on a WordPress blog running Alan Levine’s fabulous SPLOT Point theme. This proved to be a smart move because it means it’s really easy to update the materials as I’ve gained greater understanding of which topics are of interest and concern to colleagues around the University.

One topic that I’ve always felt the workshop materials didn’t adequately cover is the drawbacks of using social media.  During the workshop I point colleagues towards the University’s Managing Your Digital Foot Print resources, and in the section on Amplifying your Blog with Social Media I always make the point that social media can be a hostile environment for women, people of colour and marginalised groups in particular, however I didn’t have anything explicitly covering this in the course materials. Three things have prompted me to address this.  Firstly, a female colleague who spoke to me in private after a workshop to ask about using pseudonyms on social media as she had legitimate concerns about her privacy and safety.  Secondly, a male colleague who explained to me during a workshop that it’s not just women and people of colour who experience harassment online.  (This is true, but it does not negate the fact that there are specific gendered and racist aspects to online harassment.) And thirdly, this article by Katherine Wright, which I recently read, about how twitter can be a hostile environment that “can and does have serious repercussions for women and other marginalised groups.”  Wright goes on to say: 

“Given the severity of the gendered and racialised pushback many experience in the public eye, and twitter specifically, all training on social media or engagement should start with this. It is a responsibility of our employers and us as individuals who care about whose voice is heard.”

So in order to start addressing that responsibility the workshop page on Amplifying your blog with social media now includes the following note of caution:  

Although using social media, particularly twitter, can be a great way to amplify and disseminate your blog posts, it’s important to be aware that social media can be a hostile environment, particularly for women, people of colour and marginalised groups, who may experience targeted harassment.  You should never feel obliged to engage with social media, particularly if you feel unsafe or attacked.  Your online safety is of paramount importance.

blogs.ed.ac.uk allows you to choose whether to make your blog posts available to the general public, to EASE authenticated users only, or to keep them completely private. It’s entirely up to you.

All users should exercise caution when disseminating potentially sensitive or controversial topics. A blog post that may not be controversial in an academic context could resulting in unwanted attention or abuse if it circulates widely in the public domain.

Further advice and guidance is available as follows:

There’s a lot more that could be said on this topic, but that would be the subject of a whole other workshop. I’d be really interested to know how other institutions and organisations are addressing this aspect of e-safety, so if you’ve got links to any guidelines, research or practice, please do let me know. 

Icepops Conference 2019 – Learning how to play the game

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Ok, confession time; I’m useless at playing games.  Any kind of games – card games, board games, computer games, strategy games, discovery games, competitive games, for some reason they just don’t hold my attention.   I’m not sure why that is, I just don’t seem to have that “hook” that engages people with game play.  Although I’m not a natural game player, I do really enjoy playfulness and creativity (who doesn’t?!) and copyright literacy is definitely my thing so I really appreciated being able to go along to last week’s ICEPOPS Conference here at the University, not least because my inspirational OER Service colleague Stephanie (Charlie) Farley was giving her first ever keynote.  Icepops is the International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars, which is run by Jane Secker and Chris Morrison of the UK Copyright Literacy Team, in conjunction with the CILIP Information Literacy Group.   The themes of the conference this year were copyright education, games and play, music and copyright, creativity and the relationship of copyright literacy to information literacy and scholarly communication.

Melissa Highton, Director of Learning Teaching and Web Services here at the University, opened the conference by welcoming delegates to the University and the city.  Melissa emphasised the importance of copyright as part of the University’s core business and highlighted the role of the OER Service in supporting and developing copyright literacy across the institution.

Simon Anderson gave a really engaging and interactive keynote on copyright infringement in music “Stop me if you think you’ve heard this before”, and yes, he did play snippets of music live on stage and asked us to vote on whether they sounded similar or not. Simon introduced us to the fabulous Lost in Music resource developed by the University of Westminster, a free and open resource that aims to demystify and develop understanding of copyright and infringement within the music industry.  The site includes a wide range of legal case studies and resources including the highly entertaining You Be The Judge, which challenges listeners to decide at what point a piece of music becomes infringing. Simon played this game with us at the conference and it was a lot of fun.  I particularly enjoyed the lightbulb moment when he added one tiny sequence of notes to the piece of music and suddenly everyone in the room recognised it!  I also learned that the Australian band Men At Work were successfully sued in 2010 because their 1983 hit Down Under ripped off the Kookaburra song.  Who knew?  There was also an interesting question about who is responsible for potential copyright infringement in machine generated music.  The answer isn’t yet clear.

Following Simon’s keynote, the rest of the morning was taken up by a whirl wind of amazingly creative copyright education world café sessions and pecha kucha presentations including one fascinating talk on the copyright and performance rights of John Cage’s 4’33”.

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Icepops World Cafe, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell

I also got to take part in my very first escape room challenge run by Katrine Sundsbø of the University of Essex.  The Open Access Escape Room challenged us to thwart a villain who had hidden away all publications by unlocking the research to make everything free.  It was a lot of fun and Charlie and I came away with lots of ideas about how we could adapt the format for an open education escape room for next year’s Festival of Creative Learning.

Charlie Farley & Jane Secker, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell

The afternoon opened with Charlie’s keynote “Make and release – embedding practice through play”.  Charlie spoke eloquently about the significance of play and creativity in her own life and working practice.  In terms of introducing playful engagement in the workplace, Charlie highlighted the importance of the “lusory attitude”, the mindset we enter into that let us accept the arbitrary rules of a playful space in order to engage with play and creativity.  Charlie said that she found “that by creating a lusory attitude or environment, staff and students are more willing to experiment and learn new technologies and skills with much less fear and apprehension”.  To let us do just that, Charlie led us through a short Board Game Jam session.  It’s always great to see the creativity that results when people engaging with the University’s open licensed image collections through Board Game Jam, and this time was no exception.  As might be expected, the Icepops delegates created some amazing and highly entertaining game scenarios.

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Icepops Board Game Jam, C BY, Lorna M. Campbell

During her keynote, Charlie also challenged us to draw or write a short story about our journey to becoming a copyright literacy expert. This is mine 🙂

Chris and Jane brought the conference to a poignant close with a tribute to Marion Kelt, a long standing member of the UK copyright literacy community, who had been due to attend the conference.  Marion’s touching and funny Copyright Comic, a lovely memorial to her, features in the Icepops Annual 2019.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to stay in Edinburgh for the after-conference entertainment, though it sounds like the playful and musical theme of the event continued well into the evening with the Icepops houseband The Infringers XD

It was great to experience the playfulness and creativity of the copyright literacy community at Icepops and I came away with some really cool ideas that we can incorporate into our OER Service digital skills programme.  But perhaps the most important thing I learned at Icepops is that maybe I’m not as bad at playing games as I thought!

Wikipedia for Peace at Europride Vienna

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Earlier this month I took some time out from my Edinburgh work to travel to Vienna to take part in the Wikipedia for Peace editathon organized by Wikimedia Austria to coincide with Europride 2019. The event brought together twelve editors from all over the world to create and edit LBGT+ articles in a range of European languages over the course of four days. Unfortunately I missed the first day and half of the event as my travel plans were thwarted when a tree brought down overhead power lines on the West Coast mainline, my train to London was cancelled and I missed my flight. Not the most auspicious start! I eventually managed to get to Vienna on Thursday afternoon in time for a walk around the city visiting significant queer sites, including the home of Josef Kohout, whose experiences of incarceration in a Nazi concentration camp are recorded in Heinz Heger’s The Men With the Pink Triangle. Later in the day we made our way to Wikimedia Austria’s offices for an online meeting of the LGBT+ User Group, which is in the process of scoping a role for an LGBT+ Wikimedia at Large.

On Friday our group spent the morning discussing LGBT+ strategy within the global Wikimedia movement. Issues that were raised included addressing homophobia and discrimination in some Wikipedia chapters and communities, educating Wikipedians around issues relating to gender identity, the need for multilingual LGBT+ style guides, particularly addressing how to write about trans individuals on the encyclopedia without misgendering them. We also felt strongly that as a condition of funding, the Wikimedia Foundation should require chapters to demonstrate how they are actively supporting and promoting equality and diversity, while acknowledging that how chapters are able to do this will look very different across the world.

Wikipedia for Peace 2019, CC BY SA 4.0, Mardetanha on Wikimedia Commons

Friday afternoon was devoted to editing. When I applied to Wikimedia UK for a project grant to attend Wikimedia for Peace, I said that I hoped to create some articles around bisexual topics and individuals, which are sometimes marginalised in the LGBT+ community. The first article I created was Bi Academic Intervention, group of bisexual academics, researchers, scholars and writers, which was formed at the 11th National Bisexual Conference in Notttingham in 1993, an event that I coincidentally attended.  I also translated articles on Sápmi Pride and Serbian gay rights and peace activist Dejan Nebrigić, who was murdered in Pancevo in 1999. That article prompted one of our participants to write a new Serbian article on Arkadija, the first LGBT+ organisation in Serbia, founded by Nebrigić and colleagues in 1990. I translated that article into English too, though it still needs a bit of work to bring it up to scratch.  

The total outputs of the Wikipedia for Peace editathon are:

  • 113 new articles created and translated
  • 5 articles improved
  • 5 meta pages improved
  • 21 new Wikidata items created          
  • 9 Wikidata items improved

Plus hundreds of images of the Europride village and parade. This is a huge achievement for the event, and a significant contribution to improving equality, diversity and queer representation on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia for Peace editathon, CC BY SA 4.0, Mardetanha, on Wikimedia Commons.

The parade itself took place on Saturday in 38 degree heat. How the drag queens in their finery and the kinksters in their leather and latex survived is beyond me. I haven’t seen a final estimate of how many took part in the parade, but one press report the following day said 500,000 people attended the event, which I can quite believe. The whole atmosphere was very friendly and laid back and I particularly appreciated the fact that the parade was un-ticketed and open to all. Like Pride parades the world over, there was a visible corporate presence but it was much less obvious than at some other events. Like everyone there, I took a ridiculous number of pictures of the parade, 60 of which I uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as part of the Wiki Loves Pride competition. Huge thanks to all the amazing participants who were so happy to be photographed.  It’s been a joy to see more and more pictures of both Wikipedia for Peace and the Europride Parade being uploaded to Commons over the last fortnight.

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All images CC BY SA 4.0, LornaMCampbell on Wikimedia Commons

I’ve carried on working on my Wikipedia articles since getting back from Vienna, and am hoping to create a new article on Scottish Aids Monitor as part of Wiki Loves Pride. So much of the queer history of Scotland and the UK is poorly represented on the encyclopaedia, if it appears at all, so I hope I can make a small contribution to improving representation, and work with the Wiki community to address equality and diversity across the movement.

I’m immensely grateful to Wikimedia UK for funding my travel to Wikipedia Loves Peace, to Wikimedia Austria for organising and supporting the event, to all those who participated (it was amazing to meet you all), and last but not least, to Thomas for making it all happen and for looking after us so well during our time in Vienna ♡

Remembering Marion

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Like many colleagues, I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Marion Kelt earlier this week. Marion was Research and Open Access Librarian at Glasgow Caledonian University Library, but more than that, she was a weel kent, well respected and well liked member of the open education community.

Marion was nothing if not tenacious and, as a result of her persistence, Glasgow Caledonian University became the first university in Scotland to approve an institutional OER policy. Marion gave an enlightening and entertaining talk about the development of this policy at the OER15 conference in Cardiff, and the extraordinary lengths she had to go to get it approved. I vividly remember her telling us about the months she spent trying to track down the institutional IPR policy, which she’d been told the OER policy had to refer to, only to finally discover that no such policy existed!

It was typical of Marion’s enthusiasm and generosity that she was more than willing to share her experience with colleagues here at the University of Edinburgh when we were developing our own OER policy and establishing the OER Service. GCU’s OER policy is one of three OER policies the University of Edinburgh’s builds on.

The GCU OER policy wasn’t the only contribution Marion made to the open education community. She regularly attended and spoke at the OER conferences, and just recently presented a paper at OER19 in Galway about the GCU Copyright Advisor, a really useful piece of work that I hope will stand as Marion’s legacy. The Copyright Advisor walks users through a series of questions to help them decide whether and in what context different types of resources can be used. The tool was developed for use within GCU but because it’s open licensed (of course), it can easily be adapted for use in other contexts and institutions.

We won’t remember Marion just for her contribution to the open education community though, we’ll remember her for her warm and generous spirit, her love of cats and music, fancy shoes and G&T. Marion’s colleagues at GCU have set up a Just Giving appeal in her name to benefit Cats Protection, a cause that was close to her heart, and which you can donate to here. CILIP Scotland have also written a touching obituary for Marion here: Marion Kelt (nee Murphie).

Marion at OER19

The annual ALT Scotland Meet Up this week was dedicated to Marion’s memory, and these are just some of the many tributes to her that have been posted on twitter.

On the importance of attribution in metadata

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Anyone who has ever worked in developing or implementing metadata specifications will know that they’re not exactly a bundle of laughs, so metadata jokes are a rare and precious thing (cf Winston Jingo and Patrice Roux-the-Day.)  So when I came across this image in 2016, I had to retweet it for the poor souls who suffered through the LOM and DC years with me. 

© Michael J Swart, michaeljswart.com

Being mindful of copyright, I attributed it with a link back to the original blog it was posted on, BigSnarf.  Turns out that BigSnarf were not creator of the image and 3 years later the real creator, Michael J. Swart turned up in my mentions to claim his quite rightful ownership.  Michael was very gracious, and when I offered to delete my original tweet said he wasn’t too bothered, he was more interested to see how people were using and attributing his images.

So instead I offered to write a blog post, which means I can re-post Michael’s image with the correct attribution and I can also use this as a teachable moment. Even if you do your best to attribute images correctly, sometimes you will get it wrong.  If you do get it wrong, then immediately offer to make it right, by apologising, offering to remove the misattributed image and correcting the attribution.  Oh, and Michael has also made lots of other very cool illustrations, which you can see here Articles by Illustration 🙂

Wikipedia for Peace at Europride

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Next week I’ll be taking a little time out from my work at Edinburgh to go to Wikipedia for Peace at Europride 2019 in Vienna. Europride promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans (LGBT) and other queer issues on an international level through parades, festivals and other cultural activities.  During the event a group of international editors will be coming together to create and edit LBGT+ articles in a range of European languages.  The event, which is run by Wikimedia Austria, is part of the Wikipedia for Peace movement which aims to strengthen peace and social justice through Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia for Peace organises community projects which bring together Wikipedia editors and people active in social and peace movements.

Although I’m not exactly the world’s most prolific Wikipedia editor, one of my proudest editing achievements is creating a page for Mary Susan McIntosh during one of Ewan McAndrew’s early editathons at the University of Edinburgh.  McIntosh was one of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front in the UK, and a member of the Policy Advisory Committee which advocated for lowering the age of male homosexual consent from 21 to 18.  As an academic criminologist and sociologist, she was one of the first to present evidence that homosexuality was not a psychiatric or clinical pathology but rather influenced by historical and cultural factors, and her paper The Homosexual Role was crucial in shaping the development of social constructionism. 

I had never heard of McIntosh before writing her Wikipedia entry and it was shocking to me that such an important activist and foundational thinker had been omitted from the encyclopedia.  I hope I can use my time in Vienna to create articles for other overlooked individuals from the queer community.   I’m particularly interested in focusing on the creation of articles around bisexual topics and individuals, which are sometimes marginalised in the LGBT+ community.  So if their are any LGBT+, with emphasis on the B, topics or individuals that you think should be added to the encyclopedia, please let me know!  You can also participate in the event remotely by signing up here.

I’m also looking forward to having an opportunity to photograph the European Pride Parade for Wikimedia Commons.  I think this will be my first Pride since 1998!

I’m immensely grateful to Wikimedia Austria for supporting my attendance at this event, and to Wikipedia UK for funding my travel through one of their project grants. Wikimedia UK’s project grants support volunteers to complete activities that benefit the organisation’s strategic goals including creating and raising awareness of open knowledge, building volunteer communities, releasing information and images under an open licence, and technology innovation. You can find out more information about project grants and how to apply here Wikimedia UK Project Grants.

Society for Nautical Research – Stepping down

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In a couple of week’s time I’ll be formally stepping down as Member of Council and Chair of the Society for Nautical Research’s Publications & Membership Committee, a role I’ve held for five years. I was approached by SNR, following a couple of conference presentations my colleague Heather and I gave while we were researching and writing our book about the midshipmen of HMS Indefatigable, Hornblower’s Historical Shipmates.  At the time, the Society was in the process of redeveloping their website and launching new social media channels and they were looking for a committee chair with experience of both nautical history and digital media. 

I’m glad to say that the SNR’s new website, snr.org.uk, and social media presence, curated by the Society’s web editor Dr Sam Willis, have been a huge success and have helped the SNR to connect with it’s wide international membership in new ways.

Charing the committee has been an enjoyable and enlightening experience for me, though as one of the few female Members of Council it hasn’t always been plain sailing.   It’s been a privilege to meet so many highly respected scholars and historians through the Society and I’d like to thank everyone who has worked so hard for the Committee over the last five years, particularly our secretary Dr Cathryn Pearce, Nigel Blanchford, who was single handedly responsible for revitalising Topmasts newsletter, and Dr Chris Holt who has kindly agreed to replace me as chair.  It’s great to know  that the Committee will be in such good hands, and I’ll also be staying on as a regular committee member to ease the transition. Although the chair hasn’t previously rotated on a fixed term basis, we strongly believe that this will help to ensure that the Committee remains fresh and is able to attract new members. 

When Heather and I started our research six years ago, I would never have envisaged that what started off as a fun, informal project would end up with me joining such an august society. I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to work with the SNR and I’m honoured to have been made a Fellow of the Society.  I don’t generally use post nominals, but if I did, I would now be Lorna M. Campbell  MA (Hons), CMALT, FSNR.  I remain, as always, Ms 😉

PressEDConf19: Reflections on the #femedtech Open Space

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This PressED Conference presentation by Lorna M. Campbell, Frances Bell, Maren Deepwell and Sheila MacNeill reflected on our experience of using a WordPress SPLOT to support the #femedtech Open Space; an accessible & inclusive space to question dominant narratives of open & explore themes & conversations around openness, equality, diversity & inclusion in education.

PressEDConf19: Supporting Digital Skills with SPLOTs!

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This PressED Conference talk by @lornacampbell and @emcandre explored how @EdinburghUni’s Wikimedian in Residence and Academic Blogging Service have used WordPress SPLOTs to develop sustainable open licensed digital skills development resources on engaging with @Wikipedia and blogging to build your professional profile.