February and March are always busy months for Open Education and this year was no exception, with the University’s Festival of Creative Learning, Open Education Week and International Women’s Day all coming back to back.
Niko is unimpressed…, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
The fun and games kicked off with Festival of Creative Learning in mid February. My OER Service colleague Charlie ran a really fun and thought provoking 23 Things for Digital Confidence workshop. The workshop challenged us to explore how we engage with technology in creative ways and we also got to play with some really cool augmented reality toys. Oh, and there were dragons! I took them home but I don’t think my cat was very impressed :}
Later in the week I helped to run a Get Blogging! workshop with Karen, Lila and Mark from DLAM, which guided students through the process of setting up a blog on Reclaim Hosting and provided them with some pointers on the benefits of blogging and topics they could write about. I don’t usually get to work directly with undergraduate students so it was a really rewarding experience. Their enthusiasm was infectious and it was great to see how proud and excited they were to leave at the end of the day with their very own brand new blog. The fabulous feedback the students left was just the icing on the cake. My slides from the day are here: Why Blog?
At the beginning of March we celebrated Open Education Week, I’ve already written a post about the activities we planned over the course of the week, and they all went really well. We curated eight blog posts from staff, students and graduates on the Open.Ed blog over the course of the week, each bringing a unique perspective on engaging with open education. You can read a round-up of of these posts here. I particularly like this quote from Martin Tasker, our very first Open Content Curation Intern, who is now building a career as a software engineer.
“In an age where where the world is both more connected and less trusting than ever, the onus is on institutions such as universities to use their reputations and resources to promote open education. As well as benefiting the public, it benefits the institutions themselves – there’s little better in the way of marketing than having potential applicants having already experienced some learning at your institution.”
I’ve often quoted Martin’s Open Content Curation blog posts when I talk, and I’m sure I’ll be quoting his Open Education Week blog post, Reflecting on the Importance of Open Education, too.
My daughter’s contribution to International Women’s Day, CC BY SA, RJ McCartney
International Women’s Day fell at the end of Open Education Week and Information Services marked the event by hosting a Women of Edinburgh Wikipedia Editathon and naming the Board Room in Argyle House after Brenda Moon, the first woman to head up a research university library in the 1980s, and who played a major role in bringing the University into the digital age. I spent part of the day updating the Wikipedia entry I’d previously written about Mary Susan McIntosh to include information about her work as a Women’s Rights Advocate campaigning for legal and financial rights for married and co-habiting women, defending the right to sexual expression, and arguing against censorship of pornography.
The following week I was off down to UCL for their Open Education Symposium. It was a privilege to be invited to share the University of Edinburgh’s strategic approach to Open Education, and it was great to hear about some of ways that openness is supported across UCL. I particularly enjoyed hearing a group of Arts and Sciences BASc students reflecting on their positive experience of engaging with Wikibooks. Their comments reflected those of our Edinburgh student who have participated in Wikipedia assignments and editathons.
Somehow, in amongst all that, there was also several ALTC submissions, the launch of femedtech.net, and my daughter’s 13th birthday. How the hell did that happen?!
