My blog software has been complaining that my page of Friday messages had been going on too long.

I know how it feels.

Here’s a new page for 2025.

Friday 10th January

Digimap's birthday cake
Digimap’s birthday cake

Dear All,

Welcome back, and thank you for your work this week.

The heat in Argyle House is thankfully on.

For the new year we welcome  our new Digital Safety Intern, Aysha Sohail and Liz Dickie, who some of you may know as a Learning Technologist from COL in Moray House, is working with us two days per week  to ensure we get the best alignment for our Short Courses Platform implementation.

I hope you all managed to get some rest and festive elements during the break. For those who celebrate Christmas this week it’s been Orthodox Christmas, Old Christmas, Little Christmas and Women’s Christmas. Little Christmas – Wikipedia

Coming up in January  (to combat any symptoms of Blue Monday Blue Monday (date) – Wikipedia) we have our foodbank collection launch, our digital skills tutors party and Lunar new year events at St Cecilias St Cecilia’s Hall, The University of Edinburgh Events – 7 Upcoming Activities and Tickets | Eventbrite

If you are interested in presenting at the University of Edinburgh Teaching and Learning Conference, the CfP is now open Call for Proposals | Institute for Academic Development Let you manager know what you would like to do. Satu and Katie will be presenting  posters at 2025 Digital Research Conference if you need inspiration.

Nice to see online learning featured in the THE Rethinking online learning to tackle global injustices | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

And women in AI on linkedin Women in AI at EDINA | LinkedIn

Great to see colleagues gaining post-nominal letters. Marcello has completed the Edinburgh Teaching Award and is now a fellow of the higher education academy (FHEA) and  both Andres  and Delia have been awarded their CMALTs (with minor corrections). Well done , All!

If you all have a bit of time for some life-admin, please do go into People and Money and update your personal details. If you have a disability, or no known disability, please do update that so that there is something showing in that field, and add your qualifications etc to make sure we can keep up to date with our data and demographics.

Thank you again for coming back.

Best wishes,

Melissa

Friday 31st January

Dear All,

Thank you for your work again this week.

It seems like the ISG and Library buildings mostly survived the storm. The Library have launched an exhibition in the ground floor public space called ‘Rooting’. I suspect they did not test that name on anyone from Australia, or perhaps they did, and it is a comment on the wider context of the state of higher education funding. You will have seen news reports of big job losses at  more universities this week.

If the news is too grim and you are retreating into a good book, you can catch our Fiona on the Radio 2 Book Club this week and  she managed to sneak in a recommendation for Andres’ book, ‘How we named the stars’  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0kmhzdr

Thank you to those doing ITIL training this week and well done to everyone presenting papers and posters at conferences.

Due to popular demand Bart has scheduled more dates for ELM training for staff, book your place now  Learning Item Details – Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications

The LTW SMT are away today for a full day  working on our teamwork and  strategic digital leadership skills, let me know if you can spot the difference when we get back.

 

I hear rumours of a pot-luck picnic lunch for the wing being organised… get your favourite recipes from home ready.

 

Have a good weekend,

 

-Melissa