Tag: OpenEdFeed

light reflections on OER16

Interpretation of my #OER16 keynote (c) Beck Pitt CC-BY https://www.flickr.com/photos/40959105@N00/26658563491/in/album-72157667593223021/
Interpretation of my #OER16 keynote (c) Beck Pitt CC-BY https://www.flickr.com/photos/40959105@N00/26658563491/in/album-72157667593223021/

It was lovely to see you all at #OER16 in Edinburgh.  It was a great personal pleasure to host the conference and to listen to the papers and speakers. For me it provided  an excellent excuse to have so many friends and colleagues here.

When Lorna and I passed across to next year’s chairs it was a relief to know that the conference will survive and thrive for another year.

I gave the last keynote, the one usually punctuated by the poorly stifled sound of wheely suitcases escaping from the back of the room. Jim, Catherine, Emma and John are hard acts to follow.

You can watch all the keynotes ( and many of the sessions) on MediaHopper, they are all excellent.

One of the benefits of being the last keynote is that the many flavors of openness had already been rehearsed and debated by other people in the room. And that many of my excellent Edinburgh colleagues had already covered the detail of our services and projects. The keynote offered me a chance to reflect on the themes of the conference and why it made sense to have it in Edinburgh.

I spoke about the Edinburgh vision for OER and the journey that brought us here. I spoke about technical and copyright debt and  the importance of doing your bit when we live in shared space.

If you get a chance to watch all the keynotes, which I hope you will, you will see 5 very different people in very different jobs/contexts taking different approaches to identifying the value proposition for open.  But none of them are doing it alone. That’s the beauty of the thing.

After you watch Emma’s talk know this: as well as her excellent Shakespeare credentials, Emma is also the woman who helped one of Oxford’s oldest colleges to rethink the power of the portraits on its walls -‘Dead white men’ make way for women at Oxford (Guardian, Sept 14)- and as such , one of my inspirations for The Playfair Steps.

big fish at #OER16

ticketMy keynote is mostly written, I know who I’m going to introduce and where I am chair.  I’m looking forward to see you all there. Got your ticket?

My presentation is called ‘Open with Care: contents may have shifted during flight’.  Emma Smith’s is called ‘Free Willy’. Last year Josie brought the dolphins, this year Emma brings the orca.  A whale of a time will be had.

my week as an international open education woman

Issue 26 p. 1 front cover Illustration of hanging a sheet on a washing line Usage terms: We have been unable to locate the copyright holder for Hanging a sheet on a washing line. Please contact copyright@bl.uk with any information you have regarding this item. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/spare-rib-magazine-issue-026#sthash.qZnKW0Db.dpuf
Issue 26 p. 1 front cover
Illustration of hanging a sheet on a washing line
Usage terms: We have been unable to locate the copyright holder for Hanging a sheet on a washing line. Please contact copyright@bl.uk with any information you have regarding this item. – See more at: http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/spare-rib-magazine-issue-026#sthash.qZnKW0Db.dpuf

It is a source of great pleasure for me that in recent years the celebrations of International Women’s Day have co-incided nicely with Open Education Week. This makes it easy for me to find authentic and useful things to do as my contribution.

This time last year I was visiting a number of tech partners in California and the theme was #makingithappen  This year the theme is #pledgeforparity and I’ve stayed at home.

I don’t find it difficult to see connections between feminism and open education movements. Both seek to give equality of access, challenge traditional structures and ways of doing things; and involve a diverse community of people in thinking about the greater good. Both also have outspoken advocates with strong opinions and sometimes end up arguing amongst themselves. Nonethless it’s been a fun week.

Saturday: A lovely day doing pleasant writing tasks at the Modern Scottish Women wikipedia editathon #artandfeminism. Working towards parity of coverage and parity of esteem with Jo, Gill, Sara and Mary.

Monday: I ate retro sweets with Charlie and Susie near our #OpenEducationWk display stand and attended the launch of Jo and Peta’s Dangerous Women Project to which I have contributed a blog post to be published later in the year.

Tuesday: On IWD2016 I spent some enjoyable time searching the digital archive of Spare Rib at the British Library to find images to use in my OER16 keynote. I was surprised to find that Spare Rib itself is not particularly well described in Wikipedia, so I spent some time on that too. I added a section on design to continue the #artandfeminism theme.

It seems to me that the big libraries are missing a trick if they are spending time making digitised collections open to the public and not taking a moment more to get a good article on the topic in Wikipedia. They probably need a Wikimedian in Residence.

Wednesday: While my teams were launching our new University of Edinburgh Open Educational Resources policy  to #OEPS in Stirling, I was presenting online in Croatia for Sandra. Our policy is largely based on one crafted by Rebecca for Leeds.

Thursday: I worked with Dominique, our ISG gender equality intern to refine once more our ISG gender equality plan and with Sonia, Yujia, Susan and Lauren to edit the ’embracing openness’ double page spread for our upcoming BITS magazine.

Friday: Today I am working from home, fortified by jam by Anne-Marie and coffee warmed by Maggie’s bespoke knitwear.  I see that all but one of the women artists we were editing on Saturday now have their own wikipedia page, and Lorna, Viv and Catherine are giving it a bit of welly in an ALT OER-SIG webinar to promote our April conference.

A good week’s work all.

pledge for parity

Image from the British Library who have generously digitised the archive of Spare Rib. http://www.bl.uk/spare-rib
Image from the British Library who have generously digitised the archive of Spare Rib. http://www.bl.uk/spare-rib. Some of it even as OER. This is the cover of Issue 199. Please contact copyright@bl.uk

March 8th is International Women’s Day. We are encouraged to make a #pledgeforparity.

Without wishing to sound parroty and go on about the same things all the time, the parity I’ll be championing is parity of coverage and parity of esteem in Wikipedia.

Modern Scottish Women is an exhibition of work by Scottish women artists and concentrates on painters and sculptors. It covers the period from 1885, when Fra Newbery became Director of Glasgow School of Art, until 1965, the year of Anne Redpath’s death. The exhibition is on now and will be there until my birthday in June.

In a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 15% of its contributors identify as female  and less than 20% of the English language Wikipedia’s biographies are about women. As a result, content is skewed by the lack of female participation.

On Saturday 5 March 2016, 12:00 pm – 4:45 pm there’s an editathon at the Portrait Gallery  to improve and include the information about those artists in Wikipedia.* There’s a follow up event on the 8th at the University to continue the good work.

People are always telling me that the reason women don’t edit wikipedia is because they’ve got better things to do. This seems like a good thing to do. Lets make sure an international audience can find information about our cracking Scottish artists.

 

*we created 6 new articles, and improved 8.

body of work

23707548313_7d4a452525_o
Dermatome man, early twentieth century. (c) University of Edinburgh https://www.flickr.com/photos/crcedinburgh/23707548313/in/album-72157661120362394/ CC BY-SA 2.0

During our ‘Creating an open body of knowledge’ wikipedia editathon last week we managed to upload over 500 images, create 4 brand new articles and 56 improved articles.   Our Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan reports that:

“There are now some astonishingly interesting additions to Wikipedia which just simply weren’t there before….

Including:

  • Anne’s article on Norman Dott – the first holder of the Chair of Neurological Surgery at the University of Edinburgh.
  • Gavin’s one man ‘Citation Hunt’ crusade to plug those pesky ‘citation needed’ labels in articles.
  • Chris’s work on Robert Battey – an American physician who is known for pioneering a surgical procedure then called Battey’s Operation and now termed radical oophorectomy (or removal of a woman’s ovaries).
  • Melissa’s noteworthy work doubling (if not trebling) the article on Mary Fairfax Somerville – a Scottish science writer and polymath, at a time when women’s participation in science was discouraged. As well as editing articles on Isabel Thorne, Matilda Chaplin Ayrton and the Scottish Blood Transfusion Service.
  • Christine’s new ‘Controversy’ section on the intriguing case of James Miranda Barry.
  • Eoin’s really helpful mapping tool of the buildings to be photographed: https://mapalist.com/map/573668
  • Our historian of medicine, James’s work on The Brunonian system of medicine – a theory of medicine which regards and treats disorders as caused by defective or excessive excitation.
  • Mary’s first ever article on Leith Hospital – illustrated with pictures she took herself and uploaded to Wikicommons.
  • Eugenia’s articles on Frances Helen Simson (a Scottish suffragist) and The Edinburgh Royal Maternity and Simpson Maternity Hospital Pavilion. Ably added to by Luise Kocaurek’s work on Lady Tweedale.
  • Anne-Marie’s work on Emily Bovell’s article and a brand new article on the New Zealand Army Nursing Service page which came into being in early 1915, when the Army Council in London accepted the New Zealand government’s offer of nurses to help in the war effort during the First World War.
  • Neil’s articles on ‘Fabry disease’ – a rare genetic lysosomal storage disease – and on ‘Alport Syndrome’ – a genetic disorder] affecting around 1 in 5,000 children, characterized by glomerulonephritis, end-stage kidney disease, and hearing loss.
  • Sara’s sterling work uploading images and flitting about improving articles on Leith Hospital, Edinburgh University’s Women’s Union and many more articles.
  • Kimberley’s work on Frances Hoggan – the first British woman to receive a doctorate in medicine from a university in Europe, and the first female doctor to be registered in Wales.
  • And much much more besides…. including LiuLing’s work on The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh on Chinese Wikipedia!”

Creating an Open Body of Knowledge

 

CbVWt1AUYAALJYn.jpg_largeDo you want to learn how to write for the world’s largest encyclopeadia? Do you want to make knowledge available for the whole world to share? Do you like eating biscuits, meeting new people and having fun?

Building on the tremendous success of last year’s Innovative Learning Week Wikipedia editing extravaganza, we invite all to once again come along and join in.

The focus of this years’ event will be on the History of Medicine. You don’t need to know anything about the subject to participate. Suggestions of topics to create or edit, along with supporting resources will be available, and training will be provided by a professional Wikimedian. If you have a laptop or tablet, please bring it along.

open now

ticket
Promo picture for #OER16

Booking is now open for #OER16 . More than 100 papers accepted, some fine looking speakers, and some of the funnest people with whom you could ever care to discuss the minutae of copyright law.

Looking forward to it.

https://oer16.oerconf.org/

In this week we will also be launching our new Edinburgh University OER showcase website Open.ed, and celebrating the ratification of our OER policy by University of Edinburgh Learning and Teaching Committee.

an Edinburgh festival of digital education

Picture taken by me from Evolution House. No rights reserved.
Picture of Edinburgh castle taken by me from the balcony of Evolution House. No rights reserved.

Next year in April 2016 University of Edinburgh will host 3 major digital education conferences back to back. The city will provide a stunning back-drop for leading educators, policy makers and learning technologists to meet, share ideas and present their research. The calls for papers for each of the conferences is open now and the lists of keynote speakers and themes offer a tempting menu for anyone interested in open educational resources, learning analytics or the challenges of learning at scale.

The conferences are: the 7th Open Educational Resources: Open Culture. OER16 https://oer16.oerconf.org/, the 6th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) Conference. LAK16 http://lak16.solaresearch.org/ and the 3rd annual meeting of the ACM Conference on Learning at Scale L@S

Where else would you want be?

be our Wikimedian in Residence

IMG_2147 copyDo you have an eye for detail and a love of facts? Are you an experienced Wikimedian with experience working with the Wikimedia community? What would you do to engage our staff and students in editing, contributing and sharing open knowledge? We are recruiting a Wikimedian in Residence to work in Information Services alongside our learning technologists, archivists, librarians and information literacy teams. Following our first successful editathon events we now need your help to establish a network of Wikimedians on campus and to embed digital skills and open knowledge activities in learning and teaching across the University.

Media coverage:

The Student Newspaper

Edinburgh Evening News

The post is offered on a fixed-term (12 months), part-time basis (17.5 hours per week).

Closing date: Thursday 29 October 2015 at 5pm