Tag Archives: 1edtech

weeknotes

In Thessaloniki you cry two times, when you arrive and when you leave – Weeknote #394 – 18th September 2026

Leave a comment

This week I was in Thessaloniki for the second SIG-EDU meeting and attending the 1EdTech Learning Impact conference.

I have been to Greece before, visiting Zante and Kefalonia on holidays in the 2000s. However, I had not visited the Greek mainland before. I also realised this was the first European conference I had been to which was in southern Europe. I think the furtherest south I had been before (in Europe) was Brest in Brittany (northern France). Though it was in September, it was still very warm with temperatures in the high twenties. I arrived in Greece on the Monday having spent most of the day travelling.

Both the SIG-EDU meeting and the 1EdTech Learning Impact conference were taking place at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

The SIG-EDU meeting focus was on interoperability and procurement. One of my colleagues from Jisc did a great presentation about licensing and procurement.

Across the week there were various sessions on standards, interoperability and examples from across Europe. It was also great to discuss issues and challenges with European colleagues and learn what was working and what wasn’t.

I did get a bit of a reputation at the conference for asking questions about the concept of a home institution, something I should really write a blog post about in the future.

As with most conferences some sessions were insightful and really useful for me, others, were, well, not really for me.

Across my career, I have come to realise the importance of scalability and ramping up ideas that will work with thousands of students well beyond the scope of an initial pilot or small scale project. I wrote this back in 2018 on scaling up pilots.

One lesson I would pass on, is if you are undertaking a small scale pilot is to reflect on how it would scale in the future. It’s not just about how the technology, device or process enhances and enriches teaching and learning, but what about all the other stuff. Logistics, charging, storage, training, support, staff development, sustainability, and end of life.

Much of that post was about scaling up institutional pilots to be delivered across the whole institution. Today, working for Jisc, I have come to appreciate the need to sometimes scale up pilots to a national level.

In the area of interoperability that does mean when thinking about the eight use cases of the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework for example, this means not just scaling up at a national level, but also internationally.

Thankfully no delay to the flight home this week.

weeknotes

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past – Weeknote #342 – 19th September

Leave a comment

This week I actually spent three days of my working week, working in the Bristol office. It was a very busy office, and as a result there was a real buzz. Some of my colleagues in my team were also in the office, so there was much discussion and in-person collaboration.

The beginning of the week I was in a meeting looking at improving internal communication and collaboration within our directorate. It was an interesting meeting.

Spent a lot of time on organising and planning next week. I am off to the Netherlands for a GÉANT TF-EDU (Education Taskforce) meeting in Delft and then will be attending the 1EdTech Learning Impact conference before ending the week meeting up with Dutch colleagues from SURF. I helped put together a presentation which Jisc will be presenting next week at the conference looking at sharing and collaboration.

I did look at travel options for the trip; my first choice was to actually drive and use the Harwich Hook of Holland ferry. Though this would take a lot more time, most of which would be driving to Harwich in Essex, which with charging would be a six or even seven hour drive followed by an eight hour ferry crossing. Another option was to catch the train. There are direct trains from London to Amsterdam, but the timings are challenging as it is a nearly a five hour train journey, but I would need to get to London first, and then at the other end get to Delft. In the end it was easier, quicker (and cheaper) to fly from Bristol. It’s a seventy-five minute flight, though I have to get from Schiphol to Delft, however that is less than an hour away on the train.

lecture theatre
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

The OfS has proposed a revised TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) and is consulting how it assesses and regulates higher education. One key point is putting a lower burden on high-quality institutions; and increased scrutiny on weaker ones. There is still some reliance on NSS scores, which we know sometimes skews how universities interact with students.

There’s something for everyone in the latest rethink of the Teaching Excellence Framework, but as David Kernohan suggests at WonkHE, bringing disparate approaches together can highlight fundamental weaknesses.

weeknotes

Raising the standards – Weeknote #308 – 24th January 2025

Leave a comment

I was off to London again this week. I was attending an 1EdTech Event in London, Innovate your way out of the funding crisis. This was my first engagement with the standards community for some time. Before I joined Jisc and when I was working in Further Education I did a lot of work looking at standards in relation to moving student data around so it could be imported into the VLE. Then there were standards for learning objects and ensuring that they would work on the VLE, both importing and exporting the right data. I also being very impressed with LTI and what it would enable in allowing students to use a WordPress installation for blogging. Blogging, what was that, and is it still around?

We are starting work on a collaborative project with UUK on collaboration. Part of that is reviewing the original terms of reference and bringing in a consultant to undertake some of the work as well.

laptop
Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

I have been spending time researching, planning and writing initial draft for a higher education state of activity report.

In February Jisc has one of its regular meetings with the OfS and I have been preparing some notes for that meeting.

Spent time on the planning and logistics for a workshop I am attending in Helsinki in February. The workshop is about NRENs for Education. NRENs are the National Research and Education Networks that most countries have for connecting their universities and research institutes. In the UK Jisc is the NREN. This workshop is bringing together a group of like-minded NRENs to work together on essentially student mobility.

I am anticipating that Helsinki will be cold. I have been before, for an EU e-Learning Conference which took place in July 2006 in Finland. I reminisced about that conference back in a weeknote in July 2019.

I also signed up for TNC in Brighton in June. It’s the first TNC I go to, and it’s in the UK. Reminds me when I got funding to go to the international conference mLearn, and the year I went, it was in Dudley.