Reading Time: 3 minutes Highlighting women’s experiences online To mark International Women’s Day (8 March) 2021, the Digital Skills team have created a Resource List (no login required, also available as a PDF download: IWD 2021 Reading List) comprising books, articles and essays seeking to empower women in the digital age and shed light …
Reading Time: 3 minutes A Year in Digital Safety To celebrate Safer Internet Day this year, I thought I’d look back on the first year of the University of Edinburgh’s Digital Safety and Citizenship initiative. In many ways, it’s been a year unlike any other, filled with hard lessons, disruption and adaptation. One beacon …
Reading Time: 3 minutes Blue Monday Blues Today (18 January 2021) is Blue Monday and, considering how this January has gone so far, things feel, to me at least, just a little bit harder than they normally do at this time of year. I don’t think I’m alone in having pinned all my hopes …
Reading Time: 4 minutes Digital Kindness I originally started this blog post back in November, intending to publish it in time for World Kindness Day (which, rather ominously, fell on Friday the 13th this year), but it ended up on the back burner as other projects took priority and digital fatigue began to set …
Reading Time: 4 minutes The pressure to be “always on” A couple of weeks ago, I was in a Microsoft Teams hangout with some colleagues at the University when someone mentioned being tied to their emails more than ever before. “It’s like a new form of presenteeism,” my colleague said, “you’re expected to be …
Reading Time: 4 minutes The start of something new I know it’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog. After posting at the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown, it felt at once that digital safety had become more important than ever in our new “digital-first” world and yet that there was too …
Reading Time: 4 minutes Covid-19 has presented a unique challenge for the higher education sector A week ago today on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised Covid-19 as a pandemic and I was just beginning to clock onto the severity of the situation. It seems rather naive now, but just seven …
Reading Time: 3 minutes Embedding Digital Citizenship into the University Community Tomorrow, 11 February, is Safer Internet Day and here at the University of Edinburgh, the Digital Skills and Training team are launching #DigitalCitizen: an online campaign aimed at raising awareness about digital safety and the responsible use of technology. It is my hope …
Reading Time: 8 minutes what can we learn from techno-thrillers like Black Mirror and You? “Nosedive,” Black Mirror, Netflix (image via Giphy) Popular media often paints an alarming picture of digital technology. Shows such as Black Mirror (2011-present) and Westworld (2016-present) have become synonymous with a dystopian vision of automation run amok in a …
Reading Time: 3 minutes New Beginnings and Digital Skills Thoughts On my first weeks as the UoE’s new Digital Safety Support Officer It’s been a month since I started my job as the University of Edinburgh’s first Digital Safety Support Officer in the Digital Skills & Training Team at the Information Services Group (isn’t …
