We know that many students are involved in activities alongside their studies such as volunteering, part-time work, and getting involved in the University community. To help these activities to stand out from the crowd, our University has had an Award for “Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” to sit beside other available Edinburgh Awards for the last […]

Over the years, I have tried more productivity systems than I can count. Todoist, Notion, NotePlan, markdown files, plain text files, and plenty of others. I tried free versions, paid versions, systems I was curious about, systems I wanted to love, and systems I convinced myself might work if I just used them properly. I […]

On Tuesday 21st April 2026 our Digital Skills Specialists Edinburgh Award students celebrated and toasted their success. Over the past 6 months they have thrown themselves into the depths of the digital unknown with hope that they’ll come out the other end with a working project that not only gives back to the community but […]

Introduction On March 16th, I attended the AI for Cultural Heritage Hub (ArCH) Conference at the Clare College at the University Cambridge. I am very grateful for the generous invite by the organisers of the conference. Hosted by Cambridge University Libraries in collaboration with the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and funded by […]

We have made some updates to the JISC Digital Skills Discovery Tool to make selecting your school or department within the university simpler. The Discovery Tool is an interactive questionnaire that identifies your Digital Skills Capability ratings, highlighting strengths, and areas for improvement.  Existing users: We need you to update your Discovery Tool Department!  Follow these easy steps to complete this process:  Open the […]

As someone who is really interested in developmental psychology, I often find myself thinking about how different tools shape our habits and influence our cognitive behaviours, particularly when it comes to thinking and learning. The kind of thinking I’m referring to is the kind that happens when you’re halfway through solving a problem or trying […]

This year’s Digifest conference in Birmingham has just wrapped up, and my brain is buzzing with ideas. The 2026 theme, ‘From disruption to direction’, landed exactly where my head has been at lately. As I attend talks and workshops, I tend to map what I’m hearing to the work our team is doing back at […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking lately, which is not something I ever thought I’d write. Not in a formal way. More in a quiet, slightly uneasy way that shows up when I’m halfway through a task and realise I’ve reached for ELM almost automatically. Sometimes that feels helpful. Sometimes it makes me pause […]

Data used I looked at bookings made in Event Booking for Digital Skills courses that ran from 1/9/24 to 1/9/25, where the person either attended or did not attend the course. Cancellations and bookings where attendance was not recorded were not included. I only included bookings that were made at least 1 day before the […]

Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia The fourth year of the Edinburgh Award for Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia concluded on 31st March 2025. Seven students (and one staff volunteer) completed this extracurricular digital research project amassing both the requisite 55-80 hours of volunteering time AND the significant & demonstrable impact in improving the topic coverage of their […]