This is our Digital Practice round-up for March 2026 of the things we’ve been reading, watching and discovering this month. Lots of Digifest-related activity this month for you to peruse! This edition has been edited by Chris Thomson with contributions from Cat Bailey (CB), Cathie Evans (CE), Kathryn Woodhead (KW), Lis Parcell (LP) and Zac Gribble (ZG)
Digital tools and spaces
‘The era of invincibility is over’: the week big tech was brought to heel by Dan Milmo and Robert Booth. The outcome of this will interesting to watch. It’s not inevitable that it will lead to wholesale change in social media but it does mark a change in people’s willingness to challenge the status quo of social media. It will be interesting, depending on the outcome, to see whether it leads to change in regulation. Although this is on the surface a wellbeing issue, it has broader implications for how the major platforms operate and the way we engage with them. (CT)
This virtual exhibition from the National Gallery is really inspiring and a nice example of how a virtual exhibition can work. I spent a happy time in the virtual exhibit checking out the artwork and learning more via their innovative discovery learning method. (CB)
Kathryn lifts the lid on the discussions at the XR Community workshop on smart glasses at Digifest this month. They explored the role of the devices as an assistive technology and its usefulness for teaching and learning. (KW)
This article on the experience of living with smart glasses interested me, not least because of the journalist’s note that when live streaming her shopping trip to her husband, he started telling her to do ‘disruptive’ things. When asked why, he likened it to playing video games. You don’t need to be a science fiction fan to find this disconcerting. I’m going to be searching through the research now to see if this angle of first-person POV has been explored already. (CB)
Skills and capabilities
Chris hosted a live recording of the Beyond the Tech podcast at Digifest this year discussing Creative Universities’ approach to digital innovation. He was joined by Jim Nottingham, CIO at Creative Arts University and Fiona Camino from Adobe. (CT)
Zac explore the results of the Digital Storytelling Community workshop at Digifest this year that as asked people deliberately provocative questions about the role of storytelling and digital technology in the modern workplace. (ZG)
Collaboration and cooperation
Lis summarises the Digifest workshop hosted by the Jisc FE Library LRC community of practice on the central role Library/LRC professionals and services play as the “glue” in digital transformation. (LP)
Wellbeing and online safety
Catherine provides an overview of the Digital Wellbeing workshop at Digifest 2026 and invites you to join the Digital Wellbeing community (CE)
Research conducted at 3 UK universities failed to show any measurable link between the use of learning analytics to identify students that might have wellbeing issues and the take up of support services or improved learning outcomes. The studies focused on automated nudges via email or mobile app. There’s lots to unpack here but for me this highlights the difficulties of deriving meaning from system data points on something as complex as students’ life stories. It might also say something about students’ relationships with personalised technologies. (CT)
As a counterpoint to the above, Jisc released this edition of the Beyond the Tech podcast in which Liam Snaith, student wellbeing advisor at Newcastle University talks to Jisc’s Jim Keane about how learning analytics are helping to inform conversations with students and teaching staff that enable effective support. (CT)
Expanding our horizons
A wildcard one, this one, but I found how Disney and NVDIA have worked together to create this Olaf robot fascinating. The used reinforcement learning to help Olaf learn to walk in a complex environment. I wonder how this technology could be used in other ways? (CB)
Not technically about education, but there’s a lot of interesting insight in Rory’s piece here about how value is perceived in an organisation and that has implications for how we think about and use ed tech including (but not limited to ) AI. (CT)
