Weeknote 38/2015

This week I’ve been:

• Sending out Issue #186 of my newsletter, Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel. Many thanks to Makers Academy for sponsoring September’s issues. Let me know if you know an organisation who might be interested in sponsoring October!
• Releasing Episode 22 (‘Badass Context’) of the Today In Digital Education podcast that I record regularly with Dai Barnes. We discussed lots of things including Apple’s most recent product launch, banning smartphones and tablets in classrooms, and the ROI of open education.
• Teaching the first session of Computing Club at my kids’ school. My son’s now old enough to come along and, after he got over the embarrassment of his dad teaching his friends, got stuck with the rest of them as learned a bit of Markdown.
• Making (some) decisions about our loft conversion. We’re only one week in and the steels, windows, and floor are in! My wife’s making the majority of the decisions as I’m away at least a couple of days a week. It’s going to be a wonderful light and airy space when it’s finished.
• Travelling to London and Brighton for work with City & Guilds. Lots of interesting stuff including chairing the regular Open Badges Advisory Group and being part of a pitch team for a relatively large and exciting project.
• Learning the basis of iDraw. Many thanks to Bryan Mathers who gave me some very helpful pointers.
• Involved in a full-day future planning session. More details when I can share them about that.
• Staying at The Waterfront hotel in Brighton (along with the Samoan rugby squad who are immense) and the Novotel London City South, which had awesome privacy glass in the bathroom (see this video I took).
• Catching up with Oliver Quinlan over coffee. We then headed to a Digital Leaders Salon. Felicity Singleton from the UK Government Digital Service was excellent.
• Writing about how to sponsor my newsletter, as well as taking another look at the digital credentials landscape.

Next week I’m down in London on Wednesday and Thursday as it’s City & Guilds second UK Products & Services conference on the Thursday. The rest of the week I’ll be working from home — or, more likely, the library and coffee shops due to the noise generated by the builders…