Weeknote 47/2015
This week I’ve been:
- Away from home all week. It’s been tiring but, at least, means that I get two ‘Doug days’ next week! I stayed at the Premier Inn in Worcester, the Radisson Blu in Birmingham, Citadines St Marks, and… Bryan Mathers‘ house (thanks Bryan!)
- Sending out Issue #194 of my newsletter, Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel. This week it featured links about digital revolutions, reclaiming privacy, and great advice from Tony Robbins. This month’s newsletters are in association with Dynamic Skillset.
- Releasing Episode 31 (‘Teetering Email’) of the Today In Digital Education podcast, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes. In this episode we discussed the digital revolution in higher education, myths about how teens use tech, reclaiming privacy, Twitter’s ‘pyramid scheme’, and why you’re using email… incorrectly.
- Keynoting, running a workshop, and pulling together some strands at the end of the University of Worcester‘s staff development day. I uploaded my slides on Digital Literacies, Learning Pathways, and Open Badges to Slideshare.
- Spending four days working with City & Guilds this week as I needed to be in Eastbourne at an event on Thursday evening.
- Giving an impromptu short talk on Open Badges at the above event (‘Digital Vocational Badges‘).
- Annoyed at the way the Paris attacks have led to infringements on our civil liberties by politicians. I’m particularly upset at the way the mass media have demonised encryption — which is ironic given ISIS plotted the attack via unencrypted SMS.
- Grilled (OK, not quite) by the City & Guilds investigation & compliance team about using Open Badges in high-stakes testing, etc.
- Popping into a thinkathon run by Wapisasa at UCL Academy. I inevitably chipped in now and again despite just being there as an observer! I have to say that I was very impressed by the whole experience.
- Herding cats. Always. Herding. Cats.
- Meeting with:
- Sirkku Nikamaa, a Finnish educator I first got to know while working for Mozilla. We talked about all kinds of things with a drink in The Happenstance while it poured with rain outside!
- Eylan Ezekiel, who I first met when he was Head Honcho at BrainPOP, and who now is Head of Education for BCS. Bryan joined us and we went to Wahaca.
- Writing:
Next week I’m doing some work for London Connected Learning Centre (that I’d been hoping to have already started) around the Go ON UK Digital Skills grid. I’ll then be down in London for a couple of days working with City & Guilds before (apart from one meeting) taking Thursday and Friday off!
Image CC BY-NC Xenja Santarelli
