Weeknote 04/2016

This week I’ve been:

• Sending out Issue #200 of Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely focused on education, technology, and productivity. This week it included links about growth mindsets, Beyond 140, and working hard.
• Recording and releasing Episode 36 (‘Walled League Tables’) of the Today In Digital Education podcast, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes. In this week’s episode we discussed BETT, the end of school league tables in England, growth mindsets, Facebook farmers, surviving winter, and more!
• Getting back into a routine. I created a spreadsheet to track six things, which worked pretty well!
• Down in London for two days working for City & Guilds on various things. I really do enjoy working with that Bryan Mathers.
• Having dinner with Sirkku Nikamaa, her husband Mark, and Dr Mike Martin. We had a really wide-ranging conversation as well as an interesting debate about education policy.
• Commissioning Andrew Peachey to do some research on the (technical)  base to build the new version of dynamicskillset.com.
• Accepted for an OER16 conference session (with Laura Hilliger) on ‘Implementing Cultural Shifts in Organisations Through Open Source Approaches’.
• Finally getting around to setting up a Twitter account for the TIDE podcast — find it at @TIDEpodcast.
• Refactoring a Digital Skills curriculum for London CLC that came out of a thinkathon that Bryan and I ran for them. I also added some badges into the mix, including ones based on stealth assessment!
• Meeting up for coffee with Graeme Redshaw-Boxwell from Newcastle University. We had a great chat about Open Badges and new technologies.
• Writing:
  • Planning for productivity (Jan 29th)
  • SAD is hibernation (Jan 28th)
  • Caring doesn’t scale, and scaling doesn’t care (Jan 27th)
  • Mozilla’s role in the Open Badges ecosystem (Jan 26th)
  • 3 things to consider when designing a digital skills framework (Jan 25th)
  • Day rates and focusing on #doingthework (Jan 23rd)

Next week I’m down in London on Tuesday and Wednesday as usual. I’m looking for a couple of additional clients, so if you know someone who needs some help around digital skills/literacy, alternative credentials, and/or working more openly/effectively, then let me know!

Image CC BY-NC-SA Paul Carmody