Weeknote 12/2016
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Issue #207 of Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely focused on education, technology, and productivity. This week it included links about Open Source in schools, internet control, and quitting email. I experimented with a slightly different design, and adding a ko.fi button to this week’s newsletter, so thank you to Isger Janson and Laura Hilliger for buying me a coffee!
- Recording and releasing Episode 43 (‘Elite Philosophers’) of the Today In Digital Education podcast, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes. This week we discussed discuss Studio schools, intentional and unintentional racism, ‘deep work’, Open Source software, control of the internet, and more! You can discuss TIDE in our Slack channel.
- Working three days for City & Guilds this week. That’s for a couple of reasons: there’s an important project workshop next week, and I want to take August off to go camping around Europe with my family. Hence extra days now, to work less in the summer…
- Speaking at the AoC Learning Technology conference in Birmingham on behalf of City & Guilds about gamification and Open Badges. Slides and audio of my presentation can be found here.
- Attending the RSA Cities of Learning Summit. I particularly appreciated meeting Timothy Freeman Cook in person, finding out about LRNG’s approach to ‘playlists for learning’, and talking to some people doing great work across cities in the UK.
- Meeting with my friend, former Mozilla colleague, and Slack buddy, John Bevan about how we can work together, co-operatively.
- Figuring out with some representatives from the Groningen Declaration conference what I’m going to cover during my keynote in South Africa in May.
- Catching up with Kathryn Meisner (another former Mozilla colleague) who’s now a kick-ass career coach, and Eylan Ezekiel, who’s a self-described ‘edtech chef’.
- Spending a few hours on Good Friday at Wallington, a National Trust near us. Our children did the Cadbury Easter egg hunt, played around, and generally enjoyed themselves in the sunshine!
- Writing:
Next week I’ll be taking Monday off as it’s a Bank Holiday in the UK, and then down in London working with City & Guilds on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m trying to work a little less over the next couple of weeks as my wife and children are on Easter holidays.
