Weeknote 27/2016
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Issue #222 of Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely focused on education, technology, and productivity.
- Recording and releasing Episode 56 (‘Brave Metaphors’) of Today In Digital Education, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes. We discussed positive news, metaphors, badges, exercise, credentialing, Evernote, Douglas Rushkoff, Brave, Ecosia, Codemoji, Obama, cognitive potential, and more! You can discuss TIDE in our Slack channel.
- Suffering from delayed jet lag. I was fine last week, and then ended up going back to bed on Monday morning after getting breakfast for the kids. Funny how these things work…
- Chilling out on Tuesday and spending time with the family. I read things I’d been queuing up to read, and did some admin I’d been putting off for a while.
- Buying a roof box for our upcoming family camping trip around Europe. I’ve planned out a rough route that takes us down past Lyon, into Italy and Lake Como, down past Nice and into Spain, visiting Barcelona and San Sebastián, and then back home via the west coast of France. Fortunately, we’ve got the whole of August to do that…
- Working with City & Guilds from their London office on Wednesday. I also got to have a pleasant drink and a chat in the sunshine outside the British Library with John Potter from UCL.
- Getting the DNS sorted out so that the We Are Open Co-op site could go live. Many thanks to Laura Hilliger for doing the majority of work on that!
- Speaking at the Festival of Skills event on Thursday and Friday. I think it’s fair to say that there were less people there than expected. Still, I got a bit of a tan, got to hang out with the Digitalme guys, and got to talk about both Open Badges and the work Bryan Mathers and I have done with London CLC!
- Honoured to be mentioned in the same bracket as Audrey Watters in this glowing post from Ben Wilkoff. I was particularly enamoured with this paragraph:
- “They are philosophers in the best sense of the word: they offer a distinct viewpoint on learning that sets them apart from many of those around them. Although they are part of a broader blogging and academic community, they are not of it. They are both reaching further and creating more. And it is in this act of creation that I am most inspired.”
- Writing:
- New weareopen.coop website now live! (8th July 2016)
- This is not working (6th July 2016)
Next week I’m working from home on Monday, down in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then back home on Thursday and Friday. The latter are the only days I’ve got any capacity until September, really — unless I re-jig things around my trip to California in a couple of weeks’ time.
