Weeknote 12/2017
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #251 was entitled ‘Vernal Equinox’.
- Releasing Chapter 4 of my productivity audiobook: #uppingyourgame: a practical guide to personal productivity. This latest chapter is on ‘time’.
- Collaborating with two of my We Are Open Co-op colleagues, Laura Hilliger and Bryan Mathers. We ran a mini-thinkathon for ourselves around the topic of ‘digital employability’.
- Recording and releasing Episode 79 of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast with my co-host, Dai Barnes. This episode was entitled ‘The Random Show (Part 2)’, as we again tried to discuss things other than those we do on a regular basis. That included. Note: Episode 80 will involve community contributions via Anchor.fm — more about that here.
- Interviewed for E-180 Magazine on Open Badges. I’m pleased with the resulting article, entitled A Constellation of Microcredentials.
- Swimming. As I’ve got asthma, doing anaerobic sports in winter is a mild form of torture. Howevre, now it’s spring, I’m back in the pool.
- Meeting with Stephen Kelly and Peter Knipe from Queen’s University, Belfast, as they’re helping me with the digital literacies workshop I’m running (along with a keynote I’m giving) at their university next month. I also had a critical friend conversation with Sarah Horrocks from London CLC, and caught up with Wayne Skipper from Concentric Sky, then Mark Otter from Participate.
- Booking our family holiday to Malta and Gozo for Autumn half-term. We’ve been many times before, but this will be the first time since the Azure Window collapsed earlier this month.
- Migrainey. Possibly because I’ve started swimming again, and because one of my triggers is vascular stress, I had a pretty bad migraine on Wednesday, and then (what I call) a ‘migraine hangover’ on Thursday. It’s all manageable, but not much fun.
- Responding to enquiries and booking in work with clients for May and June.
- Grateful for the amazing customer service provide by Reclaim Hosting, this time with Jim and Tim fixing my wiki.
- Up a mountain. Well, several, actually on Friday and Saturday to ensure I got in a couple of Quality Mountain Days. I need to log 20 QMDs before I start my Mountain Leader Training, and these were days five and six, respectively.
- Writing:
- What we know about ‘knowledge’ (Ambiguiti.es, 23rd March 2017)
- Revolutionaries, retreat, and renewal (Discours.es, 23rd March 2017)
- Eight ways to think about digital employability (We Are Open Co-op blog, 22nd March 2017)
- Chapter 4 of my new audiobook on productivity is now available! (Open Educational Thinkering, 20th March 2017)
Next week I’m working from home again, Monday-Thursday. I’ll be preparing for upcoming presentations and workshops in Manchester, Waterford, Belfast, and London. On Friday/Saturday I’m planning to head up mountains again, to get in some more QMDs.
Photo of approach to Ben Ledi by me, on Friday
I make my living helping people and organisations become more productive in their use of technology. If you’ve got something that you think I might be able to help with, please do get in touch! Email: [email protected]
