Weeknote 23/2017
This week I’ve been:
- Flying to and from Dubai to meet with the Al Ghurair Foundation for Education. My wife, Hannah, came with me, and we had a very interesting time — especially given the restrictions around eating and drinking during Ramadan.
- Causing myself some issues by (stupidly) upgrading my phone while travelling, and then losing all of my two-factor authentication codes. Getting back to my accounts in was (reassuringly) complicated, and I’ve definitely learned an important lesson there!
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #261 was entitled ‘Gettin’ hot in here’.
- Meeting with Charles Kriel from the Corsham Institute and catching up with Lars Hyland from Totara.
- Issuing more badges to those who have completed the Badge Bootcamp email-based course.
- Updating and making small tweaks to my landing page at dougbelshaw.com.
- Working on the technical scope for Badge Wiki on behalf of We Are Open Co-op. We then commissioned Web Architects (a fellow memeber of coops.tech) to install MediaWiki and configure plugins/extensions. We’ll be doing some configuration over the next couple of weeks, before having some kind of community wiki barn raising event.
- Recording and releasing Episode 84 of Today In Digital Education (TIDE), the regular podcast I record with Dai Barnes. This episode was entitled ‘Chickenshit Rubbish’ and we discussed the UK General Election, the benefits and drawbacks of Facebook, crypto-anarchism, the Internet of Things, Linux, blockchain, Open Badges, and more!
- Sending out Issue #12 of Badge News, the bi-weekly newsletter for those interested in keeping up-to-date on what’s happening in the world of Open Badges.
- Watching the omnishambles of this General Election reach it’s fascinating conclusion. Looks like we’ll be voting again this year…
- Writing:
- Digital Employability for the New Economy [Stir to Action] (Open Educational Thinkering, 8th June 2017)
- Badge Wiki: technical scope (We Are Open blog, 8th June 2017)
- Facebook paranoia (Discours.es, 7th June 2017)
- Some thoughts on the future of the Open Badges backpack (Open Educational Thinkering, 6th June 2017)
- The Surveillance State will be made possible through Surveillance Capitalism (Discours.es, 6th June 2017)
- The threat (and promise) of crypto-anarchism (Discours.es, 6th June 2017)
Next week I’ll be configuring Badge Wiki, preparing to present at an Open Badges event up at the University of Dundee, doing some research about open practices in the NHS, and making some important decisions about the future…
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]
