Weeknote 28/2017
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #266 was entitled ‘Is it a sign?’. Don’t forget you can sign up to Thought Shrapnel Live! using Telegram to receive links as I come across them. You can also become a valued supporter.
- Joining Costco as a business member, which makes me feel all grown-up. Our kids had a field day, and I took that great photo of the tins of spam. The one that was turned around the other way to the others made me smile.
- Running a half-day thinkathon for London CLC around their strategy, branding, and marketing. Bryan Mathers was in the room with them, and I was on the other end of appear.in.
- Travelling to and from London on the train for a meeting with Freeformers and the client (a large tech company) that we’re doing work for. It’s an introduction to coding project.
- Ordering and receiving a OnePlus 5 which, so far, is fantastic. The portrait mode using the dual camera is superb.
- Working on the resources for the above, which is proving very enjoyable as it’s been a while since I wrote a scheme of work! This has taken up most of my week, and will continue to take up a fair chunk of time until the end of July.
- Confirming that I can keynote the Innovate EdTech Conference on 11th November in London. Early bird tickets are now on sale! This year’s theme is ‘The Age of Learner Experience’.
- Drafting an article for Hello World magazine on Open Badges at the request of Miles Berry, and answers to questions about badges for Lars Hyland from Totara (who I’ll be doing some work for over the summer). Thanks to Eylan Ezekiel, Gavin Henrick, and Tony Sheppard for helpful comments and suggestions on the magazine article.
- Catching up with my We Are Open Co-op colleagues after we’ve off being doing different things over the last few weeks, in a couple of cases on the other side of the world! We discussed putting in session proposals for Re:publica in Dublin in early September, and the Mozilla Festival in London in late October (although I’ll be away on holiday during MozFest).
- Meeting with Jeff Bohrer from IMS Global about the work we’re doing around Badge Wiki. I’ve also invited many members of the badges community to join a Loomio group in preparation for a barn raising session we’re holding on July 26th.
- Selling some technology on eBay. I’m now completely Apple-free!
- Working with Sarah Horrocks from London CLC on a report on technology-enhanced teacher professional development we’re writing for the Education Development Trust.
- Attending my children’s seemingly-endless end of term activities. This week it was summer fairs.
- Going away my wife away for the night after packing the children off to my parents. We went to Jesterval in Newcastle, which was bizarre and awesome, enjoyed a meal at Fat Buddha, and stayed over at Hotel Du Vin.
- Writing:
- The role of the nation state (Discours.es, 14th July 2017)
- Back to the RSS(R) (Discours.es, 12th July 2017)
Next week I’m working from home on Monday and Tuesday, and then in Brighton from Wednesday to Friday, kicking off work with Totara.
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]
