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Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’

Things I Learned This Week – #35

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Offline this week I learned how dead the world of Higher education is over the summer, that there was a reason I was heavily discouraged to take GCSE Art, and that trying to run after a takeaway curry the night before is a non-starter… :-p
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Things I Learned This Week – #34

This week I learned that seagulls are carnivorous (I saw one eating a pigeon), that trying to escape via a nettle-strewn path when playing ‘capture the flag’ is foolish, and that this season is going to be pretty much the same as the last for Sunderland…
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Things I Learned This Week – #33

Offline this week I learned not to go and see films on the basis of who’s in them, not to sit next to large cheese plants at doctors surgeries, and that listening to audiobooks before bed almost guarantees some form of lucid dreaming. :-p
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Things I Learned This Week – #31

You’re expecting me, I know, to talk about Google Teacher Academy UK. I learned so much in my time in London that to try and shoehorn it into this post would be foolish. Instead, I’m going to write a series of five (or so) blog posts over the next couple of weeks. I’ll stick to the usual format with this post! :-) (more…)

Weeknote #12

This week I have been mostly…

Travelling
I flew to Cardiff for a JISC Advance internal comms meeting on Tuesday and then went to London and back (Wednesday-Friday) on the train. The thing that seemed to take longest was walking and getting the tube around London. I remain baffled as to why anyone would want to live or work there; I feel like I need to take a shower after travelling one stop on the Underground.

Being inspired
Google Teacher Academy UK more than met my expectations. I’m going to save my reflections for a series of blog posts over the next couple of weeks. Suffice to say, however, that from the first lesson on ‘Search’ I was challenged, inspired and enthused in equal measure. The team that organised #GTAUK were legendary: both friendly and awesome!

Watching Toy Story 3
My thoughts? Great film – probably my favourite action/jailbreak film actually. Still, not as good as Toy Story 2 and I found the attempt to make the audience cry at the end a bit cynical. It was Ben’s first trip to the cinema – he was tired by the end but enjoyed it!

Being reminded of the importance of sleep
I know how much I need to get a good night’s sleep to be productive. That has never been brought home to me more forcibly than this week. Man cannot live on caffeine, sugar and adrenaline alone…

Things I Learned This Week – #28

Offline this week I learned that running two 10k’s in a week doesn’t actually kill you, that ‘location-based task chunking’ aids productivity and that the Kindle rocks (although technically the latter can go online as well…) :-p
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Things I Learned This Week – #27

Offline this week I learned that sometimes you’ve got to just grab the bull by the horns and take the lead, that lemon curd has never stopped being insanely tasty, and that camping with a 3 year-old is actually quite fun!
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Things I Learned This Week – #26

This week I bought an iPhone 4. So shoot me. :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW26

Tech.

Productivity & Inspiration

If I wanted to keep anything, I had to buy it for a dollar (Just one dollar!) at a time. You soon realise that you wouldn’t pay a dollar for that CD in a junk shop — so why are you keeping it? All the money I paid went to charity, the amount of stuff I didn’t want also went to a charity store. It’s amazing how unappealing that old sweater looks when you have to pay for it.

Education & Academic

I yearn to travel to a place with colleagues were we decided to do something, create something, make things, build stuff. “Workshops” are a bit of a misnomer, you do a little work, but its mostly about an exercise in training, not with a goal of creating something.
…
Likely what I am dreaming of would be a bit more local… What if people with various skills (graphics, coding, instructional design) descended on a selected institution and focused on one project for a week? Revamp their web site, implement an online portfolio tool, set up a word press multiuser service? I dont know what would be done or how to organize it, but I’d bet, that not just the host location benefits, as people would share ideas, learn from each other.

I for one, would be more energized perched on the roof driving nails than sitting in rows listening to talks.

Data, Design & Infographics

  • You can’t see wireless networks (obviously!) but they play an important part in our lives. The following video shows them in a visual way which is aesthetically pleasing:

  • Need some quick feedback on your website design? Try Bounce App! (here’s an example from swiss miss)
  • Years ago I attempted to make a font out of my handwriting. Here’s a way to do it quickly, easily and with great results!

Misc.

Quotations

It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top. (Henry Ward Beecher)

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. (Theodore Roosevelt)

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. (Herman Melville)

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. (Confucius)

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can. (Paul Tournier)

Image CC BY-NC BasBoerman

Things I Learned This Week – #25

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

This week I learned to make my freakin’ mind up and stick to it, that there’s a lot to be said for not putting yourself in positions you know are going to be frustrating, and that you’re onto a losing battle when you try to reason with a 3-year old. :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW25

Tech.

  • Apple’s newly-revamped MobileMe looks good. If I had an iPhone anymore. And didn’t have GMail. For free.
  • Americans, eh? Got to love them. Why should the US President have an internet kill switch?
  • Clay Shirky’s got a new book out about technology and society. Guess what? It’s awesome (apparently).
  • Google, apparently, classify mobile users as ‘repetitive now’, ‘bored now’ or ‘urgent now’. Which is probably a good way to think about it, actually.
  • Not sure whether to buy a new gadget? This flow chart should sort you out.

Productivity & Inspiration

Education & Academic

  • Michael Gove, the prophet of doom UK Education Secretary, has outlined how the setting up of Free Schools is going to work. If, as he reckons, it leads to parents and teachers setting up schools in the most disadvantaged areas, I’ll eat my metaphorical hat.
  • YouTube launched an online video editor this week. Hopefully, this will mean the demise of the awful, crash-prone, but seemingly-loved-by-teachers Windows Movie Maker:

  • The Angry Technician reminded me this week why, in many ways, I don’t miss being the resident techie in a school.
  • The Google Scholar team now have their own blog.
  • AQA, an exam board in the UK, is developing separate exams for boys and girls.

Data, Design & Infographics

  • There’s not a lot of point in information for it’s own sake. Which is why I liked this trailer for a forthcoming activism video, in itself a great example of a well-designed product!

  • Who’s the best footballer in the world. Messi? Ronaldo? Nope, it’s either Sergio Ramos or Xavi Hernandez. I’ve got proof!

Misc.

Quotations

If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves. (Thomas Edison)

Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out. (Titus Livius)

As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Do or do not, there is no try. (Yoda)

You don’t have to get it right; you have to get it going! (Mike Litman)

Things I Learned This Week – #24

This week I learned that not being contactable is actually quite nice sometimes, to always back up the contacts on my SIM card, and too much stuff to list here from ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever. :-)

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW24

Tech.

  • Confused/annoyed with Apple’s recent decisions (e.g. about Flash)? Aza Raskin’s recent post about the history of Apple (and his dad’s role in it) is a must read.
  • LED-powered lights with built-in speakers for wireless music in every room? Yes please!
  • Boxcar has launched a free, ad-supported, version of its push notification service for iPhones and iPads. It allows you to get instant notifications of everything from Twitter replies to emails.
  • Been under a rock or on a different planet this week? Here’s a rundown of what’s new in Apple’s new iOS4 operating system (which is powering the new iPhone 4 and, presumably, future devices)
  • Again, if you’re not aware, the football World Cup has just started in South Africa. Google has made its Street View imagery available inside each stadium as well!

Productivity & Inspiration

The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties—something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows. We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds. We leave a movie theater vowing to reconsider our lives in the light of a film’s values. Yet by the following evening, our experience is well on the way to dissolution, like so much of what once impressed us: the ruins of Ephesus, the view from Mount Sinai, the feelings after finishing Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Education & Academic

  • I like the sound of Trebor Scholz. Not only has he got a sweet name (geddit?) but he rejects the ‘digital natives’ label and gets students even in large lecture classes to produce publication-quality books. Awesome.
  • Futurelab has a new resource called the Futures Thinking Teachers Pack:

Education is about the future. Educators aim to prepare young people for the future and to support them to fully participate in all aspects of civic, cultural, social, intellectual and economic life. It is therefore important for young people to be given opportunities to think carefully about that future and their role in it.

The Futures Thinking Teaching Pack supports teachers and learners to develop approaches to exploring the future that are not about making predictions, but about considering possible, probable and preferable futures in order to support action and decision making in the present.

The pack, which is closely linked to National Curriculum requirements, engages Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 students in grounded inquiry into current trends and possible futures. The activities in the pack encourage students to critically examine their place in the world, the structures and features that bring about the societies they live in, their own beliefs and their agency in shaping their preferable future.

Data, Design & Infographics

Repairing the world is not about individual virtue; instead, it’s a design problem. Bacigalupi wouldn’t have to fly to the American Library Association meeting if America had decent, comprehensive high-speed rail (which is certainly not zero-net, but is less harmful than flying). People wouldn’t pour so much surplus income into goods if they could jaunt down to the Neighborhood Share Center for shareable tools or toys or camping equipment.

Misc.

  • My wife and I finished watching the last episodes of Lost this week. We’ve been watching it most of our married life and tend to like to watch it in a concentrated period of time after obtaining the whole series (we’ve done the same with 24, Prison Break, Flash Forward, etc.) I’m delighted, therefore, to find out that there’s going to be an epilogue on a forthcoming DVD about how Hurley deals with being the ‘chosen one’ on the island! :-)
  • From the random-but-made-me-smile department comes The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I liked this one in particular:

open source blindness
n. the tangerine-slice glow of summer sun through closed eyelids, which is your body’s way of telling you that the drawbridge obscuring your emotions from the world is about as effective as peekaboo.

  • Like the bar chart above, this is something that should probably go in the design/infographics section. Kayak have got an awesome mashup that shows you visually how much it costs to travel to various places:

Quotations

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. (Martin Luther King)

You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero. We’re organized like a startup. We’re the biggest start up on the planet. (Steve Jobs)

The greatest education in the world is watching the masters at work. (Michael Jackson)

The smaller the mind the greater the conceit. (Aesop)

Your life is what your thoughts make it. (Marcus Aurelius)

Image CC BY CLF

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