The best blog posts I’ve ever written, by category.

Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life. — Andy Warhol

The process of redesigning the look of this blog enabled, indeed forced, me to go through old posts and reflect on what I’m doing here. I stumbled across a post I wrote back in 2008 entitled The very best of teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk referring, of course, to a blog I wrote between 2005-2007 whilst teaching History.

I realised that, whilst there’s ways of finding the most popular posts on this blog, I haven’t reflected on what I would consider my best posts. So here goes (the 10 in bold are important to me for various reasons):

Education

• Free schools: the good, the bad and the ugly (September 2010)
• 3 things I’ve learned in my 11 years as a student in Higher Education (September 2010)
• 3 reasons teachers should smile (September 2010)
• New metaphors and symbols required! (August 2010)
• I am not a person who teaches (August 2010)
• 10 things I learned from ‘Why Don’t Students Like School?’ (August 2010)
• Google Earth for #GTAUK (July 2010)
• My bMoble TeachMeet presentation (May 2010)
• Twitter is not the best CPD you ever received (May 2010)
• What I learned about education whilst in the UAE (March 2010)
• Research supporting collaborative, enquiry-based learning (November 2009)
• Carol Dweck on ‘growth mindsets’ and motivation (October 2009)
• How I mark students’ books (October 2009)
• Learning objectives: the importance of trigger verbs (October 2009)
• Assessment in UK schools: a convenience hypocrisy? (September 2009)
• Why I’m trying to make myself redundant (August 2009)
• Why governmental educational reforms fail (June 2009)
• Telling a new story (April 2009)
• Flow and the Autotelic Classroom (March 2009)
• 3 reasons I’m against the Edublog Awards (December 2008)
• My response to the GTC’s proposed ‘code of conduct’ for teachers in England (December 2008)
• More on Teaching as a Subversive Activity (November 2008)
• The Vortex of Uncompetence (November 2008)
• Teacher as Game Show Host? (September 2008)
• Politics: the biggest problem in education (September 2008)
• 4 quotations that will guide me next academic year (August 2008)
• 90% digital, or 12 ways my teaching ecosystem is evolving (August 2008)
• 5 ways my teaching will change because of today’s GCSE results (August 2008)
• Are you an ‘Edupunk’? I’m not. (May 2008)
• The Map is Not The Territory: the changing face of the edublogosphere (March 2008)
• Classroom organization and its relation to pedagogy (February 2008)

Technology

• Edtech companies: inspiring or conspiring? (October 2010)
• The freeze-thaw method of technology integration (August 2010)
• A life in my technological day (July 2010)
• Intention vs. Effect (July 2010)
• Design and the 5 Golden Rules of Technology purchases (May 2010)
• Some thoughts about online privacy (February 2010)
• On the glorious weirdness of connecting with people online (December 2009)
• How I deal with email (December 2009)
• On the important difference between hitchhiking and bandwagon-jumping (October 2009)
• Embracing the future: why I’ve ditched MP3s and signed up to Spotify Premium (October 2009)
• Heuristical Templates (or how to review elearning stuff in a way that benefits others) (September 2009)
• Acceptable Use Agreements, Definitions, and Digital Guidelines (June 2009)
• How E-Learning can contribute to raising achievement (March 2009)
• Doug lives in rural isolation thanks to the Internet (June 2008)
• AUP 2.0 (June 2008)
• I don’t like paper (May 2008)
• Towards a forward-thinking Acceptable Use Policy for mobile devices (May 2008)

Productivity

• Creativity: confusing inputs with outputs (September 2010)
• You are what you habitually do (July 2010)
• 3 things I need to maintain my productivity (July 2010)
• Innovation: where it’s at (May 2010)
• 7 things the Bible taught me about productivity (April 2010)
• How to ‘chapter’ your life to make it more productive (March 2010)
• How to be overwhelmingly positive (even when you don’t feel like it) (March 2010)
• Modern procrastination and cycling trivialities (February 2010)
• My digital reading workflow (December 2009)
• It’s the energy that matters, not the hours you put in (October 2009)
• A Week of Divesting: an introduction (August 2009)
• Be more productive: take ‘caffeine naps’ (July 2009)
• Under-promise and Over-deliver: the language of productivity (February 2009)

Ed.D. Thesis

• Performativity, fetishism, and the aristocracy of everyone (October 2010)
• Pragmatism, dead metaphors & the myth of the echo chamber (September 2010)
• Google Knol: the future of academic journals? (August 2010)
• Freire, Conscientization & Digital Literacy (June 2010)
• The Hyperlinked Society [Full Review] (May 2010)
• Affinity spaces, secondary orality, and digital epistemologies (November 2009)
• Why digital literacy != the ‘aftermath’ of literacy (August 2009)
• Digital Literacy and the ‘Digital Society’ (May 2009)
• Hannon: ‘Reflecting on Literacy in Education’ (January 2009)
• Digital Literacy, Pragmatism, and the Social Construction of Reality (October 2008)
• Buddha knows best, or why ‘digital literacy’ is so hard to pin down (August 2008)

Design

• Let me tell you what I think ‘this’ is (August 2010)
• On Minimalism (July 2010)
• Wabi-sabi, Mono no aware and creative ambiguity (June 2010)
• How to design the ultimate presentation (June 2010)
• My resumé as a London Underground map (April 2010)

Leadership

• Leadership by Design (April 2010)
• What I learned about leadership from Seth Godin’s ‘Tribes’ (September 2009)
• Daniel Goleman on Leadership and Emotional Intelligence (July 2009)
• How to Lead: Being Positive (July 2009)
• How to Lead: Being Positive (July 2009)
• How to Lead: Being Professional (July 2009)
• How to promote organizational innovation (June 2009)
• Are organizations like brains? (June 2009)
• Four ways to understand organizational change (June 2009)
• How to Lead: Focusing on People (June 2009)
• Everything that’s wrong with educational management, summed up in 3 Dilbert cartoons (May 2009)
• Blue Skies Thinking vs. Grey Skies Thinking (September 2008)

Everything Else

• Why we don’t celebrate Hallowe’en in our house (October 2010)
• 5 things it’s currently fashionable to say (without much evidence) (September 2010)
• HOWTO: Go Camping (according to my Twitter network) (July 2010)
• Wednesday Wisdom #18: Be common in nothing (May 2010)
• The ultra-paranoid guide to ensuring you’ve got your presentation slides (April 2010)
• My favourite proverbs from around the world (February 2010)
• Feedback: why you read this blog (January 2010)
• My favourite music of the ‘noughties’ (January 2010)
• Why I no longer wear a watch (January 2010)
• The problem with free stuff (December 2009)
• Beyond Creative Commons: uncopyright (December 2009)
• OpenBeta: a publishing model (November 2009)
• A (temporary) farewell to a hero (August 2009)
• “You can tell a lot about someone from what they’re like.” (February 2009)
• Good ideas, sheep and wolves. (September 2008)
• Synaesthesia, migraines, and creativity (July 2008)
• How I got started… and the difference it’s made (May 2008)
• Writing tips from George Orwell (Feburary 2007)

In compiling the above I also came across My (finely crafted) information environment from 2007 and an attempt by Scott McLeod to collate ‘seminal’ blog posts. It’s amazing how going through things you’ve written not only reminds you of stuff but also prompts further thinking…

Image CC BY-NC-SA Don Solo