Yearnote 2014

Introduction

Every week for the past couple of years I’ve written a ‘weeknote’. It’s a brief overview of what I’ve been up to – mostly in terms of paid work. This ‘yearnote’ post is effectively me using those weeknotes and other stuff I’ve done to help me write a brief overview of the year.

I did way more than just the stuff listed here as this isn’t meant to be comprehensive. I haven’t included recurring stuff and I’ve tried to surface the things that I found most interesting.

January

• Released v0.9 of The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies
• Wrote blog post for DMLcentral about 2014 being the ‘year of web literacy’
• Switched from using Evernote to using Simplenote
• Flew to Orlando, Florida for 48 hours to attend an NSF meeting about computational literacy
• Renamed the Web Literacy ‘Standard’ to the Web Literacy ‘Map’
• Joined the #TeachTheWeb sub-team of Mozilla’s Webmaker project
• Took my son to Kielder Observatory for his seventh birthday. He blogged about it here.
• Visited Gozo with my wife to find somewhere to rent for six months.
• Attended and spoke at BETT.
• Presented with Tim Riches at Learning Technologies 2014.

February

• Attended a Mozilla workweek in Toronto which involved tobogganing and axe-throwing.
• Moved to Morpeth after our proposed six-month stint in Gozo fell through.
• Presented (virtually) at the UCISA Changing Landscapes conference.
• Had a book proposal rejected by MIT Press.
• Participated in an NWP Educator Innovator webinar entitled The Past, Present, and Future of Web Literacy
• Co-invented ‘Trellbeering’ (basically end of week virtual social drinking) with colleagues.

March

• Hung out in London with my #TeachTheWeb colleagues.
• Led a discussion on Google+ and wrote a post on Brian Kelly’s blog for Open Education Week. I also wrote a summary for the Webmaker blog
• Worked with colleagues to get the Web Literacy Map v1.1 moved to webmaker.org/literacy
• Participated (virtually) in the inaugural meeting of OBANZ (Open Badges Australia and New Zealand).
• Starting tracking everything after being plagued by migraines.
• Created draft resource for those seeking to align with the Web Literacy Map.
• Worked with colleagues to curate ‘best in show’ resources to populate webmaker.org/resources.
• Wiped my MacBook Pro hard disk and installed Elementary OS instead.

April

• Worked with Atul Varma to test the WebLitMapper.
• Created a draft version of the Webmaker Super Mentor badge.
• Recorded a podcast with Ian O’Byrne about writing and publishing openly online.
• Stayed focused despite everything that happened with Brendan Eich’s short tenure as Mozilla CEO
• Wrote a post for DMLcentral about why I still believe in badges.
• Stopped running outside. My extremely detailed tracking found it was this (bizarrely) that was causing my migraines.
• Travelled to Helsinki for the Oppi Festival to run workshops on Open Badges and Webmaker tools.
• Wrote a piece for the launch of Educating Modern Learners at the request of Audrey Watters. It’s entitled Rethinking Literacy for the Web.
• Created a Web Literacy Ninja badge – just for fun, but people applied and earned it!
• Set up dougbelshaw.com/wiki.
• Spent a week in San Francisco for the Mozilla Foundation’s All-Hands meeting.

May

• Travelled to Amsterdam with my wife for a belated celebration of our 11th wedding anniversary.
• Adapted to a new workflow.
• Wrangled Webmaker Training badges.
• Spent some time with colleagues at the Mozilla London office as we all happened to be in town for various things. In my case, it was meeting up with the good people at Code Club.
• Participated in a session at Oxford University entitled What does it mean to be an ‘expert’ in the web era?

June

• Appeared on CBC’s ‘The Current’ about faking cultural literacy.
• Read and made notes on every post on Vinay Gupta’s blog.
• Wrote a post for DMLcentral about reclaiming the web for the next generation.
• Kicked off the Badge Alliance Working Group on Digital and Web Literacies as co-chair.
• Worked with Cassie McDaniel on a new graphic for Web Literacy Map v1.1.
• Wrote about my morning routine for the website of the same name.
• Closed my LinkedIn account after growing tired of their incessant spam. Also moved from Gmail to self-hosted webmail.
• Created a quick video overview of the new Webmaker resources section.
• Condensed Jon Udell’s work into a manifesto for working openly on the web.
• Launched v1.0 of my ebook, The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies
• Finalised the 15 Web Literacy ‘maker’ badges to be earned via webmaker.org.
• Upgraded to new MacBook Pro Retina so returned to Mac OS X.

July

• Participated in EU webinar on MOOCs for accreditation and employability
• Published whitepaper co-authored with Karen Smith entitled Why Mozilla cares about Web Literacy.
• Spoke at the Indie Tech Summit in Brighton on Raising the next generation.
• Speaking in the sponsor slot at an eLearning Development on a Shoestring event in London.
• Finished a concepts page on DRM for Webmaker Training
• Wrote guidance for those applying for Webmaker badges
• Collated links for a Net Neutrality page as part of Webmaker Training

August

• Presented at SuperMondays in Newcastle on Privacy: getting beyond ‘meh’.
• Headed on holiday with my family, our car and a tent for an epic camping trip through seven European countries.
• Worked with colleagues to create three new MVP contribution badges.
• Started walking more.
• Began work on Web Literacy Map v2.0
• Completed Mountain Training’s Hill Skills course.
• Re-organised and re-painted my home office – inside and out.
• Removed every plant from our garden so we can begin from ground zero.
• Wrote post for DMLcentral about scaffolding web literacy through learning pathways.
• Started to lift weights at the gym.

September

• Interviewed lots of people for Web Literacy Map v2.0.
• Wrote a guest column for EdTech Digest about web literacy, ‘an enabling education for our times’.
• Recorded an episode for the OKCast about Mozilla’s Webmaker work.
• Sat in the audience listening to Audrey Watters speak at Newcastle University – then hung out with her and a few others in a pub afterwards.
• Sold my iPad Mini and gave away my Motorola Moto G. Bought a Sony Xperia Z Ultra to replace them both.
• Spoke on Mozilla’s work as part of a Code Acts in Education seminar at the University of Stirling.
• Supervising the replacements of our bay windows and downstairs flooring.
• Said farewell to my Dad as he (unexpectedly) started a seven-month contract advising a school in Doha, Qatar.

October

• Created a community survey as part of the Web Literacy Map v2.0 process.
• Gave a lecture and ran a workshop at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln as part of my playtesting for the Mozilla Festival.
• Wrote about the challenges of creating an architecture of participation within a culture of episodic volunteering.
• Contributed to the launch of the OEPS Forum in Edinburgh. They kindly let me talk briefly about the Web Literacy Map.
• Finalised the deliverable for the Badge Alliance working group – a sample privacy badge pathway.
• Worked with the community to translate the Web Literacy Map v2.0 survey into other languages.
• Created a landing page for Webmaker badges.
• Attended the TeachMeet & Greet event before the Digitally Confident conference and met lots of familiar faces.
• Participated and led sessions at the Mozilla Festival.

November

• Began #BelshawBlackOps14.
• Attended and spoke at the Safer Internet Forum in Brussels.
• Helped organise and ran a Webmaker space at Maker Party North East 2014 at Ignite100 in Newcastle.
• Ran a series of community calls as part of planning for Web Literacy Map v2.0.
• Started planning for 2015.
• Created better-designed page for my co-authored 2011 article Digital literacy, digital natives, and the continuum of ambiguity.
• Tinkered with Known (as part of a push towards POSSE) and Sublevel (out of a growing dissatisfaction with Twitter).

December

• Flew to Portland, Oregon for a Mozilla coincidental workweek. I left it early to speak at the Literacy Research Association conference in Florida.
• Wrote post for DMLcentral entitled A Brief History of Web Literacy and its Future Potential. This was picked up by the Washington Post.
• Worked on a new curriculum for Web Literacy clubs with Laura Hilliger.
• Set up Dynamic Skillset Ltd.
• Created a screencast of my LRA presentation for Ian O’Byrne and sample videos showing how people could ‘fork’ the Web Literacy clubs curriculum.
• Co-wrote article entitled Guiding Students as they Explore, Build, and Connect Online for the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy with Mozilla contributors Ian O’Byrne and Greg McVerry.
• Moved my email from self-hosted to Fastmail.

Conclusion

This has been an interesting year for lots of reasons. As ever with Mozilla it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, so I’m hoping for some interesting work but some increased stability in 2015! As you can see, I’ll also be doing a limited amount of consultancy with educational institutions, businesses and third-sector organisations in the coming year. Get in touch via hello@dynamicskillset.com if that intrigues you.

Image CC BY-NC-SA leanderthal