Weeknote 25/2015
This week I’ve been:
- Publishing issue #178 of my newsletter, Things We Learned This Week. The awesome people at Think Associates are sponsoring June’s missives.
- Spending three days in London due to a meeting on Monday afternoon. I stayed at the City Marque Clerkenwell serviced apartments (fast becoming one of my favourite places to stay).
- Finalising an Open Badges 101 presentation for use internally in City & Guilds. Bryan Mathers and I are running a ‘brown bag lunch’ for staff next Tuesday.
- Swimming – twice in London at Golden Lane and then once in Ireland. It can be meditative at times.
- Releasing episode 14 of the TIDE podcast. Dai Barnes and I decided to call this one Foucault your edtech.
- Meeting with Paul Bailey and Simon Whittemore from Jisc about learning analytics and, inevitably, Open Badges.
- Making some recommendations around team collaboration for City & Guilds, building on this wiki page.
- Buying an iPad Mini 2 (16GB cellular). I spotted it was £185 via HotUKDeals so it was almost rude not to buy. It’s partnered with this very smart cork case. I find an iPad mini pretty much the perfect conference device: battery life is amazeballs.
- Attending Nesta’s Ready Player Two event as part of London Technology Week, which was great. Afterwards I had dinner at Pizza East in Shoreditch with Oliver Quinlan.
- Participating in an invite-only Jisc Digital Capabilities event run by Helen Beetham where we got to play with pipecleaners! I enjoyed catching up with familiar faces such as James Clay (now at Jisc), Josie Fraser, and Sheila MacNeill.
- Adding links to my discours.es blog.
- Nipping home overnight on Wednesday/Thursday to see my wife and children.
- Travelling to and keynoting the CELT conference in Galway, Ireland. Catherine Cronin‘s been saying I should come over for years so I was glad to have a chance to go. What a beautiful, friendly place! Many thanks to Iain MacLaren, Sharon Flynn, and the rest of the organisers for the warm welcome. I enjoyed the other keynote from Siân Bayne – especially the stuff on twitterbots! You can find my slides below:
Identifying, scaffolding, and credentialing skills in an ever-changing digital environment from Doug Belshaw
- Travelling home Friday/Saturday via Dublin. I’m writing this on the wifi-enabled bus from Galway. In both places my accommodation is/was provided by Radisson Blu – always exactly what you need after travelling.
- Writing:
Next week I’m taking it a bit easier after three weeks of more intensive travel. I’ll be in London Tuesday/Wednesday as usual but otherwise working from home. I may also organise a family camping trip to Galway for August; the original plan of heading to the area around Parco Nazionale del Gargano and back in a week is looking slightly ambitious!
