Weeknote 39/2015

This week I’ve been:

• Sending out Issue #187 of my newsletter, Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel. Many thanks to Makers Academy for sponsoring September’s issues. I’m still looking for a sponsor for October onwards.
• Releasing Episode 23 (‘Incompetent Edtech’) of the Today In Digital Education podcast that I record regularly with Dai Barnes. We discussed incompetent male leaders, ad blocking, cars that spy on teenagers, Amazon’s new Fire tablet, having a domain of one’s own, caffeine naps, and more!
• Teaching the second session of Computing Club at my kids’ school. They learned what their favourite colour is in HTML hex codes and we did a bit more with Markdown.
• Starting to put together a proposal around an Open Badges workshop for ISTE 2016 with Noah Geisel and Bryan Mathers.
• Travelling to and from London for face-to-face work with City & Guilds. I participated in a UK Products & Services conference on Thursday, and stayed at Citadines Barbican (as it’s opposite the swimming pool I go to).
• Suffering from a migraine. I think it was the fluorescent lights I was under all day at the conference. No aura (‘flashing lights’) thankfully, just fuzziness and head pain.
• Buying a Zimbabwean 10 trillion dollar note from the period of hyperinflation in the late 1990s. Inspired by seeing Shed Simove in action. I used to be an examiner for the History AS level syllabus on Weimar Germany when I was a teacher, so I find this stuff fascinating.
• Updating the Open Badges 101 community course that Bryan Mathers on which Bryan Mathers and I are co-leading work. The second module is now finished in draft form. We sent out an update to those who have opted-in via the site.
• Shifting from using Known to using Pinboard.in for bookmarking, as I explained briefly here.
• Negotiating a new contract with City & Guilds. More on that means for other clients soon (hint: it works well for everyone!)
• Writing about A Decentralized System for Education and Assessment.

Next week I’m in London on Tuesday and Wednesday and working from home for the rest of the week. It’s the time of the year when I have to get my Lumie Arabica SAD light out. And yes, they work even if you’re skeptical about their efficacy (as I was!)