Weeknote 29/2016

This week I’ve been:

• Sending out Issue #224 of Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely focused on education, technology, and productivity. This one featured childhood memories, tethered beings, and the myth of productivity.
• Recording and releasing Episode 58 (‘Tethered Cretins’) ofToday In Digital Education, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes. We discussed barefoot adventures, squabbles about education, Pokémon Go, childhood memories, big data for porn, tethered communism, open organisations, culturally contrived ignorance, and more! You can discuss TIDE in our Slack channel.
• Working one day with City & Guilds Group in London. This was my last day working Group-wide as I’ve switched to working directly with Digitalme (a recent acquisition they’ve made). I updated the Open Badges 101 course that Bryan Mathers and I created and recorded some short video clips to be used internally.
• Attending the Web Science Institute’s Ethics Symposium in London. It was an excellent event with some top-notch speakers. I was delighted to get the chance to speak in depth with leaders in the field and look forward to following that up. Many thanks to Anni Rowland-Campbell for the invitation!
• Starting work on some case studies around Open Badges for Digitalme while working from home. I spent some time digging into Sussex Downs College‘s Ufi-funded project, and created a graphic of their employability skills-related badge system.
• Feeling old as I watched my son’s achievements be recognised in his first school leavers’ assembly. We have a three-tier system in Northumberland, so he’ll be moving up to middle school in September.
• Helping Sarah Horrocks, Director of London CLC, through our ongoing critical friend sessions. I’m genuinely excited for the work we’ll be doing together (potentially through We Are Open Co-op) next academic year.
• Drafting a few session proposals for the Mozilla Festival which is at the end of October 2016. The closing date is the end of July, so get yours in!
• Creating some thinkathon proposals for potential We Are Open clients.
• Putting up our tent and new awning to get ready for our epic month-long camping trip in August.
• Packing and getting ready for my brief trip to Los Angeles to speak at the Corona-Norco Summer Institute on Digital Badging.

Next week I’m in California until Wednesday night, then working from home with Digitalme on Thursday and Friday. After that, it’s packing time! As I’ve already said, I’ll be under canvas and away from everything apart from occasionally glancing at work emails during August.