Weeknote 42/2016

• Sending out Issue #233 of Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely focused on education, technology, and productivity. It featured links on CC0, broccoli, and ChromeOS alternatives, amongst other things. Many thanks to Makers Academy for sponsorship!
• Recording and releasing Episode 65 (‘Licensing Educational Content’) of Today In Digital Education, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes.  This week we discussed Creative Commons Zero and educational licensing (main topic) as well as the Internet of Things, the best jobs for your personality type, and why learning to code shouldn’t be ‘fun’. You can join the community to discuss this episode of TIDE in our Slack channel!
• Participating in Stoic Week 2016. You can see what I wrote in response to the prompts in the ‘writing’ section at the end of this post or by clicking here.
• Meeting with Estelle Blanks from the Innovation Super Network and subsequently registering for VentureFest North East. I’m on a bit of a mission to get myself more connected and embedded in the region.
• Talking with Simon Butt-Bethlendy about all things writing and consulting-related which I’m sure will lead to great things!
• Catching up with Louise Thomas, now at the Innovation Unit, but who was at the RSA when we did some work with Keri Facer and others around ‘Education for the Apocalypse’.  The slides for the presentation Keri and I did around that at Learning Without Frontiers in 2012 are still available online. I’m hoping to collaborate with Louise on future projects.
• Planning with my We Are Open comrades for the three sessions we’re running at the Mozilla Festival this year.
• Offering my services to King Edward VI School, which not only is about 200 metres away from where I live in Morpeth, but also where my children will end up in a few years’ time! They were very keen on Open Badges, so watch this space!
• Working on Chapter 2 (‘Nutrition’) of my audiobook, #uppingyourgame: a practical guide to personal productivity. I’ll be releasing it soon, and those who have already bought into the book will get a free update (the price increases with each chapter I add…)
• Booking the conference room at London Connected Learning Centre for a couple of workshops on Wednesday 7th December. More details soon!
• Having a mini adventure at Boggle Hole near Robin Hood’s Bay. It was recommended to me as a good family getaway by a couple I met when climbing Helvellyn, and my children’s schools had a teacher training day on Friday. We spent almost exactly 24 hours away from home, from 16:00 on Thursday, to about the same time on Friday. It’s recently had a major refurbishment along a pirate them, and we had a great time! Recommended.
• Writing:
  • I’ve been busy writing for a couple of new publications this week, but one hasn’t launched, and the other hasn’t published my post yet. So I’ll hold off announcing that until next week!
  • Draft on the importance of working openly (for DML Central) which should be published in next couple of weeks. Sneak peek here — featuring a great new image from Bryan Mathers!
  • #StoicWeek: Day 6 (Discours.es, 22nd October 2016)
  • #StoicWeek: Day 5 (Discours.es, 21st October 2016)
  • 3 quick updates (Open Educational Thinkering, 20th October 2016)
  • #StoicWeek: Day 4 (Discours.es, 20th October 2016)
  • #StoicWeek: Day 3 (Discours.es, 19th October 2016)
  • How to do more ‘deep work’ (Discours.es, 18th October 2016)
  • #StoicWeek: Day 2 (Discours.es, 18th October 2016)
  • Barack Obama on the difference between Silicon Valley and government (Discours.es, 17th October 2016)
  • Stoic Week 2016 (Discours.es, 17th October 2016)
  • On the divide between academic writing and literary writing (Discours.es, 16th October 2016)
  • Writing straight from the hip (Discours.es, 16th October 2016)

Next week it’s half-term, so I’ll be working less at the start of the week and spending time with my family. At the end of the week I’ll be at MozFest, and very much looking to catching up with a whole range of people!