Weeknote 05/2017
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Somewhere in amongst the tsunami of links in Issue #244 was some information about privacy, productivity, and… deranged cannibal hamsters.
- Getting confirmation of work in Calgary at the beginning of May. If everything comes off, I could have a two-week working trip that covers both east and west Canada!
- Planning activities and input for Safer Internet Day next week. I’ll be working with staff as well as students in Years 10, 11 and 12 at an international school in Geneva, Switzerland.
- Catching up with Sheryl Grant about Open Badges, finishing her PhD, and more. She was the main author of a report that came out this week entitled Promising Practices of Open Credentials: Five Years of Progress. I’m looking forward to reading it next week!
- Flying to Jersey to work with staff at Victoria College around digital learning. I’m delighted that they’ve been able to appoint a Head of Digital Strategy for Easter, so that was my last trip. My final report, after working with them for six months, outlined how far we were able to shift the overall staff baseline digital competency due to some intensive training.
- Putting together proposals for potential clients after initial 30-minute meetings.
- Attending the Open Recognition Alliance community call, although the hotel wifi stopped working halfway through, so I had to bail…
- Registering for the Thinking Digital conference in May. I count it as part of my CPD as I always meet interesting people and learn lots of new things.
- Curating and sending out Badge News Issue #003 on behalf of We Are Open Co-op.
- Agreeing to facilitate (with my co-op colleagues) more sessions at the Open:2017 conference in a couple of weeks’ time.
- Recording and releasing Episode 74 of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast with my co-host, Dai Barnes. This episode was entitled ‘A Safer, More Private Internet (Part 2)’ and followed up from last week’s discussion about Data Privacy Day. Next Tuesday is Safer Internet Day, so that was our main focus.
- Sending out my monthly Dynamic Skillset newsletter. I wrote a lot of newsletters this week…
- Restoring this blog after it was hacked sometime on Thursday. I had in place the usual precautions, but I’ve now added Wordfence after being recommended it by Reclaim Hosting (who were incredibly fast at responding to my cries for help on Twitter)
- Writing:
- Against mass consumption of ‘already certified’ credentials (Open Educational Thinkering, 1st February 2017)
- Chapter 3 of my new audiobook on productivity is now available! (Open Educational Thinkering, 31st January 2017)
- Beyond tabs: visualising ‘trails’ on the Web (Literaci.es, 30th January 2017)
Next week I’m in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday, then I’ve got a few meetings on Wednesday. On Thursday I’m planning and writing, then on Friday I’m doing anything other than work. If the weather is OK I might go up a mountain, but it’s probably still too early in the year.
I make my living helping people and organisations become more productive in their use of technology. If you’ve got something that you think I might be able to help with, please do get in touch! Email: [email protected]
