Weeknote 25/2017
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #263 was entitled ‘Sizzle’. Don’t forget you can sign up to Thought Shrapnel Live! using Telegram to receive links as I come across them.
- Giving the closing keynote at an Open Badges event up at the University of Dundee. My slide deck can be found here. I enjoyed catching up with Grainne Hamilton from Digitalme while I was there (we were former colleagues at Jisc).
- Redesigning the landing page of dougbelshaw.com on the train home from Dundee. I’m much happier with how it looks now!
- Making progress with Badge Wiki, from a technical and policy perspective. With the assistance of Web Architects we’ve sorted out the login workflow, and I’ve drafted Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy for community feedback.
- Meeting with Sarah Horrocks from London CLC about some research around international teacher professional development that we’re doing for the Education Development Trust.
- Issuing badges to more of those who have completed Badge Bootcamp. We’re actually going to shut it down at the end of the month to tweak it a bit over the summer, so be quick if you want to go through it!
- Catching up with Rhys Kidd-Scannell who works for Frog, and is also the father of my daughter’s friend. I also spoke with a reporter from EducationInvestor magazine about badges, Eva-Marie Costello about her plans for digital literacy-related apps for underserved populations, and Bryan Mathers about visualising ways in which badges can be ‘dynamic’ with v2.0 of the Open Badges specification.
- Attending the local Scout group’s AGM. It looks like I may have upgraded my role from Executive Committee member to Secretary.
- Compiling, editing, and sending out Issue #13 of Badge News, a regular newsletter for the Open Badges community.
- Looking after my children due to a teacher training day on Friday.
- Spending time with local pharmacists, opticians, and doctors at the RVI in Newcastle after a mystery eye infection. I can see fine, but it’s painful. They’ve put it down as viral conjunctivitis, but that’s because they weren’t sure what else it could be…
- Writing:
- “And she turned round to me and said…” (Literaci.es, 23rd June 2017)
- Badge Wiki: start of 30-day feedback period on Terms of Use and Privacy Policy (Open Educational Thinkering, 21st June 2017)
- Redesigning dougbelshaw.com (Open Educational Thinkering, 19th June 2017)
Next week I’m working from home at the start of the week, then heading to London on Wednesday to take part in an SQA expert group on assessment on Thursday. I’m itching to get away up a mountain again, but that might not happen until August now.
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]
