This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #267 was entitled ‘Wimbledon(e)’. Don’t forget you can sign up to Thought Shrapnel Live! using Telegram to receive links as I come across them. You can also become a valued supporter.
- Catching up with John Igoe from AstraZeneca and TJ Scholl from Participate in video conference meetings, and Craig Taylor from HT2 over beers.
- Confirming my keynote at the ALL DIGITAL Summit in Barcelona (4th-5th October). I’ll doing a TED-style talk on the infrastructure, skills and mindsets we’ll need to ensure that everyone is included in the digital society of the future. I’ll also be running a workshop.
- Working with Sarah Horrocks from London CLC on a report on technology-enhanced teacher professional development we’re writing for the Education Development Trust.
- Attending my daughter’s first ‘proper’ school sports day. She’s six, and beat all the boys in the running race. Second in the potato-and-spoon and skipping races, though, so a hard year’s training ahead…
- Developing a scheme of work, session plans, and resources on behalf of Freeformers for a large tech company.
- Putting things in place for the Badge Wiki barn raising next week. Details can be found here.
- Spending three days in Brighton starting some work for Totara. I stayed at My Brighton and it was great to spend time with Lars Hyland and the team. I’ll be helping them over the next few months, mainly based from home as it’s 5.5 hours each way on the train from Northumberland to Brighton…
- Reading Ryan Holiday’s fantastic new book, Perennial Seller: the art of making and marketing work that lasts. As with all of his books, it’s about a lot more than just creating content.
- Sending out Issue #14 of Badge News, a regular newsletter for the Open Badges community. This one features a summer survey for subscribers.
- Writing:
Next week I’m working from home for Freeformers on Monday/Tuesday, and then for Totara from Wednesday to Friday. I also need to fit in work for other people, so it looks like I’ll be working evenings, too — just as everyone else in my family winds down for the summer!
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]
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #266 was entitled ‘Is it a sign?’. Don’t forget you can sign up to Thought Shrapnel Live! using Telegram to receive links as I come across them. You can also become a valued supporter.
- Joining Costco as a business member, which makes me feel all grown-up. Our kids had a field day, and I took that great photo of the tins of spam. The one that was turned around the other way to the others made me smile.
- Running a half-day thinkathon for London CLC around their strategy, branding, and marketing. Bryan Mathers was in the room with them, and I was on the other end of appear.in.
- Travelling to and from London on the train for a meeting with Freeformers and the client (a large tech company) that we’re doing work for. It’s an introduction to coding project.
- Ordering and receiving a OnePlus 5 which, so far, is fantastic. The portrait mode using the dual camera is superb.
- Working on the resources for the above, which is proving very enjoyable as it’s been a while since I wrote a scheme of work! This has taken up most of my week, and will continue to take up a fair chunk of time until the end of July.
- Confirming that I can keynote the Innovate EdTech Conference on 11th November in London. Early bird tickets are now on sale! This year’s theme is ‘The Age of Learner Experience’.
- Drafting an article for Hello World magazine on Open Badges at the request of Miles Berry, and answers to questions about badges for Lars Hyland from Totara (who I’ll be doing some work for over the summer). Thanks to Eylan Ezekiel, Gavin Henrick, and Tony Sheppard for helpful comments and suggestions on the magazine article.
- Catching up with my We Are Open Co-op colleagues after we’ve off being doing different things over the last few weeks, in a couple of cases on the other side of the world! We discussed putting in session proposals for Re:publica in Dublin in early September, and the Mozilla Festival in London in late October (although I’ll be away on holiday during MozFest).
- Meeting with Jeff Bohrer from IMS Global about the work we’re doing around Badge Wiki. I’ve also invited many members of the badges community to join a Loomio group in preparation for a barn raising session we’re holding on July 26th.
- Selling some technology on eBay. I’m now completely Apple-free!
- Working with Sarah Horrocks from London CLC on a report on technology-enhanced teacher professional development we’re writing for the Education Development Trust.
- Attending my children’s seemingly-endless end of term activities. This week it was summer fairs.
- Going away my wife away for the night after packing the children off to my parents. We went to Jesterval in Newcastle, which was bizarre and awesome, enjoyed a meal at Fat Buddha, and stayed over at Hotel Du Vin.
- Writing:
Next week I’m working from home on Monday and Tuesday, and then in Brighton from Wednesday to Friday, kicking off work with Totara.
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]
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #265 was entitled ‘Leaf flare’. Don’t forget you can sign up to Thought Shrapnel Live! using Telegram to receive links as I come across them. You can also become a valued supporter.
- Presenting to a symposium session at the World Conference on Computers in Education in Dublin. I spoke on digital literacies, and the importance of not just taking a framework ‘off the shelf’. I recorded my presentation and posted it along with my slides here.
- Wandering around the fantastic collections in the Chester Beatty Library and eating in their wonderful café. I bought a print of Zhou Shengua’s magestic artwork ‘The Winter Journey’.
- Catching up with Mark Brown from Dublin City University, as well as Gavin Henrick from Moodle, Ian Simmons the former Science Communication Director at the Centre for Life, Erica Neve from Freeformers, and Phil Watkins about STEM badges.
- Collaborating with Sarah Horrocks from London CLC on some research around international teacher professional development that we’re doing for the Education Development Trust.
- Recording Episode 86 of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast with Dai Barnes. This week, we discussed open source in healthcare and education, email productivity tips, why edtech sucks, critical creativity in the classroom, password managers, screen time, iPhones, and more!
- Cheering on my son during his school’s sports day. He won the 200m race and his team came second in the relay, mainly due to some dodgy baton changeovers…
- Planning for next week’s London CLC half-day thinkathon with Bryan Mathers which we’re doing through We Are Open Co-op.
- Writing:
Next week I’ll be getting cracking on creating a scheme of work and resources for Freeformers. I’ll be in London on Thursday for some ideation around that and, apart from running a half-day thinkathon with Bryan for London CLC, won’t have much time to do much else…
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]
