Weeknote 42/2017
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #279 was entitled ‘Nothing like a nap…’ You can also try my Thought Shrapnel Live! channel on Telegram where I post links as I come across them. Thank you to valued supporters!
- Recording and releasing Episode 90 (‘Unscripted and uncensored’) of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast, which I record with Dai Barnes. This week, we discussed the key to successful organisations, Doug’s new censorship-resistant blog, calming technology, vegetarianism, and other unscripted nonsense.
- Finishing off my contract with Totara Learning, who I’ve been helping with their community migration project. They’re a great bunch of people, and I look forward to working with them again at some point.
- Sorting out a mirrored will with my wife over the phone through the easy-to-use Co-op will writing service. We’ve been married 14 years and been parents for almost 11 years, so it’s a bit embarrassing that we’ve left it this long.
- Interviewed by Education Investor magazine about the potential use of blockchain technologies in education. As I reminded them, it’s literally a distributed ledger with cryptographic proof of work that allows append-only changes. Most uses are likely to be for backend, ‘boring’ supply-side stuff, rather than anything anyone notices and pays attention to.
- Writing a report for the International School of Geneva about their strategy around learning technologies, after my visit last week.
- Setting up Nextcloud to sync files, photos, and contacts to my own server.
- Booking flights to Washington D.C. for the work Bryan Mathers and I are doing for the Inter-American Development Bank in November on behalf of We Are Open co-op.
- Helping with Scouts. We carved pumpkin, made soup, and fried sausages. Great fun!
- Looking after my children on Friday as it was a teacher training day for them — but not for my wife, who was at work.
- Writing:
- Highlights from MIT Decentralized Web report (Doug, uncensored, 20th October 2017)
- Decentralised technologies, universal basic income, and co-operativism (Doug, uncensored, 18th October 2017)
- How to get to a decentralised future (Doug, uncensored, 18th October 2017)
- How ZeroNet works (Doug, uncensored, 16th October 2017)
- ZeroNet bridge/proxy (Doug, uncensored, 16th October 2017)
- New blog: Doug, uncensored (Open Educational Thinkering, 16th October 2017)
Next week, I’m working at home on Monday, and then away for a week in Gozo with my family.
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]
Photo of Morpeth riverside taken by me on Friday.
