Weeknote 40/2024
I’m typing this with my back to the radiator and a cup of tea next to me. I’m in the room we call the ‘spare lounge’ which, on the official floorplan to this house, is the dining room. But who has a dining room in 2024?
Yesterday, I had a flu jab in my left arm and a Covid jab in my right. I knew I’d feel rough afterwards and, psychosomatically or otherwise, I definitely do. A generous person might praise my forward-planning to have my MSc End of Module Assessment (EMA) close to finished beforehand. A less generous reading would point to an overactive brain and general background anxiety. Even right now as I’m typing this, I’m thinking of how many kilometres I’m falling behind my yearly distance goal.
That I have to feel rough, or plan in advance times when I give myself a break is pretty on brand for me. For example, last night was the first time I played on my Steam Deck we moved house almost six months ago. I probably need more fun in my life, especially at this time of year. That was one of the reasons for adding “Go to some kind of in-person event that isn’t sport-related” to my targets for this month.
This week I ran a workshop on an introduction to digital badging for the N-TUTORR project. Although I ended up being the one who talked for most of it, the work it was based on belonged to Bryan Mathers. The images he’s created over the years make it so easy to explain things, and his Remixer Machine means it’s easy to set workshop activities. I’ve started to plan the follow-up one which focuses on coming up with a badging (as opposed to a microcredentialing) policy. It’s all about the recognition.
I continued working on projects with and for Skills Development Scotland, Friends of the Earth, and JFF/IRC. After a couple of weeks out sailing, Laura was back this week, which brought a fresh perspective to these projects. Other than that, I’ve been working on my EMA, taking my son to his driving test (he didn’t pass, but has snagged a cancellation for 10 days’ time), and getting a quotation for a new home office. The latter will probably end up involving converting about quarter of our double-garage, but we’re getting a price for one in our garden, too.
I attended the first session of School of the Possible’s Project Studio on Wednesday. The convener, Dave Gray, describes it in the following way:
Not everybody wants a creative life, but if you do want it, and are willing to make space for it, you deserve to have it. That’s why I’m launching Project Studio, a six-week program designed to generate momentum and community for our creative projects.
[…]
This is a peer-to-peer program, and as such it will only be as good as the people who show up. We want people who are committed to doing good work and serious about finishing in six weeks.
My aim is to create some kind of business offering based on what I’ve learned during the foundational modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. The six weeks doesn’t actually start until next week, with the session on Wednesday being about saying hello, helping us describe our projects, and getting used to the online tools we’ll be using.
As an educator and facilitator, I really appreciate the way that Dave de-centres himself and makes his sessions dialogical. Going into three separate breakout rooms with different people in each really did help me refine my thinking. For example, I realised that I really want to focus on the creative aspect of Systems Thinking, lowering the bar so that it doesn’t seem so academic to people. I guess I did the same with my doctoral thesis by writing a more-accessible book and giving a TEDx Talk about it.
Other than the above, buying some birthday presents for my wife’s birthday, submitting some proposals for new business, and taking people to various places, that’s pretty much it for this week. At this time of the year, I feel like I’m limping towards the half-term holidays. I felt like that as a student, as a teacher, and given that I still take that week off work, I feel like that now. Only two weeks to go, and then hopefully I’ll feel re-energised for ePIC in Paris at the start of November.
Next week, I’m going to get the JFF/IRC project finished and ready to present, submit a finished proposal to Skills Development Scotland, get loads of desk research done for the Friends of the Earth project, and figure out a plan for a small horizon-scanning report we’re doing around microcredentials for Irish universities. I’m quite looking forward to getting my EMA handed in and having six months off doing academic work. I might, in fact, just get it submitted today.
Photo: aurora borealis (northern lights) over our back garden, taken by Hannah Belshaw and edited by me.
