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Category: stories

Personal post: Tools of a life

After a decade in which we survived cancer, Brexit and a global pandemic, my family is preparing for a seismic shift: my parents are returning to the shores of Europe to be near my sister, and I will remain in the UK, where my home has been since I immigrated in 1997. The demands of age, which increase year on year, will be more easily met in their new home on the banks of the…

Poseidon, bin collector, judge. What I wanted to be when I was a kid.

When things are busy, it can be tough to make time and space for YOU. So in order to make some space for ME on MY blog, this is a blog post all about… me 🙂 Reflecting on ‘career’ progress for want of a better word is an important part of charting your own development, and this is something I have been doing as part of reviewing and updating my Senior CMALT Portfolio. The time…

A love letter to #DS106radio emergency broadcasting

Tomorrow’s the big #ds106 #ds106radio marathong and I can’t wait for 24 hours of broadcasting on my favourite radio station. I came late to this great endeavour and only really got into DS106 Radio in 2020, when my friends Tannis and Anne-Marie and I started broadcasting every Sunday throughout lockdown from Canada and the UK respectively. If you’d like to get a flavour for what we got up to, then head over to this post…

Drawing 2020 – a bit of strategic ‘visual thinkery’

Earlier this year, I blogged about that I feel I am starting a ‘new job’ as things have changed so much over the past year… so this week on Friday I am having a strategy away day, pandemic style. CEOs often get asked what success will look like in 3, 12 and 36 months. Asking yourself that question is a useful way to get your own thoughts in order and prioritising short, medium and long…

Still broadcasting on #ds106radio

It’s the middle of July… and ever since March every Sunday evening three of us, Tannis, Anne-Marie & me, have been meeting up on Radio DS106 http://ds106rad.io/listen/ . This little online radio venture started as a crisis support for each other and our listeners. We met up once a week to share lock down tales and even though the immediate crisis has started to relax somewhat in our day to day lives I value the…

Letter making and reflection

I have been watching a documentary series recently on the art of design, and one episode about Jonathan Hoefler: Typeface Design in particular captured my imagination. It’s an amazing glimpse into a professional and creative practice that combines material and digital elements effortlessly. Anything from maps in museum collections to books and wooden blocks to visualisation tools and digital pens is part of the process of creating a new typeface, which then is used both…

Unsettled… a very personal blog post

On Friday, on my afternoon off, I went to my local library to use their Android device to apply for permission to settle in the UK. Ironically, I live in West Oxfordshire, David Cameron’s former constituency, and whilst that means that I am often surrounded by people in 4x4s viewing ‘affordable’ new homes starting at £580k, it is the kind of place that postcards of the Cotswolds often feature: yellow stone cottages with roses growing…

#OpenBlog19: The library of the future is…

Who’s next? Open writing/blogging challenge #OpenBlog19 https://t.co/N1tRu6eXdu … reaching out to @julianstodd @courosa @mhawksey @MarenDeepwell @jamesclay @digitalmaverick — David Hopkins (@hopkinsdavid) March 23, 2019 I have been really enjoying following #OpenBlog19 posts over the past week or more and if you haven’t come across it before now, start by reading David’s original post or browse the hashtag and discover the inspiring contributions to date. When I went to the Google doc, one topic really jumped…

Crossing the Meridian: on stories and ideas

This week I had a really interesting conversation about how to communicate ideas and what role stories play in that. Shortly afterwards I crossed the Meridian Line in London and it made me think about all the different lines that connect our planet and us to each other. Networks, infrastructure, data… we often visualise the connections in a linear fashion. And most stories, too, follow that patterns, they have a beginning, middle and end, reaching…

The ‘digital’ Trojan Horse and the rise of Learning Technologists (2017: part 1)

With the end of the year around the corner, I’m adding my contribution to the many excellent reviews and reports reflecting on Learning Technology in 2017. I work at the intersection of policy, research and practice, focusing not on technology as such, but on the professionals, the human dimension of technology in education. As such, it’s been an interesting year as the relationship between people and machines evolves. I hope that there will be three posts…