Today (29th November) I sat in a room full of people who support teachers in further education*, they were earnest and honest and quite frankly a little overloaded in the size of the work they need to do, with little budget, and little support. And still I heard stories of people making great progress and…
Read moreTag: Culture
Changing the narrative: bell curves and refusal
Donna Lanclos just gave a keynote on “refusal”. It sounds quite negative, but we’d been chatting about the idea, and refusal as act of engagement is something we see a lot of in the sector. Most often we dismiss it, consigning those who refuse change to “not wanting to change”, or “lazy”, or “they don’t…
Read moreA Session for #OER19 and coming back to Eire
OER19: what I am thinking, and what questions do I have? Myself, Bonnie Stewart and Dave Cormier are presenting this week at OER19. The Participatory Open: Can We Build a Pro-social / Pro-societal Web? We started talking about this session when I wrote a blog post about the UK Government’s approach to digital. Namely the…
Read moreMind the gap!
This has been on my mind for a while. It bothered me at the time, but I said nothing. And it is also inspired in part by Marcus Elliott’s post about non-overlapping magisteria Earlier in 2018 I was asked to speak to a group of senior professional services staff from across the higher education sector.…
Read moreThe Darker side of Digital
Amid the noise of Brexit and our national obsession with the soap opera that is Westminster, BBC news last night reported a story about poverty in the UK. I expect that as both big parties play their Brexit games next week that story will will slip further and further away from the news cycle, just…
Read moreWhich tale is your EdTech?
If you do read what I write here, then you probably realise that conversations are big part of what I do, and where I get my ideas from. Amber Thomas gifted me another this week. We were discussing an edtech and she said “it’s like stone soup”. Stone Soup The story of the stone soup…
Read moreToward digital praxis: just thinking out loud
Introduction First of all this is just open thinking – I am looking for feedback. I started thinking in this direction when I started working with Donna Lanclos back in 2014. We co-authored a blog post where Donna wrote: In a post-digital academy, where presence may be seen as having value, understanding how an online…
Read moreToday I am 50: I am birder
[caption id="attachment_8094" align="alignright" width="136"] “The Observer’s Book of Birds”[/caption] Today I am 50 years old. I am going birdwatching. I started birding (a term we use for birdwatching) in the late 70’s and I have always been an aspiring amateur naturalist. So what’s that got to do with this blog? My birding kit in the…
Read moreSomething, not somewhere, and increasingly somewhen
This is a co written post with Donna Lanclos A podcast of me and Donna arguing discussing this post refereed hosted by James Clay is available over on James’ Blog “Work is something you do, not somewhere you go!” Obviously this is not true for many people – from chefs to hospital staff, work is…
Read more