I’m stealing a page from my friend Doug Belshaw's playbook. He does a great job cataloging what he’s done and what he’s read and what he’s learned each week. To that end, he sends out a weekly newsletter (ed-tech folks should subscribe as Doug's work at Mozilla means there are always interesting thoughts re: teaching and learning and webmaking and open source-ness). Me, I already generate too many newsletters, so instead I’m going to blog the updates here.
Travel
Kin and I traveled to Kamloops, British Columbia on Tuesday – a first time to Kamloops for both of us. I was the keynote Wednesday morning at CNIE 2014. (I’ve posted the notes and slides from my talk here.)
It was a great trip, made even more awesome thanks to the lake-side food and music and beers with the likes of Brian Lamb, Grant Potter, Jason Toal, Irwin DeVries, Giulia Forsythe, and D’Arcy Norman. (Some of the sounds were captured and posted to Soundcloud if you missed the DS106 radio livestream.)
It was back to Los Angeles on Friday, where apparently we missed a heat wave while we were gone.
The upcoming week’s travel destination: For me, Edmonton, Alberta (I almost bought an LA Kings t-shirt to wear during my keynote but decided it’s already dicey enough crossing the border into Canada these days.)
Hack Education Writings and Not-Writings
It feels like Hack Education has become a site that posts mostly weekly edu news roundups and keynote talks. Apologies. Between the book-writing and the traveling and the speaking, it is what it is. Here’s what I wrote there this week:
- Against “Innovation”
- Hack Education Weekly News: MOOC Magic! MOOC Disruption!
- Hack Education Weekly Newsletter, No. 60
I did not post the notes from my once-again canceled presentation to the good folks, the patient folks over at the Global Math Department. And unlike most online writers this week, I did not weigh in with "think pieces" on Solange versus Jay-Z or on Jill Abramson's ouster from The NYT.
Editing Educating Modern Learners
The theme this week over on Educating Modern Learners (where I am editor and lead writer) was leadership and community, with articles by Zac Chase (on net neutrality) and Jabiz Raisdana (on DS106 in a K–12 environment), as well as a podcast-interview between Will Richardson and Mike McGill. (Some of these articles are behind the EML paywall, but even free subscribers can receive 2 weekly newsletters – see I warned you about the newsletters – as well as access to my regular column "What You Should Know This Week.")
What You Should Know This Week: EU Court Backs the “Right to Be Forgotten” Online
Reading and Listening and Crowd-funding
I’m still working my way through Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. No doubt all the talk of growing economic inequality (thanks not just to Piketty, of course) is permeating my thinking, writing, speaking.
I bought the new Black Keys album Turn Blue, which much like the Black Keys themselves is solidly predictable (and predictably not-great-but-okay).
I backed a couple of crowd-funding campaigns this week: one for Bill Fitzgerald’s book project on inBloom, data, and education reform and one for Steve Altes’ graphic novel on MIT pranks. I also chipped in for Eden Alexander’s medical bills.
Family
I purchased a one-way plane ticket for the kid, who’s leaving Portland on Monday to come and stay with us in LA for a while.
Siva Vaidhyanathan asked what message he should give the UVA Media Studies Class of 2014, and I said “Be nicer to your parents. Chances are you’ll move back in with them soon.”
Be nicer to your parents. Be nicer to your kids. Be nicer to your Granny. I received a particularly upsetting letter in the mail from mine this week. A bewildered letter, apologizing for missing me while she was out for a walk with my aunt Carol. I just saw Granny last month – the first trip I’ve made back to England in 25 years (although I have seen her more recently than that). I promised then to come again soon (I’m back in the UK next month in fact), but there seems to be confusion about what that means and when.
And maybe all of this is partially the motivation behind starting to chronicle what I’m up to each week here on this blog: I’ll be more transparent so that friends and family know where I am and why (rather than just speculating based on Facebook status updates and the like). Of course, that means I’ll probably ditch the comments here as I did on Hack Education. Really, it’s not you. It’s me.