ELECTRICCHALK

My weekly round up of things at work and beyond

At work

Collaborative Writing

We have a major project on at work at the moment and I found myself using Google Docs properly for the first time. I’m a little late to the party.

Initially, this was working collaboratively with @sboneham (who must be sick of me mentioning him on this blog). We have a series of documents to write on a number of topics and it seemed to make sense to do this together to get an idea of a format that would work.

It was a strange experience working in realtime on the same document whilst sitting in the same room but curiously energising. My usual pace of work is quite slow and reflective so this was a bit out of my comfort zone but well worth it. It forced me to think a bit harder but also not be so precious about ideas that I was putting down; not being afraid to put down half thought-out ideas and thinking “out loud”.

I also like the stripped down interface and the simplicity of the sharing options.

AR

I did a few posts on AR in the last week. I’ve found myself  thinking like a proper geographer, about how space is used and perceived, and it made me wonder what life would have been like had I actually decided to carry on and teach it.

Affective Context Learning

I’m still thinking a lot about digital storytelling and trying to find a way of explaining the importance of emotional responses in learning. Nick @shakletonjones expanded on his idea of an Affective Context Learning model with this video which offers an intriguing answer

Proper blog post on this coming shortly…

On a personal note

Walking

I spent a rare weekend with my Dad, tackling Ben Lawers (3982 ft)and BeinnGhlas (3618 ft) on the shores of Loch Tay (see pic); the first proper walking I’ve done for about 8 years, I reckon. It was wet and windy, slow going,  visibility was down to about 20m and it was completely fantastic! I tried out the MotionX app for the iPhone while we were up there. I can’t seem to work out how to attach the pictures I took using it but at least it’s some sort of evidence that  we actually made it (the battery only lasted long enough to get to the summit and have a bit of charge in case we got into trouble).

Click here to see our route in Google Maps

Contrary to disparaging comments from my sister-in-law I did NOT update my Facebook from the top of the mountain!

It was great to spend time with Dad and I’m looking forward to doing  more Munros in the future.

Spotify ads

I love Spotify and can handle the occassional ads…but I can’t help feeling that advertising music (heavy metal) that is completely different from what I’m listening to (Elbow) is pretty counter-productive.

I’m on holiday for the next 2 weeks. Whoop!