I’ve been reading Martin Amis new book called Inside Story which he calls a novel. I’ll do a video review on it once I finish but so far, all I can say is that the writing is beautiful. It’s as if I’m catching glimpses of his life and in particular, the moments he shared with […]
Lockdown 5.0
It is now like a stale old joke that you’ve heard countless times before. Victoria – Melbourne and it’s regions are in a full lockdown for the next 5 days (possibly longer if we don’t control the Delta variant that is making its way through the community). The virus was brought in by a couple […]
A Way To Improve Vocabulary in Language Learning
Many years ago, a girlfriend gave me an old French picture dictionary and I’ve wondered how I could use it as all the definitions of the words are in French too. She had bought it thinking that it would help her learn the language but as she was a complete beginner, the definitions weren’t much […]
Time to Give Back To Your PLN
I don’t know about you but I felt that through the time of months of COVID isolation, I did more professional and personal development than I have ever done before. Not to make light of the situation that many find now find themselves in, I have mentioned that I am one of the lucky ones […]
Learning Is a Mindset
This week I reflected on an event that made me feel very uncomfortable but in hindsight, my mind made it into a mountain than a molehill it was. I have been learning French for a while now and doing it in my own way through creating my own personal learning plan which I have blogged […]
My Top Ten Learning Tools for 2020
It’s that time again where it’s time to list our top 10 learning tools for the year and submit our responses to Jane Hart’s annual Top Learning Tools survey. Why not take the time to consider what tools you use on a daily basis to learn from and with and share your results too? I’ve […]
The Artist’s Way
Have you heard of “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” by Julia Cameron? The book was published many years ago in 1991 and was written for people who may have experienced a block in their creativity. It’s a 12-week program that enables the reader to rediscover their creativity and curiosity through reflection […]
What Would a Future Office Space Look Like?
This is a question that a few of my friends and colleagues have been asking. It’s a weird question to ask admittedly because I have been working from home for some years and cannot even contemplate ever going back to an office for the rest of my working life. The period of the pandemic thrust […]
Humans Connected But Alone
via GIPHY Recently I’ve been watching a series on ABCiView called Humans. It’s a show created in the UK about a recent future where robots (they call them ‘synths’) are used for various manual labour situations in the home or work. Seeing these situations played out on the television screen makes me mind race with […]
Image versus Substance
Last week Sukhinder Pabial (@sukhpabial) shared an observation on Twitter which has been one that I have often thought about. Make sure you go into the tweet and read the thread because it proposes alternative views around our different ways of how we present ourselves online. It got me thinking that I had similar questions […]
Learn a New Skill by Learning An Endangered Craft with New & Modern Twist
Some years ago, I was surfing through my Facebook feed and Ann McCrossen @annemcx who writes about the emergent organisation shared a PDF called The Radcliffe Red List of Endangered Crafts. Ann is also a wonderful ceramic artist when she’s not writing about organisations and in her website, she shares that part of herself, the […]
Doing A Booktube
I’ve written a lot in recent times about getting some of my time back to get my headspace out of thinking and talking about work all the time (at times it felt I was thinking about learning and development 24/7 and my mind had to take a break). The way I’ve been doing this is […]
Experimenting with InstagramTV with the Misfits of Learning
It’s been a while since I have blogged and in truth, I missed it. It’s time I get back into it and thought that my first blog post since coming back from a fabulous time overseas in Belgium at LearnTechDay was to share my initial experiences on a new project with a few of my […]
How to Work Out Loud: A Month of Different Activities to Do on Your Enterprise Social Network
The question I get asked by business is how to work out loud so here is a guide I have created that you can follow over the course of one month to set up the habit and practice using your enterprise social network. What is Working Out Loud? Working out loud is the process of […]
A New Way To Create Podcasts
I found a new way to create podcasts for those who have been asking me this question over the last couple of years. And it’s too easy. In an employment contract with an organisation some time ago, I remember trawling Yammer one morning while having breakfast at my desk. I came across an internal business […]
Why We Post
Some years ago on Facebook, I made an intriguing observation on why we post. On my feed, I saw a variety of different types of posts. Ignoring the sponsored posts and paid advertisements, I looked at what posts seemed to have more discussion and engagement with my family, friends and peers. I noticed that posts […]
This Week’s Snap Stories of Personal Learning Week of 10 July 2017
Here are this week’s snap stories of personal learning (that is, what I’m learning and how it applies to work). I use Snapchat as my Working Out Loud tool that captures my thoughts and reflections during the day in a chronological order. I also use it as a channel to inform, educate and inspire others […]
Curiosity in Learning
I’ve been thinking about curiosity in learning lately. In particular, why it is that I can become obsessed with some subject matter and not others. You may have seen my latest obsession with maritime history focussed on the Royal Navy between the years 1787-1790. That’s pretty specific, isn’t it? It’s like I have some crazy […]
Interview with Rod Beach from Liberate eLearning
You may or may not be aware that I’m a roving reporter for LearningNow TV. I was kindly asked by Colin Steed (@ColinSteed) and Nigel Paine (@ebase) some time ago to provide short reports to this live internet television channel dedicated to people in the Learning and Development in large and small organisations. At the […]
Am I Ready for Snapchat?
By now, you may have already been reading my personal experiences with this tool and asking yourself, Am I Ready for Snapchat? In this post, I’ll go through my own personal reactions to this platform because it’s been an interesting journey. It started out with this need to figure out why so many younger people […]