Hello and Welcome

Writing a first blog post for any website is a bit of a challenge really. As I see it there are two choices; you either begin with a random post that reflects the type of thing that you will be writing, or you do something of an introduction or preface which explains your purpose. If I was writing a book, I would do the introduction chapter at the end, after I’d written a half-dozen chapters and a conclusion. It’s an oddity in writing that the introduction is often the last thing that is written!

As you can probably tell I’ve opted for the latter option of writing something of an introduction. So, what to write? First, welcome to my website. It’s great to have you here. The purpose of this website is three-fold;

• First, to talk about the process and purpose of learning and teaching. This is my subject of interest.
• Second, to describe and advertise the services that I offer.
• Third, to showcase the growing collection of courses and training activities that I have developed.  

These blog posts form part of the first purpose (talking about learning practices and theories). Sometimes, these blogs will be musings – this will be pretty much me just thinking through a subject or raising a bunch of questions for which I don’t necessarily have an answer. In other cases, the blog will have required some research and will focus on things like educational theories, practical examples of teaching practices, or opinions of well-known people about what learning is and how it can be best done. I’m writing one or two about Albert Einstein right now, in fact, and I’ve got one on the backburner about a very outdated children’s book about a famous historical figure.

These blog posts will also, occasionally, focus on my own work. If you’ve looked at my website, then you’ll see that I describe myself as an educator, writer, and historian. At some point I want to explain how those three aspects to my professional-self fit together. In terms of titles, I originally trained as an historian, but quickly learned on the job, the role of learning technologist and instructional designer. My career to date has also focused on the Open Access movement, including managing open access repositories and journal systems. That’s my background.

My future, well, I’ll be focusing on the idea of ‘learning’ and, on how I can encourage and help people everywhere to learn better and to enjoy learning; to see it as a core part of their lives. That’s my mission and purpose, but beyond that I will be offering my services on a freelance basis, providing institutions help with creating online or blended (hybrid) training experiences (courses, workshops, activities), face-to-face workshop sessions on research and study skills, and some aspects of technical support. I’ll also be designing and building my own training materials to offer directly to those who wish to learn about a subject. I’ll be trying out a few different things to see what works best. Experimentation and a bit of play is important to figuring out what works well, and what doesn’t. In these blog posts, I’ll be sharing that journey with you.

So, these posts will be of varying length, but usually less than 1,000 words. They will be written with some informality. This isn’t an academic blog. They will also contain the occasional video or other multimedia content. The focus is on ‘learning and teaching’. My aim is to publish one or two posts per month.

In addition, I will be starting up a mailing service. So, if you fancy a few of my musings direct in your inbox, just click on the subscribe button below and fill in a few details. I won’t spam you; I promise. These mailings will appear once or twice a month, at most and you’ll always have the option to opt-out.

So that’s all from me for now. This ‘introduction’ post has been a bit rambling. I apologise for that. But I wanted to set the scene and explain in a few extra words what I’ll be doing in this new venture of mine. So, with that in mind, I best get started…