Yesterday we had our annual (not)Cetis Scotland outing to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We’ve been having a get together at the Fringe for a number of years now and it’s always great fun. Sometimes partners and children come along, sometimes we book a show in advance, sometimes we pick one on a whim, more often than not we just bimble up the Royal Mile enjoying the Fringe chaos. (Open entertainment?!) There’s always good food involved, often from the Nile Valley Cafe, which is still one of my favourite places to eat in Edinburgh. Last year we were entertained by the Horrible Histories stage show and a man wearing underpants balancing on top of a ladder juggling knives. This year it was a different man balanced on top of a unicycle juggling flaming torches, assisted by a small child. Class!
Category Archives: cetis
That was the week that was
It’s the end of what’s been a rather strange week. After sixteen years, my contract at the University of Strathclyde came to an end as the university’s relationship with Cetis “reached it’s conclusion”. I’m not going to repeat what I’ve already written over at my old Cetis blog here – In The Meantime, but I just wanted to say huge thanks for all the best wishes from everyone on twitter and across the ed tech world. We all really appreciated your support. Thanks also to Amber Thomas and Brian Kelly for their linked in endorsements and to Audrey Watters for her kind words here. And last but by no means least, thanks to the indomitable Aileen Wilson, formerly of CAPLE, for her highly entertaining and very appropriate leaving gift Dance First Think Later, and to my BFF for the beautiful flowers.
Everything is still rather up in the air at the moment but, as Sheila has already said, hopefully this is a brief sideways step and we hope to resume our relationship with Cetis at some point in the not to distant future.
Welcome to Open World
Hello and welcome to my new blog which I’ll be using to post thoughts and reflections on all kinds of issues relating to open education, technology and innovation. For more years than I can recall, I’ve maintained a Cetis blog, however recent contractual changes, which are explained here, mean that there will be a bit of a hiatus in my work with Cetis. So, like my colleague Sheila MacNeill, I thought it would be useful to set up a new blog.
I’m also hoping to use this space to comment on more general topics and issues that interest me, and to link to other research I’m doing in the area of late 18th century social and naval history. (Yes really!)
As for the title of this blog, Open World, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it refers to the various open education initiatives I’ve been involved in over the years, and in some ways it does. However the title is actually lifted from the collected poems of Kenneth White, chair of 20th century poetics at Paris-Sorbonne and a writer for whom openness is an enduring and inspiring theme.
