Posts tagged update
First Year Skills Workshop
Mar 15th
In this post: recent First Year Skills Workshops, what they’ve been like and what comes next.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have been asked to direct several more First Year Skills Workshops at the University of Liverpool in the last few weeks; regular readers may recall that I directed three last autumn, and that I really enjoyed the work involved in leading these courses. The last two have been no different, but have also held their own challenges, surprises and delights.
Updating begins!
Mar 7th
Quick Thought: changes that are happening!
I’ve been preparing a lot of things in the background for the site’s updates; I like the overall look of the website, but have decided that really there needs to be a lot more content than there is currently. Separate pages for courses (like Viva Survivor, Creativity in Research and others) are on the way, and will be put up simultaneously. I’m going to update the front page with some new images from the many workshops I’ve delivered over the last year, and also get around to saying something new about my Vitae Innovate project, NonZeroSum. More >
Being Busy
Mar 3rd
Quick Thought: what I’m up to!
So much to do, so little time… Actually, no, there is quite a bit of time, but there really is just so much to do and think about that writing about those things seems like a Herculean task on top of actually getting them done. More >
Coming Soon
Feb 22nd
In this post: what I’ve been up to recently, and what you can expect soon on this site.
I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, and that’s something which isn’t going to slow down just yet. I’m just about to direct my fourth First Year Skills Workshop for the University of Liverpool – I realised at the end of last week that this will be the 20th First Year Skills Workshop that I’ve been involved with as a tutor/director! That’s a lot of interdisciplinary groups working on projects.
Innovate Update: January
Jan 11th
In this post: developments with my Innovate project; and I’m still looking for a few more institutions to host pilots.
The Christmas and New Year break was just what I needed for my Innovate project to move forward. Before Christmas I had spent time over the course of several weeks brainstorming for ideas for the resource and thinking about what the desired outcomes of the session should be. With the Christmas break this really gave the opportunity for all of those thoughts and concepts to move around, to breathe on their own. And now I’ve sat down to produce the prototype resources I think they’re much stronger for it.
Last Year and the Year Ahead
Jan 5th
In this post: looking back over the last year, and looking ahead to 2011!
Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a great time over the Christmas and New Year period, however you mark the events. It’s always great to take a break, but before the end of the holiday I’m always eager to get back to work, my brain starts firing again with ideas and thoughts of things that I want to do.
I’m thinking about the year ahead, but of course I’m looking at it through the lens of the year that’s just finished. And what a year it was!
Career Story
Aug 23rd
In April of this year, Vitae and icould asked if they could interview me for some short videos that they were putting together for their respective sites. I had almost forgotten about this until the other morning when a parcel arrived with a memory stick containing the edited videos. Each of the two organisations had their own particular angle that they were working on, and although I was filmed just the once, the footage was taken and then edited to make two different sets of videos.
Vitae’s focus was on looking at what researchers do: seeing what it is that people with PhDs do for work after they have completed their doctoral studies. My video is one of many that they have on their site, from people with all kinds of research backgrounds who have gone on to have many different kinds of careers.
icould is a really interesting website, and has an archive of videos of people with all sorts of jobs, telling their stories of what it is that they do and how they ended up getting there. I think that the first two lines on their about page sums it up really well: “icould is about inspiration and encouragement. The idea is to help you make the most of your potential and talent, by showing how others have used theirs.”
The videos are online now, and so if you’re interested to hear about why I decided to do what I’m doing, and how I got here, then go here on the Vitae site and here on the icould site. Of course, come back here after that to find out more about what I can do for you!
Creative Thinking
Aug 2nd
I’ve spent some time recently delivering courses to universities in the North West and North Wales. This has been great, a chance to put into practice so many of the things that I’ve learned over the years, and also a chance to put some courses of my own together. Working as a facilitator on programmes that others have designed is good, and I’ve learned a lot from being a part of them: I hope to continue working on other institutions’ programmes, but I’m really excited about the courses that I’ve developed.
The two new courses that are up on the Courses page are both centred around Creative Thinking, specifically in providing people tools and techniques for developing their creative thinking and creativity skills. The first, Breaking Barriers to Creative Thinking, is focussed on transforming the way that people approach creative thinking. Too often we look at a problem and all we can see is the situation as it is, with no hint of a solution. This course is all about promoting a mindset that we should adopt when looking for new and original ideas to problems: by using some accessible methods we can change the way that we view problems – and change the way we look at finding potential solutions.
The second course, Easy Idea Generation, is like the first in that it offers some really great tools for creative thinking. The main difference is that Easy Idea Generation is focused more on providing the tools for getting ideas than on the bigger picture of the kind of mindset needed for creative thinking. The tools in this second course have been selected for the great breadth that they offer the person using them; I’ve seen them used to great effect, and had great feedback from participants about how they are going to incorporate them into their work.
These courses are for anyone, so if you’d like to know more about these sessions, or if you have a training need that you think I might be able to meet, please get in touch. And keep coming back for more updates that should be live on the site soon.
Branding, or “Why a jigsaw?”
Jun 2nd
For a long time I’ve been developing my own branding and logo, something to distinguish me from other training providers. I wanted it to be something that I could talk about when people ask me, to be colourful and something that people would engage with quickly. After some development time I came up with the primary-coloured jigsaw design that you can see at the top of every page on the site.
There are many reasons which lead me down this path – the main one being that the jigsaw is a puzzle concept that has an almost universal recognition: it’s simple, but a lot is conveyed in the term/image. It suggests problem solving, an area that I have lots of experience with. I wanted it to convey my belief that skills training is about helping to put the pieces together: skills training is as much about helping people to consolidate the skills that they already have as it is about teaching new techniques or tools.
My “strapline” of “Delivering innovative solutions to your training needs” came out of a desire to communicate the approach that I want to take in all the aspects of my work; I want this direction both for providing training for organisations and for working with companies and organisations in order to develop new resources.
I have a few more posts in mind for this week: in one I’ll show off my new business cards, and in another I’ll talk through the creative process that I used in order to arrive at my logo, and the direction that I’m taking with the main part of my portfolio career. If you’re looking for a skills trainer to come into your organisation and deliver training on creativity, teamwork, project management or any of the other areas that I list then please get in touch. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
Making Ideas Sticky
May 27th
It’s been a good many weeks since I last wrote for the site’s blog. Life has busy in that time with work, settling into our new home and planning for the wedding. I’ve been thinking long and hard about the direction that I want to take my work over the coming year. Chief amongst this has been the dual notions that I want to both branch out in the areas into which I deliver training and resource development and find other ways of using my academic background to develop new opportunities for myself. In this way I hope to establish for myself a strong portfolio career.
Which sounds difficult – not a Herculean task by any measure, but still difficult. One book which will help me is one that I read recently as I travelled between training sessions. Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath is about what it is that makes ideas “sticky” – what causes them to become stuck in our minds, what turns information into ideas that we remember and then act on. A few months ago I blogged about how a book on facilitation had helped me enormously when it came to thinking about course and session design; now I have learned something more, that complementing clever course design with techniques to make ideas “sticky” can have a transformative effect on the way that participants take up the ideas.
Made To Stick is one of several really useful books that I have been reading of late in order to develop the course content that I am writing. I’ll blog about the others over the coming weeks, along with news about the courses that I have been writing and also the events that I am working on over the next few months.