Educational and Digital Technology Consultancy
Every month, I offer a limited number of free 30-minute consultations to startup founders and business owners. If you’d like to benefit from this, please get in touch. Ideally come with a specific problem you want advice on and I’ll see how I can help. My background is technical, so non-tech founders might particularly find […]
EdTech + Blended Learning In 2020, I ran an online workshop for academic colleagues on innovative ways to use Tech to aid teaching and learning. During the session, I asked what everyone thought “blended learning” meant. Here are a selection of the answers: Variety of delivery, can be employer, study based, online, in person etc […]
How gamification motivates people to do extraordinary things (sometimes) One of my recent reads has been Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things by Brian Burke. The concept of Gamification has been around for a long time, it’s nothing new. But, how can Gamification be used for good? In the realm of education […]
Avoiding the pitfalls of working in a vacuum As humans, we know we need oxygen to survive, and the same goes for ideas. Stifle an idea in a vacuum and it’s probably going to die. How do we avoid this? In a word: collaboration. Collaborative learning I am a great advocate of collaborative learning. As […]
Advice for Early Stage Startup Founders If you can, embed yourself in the market well before you launch. It’s much easier to sell as an insider than it is as an outsider. You can partner with prospective customers to help them understand their problems better and therefore find solutions to those problems more easily. Make […]
Should we stop at “self-actualisation”? Here is a visual of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Look familiar? The pinnacle of the hierarchy seems to make sense. Where else can you go from self-actualisation? Surely, that’s the peak. But, did you know Maslow added a new pinnacle to his Hierarchy of Needs before he died? He added […]
From teenage coder to Tech Advisor with CITP status I’ve been in tech since I was a teenager. Of course, back then, things were very different to today. The web was still evolving. Social media platforms were still up and coming. Facebook? Twitter? Nope… none of that. My adventures in web development began with with […]
Agile doesn’t mean you take an 18 month project and break it down into month releases Why do startups fail? 🤔 Too many startups begin with the idea for a product that they think people want… and they actually don’t. When we talk about “Agile”, the Agile Manifesto, and some of the principles around Agile, […]
Leaders and teachers do not need to have all the answers As a teacher/mentor/advisor, I found “The Ignorant Maestro” by Itay Talgam quite a liberating read. Even though I know quite a lot about some subjects, I often have to respond to students’ questions with “I don’t know” and then follow it up with “let’s […]
EdTech VC investors are in a position of power and are able to influence the education agenda I recently attended a fascinating Digital Education session on the current trends in EdTech investment, and particularly Venture Capital. Essentially, VCs are investing in the future of education and therefore having a direct impact on what the future […]