Links I mentioned:

Hello, it's Martine here, I am recording this towards the end of June 2021 and I wanted to give you an idea of what's on the horizon for The Teaching Space - in particular, the podcast.

Next year is the third and final year of my masters in education - my dissertation year. I know this is going to take up a lot of my energy and focus, but I am determined to reach the end.

The reality of this is, of course, I need to refocus my priorities a bit.

Podcasting is so much fun - I love doing it and I think I will always be a podcaster, but the reality is that it is incredibly time-consuming. Next year, I am going to take a break from my two weekly podcasting schedule and do something a bit different.

I am going to focus on two things for The Teaching Space.

• Writing

• Informal audio

You might have noticed if you follow me on Twitter, that I have been working on my writing by doing the Ship 30 for 30 challenge. I plan to keep up the frequent production of short-form essays and will be publishing them in a variety of places including Twitter, Medium and my email newsletter.

I'm going to experiment with informal audio over the summer - I am exploring Anchor and Racket to see what is the lowest friction.

While it sounds like you might hear a bit less from me, in actual fact, I think you will see and hear more!

So, here's what I'd like you to do if you want to keep up with what I am doing.

Highlights

• Notion has enabled me to conduct a yearly and monthly review consistently for the first time ever. I am also refining my weekly review process. This is the first time I have managed this behaviour consistently, and it is game changing. This is a personal review - but could easily apply to work and there is always some cross over. Undertaking personal reviews is enabling me to meet my goals. (01:13).
• On the subject of goals, that’s where it all starts, so I am going to walk you through my process.
• Annual review (03:09)
  • Review the year (screenshot).
  • Consider your life buckets (e.g. health, work, business, personal life, travel, money etc) and use the plus, minus, next method to reflect.
  • Identify your proudest achievement/s and biggest challenges.
  • Set goals for next year and keep them visible (screenshot).
  • You might like to set a theme or word for the year - mine is ONE.
• Monthly review (07:50)
  • Now page - currently in Notion and template available.
  • Now page template includes goals.
  • Review: progress on my goals, achievements, what next, theme for the year update and currently reading.
  • Share!
  • Diary note for next month.
• Weekly review (09:45)
  • Empty my quick capture inboxes (refer to episode 121).
  • Inbox Zero.
  • Plan for next week - calendar, tasks, exercise etc.
  • Clear down tasks.
  • Also an opportunity to plan meals.
  • Don’t refer back to goals but perhaps I should.
• Everything comes together in my Notion dashboard which works as well as it does thanks to Notion Mastery. Template available (11:13).
• Wrap up (12:33)
  • What do you do?
  • Discuss in the community.

Helpful links

Highlights

• What is personal knowledge management? (00:47).
• “Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is the practice of capturing the ideas and insights we encounter in our daily life, whether from personal experience, from books and articles, or from our work, and cultivating them over time to produce more creative, higher quality work” (Forte Labs, 2019).
• Ness Labs creator, Anne-Laure Le Cunff describes the 5 C’s of PKM as: creation, circulation, curation, collaboration and communities (Ness Labs, 2020).
• My interpretations of the 5 C’s (02:08):
  • creation: managing knowledge derived from learning allows the creation of new knowledge.
  • circulation: that new knowledge can be circulated/shared.
  • curation: it’s also a way to collect and curate things that make you think.
  • collaboration: collecting information in this way can lead to collaboration.
  • communities: you can share anything collected or created in communities (e.g. Twitter).
• For me, PKM is about ensuring the content I consume is not wasted. How many times to you read or watch something and then forget it straight afterwards? (03:56).
• While I don’t expect to learn from everything I consume (ahem.. dog videos on TikTok), if I am consuming to learn and/or generate my own content afterwards, I want to increase my chance of retention. Furthermore, from an ethical standpoint, if someone’s work influences my thinking, I want to give credit.
• The best way to design a system for PKM is to draw it (I used Excalidraw) (05:28).
• Work out (07:18):
  • Input: where do you consume content? (Examples: YouTube, web, academic papers, reports, Kindle, Twitter etc). Also include ideas.
  • Output: what do you want to achieve? (Examples: share notes, write blog posts/articles, write a dissertation, write a book, create a podcast etc).
• I then divide my workflow into three levels (09:21):
  • Quick capture (temporary repository)
  • Literature notes (notes taken while consuming content)
  • Permanent notes (notes in my own words - usually atomic)
• See diagram on show notes - loosely based on Zettelkasten.
• Tech stack (11:39):
  • Quick capture: Drafts, Highlights and Readwise (clear weekly)
  • Literature notes: Notion (knowledge hub), Highlights and Readwise
  • Permanent notes: Obsidian (public)
• Obsidian is my digital garden (15:20).
• A Digital Garden is personal, but public learning space for live, interconnected notes.
• Or, more eloquently, “A digital garden is an online space at the intersection of a notebook and a blog, where digital gardeners share seeds of thoughts to be cultivated in public” (Le Cunff, 2020).
• Obsidian allows you to see connections between notes. Things planted in my digital garden might eventually become articles, podcasts etc (16:49).
• Wrap up: let’s discuss in the community! (17:12)

Helpful links

This episode topic was requested by Ashely in The Teaching Space Community. She said:

"I would love to hear about the most beneficial things you can have a student-teacher do before exiting the program and teaching on their own. This is my first time having a student-teacher."

In this podcast I am going to focus on general advice for those mentoring trainee teachers or new trainers as I do not have expertise in sectors outside of corporate and FE. To try to give a rounded response to this topic request, I also chatted to my wider Twitter network and will share some of their suggestions.

I am mindful that this is a massive area, so will not aim to cover everything in one short episode.