Transition and change

Photo from Pixabay

2017 has been a year of transition and change. Looking back on the year, I now realise that I was heading for some major changes of direction in my professional life. I have connected again with some old friends and colleagues, said goodbye to a few and met some new ones too. My PLN continues to grow and I have been privileged to work with some really excellent people.

The start of the year saw the usual events in and around London, including the BETT Show at the Dockland Excel Centre in January, where 4 of my students joined me to present during the conference. It was great meeting up with so many colleagues from the schools sectors and discussing new technologies, pedagogies and issues of the day. As usual, my own student teachers came away inspired, buzzing with enthusiasm and wishing to try out what they had learnt in their own classrooms.

In the first week of February I was back in London, this time in the west of the city, speaking at Learning Technologies in Olympia. I shared the stage with my good friends Andrew Jacobs and Dave Kelly, from the world of Learning and Development (corporate learning) and we will be reprising this trio in 2018. I am always impressed by the enthusiasm and drive of my colleagues in the Learning and Development sector, especially their intense desire to strive for excellence as they meet the challenges of change and innovation across all fields of activity.

INLAB - Photo by Steve Wheeler

In March I travelled to Singapore to participate in a week-long research symposium with the Lifelong Learning Institute. I worked with a team of great people during the week including famous learning theorist Roger Saljo, and spent time exploring research in the ideation rooms of INLAB - a purpose built area for the promotion of creative learning and exploration. As a visiting fellow of LLI, I hope to be able to work again with the team in Singapore in the coming years.

April brought me to a watershed moment in my career when I was informed that my digital literacies programme had been inexplicably axed by the university. I decided there and then that it was time for me to bow out and I applied for voluntary redundancy. Many of my colleagues and students were a little shocked by my decision, because I had told them often that I would never retire - because I loved the job too much. But my hand had been forced, and I realised that there was a whole world outside of academia that I wanted to explore some more.

In May I returned to Singapore as distinguished speaker for the National University award ceremony for excellence in research. It was a great honour to receive the invitation - it was my second of three visits to the Lion City in 2017, and as usual it didn't disappoint. I also spent another week teaching at the Technical University of Liberec in northern Czech Republic and this time I brought one of my students with me, so he could take part in a project with the local Radio Broadcasting company. Hopefully, Sound Czech will continue in the future.

Circumnavigating the globe: Map from Wikimedia Commons

In June I wrote about my decision to 'retire' from full-time academic work at Plymouth University (on 6 June - D Day - a decision day for me in many ways) in a post entitled Walking Away. The same day the Times Higher Education called me and asked if they could run the story, and it appeared in the newspaper the following day. By then I had already been planning what I was going to do next, for several weeks.

I was delighted to accept an invitation to spend a week as a guest of the Peel School District Board in Mississauga, near Toronto, Canada, during August. I gave a keynote speech to more than 300 dedicated Canadian educators (who gave up 3 days of their vacation to attend a conference at Cawthra Park Secondary School). I also presented two workshops, and had the privilege of witnessing the solar eclipse - thanks to the teachers who lent me a pinhole camera they had made for the event. This was my first visit to Canada, and I was impressed by the passion and dedication of all of the teachers I met. The full story is here.

In September I found myself travelling across the UK, speaking at various events and I also paid a second visit of the year to the Emerald Isle. I was keynote speaker for a one-day event at the Law Society of Ireland, and spent a delightful couple of days in Dublin. The Law Society's campus is a wonderful mix of ancient and modern architecture, and it awards its own degrees to graduates. In September I also started work as Head of Research and Innovation for a start-up company called LiketoBe.org which connects schools with business and experts to promote better careers advice. The story of my work with LiketoBe can be read here. It was also a delight to witness my final full cohort of student teachers graduating and launching their careers in education during a ceremony on Plymouth Hoe.

Jasmine's tent by Steve Wheeler

Late October and early November saw me flying out on a round-the-world tour, which took in Brussels, Los Angeles, Auckland and Singapore. I had never travelled completely around the globe before, so it was an adventure. I spent most of my time in late October and early November working as a resident academic consultant at Auckland University of Technology. It was a challenging, but thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling time for me, and I hope I added some real value to the work of the university. My time was spent giving presentations and workshops and meeting with teams of academics to discuss change and innovation. While I was down under, I spent a fair amount of time researching and writing, with some visits to schools. One outcome was this post about a child with special needs. I also developed a new model of organisational innovation which I wrote about here.

In November I aired the model publicly for the first time during my opening keynote speech to the Learning Technologies Asia conference in Singapore on 8 November. During the conference I spent time with old friends Dave Kelly, Laura Overton, Marco Faccini, Ger Driesen, Bryan Alexander and Donald Taylor, as well as some familiar Tweeps I met face to face for the first time, including Helen Blunden and Sahana Chattopadhay.

December has been a wind-down month, with just a few engagements in the diary. The most significant thing that has happened is the launch of my new consultancy agency - Steve Wheeler Associates Ltd - which will offer a growing number of services to schools, colleges and universities in the coming years, including staff development sessions and master classes in change management, innovation and pedagogy, learning technology, assessment, social media and education, e-safety, special educational needs, mental health, and behaviour management. I'm building a team that will do this work at a global level. Here's to a prosperous and successful new year - and do get in touch if you think we can work together in any way!


Transition and change by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.