Thinkery

Here is the archive of open visual thinkery in chronological order.

  • Curious Intelligence

    Prepping for a Visual Thinking workshop at DCU in Dublin last month (part of a conference entitled “Education after the Algorithm”) had me pondering my current interactions with Generative AI. I recognise that magical feeling of speaking a sentence into the void and being presented with an instant revelation – a conjuring trick. But if…

  • Eh? Aye!

    I’m as curious about AI as the next guy. Coding? Oh my goodness, I wish that had been around when I was learning how to program. Imagery? Meh. Seems like a waste of electricity to me… This mathematical cartoon about Artificial Intelligence was created using the Remixer Machine. So you can remix it here.

  • Open Education at a Crossroads

    I’ve really enjoyed capturing keynotes and conversations live. It involves being playfully curious about what’s being communicated, and wondering how the pieces of the puzzle could fit together in a visual landscape. I’ve always prioritised the capturing of messy insight over the creation of beautiful art. Somehow the ideas start to tell me where to…

  • Art vs. Idea

    I met Grayson Perry at an event once. When he was asked what is art? He responded by saying that Art is stuff made to hang on rich people’s walls… Personally, I think I’ve had to unlearn the classroom concept of art that I picked up at school. Whatever I created had to be a…

  • A Typology of Interpersonal Recognition

    Back in the old days of social media, h/t was a thing. (I remember having to ask what it meant…) Being restricted for characters as was the trend then, hat tip became h/t. I often posted half-baked drawings inspired by hearing someone speak at a meeting or event and used these precious 3 characters to…

  • The Meaning of Recognition

    I think in the early days of thinking about open credentialing, I got fixated on the credential part. The proof you might receive from an authoritative body, qualified to judge, rather than a human nod or tip-of-the-hat from someone in my community. Recognition – we all need it. By the way, it’s a long time…

  • How you made them feel

    I was listening to a politics podcast at the beginning of last week (weren’t we all?) and a cursory reference was made to this quote by Maya Angelou. It nibbled at the back of my head until I was prepping for a workshop mid-week. I drew it up and used it as the focal point…

  • Microcredentials and Recognition

    Hidden in conversation are a whole host of metaphors, which are pictorial clues to the stories being told. Contrasting two metaphors allows us to compare how different each one feels from the other. That being said, for those living in bungalows, this might need some explaining… This illustration was created for a series of credentialing…

  • Elements of a badging policy

    What creates the spark behind an illustration? There’s nothing I love better than playing idea ping-pong with a co-collaborator. This illustration was created for a series of credentialing workshops with Badge guru Doug Belshaw for the N-TUTORR project.

  • The AI arms race

    It seems that somebody somewhere is using new and sneaky ways of getting messages into my inbox. Will AI’s many fingered hands make the world more productive? I don’t know. But it will certainly make it more annoying… P.S. The arms dealer plays both sides and always wins…

  • Permission Slip

    I was giving a public talk at a Life Sciences museum in Göttingen, Germany earlier this year. Over a hundred people turned up to hear about my journey with Visual Thinkery – A picture says a thousand words. People were encouraged to bring pen and paper and we had plenty on hand to give out…

  • Facepalm

    I created this thinkery in June 2016. That’s probably all you need to know. <cough> Brexit <cough>