The idea is that you leave 5 hours between meals during the day and 12 hours overnight. I just forget to have my lunch. I was 'pooliside' half an hour before the National Squad turned up. Perhaps I should have waited until they had arrived in order to run through some tips on nutrition.

This is  no longer a diet: I lost 6 kg from 1st to 31st August eating like this - low to no carbs, no sugar at all, and plenty of veggies.

Changing behaviour takes a great deal of effort by someone.

In this instance it was my wife and a year of reading up on gut microbes. Then she has taken time off work and decided that I would be her 'proof of the pudding' to use the wrong expression. I have cheated now and again: a few bears, packets of crisps.

And then has been running. Supposedly a couch to 5k, but getting a run in during the working week is proving difficult.

Monday: at 6:30am I can't do that too often

Wednesday I can get one in 4:30 to 5:30 before swimmers.

What do I know until I've tried it?

The Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll. It looks, smells and feels like one. The grease, pasty and taste all say sausage roll (albeit a cheap one). Is it better to support veganism in this way or is it all about the bottom line? Being vegan I loath the meatiness of this: the taste and grease are an unpleasant reminder of what meat recovered from a carcass and disguised in a product can be like.

Don't eat meat, don't eat fake meat - turn to veggies.

As an FE College we need to assess levels of English, Maths and IT skills. We do this using BSKB.

This task was somewhat curtailed today by the IT sign ins changing, slow speeds and no staff. I resorted to looking up a get around ... on my private blog, my learning journal for college stuff. THIS is where I see the greatest value in a blog, a learning journal or a work diary, is to keep brief details of what you do, tagged in a way to make it easy to search.

I looked up BSKB and could relive my first run through the system and then the get around. The only pain is that the get around requires typing in a 76 character URL of mizxed upper and lower case, numbers and signs. 

Revisiting my skills at using the 360 camera to create a VR tour through the Learning Resource Centre and several things occur:

1) I had forgotten how tricksy it can be to set up.

2) Once connected between the 360 camera and my iPad I then had to remember how to use the manual settings for White Balance and Exposure, and using the self-timer so that you are not caught in the picture

3) The results were either soft, or, had this ring effect.

I hope it is a further quality setting that I need to engaged - i.e. High Resolution images. I did lend it out for three weeks. 

The trials and tribulations of the learning technologist continue.

A bust of Asa Briggs graces the Lewes Town Council Chamber after a Cllr Ruth O'Keefe was asked if she could find it a home by the family. I used to see him, in his 90s. on Keere Street or in his garden. I pay my respects at every monthly full council meeting. 

Feeling a certain civic pride and duty as a Town councillor I know pick up litter when out walking or running. There is a pattern: takeaways, plastic bottles and untouchables. I don't pick up used tissues! 

In Lewes, until recently, we had none of the take away chains - yet I find Macdonald's milk shake cups, bags and happy meals. We recently had a Subway open and within a 5 to 10 minute walk from their outlet in all directions you can now find a wrapper or coffee cup.

Then there are the plastic bottles.

If we are banning plastic bags, then why not plastic bottles? The town has plans to reinstate water fountains and to add others.

I would oblige take away outlets to at least have promotional advertising on 'Littering' in the outlet, and potentially on the offending litter.

'Please put me in a bin'

As the recently appointed Head Coach at Hailsham SC this paper will be my bible. It has been used for the last few years at Mid Sussex Marlins SC where I have been coaching since 2008.

To conclude a sabbatical after the desperately sad loss of his wife Frederic sets off (two of them) tio traverse the Greenland Plateau. It is supposed to be covered in snow. Rain has washed the snow away leaving bare ice. Dragging a sled is impossible. After a few days years of training and months of planning comes to a sad but sensible end. 

Take a sequences of video clips on your phone. If you got the shot first time and you have them in order that is you instructional video.

As the safety helm for a sailing club I need to remind myself every few months when I got out how to get away from the birth. A quick look at this helps. It works better than their training manual of photos and text.

It even has someone talking me through what to do. 

Good enough. 

My instructional design journey begins as I prepare to interview a subject matter expert on independent travel for students with special educational needs (SEN). I am posing questions against a 'learning journey' frame so that as I ask questions I can build these into a story. 

It is this story, and the ability to successfully and effectively bring the story to life, which will decide whether or not this elearning experience achieves its goals.

Projects for the next four months with Open Access release in the New Year. 

Using a Cash Machine (ATM)

Learning points: 

1.       How many numbers are in an individual pin

2.       How to protect yourself from others seeing your pin number

3.       The colour of the button you press once you have entered the pin number

4.       In the home screen what does each tab mean i.e. cash withdrawal, printed balance, onscreen balance etc

5.       Who should know your pin number and why is it important that no one knows your pin number (outcomes)

Approach: Linear video with synched slides and bold caption on Planet eStream. 

Crossing the Road/Puffin/Pelican crossing

Learning points: 

1.       Where and how to stand when crossing the road (well back from the edge of the kerb, looking and listening for dangers etc)

2.       Look at the dangers of crossing the road (not paying attention, walking across the road when traffic is coming, not using crossing points)

3.       Colours of the Pelican Crossing lights – Green mean go or stop

4. When crossing still be looking and listening out for traffic

Approach: Linear video with synched slides and bold caption on Planet eStream. 

The Learning Resource Centre, Broadwater 

Learning points: 

1.       Who to go for help and what help they can offer (buy pens, change password and computer advice)

2.       Where the quick read books are within the LRC

3.       360 tour of the LRC, especially chill out room (is it a chill out room?)

4.       How to start the computer

5.       How to use the printers

6. Swiping in and out of LRC

Approach: ThingLink 360 tour with interactive hot spots, tour links and voice over narration. 

Independent Travel Training

Approach: Scenario-based elearning. Video with voice over, text and interactive prompts.

These are at the core of G Suite for Education.

It might be as basic as learning how to drive - but you still have to learn how to drive and then set off on a journey where the road signage changes, and slow side roads become slick interstellar space ports overnight. Accepting constant change is part of working in digital.

I have taken an educator through Google Classroom and Google Drive twice or three times in a year so doing this requires me to revisit what I knew then, check all updates and give things a go myself before hand. The tutors themselves, with there 25+ students and a term of assignments to prepare are more versed in it than I am.

This isn't how I would chose to be, or not to be in my case - an industry expert. I need to be doing on a daily basis. What I currently do on a daily basis is Twitter, WordPress and Umbraco, and every few months a newsletter using MailChimp.

For me to develop a skillset requires time and constant practice.

So I am back peddling and using time set aside this week to work on video and scenario-based learning for SEND students.

I'm not the kind of person who handles these kinds of frequent adjustments in direction well.

How things come around.

Starting out in corporate video training and information films in the 1980s I found myself working with an ex BBC Money Programme Producer Alan Scales who won the contract to replace a carousel slide show (really) sent round to all branches, with video. One of the stories we covered was the opening of Abbey National's first cash machine at their Baker Street Branch (and HQ). That was 1985 or 1986.

Here I am in 2019 planning to create a simple 'how to video' for Students with Special Educational Needs (SEN). This will include how to use an ATM and to use a Pelican Crossing. No production team - just me, a camera and tripod, student actors. No budget so no producer role. I'll cut it on my desktop. It will be 'hosted' on Planet eStream, as a play alone video, or with a second screen of synchedslides. 

I would have hoped after 34 years to have moved on but my 'career' has been a constant spiralling up and down and off in all directions as I catch fermal, or come to earth with a bump, or jump out (with or without a parachute