My mom and sister visited last week and it was the best vacation and family time I could have hoped for. I napped a ton, we visited great places, my mom brought baby and childhood pictures that are now hanging in various places to remind myself that I didn’t always live in deep angst (that’s just my late teens through now). She helped us garden, dig up roots. There’s a metaphor there — roots. Renewal, refreshment.

But this post isn’t about that. It’s about high notes of the week, because it’s been rough going from napping and relaxing to full on work again (plus course prep for my side gig). It has felt great, albeit a bit over stimulating, and I’ve had trouble sleeping. Because I’m excited about so many things! Here’s a few.

I signed up for an Eduflow course on ID principles and roped in two awesome colleagues to join me. Crossing our fingers we get in! A chance to learn about ID together, through a learning environment. Very meta and very much my jam.

I finally made something that I think is pretty cool for work. Not eLearning, not a course, not an async scenario…a team activity for a hybrid meetup. We focus on pivotal moments and the underlying principles — how could this situation have gone better, with little adjustments? Social learning and metacognition and a very fun acronym that they may love or hate, “PA’s CAFE.” More on that later maybe.

I led an ID Coffee Chat with colleagues about our experience with ID (and none is ok! Some were genuinely interested and I love that). We talked, laughed, brainstormed, and the coffee is brewing for future conversations. We are truly a learning organization and I love it so much.

I got this ridiculous song stuck in my head at 2am for who know what reasons, too much thinking about ID maybe. To the tune of that 90s hit “Where do you go, my lovely? I wanna know, my lovely…”

Where should we go? (What’s the learning goal)

How will we know? (That we got there, what’s the evidence)

What will we show? (Demonstrating the evidence through activities, actions, reflections, behavior change)

Keep content low…(You know it, avoid info dumps and keep info to a minimum – less than you think learners need!)

And with that, it’s time for work.