On learning and learning French slowly

For the last five years or so I’ve enjoyed the immense pleasure of the eclectic French radio station FIP. Lucky us in Brighton, we can get it on FM. In fact, a guy once knocked at the door doing market research for RADAR and asked about our listening habits. Much to my surprise FIP had been mentioned by numerous other people in our street.

Anyway, I’ve come to love the mix of jazz, indie, French pop, French classics with accordian and the fact that the music is back-to-back apart from a couple of minutes of news at ten to the hour. That’s the time when I focus on learning French. I can usually get the gist of the main stories, clock the football scores and occasionally grasp what’s on musically in and around Paris.

I like the idea of learning this way. Reminds me of 50Lessons, a company with a really simple approach to sharing wisdom. I had the pleasure of working with them for a short time last summer.

I was also interested to hear on the radio yesterday about the government’s personalised learning approach to education. Having had some exposure to the BBC’s Digital Curriculum project when working with Magic Lantern in 2005 and being well aware of Charlie Leadbeater’s influential writings on this topic, it will be interesting to see how this concept evolves. Must talk to teacher friends.. Incidentally I was both delighted and amused to be quoted in Charlie’s open work in progress We-think. Shame he referred to me as Frank. Nevermind

The difficult second post

I wrote a blog once before, shortly after my previous work passion Getfrank, a digital design agency was absorbed by friends and competitors, Cogapp. I stopped doing that blog after a trip to the mountains in Spain. On my return I discovered I’d run out of server space and couldn’t be bothered with doing it all via Blogger online.

This time round I’ve chosen WordPress and I am doing it all online. Motivations being that WordPress seems like a good thing, created by a good guy and for some reason, it’s a little bit lefter in the field than say Movable Type, who I would otherwise have used.

Doing a blog at all seems like a necessity. Strange to say as a freeranger, although I’ve been considering it almost daily for the best part of two years. I guess the real motivation boils down to the need to get my thoughts, observations and experiences into a place where I, primarily can dump the contents of my brain. Might seem bloody obvious, but for years I’ve used Filemaker, Stickies, Post-its on the wall, Stickybrain, untold notebooks, mobile-phone notes, backs of receipts and often wondered why it couldn’t be in an easier to access place. I’ve toyed with using Flickr as a blog of sorts which it is for infrequent snapshots of family life.

As I’ve moved on in work and life, the need to share my ideas has reached a point where I must do this. Partly I’m frustrated by my own modesty and I’m gradually coming to terms with who I am and what I’ve achieved and offer. So I suppose it’s straight-forward really.. I’ll puke it out (using a favourite phase from a former colleague) and if anyone’s listening, great.