Ding's Learning Design Almanac

It’s not very often that I talk about my ‘proper job’ on Red’s Kingdom. Red’s Kingdom is a space for all those other dimensions of thinking, watching, making and doing. That said, I do have some work-related news to share as, in this instance, there is a cross-over.

My ‘proper job’ is ‘Director Of Learning Design at Ding Learning’ – and Ding Learning is the creative learning design agency I co-founded with Dr Tony Reeves. Learning Design isn’t one of those self-explaining job-titles and the short version is Tony and I work with people to turn their expertise into effective learning experiences for ‘non-experts’. We scope, imagine, design and build courses and training, and we work with a wide range of organisations – from start-ups to established companies and universities. Last year, we did a whole lot of work for data analysts, scientists and engineers; this year, we’re working with a charitable institution that uses craft as therapeutic education for young people with acute challenges around their learning. We teach too (I’m currently an adjunct Professor at Woxsen University in Hyderabad, India), running workshops and short courses, and we have a pedagogy-themed podcast called The Ding-O-Meter.

We also have a book – Ding’s Learning Design Almanac – which we’ve just published, which is our ‘Little Book Of Big Ideas’. Structured loosely around our ‘Covid Diaries’ (Tony and I founded Ding during lockdown), the almanac is a user-friendly collection of insights for making learning work better for human beings. With illustrations by friend-of-Red’s-Kingdom Emily Clarkson, Ding’s Learning Design Almanac is a book for dipping-into. It was fun to produce and satisfying way to reflect on all the ‘doing’ of the last few years.

The Kick-About features in the Almanac too, as I reflect on how much our fortnightly creative challenge has since informed my ideas about designing learning experiences in more formal settings. A big thank you then to those-in-the-know for teaching this teacher some new tricks. By way of a preview, I’ve included the short Kick-About-themed section below. Ding’s Learning Design Almanac is available on Amazon as both a natty little paperback and ebook, so if you know people with interests in all-things-educational, this would be a fun and useful read.