December 2025 Update
HASA conference
Wikipedia Paper
August 2025 Update
Q: What have I been working on in this 2nd / 3rd quarter of 2025
This (to be honest) is a bit late. Sorry to those who were wondering what I’ve been up to.
20-23 May 2025 Workshop in Eswatini
The viability of using LLM in Higher Education
M. J. Naidoo
Paper
April 2025 Update
Q: What have I been working on in this 1st quarter of 2025?
January: The year began with me wrapping up my mentorship responsibility with with OLS.
February:
Recreate Copyright Reform Conference
I began to explore Wikidata with my Wikidata Sandbox and created three tabs ( Home Page |Learn Wikidata | My Queries). Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph. It allows for open data to be made available to the public. It’s an alternative to Google Scholar and perhaps a place As is my habit, I prefer to experiment on myself first. My Scholia Profile is a bit scarce. But getting to know more about Knowledge Graphs, has been really useful.
Q: What else is happening in the life of Q132200769?
On Friday 13 we left for an intimate road trip
December 2024 Update
Q: What have I been working on in this 4th quarter?
Stories do matter and helping others tell their story is important. I heard about National Novel Writing Month when I was doing my Irish RPL course. Subconsciously, I bought the idea and spent much of November planning out and writing a story that probably won’t be the start of a great novel. But it is a story that matters.
As I look back, here are other pieces of work worth mentioning.
- December: I worked with Paul and Michael and we submitted a chapter for a book “The Geopolitics of Postdigital Educational Development”. Hoping it gets accepted.
- November: Attended a lovely workshop at Pretoria University about Research Data Management. Caught the Gautrain there and back.
- October: I was awarded a scholarship to participate in the WikiIndaba Conference in Sandton. So pleased to meet Wikipedians from all over Africa.
- September: I was a presenter at the Serious Games Symposium where I presented a workshop on Ai Literacy Telling your Ai Stories
- September: Celebrated my first year on bsky
- Contributed an article about Ai and Education on Wikipedia (please note, I have archived the version on Zenodo). Thanks to Pen for the assistance. Others are welcome.
Q: What else is happening in my life?
Looking back, at the end of 2024, at my immediate family. Quite a year.
Eldest has completed her first year of university. She signed up for a “Bachelor in Speech-Language Pathology” and has loved the year. She’s going to be looking at how the brain organizes itself for language (Neuroanatomy, Linguistics, Psychology) in 2025. Youngest could make her own subject choice (for the first time) in 2024. During year 10, she has explored a wide range of interests. Art, Science, English, First Aid, Choir. Beloved has been on sabbatical (which has been lovely). Went overseas to Ireland for a conference, submitted a few papers AND won an award. She’s worked as a team for seven years to enable students to develop writing and legal research skills
August 2024 Update
- July Participated in REAL’s Transforming Skills Formation Systems for a Just Transition Seminar
- July: The Editor-in-Chief of jeXed, Dr Herman Myburgh, launched a new journal, the Journal of Exotechnology and Education (jeXed). I missed the event.
- July: I wrote a blogpost on Whistleblower Support in Higher Education after attending and chairing a session in the Whistleblowing and Social Change conference
- June: Completed a wonderful course – Recognition of Prior Learning, in Ireland awarded a digital badge. Began drafting an OER resource
- Unit 1 – Setting the Scene
May 2024 Update
Q: What am I working on at present.
- Wrote a Wikipedia article about Renewable Assignments
May 2024 | Academic Blogging
Ran a really fun webinar about Academic Blogging for a nice crown of early researchers.
Thanks to Matete for helping me with the Video interview
April / May 2024 | SWiP Workshops
Been having fun with the SWiP Wokshops (SADiLaR, Wikipedia and PanSLAB) and updating my contributions to Wikipedia
Pleased to have the opportunity to learn from the South African Wikimedia CEO Bobby Shabangu
April / May 2024 | Recognition of Prior Learning Digital Badge
Every Wednesday morning, for six weeks I’ve been going off to Ireland to find out more about about Recognition of Prior Learning
March 2024 | Open Badges
Been teaching myself to create a badge and documenting the process on Github
Feb 2024 | Library Wikpedians
Been having loads of fun with Wikipedians who work in libraries. Feel free to join us
Jan 2024 | Open Seeds
Wrapped up 16 weeks of amazingness with Open Life Science (OLS)
Jan 2024 | UJ 101
Together with Myles, Carina, Andre and Thea, we have put together a very interesting online and onlife orientation course for first year students at UJ.
29 Jan -1 Feb 2024 Workshop
Just completed running a three day workshop about recognition of prior learning (RPL) and micro-credentials at Kambiri Beach on the shores of the Lake for an higher education body. It went very well.
Dec 2024 | Wrapping up DH OER
Finished working on the five month DH OER project and wrapped it all up with a project report. What a rewarding experience this has been. See my blog posts for further details.
November 2023 Update
Q: What am I working on at present?
I would like to update this NowNowNow page every month, so people can keep up to date with my work and life. But things have been really busy in the past two months. Here are some of my activities.
16 Nov | DH-OER Champions
19 Sep | Open Seeds Mentorship
September 2023 Update
Q: What am I working on at present?
I’ve had a really good month since my first (August) update. I was invited to be on stage at two events.
- Panel discussion about AI at the IDEAS event (30 Aug 2023, run by Eiffelcorp).
- Presented about Building capacity with CASEFULL (23 and 24 Aug 2023 , at DH-Ignite)
Put in a few proposals to possible clients. So also holding thumbs
Q: What else is happening in my life?
August ended off with a horrible fire, in downtown Joburg. The whole world got to hear of the old pass office at 80 Albert Street. Which had a terrible fire. Where over 70 people, staying in the building. Were trapped and burnt to death. Horrible. Google maps however, was not recognizing any bad news. And the only map update. Was through the USINDISO ministries project. That still has a presence there.
The fire was 6 km away from where we live. But, in the suburbs. Where things are not as dire.
- Eldest has finished off her pre-liminary exams. And is gearing up for the finals. She seems to have coped pretty well.
- Youngest has just completed a modelling course! I got in to look at the photo shoot. She’s very impressive. She was also having a rough time with her health. That’s passed.
- Partner is enjoying having her sister is in town (she’s usually based in Marseilles). There’s a birthday soon and a 25th wedding anniversary this month. She’ll also be hearing about a proposed sabbatical. Many celebrations.
August 2023 update
Q: What am I working on at present?
Thanks for asking. As of 17 July 2023. I’ve stepped in as a short term Project Manager (part time) for the Escalator Digital Humanities OER Project.
Project ends at the end of November 2023
Q: What else is happening in my life?
Jo’burg remains a broken and beautiful city. Loadshedding continues to interrupt everyday. Water has sometimes not been available. Things are good enough in the city. In the family…
- Eldest daughter is in her final year at Parktown High School for Girls. She’s going to be writing her pre-liminary exams and then finals exams in this half of the year. Next year she hopes to be studying “speech and hearing” at university.
- Youngest is enjoying grade 9 and finding her passions. These range from literature (KBF Young Writers, look for the story Courage), science (took part in the Eskom Expo. She is entering various extension competitions (and done well in them
- Partner continues to work hard at the Wits School of Law Her most recent achievement was to go to Summer School in Hungary
This is a Now Page inspired by Derek Sivers.