Notes from the practice
Field notes on career readiness, credentialing, distributed work, and the governance of technology inside educational institutions.
“It is the mark of an educated [mind] to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.”
The Credential Nobody Requires
On the quiet contradiction at the heart of career readiness programs.
Read the field note →- 01November 2026Research
Activity Theory and AI: Why the Tool Is Never the Whole Story
AI rarely fails because the model is weak. It fails because the work around it was never redesigned.
7 min read - 02October 2026Research
Vygotsky Did Not Draw the Triangle
The figure everyone attributes to him is a later redrawing. What he actually claimed was narrower, sharper, and easier to be wrong about.
6 min read - 03September 2026Research
Leont'ev's Hierarchy Is Not a Triangle
Activity, action, operation — three levels, not three corners. The conflation costs you the one distinction that makes the model diagnostic.
6 min read - 04September 2026Research
The Second Triangle Is the Whole Point
Third-generation analyses draw two activity systems and then analyse one. The shared object is a hypothesis, not a given — and it is usually the finding.
7 min read - 05August 2026Research
Reading a Career Readiness Program as an Activity System
On identifying the parts before you evaluate the whole.
9 min read - 06August 2026Research
A Change Laboratory That Cannot Fail Is Not a Change Laboratory
The one commitment that separates a formative intervention from a well-catered workshop.
10 min read - 07July 2026Research
Aristotle Did Not Say That Either
The line about entertaining a thought is not his. What he actually wrote is more useful.
5 min read - 08July 2026Research
The Triangle Is an Argument, Not a Picture
How to read the generations of activity theory — and why "which one is right" is the wrong question.
9 min read - 09June 2026Research
Contradictions Are Not Problems
And why calling them problems does real damage to the people inside them.
9 min read - 10May 2026Research
The Unit of Analysis Is the Whole Argument
What activity theory actually asks you to do differently.
9 min read - 11February 2026Technology
Cybersecurity Governance for Educational Institutions
Practical governance frameworks for protecting student data and institutional systems on limited budgets.
9 min read - 12January 2026Research
Career Readiness Programs: A CHAT Perspective
How Cultural-Historical Activity Theory frames the design and implementation of career readiness programs in higher education.
10 min read - 13December 2025Research
Distributed Work and Professional Identity Formation
How remote and distributed work environments shape the professional identities of technology workers.
9 min read - 14November 2025Career Development
Building Effective Digital Badge Systems
Best practices for designing micro-credential systems that genuinely support student career readiness.
8 min read - 15October 2025Technology
AWS Academy: Pathways to Cloud Careers
Strategies for integrating cloud computing certifications into academic programs.
8 min read - 16September 2025Education
The Future of Experiential Learning
Reimagining internships and work-based learning in a post-pandemic higher education landscape.
9 min read - 17August 2025Research
Verification Is Not Proofreading
Checking whether a source is what you think it is and checking whether a sentence says what you meant are different jobs. These are the tools I use for both, and the order I use them in.
4 min read - 18July 2025Research
Provenance Is the Product
Five research tools I actually use. Each one costs something small now and pays it back the first time someone asks where a claim came from.
5 min read