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David Sugden |
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** Links updated this week |
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| 28th December 2006 | "If you can raise the meter
for 10% of children in a school you can do it for the other 90% as
well."
I took the above quote from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6214407.stm which was titled ['E-Credits' for top 10% of pupils] -today's date. The e-credits system, with initial funding of £65m, is to be run by the not-for-profit CfBT Education Trust from next September. It's not clear who made the quote above - but I have to ask myself the same question! If our government can invest enough confidence in 'E' to support the needs of a high-flying 10%, then it should also be able to find cash for the other 90%. And, what about those young people already out of the school system - and adults? Don't their educational institutions (whatever or wherever they might be) deserve access to a similar level of support? It's not that I begrudge the opportunities given to the top 10%, it's more that I bemoan the dwindling support for all those others, not in school or university. What do you think? |
Links
Featured Videos Resources Holidays and Gigs
My other 'stuff'
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| 26th December 2006 | Merry Christmas! It's Boxing Day evening and
(sadly??) I'm sat here filling in my blog! Many thanks to all
those of you who sent us cards and gifts - they are all much
appreciated. Please take a look at the other 'Village' pages - you might
find more than you expected . . . . We have had Rosie and Steven (Sharon's brother) staying with us since Saturday and it's been a super holiday. On Saturday evening, just after they arrived, we went to Endogans - the Tapas bar in Slaithwaite. This was an early sitting, so we were home in plenty of time for a chat and to being the Christmas boozing. On Christmas Eve, John and Carol joined us for an evening meal: Salad of Artichoke, hot bacon and Goat's Cheese; Pan Fried Sea Bass with buttered Capers, Roast Loin of Lamb with lemon, rosemary and honey stuffing; Green Beans and Dauphinoise Potatoes; Cheeses (from Wensleydale and Wales); Baked Bananas and creme fraiche!!! And lots more booze - we were stuffed by bedtime. It took us all Christmas Day to open presents - people kept dropping in. To be frank, I'm happier with people dropping in than opening presents, so that wasn't a problem. Nevertheless, I was given some very generous presents. Many of these came via my Amazon wish list which, when I opened the list it felt very strange. It seemed so self-centred to tell friends and family about it., but it has allowed them (mainly Sharon and Emma) to buy 'wanted' presents without having too much trouble. One of my favourites was 'The Healer' by John Lee Hooker - recommended by Vic Dejean. Thanks Vic. Today was a more help-yourself sort of day. Sharon took Chloe back to her mum's and then we all went out for a walk around Bolster Moor and Scapegoat Hill, Food for the rest of the day was cold meats and whatever else we could find (plenty to choose from). I'm ready for a break from all the food and drink now - well at least until Sunday `evening when Karen, Dave, Tony and Gill join us for New Year's Eve dinner. |
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| Here's a fishy Christmas greeting . . . | ||
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20th December 2006
Christmas Present |
Try Martin's Money Tips for money saving ideas. He is giving money to charity for everyone enrolling on his email list before 24th December. | |
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14th December 2006
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It was my birthday last Thursday and like
last year, I was joined for lunch by Emma and Amy. This was something
I'd looked forward to for a while (the lunch with daughter and
granddaughter - not the birthday). Now she's two years old she's a
pleasure to watch. As all of you will know, a child is very inquisitive
when she's two and Amy is no exception. However, her most pleasurable
time seemed to be sat in the conservatory playing with the cat's water
dish!- she was drenched! I had a sore throat and head cold, and by
Friday didn't feel all that good - so I spent the entire morning in bed.
I had lots of reading to do, so staying in bed and reading was great for
me. I had the pleasure of catching up with work I'd normally leave until
last (the reading), I stayed warm and comfortable AND managed to relax.
Which was good because we'd booked a table for the night at Bentleys' in
Shelf.
http://www.bentleys-foodandwine.co.uk/ We had a delightful meal here
- see my MySpace blog (link on right-hand side bar) for more details. I went for a walk with John on Saturday but we concentrated on PC World and the town centre, so not much exercise there then! The rest of the weekend (until my departure for Leeds at 6.00pm Sunday) was spent trying to install my BT Total Broadband 'upgrade'!!!! What a bloody nightmare this was. We spent half the time on a phone to India - where more technically competent (but language challenged) staff were placed to help us. My new laptop passed through the hoop fairly easily - probably because it was new, but we had to go and buy a new USB wireless connector for Sharon's PC (the old one was a BT one, my PC's existing USB connector - a Belkin one - worked fine, which is how we knew a new one was needed - but (sorry this is a long parenthesis) we were told at one stage that we shouldn't use Belkin!!) But BT were crap. My Acer - which I still use for gigs etc just WOULDN'T connect, despite having a centrino chip. Betony's dad had to talk to India after I'd left for Leeds. Leeds was where I was meeting three other WBL e-Guide trainers for our day-s gig on the Monday. This went well and prepared me nicely for the next day-3 event in Liverpool on Wednesday (yesterday). Once again, I had to go the night before and ended up eating a fairly mundane Indian meal for tea on Tuesday evening. Sharon picked me up off the train on Wednesday evening and took me to the new Tapas bar in Huddersfield. I'm not sure of its name, but we weren't impressed. I'll try it again (Sharon says she won't) but it's not a patch on Endigans. They don't have a web site as far as I can see but it's a little secret place in Slaithwaite - only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. If you can find it and book it: try it! The JISC thing is still going on and I've now received a contract to do some Prison visits for NIACE, which should be interesting. |
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| 5th December 2006 | I've just done quite a bit of updating on my Googlepages site. Don't expect much on the master page (main link) but do search the fish pages and the vegetable pages - constructive comments welcome. http://dsugden.googlepages.com/commodities | |
| 4th December 2006 | It was Amy's
birthday yesterday - two years old!! I can't believe how time flies. I
spent the early part of last week working on the JISC project but on
Thursday I worked with
Alistair McNaught
at the Magna Centre in
Rotherham. The building is huge but at this time of year, very very
cold. We were right in the middle and they did their best to keep us
warm but it meant that our workshops were interrupted by the overhead
heaters (they could have been air conditioning units for all the effect
they had). It might be nice to visit again sometime - but some time
\warmer. I met and re-met lots of people including Claudia and Sarah
from NIACE and some of the WBL e-guides who I'll see again next week in
Leeds or Liverpool. Alistair and I discussed with our delegates the
creation of learning materials how how simple it is to 'include' the
majority of our learners without excluding any. Then on Friday I went to
Karen's in Chirk, to meet her and Chris Kelland. However, Chris's train
abandoned him at Wolverhampton, so we decided to cut his journey and
meet him in Shrewsbury. It was half an hour's drive from Chirk to
Shrewsbury, so we arrived just as his train did. Whilst we were walking
around the town, looking for somewhere to eat, someone came up to me and
asked if I'd been at the Magna Centre on Thursday!! He'd been in one of
our sessions - what are the odds against that? Next week is a long one - I have a Sunday start for NIACE - day three of the WBL e-Guides training for Yorkshire and Humberside - Vic and I will be joined by Terry Loane and David Boulton. Then on Tuesday I have to go to Liverpool for Wednesday's similar session for North West, where I will be joined by Sandie Gay. Then it's wind-down and catch-up time, as long as I can finally get this JISC thing put to bed! |
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| 28th November 2006 | The weekend in Swaledale was great. We'd gone to try and catch up with some work stuff and pretty much managed. It sounds really sad doesn't it? But we had no disturbances, no phone calls (NO RECEPTION - NO PHONE CALLS) as well as some time to ourselves. I had a lot of reading to do and notes to make for reports etc. which I managed to do in relative peace. Sharon managed to catch up on her assignment marking while we sat in front of the huge open fire. The JISC thing is getting closer to the first real milestone - when our work goes to its first review. Fingers crossed. Did some more work on http://dsugden.googlepages.com/fish_master and sought some permissions to use photos. So far the UK permissions have been granted - thanks to all. | |
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21st November 2006
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Just released today -
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldbills/006/07006.i-ii.html
the F.E. and Training Bill. I haven't read it yet - but as always -
comments please.
Click here
to make a comment. I've spent most of this week (at least a day and a half) trying to make headway with the JISC Innovative Technology workshops project. The pilot will be by invitation on 31st January 2007. After that we will present four other workshops in Bristol (probably April); in Leicester (Gilly Salmon's place); London (Met Uni - John Cook's place) and Manchester. It's all shaping up very well - the day's content if looking really good. That's not down to me though, John Traxler and Helen Beetham are the real hero's with the content creation. 'ALL' I've done is crack the whip and make sense of the thousands of emails from various quarters. Next week I'm working with the fabulous Alistair McNaught at the Magna Centre in Rotherham (Sheffield really). TechDis are doing a workshop for ALP as part of their roll out of e-Learning to Work Based Learning. I'm looking forward to that. I'm doing some stuff for NIACE and for Huddersfield University, before Sharon and I go to Reeth in Swaledale for a long weekend! Now, that's something I'm looking forward to. |
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| 15th Nov. addendum | Just trying out a new layout for the blog. I keep being asked about
parts of it - so I thought I'd try to make navigation easier (fingers
crossed?). See Colour wheels - see Accessibility |
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15th November 2006
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Back on the food theme for just a minute, I'm not a vegetarian (although I do like vegetarian food) and I do appreciate well prepared food >> see various notes and comments below. But I do debate sometimes exactly what it is that we call food. Dinner ladies are currently being hounded because they are trying to serve up better tasting,. more nutritious food. Yet - many of us still like to drop into one of the big chains for a quick fix of meat (sic). This video (posted earlier this week on YouTube) can be uncomfortable watching and is disturbing in places - well worth a view though. Ask yourself - "would I like to waste another gherkin on such a thing?" | |
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Also see on [My Space Blog] Food rant:
http://blog.myspace.com/dsugden
www.meatmatters.com -
a web page produced on behalf of http://www.barbecue-online.co.uk/ - a Calor web page (worth a look!) http://www.bmesonline.org.uk/ - some cracking resources on this site
http://www.meatandhealth.co.uk/ - another
useful pro-meat site |
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14th November 2006
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I'm filing this on the train from London King's Cross to Leeds, on my
way back from a LSN gig at the Boddington Hotel. Once again I led the
student services input - but also once again, this was poorly attended.
It seems that student services staff are not used to being invited out
on such things - which is a shame because there are some really good
resources on
www.learningtechnologies.ac.uk/itq - take a look and see.
This is the first publicised announcement of the
site's address, as far as I can see - so if it ended up (where it
belongs) on the Champs mailing list - how could anyone complain?? The
resources were made to support different areas of college life: Teachers
(overseen by the redoubtable Steve Smith); LRC staff, overseen by Meg
Gain and Student Services - over seen by me! I used eight authors, all
soaked in F.E: John Rousell; Nick Jeans; Karen Ford; Sharon Chapman;
Terry Middleton; Lilian Soon; John Whalley and Alan Carr. Their products
were designed to be used by learners, but to show colleagues how the
process of developing the resources could be undertaken by said
colleagues. For example, take a look at the Substance Abuse resource:
You'll see that the accompanying files show the rationale behind its
development, a word file to support any delivery or support of the
material, the supporting excel and hot potatoes files and the resource
itself. Separate to the LSN have developed (in conjunction with
Coleg
Sir Gar) a series of excellent supporting tutorials and 'how to'
documents. All these and a presentation about iTQs can be found on the
same site. Well worth a look. As I said earlier, the York e-Guides gig went really well. The same can't be said of the Manchester gig. The delegates were great but it didn't go well at all. Actors say that you shouldn't work with animals and children and until recently I've always refused to rely on ANY internet connection. My presentations, until this academic year have always had 100% hard disk back-up. This year though, due to the changing nature of 'e' and the more ubiquitous and reliable provision of wireless broadband - I've been more trusting. What's more, e-Guides training includes a great deal of internet access. We had none! There were other problems - but enough! Move on. My meal on Thursday in Manchester was at the El Rincon de Rafa Tapas restaurant off Deansgate. It was getting full as I got there but I was offered a seat at the bar to eat my food. It was smoky (big minus for me) but I was determined to eat here again, after having such a fabulous meal with Ros Smith, Sarah Knight (well done new mum!) and the Scottish ladies last year. The food was once more tremendous and towards the end, as the bar filled up, I was hunched over it (like a lion over its prey) to keep people away from it. I was ihn bwed aslepp by 10.00pm. |
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12th November 2006
click for bigger picture |
Doesn't time pass quickly. It's Sunday again yet only seems a couple of
days since I set off LAST Sunday to meet Vic Dejean in York, to prepare
for our e-Guides gig there on Monday last. The wedding had gone well and
we all had a great time. Emma couldn't have had a better day (well she
could - but for November she couldn't!). The weather stayed fine and the
sun shone brightly. She looked stunning and I was very proud of my
daughter. Amy, my granddaughter looked great too and was as well behaved
as only a two year old can be - she looked and was delightful. Karen and
Dave came over to join us in the evening and we had a great time. We'd
booked rooms in the hotel overnight, so the following morning, Karen,
Dave and I walked back home over the tops, which was great too. Both of
them stayed over that night and because of the view from our
conservatory, had a nice meal with firework accompaniment by the many
visible neighbours. The e-Guides thing went very well I think and it was a pleasure to work with Vic. This was the first event for both of us, so it was nice to have each other to fall back on. We had a few beers on Sunday evening and then were joined by Claudia Hesse from NIACE) on Monday. We'd had a restaurant recommended - so off we went to The Old Girls School. Despite some reviews, we had a good meal and a cracking bottle of wine. Then on Wednesday I was off again. But more of this later - I have to go now and stop the tea from burning. |
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| 2nd November 2006 |
It's Emma's wedding tomorrow, so today is catch up day here in sunny
(but very cold) Huddersfield. With just the one daughter, tomorrow
should be something of a unique occasion for me. How often do you get to
walk down the aisle with the bride? The father or the bride speech has
caused me more concern than any of the preparations I make for gigs and
conferences. But it's in the bag (I think). This week began with the first of six LSN events to promote the eCPD materials. "These resources have been developed and contextualised to meet the needs of Learning Resource Centre staff and their learners, both to develop the ICT skills of LRC staff and to provide interactive resources to support learners in their use of the LRC. The resources focus on three areas of skills: Information and study skills; Presentation skills; Staff skills." - http://www.learningtechnologies.ac.uk/ The gig worked ok for me, but there was some frustration caused because the hotel had not fixed up the wireless internet properly. Some of the presentations were marred by this. We discussed the day afterwards and hope to have it all in order by London (Bonnigton Hotel - 14th November!). Since then, I've been catching up on various projects and preparing for next week's e-Guides adventures. There is a bit of activity on Wales but nothing much to report there just yet. - Right I have to get on with it -I pick my suit up this afternoon . . . |
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26th October 2006 Met: Ellen Lesner Benita Wiseman John Traxler Helen Beetham James Clay Ros Smith Helen Walmsley Paul Bailey |
Well, there's a lot happened during the last week. I've worked at the Reebok stadium at Bolton (for TechDis) and then at Blackpool College on the 19th. On Friday 20th, I drove Sharon and Betony to Manchester airport (where they were making a surprise visit to Sharon's sister Gail's wedding) and then up to Accrington College, where I delivered three e-Learning and NLN sessions. On Monday this week, I was at Bishop Burton College and then yesterday I was in Leeds helping to plan the LSN workshops which begin next week. Today, I'm at the e-Ped Expert's meeting in Birmingham. On Friday I have to catch on all the projects and begin getting ready for the e-Guides work the week after next. But first, I've got my daughter Emma's wedding to go to - and that's more nerve wracking than any of this stuff! A father-of-the-bride speech indeed! It's wearing me out, trying to find the right words and then to memorise them. | |||
| 17th October 2006 |
Today is the day of the Big Blog. A group of charities headed by
the National Trust and English Heritage hope that it will become a moment of history unlike any other with the launch of what they call the greatest mass "blog" ever. My effort (which will be send, as directed via email to www.historymatters.org.uk - just as soon as the site recovers!) will be meagre - but part of the gross word count anyway. For me, this is a great diversionary tactic - I am sat at home, working my way through the delivery materials for a two day course I will deliver next month. So - a reflection of how history impinges on me today (if I have properly understood the deal): For me it's the technology we use in Education that is of paramount importance. I look back at old repeats of FRIENDS and see the gang occasionally using huge handheld bricks which they quaintly call their 'cell' (phone). Most of these episodes were post 9/11 and America had yet to catch on to the 'mobile' revolution that was taking place in Europe and the far east. My wife Sharon took delivery of her new phone this morning. It has a 3.2 megapixel camera, which gives her the improved ability to capture learning opportunities (she's a teacher; it has a web connection, video capabilities, a Gigabyte of memory AND it can be used as a phone too. The Handheld Learning Conference last week discussed many educational uses of mobile learning and for those innovative teachers amongst us - the prospects are quite exciting. Yet, back in many institutions, teachers are still reluctant to use what is now fairly common technology such as that offered by Office Suites of software or free ready-made materials like those of the NLN. See http://ferl.becta.org.uk for examples of Office suite materials and my Resources page for 'how to' |
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12th October 2006
QEII Centre |
Well, I'm at the Handheld Learning
Conference at the QEII centre in Westminster. There is no reasonably
priced access to the internet there so I'm doing a daily blog on
http://dsugden.googlepages.com/handheld - Friday's might be up on
Saturday or Sunday. Thursday's is there now. Lots of interesting people
and old friends. See link
http://dsugden.googlepages.com/handheld > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > There seems to have been some debate about the use of YouTube on the Champions discussion list - I'll have to try and catch up now that I'm back - although today is the day I have set aside for reviewing all the e-Guides 'stuff'. Well, today and tomorrow will see me do that and catch up on the Welsh Champ's report - which is looking better now. Wednesday I'm at the Reebok Stadium with TechDis and then over to Blackpool College on Thursday to talk about researching and re-crafting resources. We would talk about JORUM, but I think that I'm prevented from playing with that because I have no 'institution'. We'll review the materials on NLN, FERL and FENC and then think about how easily these can be re-purposed to suit our needs. I'll show some of the work we did for LSN and discuss the merits of Reload and other means of re-crafting. Friday - I'm at Accrington and Rossendale College to deliver some sessions about NLN materials - a sort of NLN mentor job, which was kindly brokered by RSC-Northwest. |
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| 10th October 2006 |
It seems that Google have bought out YouTube. "YouTube Inc. agreed Monday to be swallowed by Google Inc. for $1.65-billion (U.S.), a deal that may mark one of the fastest Internet growth stories since the tech heyday of the 1990s" - http://tinyurl.com/hp4sl I don't suppose that that is a bad thing as Google don't seem to have grown the horns other big players eventually develop. I've used Google videos alongside YouTube ones, so hopefully the two are compatible. I spent some time over the weekend and yesterday doing some work for Clare Killen at the LSN and today I'm off to York, to meet Sal and Sue at TechDis - then it's the Handheld Learning Conference at the QEII centre in Westminster. |
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5th October 2006
Karen's gapes - in Chirk, nr Oswestry! |
I'm still working on the Wales report and I'm
finally beginning to see the light - it's very dim, but gradually coming
towards me. The next phase of the LSN work is now being
advertised [See
the LSN site here] although I can only see the first of six events
up there so far. It seems to have been ages since I actually did any work with people - I've been sat here reading or writing or visiting folk about one thing or another. Sometimes life changes without anyone noticing. Still, it will all kick-in quite soon, with the Handheld Learning conference at the end of next week (I'm delivering a talk about the accessibility of 'm' in partnership with Alistair McNaught). This is followed by a day at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton, for TechDis and then a day at Blackpool College for Christine McAllister. The initial idea here is to look at all the national repositories and to show how they can be used to assist subject specific teaching. The following week, half term, I have a delivery at Bishop Burton College on the Monday and then two meetings (in Leeds on the Wednesday and in Birmingham on the Thursday). I did talk to someone about a gig at Accrington and Rossendale on 20th, but they haven't come back to me yet. Then - it's the LSN thing on 30th in Manchester and "where did October go?" Most of November is LSN and e-Guides, although I also have to fit in the work for the Innovations workshops - a contract I won with JISC. My colleagues on this venture will be Helen Partridge, John Traxler and John Whalley. For those of you interested in the development of free online resources - see my nascent web site at: http://dsugden.googlepages.com/fish_preparation. This is just a beginning and where time and resources allow I will add to the FREE RESOURCE as time goes by. The essential thing to remember with such a site is that it is only possible because people share things. If you have any colleagues who would like to contribute to the development of this site - please let me know. Click here to make a comment. And please do comment - I won't be publicising it more than this until a lot more work has been done and feed back received. |
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| 25th September 2006 |
Thanks to Dave Foord for the 'comment'
on my previous posting and thank you too, for the BBC link concerning last
week's news about MySpace.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5344722.stm I'm seeing the use of MySpace or Bebo etc. more as a vehicle for engaging learners rather than delivering anything to them. I've played with MySpace enough now to agree with Dave's comment that it is a social network site more than anything else. [See My Space] and [My Space Blog] for proof of that. Having posted my first MySpace blog entry - I received a favourable comment on its content from California. Which proved to me that using MySpace can have a beneficial return. Imagine the boost some learners would get from such unequivocal support from across the world. Notice too, that my second entry features an embedded video clip? Imagine learners video blogging like this to illustrate what they have learned. Many now have cameras on their phones and are equipped and interested enough to do just that. I'm thinking that if they load their video product to YouTube, just like all their friends - they can then link to it wherever they like. I agree that there is a sinister side to MySpace and the BBC news report covers that - but I also believe that there is a sinister side to everything, if we look hard enough. The thirteen to fifteen year olds I see using it (Betony is fifteen next week) do so purely to express themselves and to show off their new 'stuff' (has anyone seen MyGen yet? http://www.mygen.co.uk/) but older teenagers, who are perhaps growing out of it a bit may well find using MySpace preferable to Blackboard, WebCT or Moodle. My real quest is to link these freebies together for those learners who currently have nothing online to learn from. The real winner here could be ACL and Work Based Learners. |
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24th September 2006
Alan Carr |
I don't know what PhotoBox are doing about their images, I've just
re-embedded the one alongside and it's working fine - today. We'll
see what happens over the week. So - what's happening? I forwarded
all the LSN stuff to Ron Mitchell now and apart from the paperwork trail
- it's looking good. Some of the resources my team have sent in to me
are brilliant and I look forward to announcing the release of the LSN
DVD, later this year. There is a variety of 'cracking' stuff to be used
specifically by Student Services staff in F.E. but which will of of
tremendous use to all those of us who work in Education. Many thanks to
all those of you alongside (linked to web addresses where possible).
I've been inspired by the work these people have produced and have
attempted to extend some of the work with a new Village e-Learning web
pages - Student Life. The Student Life page will concentrate on supplying information about many of the problems our learners come across in everyday life - often for the very first time (no matter what their ages). The opening page covers topics such as Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking, Money and Sex. Let me know what you think. |
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I'm also still playing with the stuff on YouTube, MySpace and whatever
the Messenger equivalent is. There follows another video from YouTube
which compliments the filleting fish one below.
Eventually, I hope to prove that someone can put together a lesson using
all that's free and 'out there' Watch this space! |
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15th September 2006
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Sorry to bore you, but I'm stuck in the office and I suppose writing in
my blog is a diversion tactic of the first order. I'm about ready to
begin the next big thing (I'm not doing a thing with the LSN project
today) and since 8.00am I've been rearranging my office! The printer
used to be in the middle of the desk and, come winter, would block out
some of the heat rising from the radiator - and we can't have that. It's
probably culturally true also that, as a Yorkshireman, I would be afraid
of the ink (toner - whatever) drying up too quickly (and costing too
much!) So now I have room for my laptop on there as well, so no need to
sit with it on my knee anymore. I replaced my 19" CRT screen two weeks
ago with a 19" lat screen LCD model - £130 from PC World - brilliant.
This also gave me much more room on the desk and made life much easier
for my aging eyes. I emailed David Foord last night, following up a question he'd asked on the Champ's discussion list. David is now the E-Learning Staff Development Co-ordinator at the University of Derby (isn't it great that University's can still have posts like this?) and has become interested like me, in some of the features available on the web now. See Dave's blog at http://davefoord.uniblogs.org/. He replied to say he was looking into the benefits of YouTube, flickr, wikispaces and edublogs, whereas my particular interest is how we can employ the tools already being used by young and mid-teens. They use their spaces (MySpace?) for fun and for social development. It would be nice to tap into that to help their learning. Although Photobox have let me down with the picture below (they are investigating) it was brilliant in America to blog and add images hosted by others. I see a great future, particularly for work based learning providers, in using YouTube, MySpace and the like. See http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/3943528 for my growing selection of copyright free images. |
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| 14th September 2006 | I feel to have been stuck here without permission to move for 'ages' and feel like a rant. The LSN job has become a salutary lesson for me, to get proper aims and objectives for a project right at the outset. Overall, the project is exactly as described and as planned. However, the fine details are taking time that I'd not planned or budgeted for - it would have been useful to have had this sort of nitty gritty detail laid out right from the beginning. It's not a problem - other than time allocation. While I do the work that is now required, another project is suffering - and that's not good for my business or my self esteem! so, rant over - back to it . . | |||
| 13th September 2006 | I've just finished a two day training session with NIACE for the WBL e-Guides project. It was great to meet a new team of people but far too much to absorb straight away. I have to take a day sometime this month and go through all the 'stuff' to do the project any justice. right now, I'm back on the LSN project I started earlier in the summer. It's getting close to the end of the production stage (we're making resources for Student Services staff) so hotting up a bit. I should be writing up the Welsh work, but other things keep intruding. I have blanked out the next two days to begin that though!! More later. | |||
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Alison - check this out! The video alongside comes from Google. It may be of use to those of you teaching child or health care? The thing that occurred to me was that pregnancy seems to make you unsure of your hairstyle? |
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| 8th September 2006 | A recent survey has shown that students would like to receive their results by SMS. [See Text It] The same pages suggests that "A total of 137 million text messages were sent on August 17th, the day that A-level results were issued." So why are we not making more of this pervasive technology? John Whalley and Lilian Soon came around today for lunch and to discuss how we might work more closely together in the future. We had a great discussion and hope to have something ready to put out in 2007. We were joined for lunch by a colleague, who was 'working from home' - so an enjoyable time was had by all. | |||
| 7th September 2006 |
I'm back now - working on a bid for JISC. I'm copying a few of my
observations form the conference here because I'm not sure how stable
the GoogleBlog is. I’m not too sure what my overall impression of the conference was. I certainly thought that Dr Diana Oblinger’s message was a plaintive cry to the audience. Unfortunately, I think her talents were wasted – THIS audience should have been aware of the message given. We can’t just keep repeated the same thing time after time – some effort needs to me made in training staff in the employment of new technological tips and techniques (the technology will look after itself). Prof. Tim O’Shea gave a great advertisement for his institution! Generally talking about what they do now and what technology allows them to do and how institutions like theirs will lead the way with e-Learning Development. The most interesting observation I heard came from the guys talking about blogging. They told the audience about MySpace. It interested me that I’d not thought of discussing this phenomena with colleagues (outside my close circle). It is a huge huge problem waiting to burst upon us. See http://www.myspace.com (My own – just started). Millions of people are using this site. Many of the most verbose are from the mid-teen range who will come to F.E. soon and to H.E. shortly after. These youngsters will be already equipped to use Blogs, Wikis, VLE, file sharing web-technologies and VLEs – because that’s what MySpace is! As Tim O’Shea suggested – they will also have little regard for what we currently see as good practice in copyright, plagiarism and the like. If we think we are behind today’s learners (which I think Dr Diana Oblinger was saying – then we should heed the warning of some presenter and Prof. Tim O’Shea – Watch Out, things are about to change. AGAIN |
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5th September 2006
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I'm currently at ALT-C in Edinburgh. I intend to use Google Pages again to record the event so please go to http://dsugden.googlepages.com/alt-c if you have any interest at all in the drivel I might publish. Please email me with any comments about this or about the video insertion below. The trip up here was really good. I left home at 1.00pm and arrived in Edinburgh at 5.00pm. Brilliant. | |||
| 1st September 2006 |
This is the clip (if it works) of me filleting a Plaice. Many people
have seen this in different guises (including via PDA), and as far as I
know it has been used with students up and down the country. I've
finally got around to putting it on the web. If this works, I foresee
the use of YouTube as a delivery vehicle for sharing such things.
Hopefully by using the servers of YouTube, this will allow people like
me, who wish to share, to do so without the
bureaucratic limitations often found
elsewhere?
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| What a fabulous way of getting such materials to work based learners who often can't get into or don't want to get into colleges. I know we lose some of the 'control' a VLE offers (who has looked at this? and who has done that?) but . . . whaddya think? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y0_jMzwK3A | ||||
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30th August 2006
|
Those of you that know me, will remember that first and foremost, I am a
chef and that food is a passion of mine. Last week - in Wales - I ate a
great meal (and the service was good) at
The Harbour Master Hotel in
Aberaeron. The splendid thing about the food was that it was
obviously fresh (which is a good beginning) and prepared by someone who
both knows what he/she is doing and who cares about what he/she is
preparing. Both the town and the hotel are well worth a visit. However, not all food is produced in such a savoury way. See this video which I found on the Google video pages. It's a famous Channel 4 programme which investigated the production of chicken by our supermarkets. It makes scary viewing. About 40 minutes long. Think before you eat. |
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28th August 2006
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Well it seems that we'd no sooner landed than we were off again. I
coupled work in Wales (on Thursday) with a family birthday celebration
weekend in Aberystwyth. It all means that I'm now like the proverbial
dogs' testicles (always behind) but I'll get caught up again this week.
Back to Wales tomorrow - Tuesday, to see Christine Major and then three
days working on the LSN project and a bid for JISC. Then it's
ALT next week. Phew.
As many of you will know, there was much of a furore about security on aeroplanes while we were away. (See) It seemed that we would have to come back bringing nothing with us but a see-through plastic bag. But in the end it was much easier (although there were still silly practices to encounter). We'd looked on the web at JFK's rules on the Sunday just before we travelled and were advised that any small (laptop sized) cabin bag would be ok. So that's what we went with, but when we got there they had relaxed this to two bags - one normal cabin-sized bag and another laptop sized BUT NO LIQUIDS or GELS of any kind. Fair enough. We couldn't even buy duty free liquids - even though they presumably came from a bonded store! Nevertheless some customers were having Duty Free delivered onto the plane - we missed that trick. The silliest thing was that any bottle of water bought inside the concourse had their lids confiscated - in case you took them on the plane! |
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21st August 2006 |
Well we're back now - tired from the flight but back. I wasn't able to access this site while I was out there because none of our hosts had FrontPage (which I use to both edit the site and to communicate with my provider). I therefore searched for a free web creation tool (didn't want to use a blog tool) and found Google Pages. for a full record of what we did for a month (insightful, interesting, provoking, boring - in turn) the please visit http://dsugden.googlepages.com |
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| The Chicken in our food chain - 48 minutes! |
YouTube |
YouTube | ||
| Guy Kewney? not YouTube | see Boris's tackle | see Simpson's LIVE! | ||
| 19th July 2006 |
It's time for a break now. Everyone else seems to be still working - but
we have a month booked in America with Sharon's sister Gail. She lives
in Connecticut but we'll be looking in on Canada (Montreal) and New
Orleans while we're there. I hope to contribute to the blog whilst over
there, but who knows. |
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| 9th July 2006 |
Both James' gig and the two days at DYSG went really well, but after the
week in Aberystwyth - I did begin to miss being at home. I then had a
week away (again) and don't seem to have spent any time at home this
summer. This week just gone started on 2nd July, with an eight hour
drive to Cornwall, to take part in Dave Trevena's Cornwall e-Fair on the
Monday. I managed to find a room at the
Penventon Hotel - which was
delightful, apart from the fact that the suite they had set aside for me
was on the ground floor and had no windows other than those which opened
on to the car park outside (with warnings about car theft on the
inside!) In the bed room the only windows were French - and on a day
like that one, these had to be left wide open all night. A carefully
balanced bottle of talc kept me safe though! Dave and I spent a couple
of relaxing hours with a tasty dinner in their restaurant. The next
night I stayed at
Cardiff North Premier Travel Lodge, which after Redruth was a bleak
and dismal place. It is a huge monstrosity - formally some kind of Forte
Hotel (and latterly a Travel lodge - I think). No air conditioning was
to be had and no Internet access either (although other
PTL's do have
both). Its saving grace was an empty - but switched on, mini-bar in
which I was able to cool my bottles of water for the Tuesday. The food
was poor - even though I only had a Greek Salad and some bread. Tuesday,
I had arranged to meet Karen and join her on a visit to
NGFL Cymru who were going to
put a link on their web site to
LearnTrain
and the NLN Materials. We then drove on to
Narbeth in Pembrokeshire, to
meet our colleagues for a day's work at Pembrokeshire College. we stayed
at the Plas Hyfryd Hotel
and although Karen wasn't able to enjoy her room because of its
proximity to the kitchen exhaust fan - we all had a great meal in their
restaurant. The food was nicely cooked and vegetables even included
braised fennel - quite a delight. Dave T and I had Lobster Bisque and
weren't too disappointed. Well done this hotel. However - not so well
done the local youngsters - they were screaming up and down the road on
their lawnmower bikes well after midnight (some people are easily
impressed -but not me). Geoff's gig at Pembrokeshire went ok and I
returned to Newport with Karen to deliver our own WBL-NLN gig at
Coleg Gwent's Newport Campus
the following day. We also presented a gig to the ACL people of Gwent at
Blackwood. we stayed two nights at the Express by Holiday Inn at
Pontypool.
The pub next door was an absolute disaster and I'd
have no worries about suggesting people didn't eat there. On our second
evening (there being no where else to get anything in Pontypool after
8.30pm) was a disaster. They had no Lettuce - so no salad based dishes
were available (how can you run out of lettuce?); they had a huge range
of chicken dishes - but all those with bones were off the menu - just
breasts available (!?!); the restaurant is no smoking (you cannot
just have a drink in there), but the other third of the pub - where
you can't eat - is a smoking area. it was like sitting in a chimney. The
safest place to sit was right under the AC - which was dripping water
and the bar had no towels on it and was drenched, with seemingly no one
to dry it up. CRAP. I'd had enough then and drove home on the
Friday (still a six hour drive). This week I have to present a few gigs,
work out how I'm going to get to Leicester and then hopefully begin to
wind down. Phew. |
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26th June 2006 |
Where did the last two weeks go? The first was spent in Aberystwyth, as
I noted below - Karen and I met Chris Kelland on the Monday evening and
then we were working solidly on other Wales 'stuff' On Thursday we
presented a NLN/Learntrain awareness session for work based learning
(WBL) providers at the DVLA Richard Ley Development Centre in Swansea.
This was a great success and (we hope) enjoyed by all who attended. On
the way back, we detoured along Mumbles Bay and thoroughly enjoyed the
view. Wales is beautiful on so many fronts - not just mountains. we also
passed Swansea Airport which gave us some amusement - just click the
picture opposite. My other duty this week was to look after Rosie and
Steven's dogs and chickens while they went off for a few days in France.
The weather was kind to me, so the week was fabulous: fresh eggs, walks
along the seaside and great scenery! Last week saw me representing
TechDis at the
RSC-YH annual conference at the
National Museum of Photography in
Bradford on the Monday and doing my first event for James Clay (at
WCC) at One Queen Anne's Gate
in London. I had a ropey meal the evening before this - at some pub near
Scotland Yard - it was inexcusably bad. Why can't people prepare
and cook food properly and serve it in a way that say "I care"? Then on
the Wednesday I worked alongside the redoubtable
Sal
Cooke, again for TechDis -
this time at the CEME in Rainham,
Essex. I'm now preparing for another gig with James Clay, this time in
Manchester and then have two more days in Swansea at the DYSG
Conference, where I have two presentations to make: one on repurposing
tools and the other on accessibility. |
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Swansea Airport - click
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I was just preparing for some work I will be doing for James Clay at
WCC when I was reminded of
Ted Nelson's
single minded determination to present the world with a truly
personalisable reading [learning?]
experience. The picture alongside uses Ted's 'transpublishing'
protocol and is linked to his own server (rather than mine) which is
cool because mine is getting fairly full. Transcopyright-on! Still in Wales; the weather has cooled somewhat since weekend and I've managed to catch up with some work. Chris Kelland came down to meet Karen and me yesterday and stayed in Aberaeron. I've been here at most times of year and I am never disappointed - there's something about it that makes me want to come back time and time again. We ate at the Royal Oak partly because it didn't charge the exorbitant prices found at hostelries nearer the sea and partly because it was the only other place open on a Monday evening! He and Karen left late morning and I've been catching up on emails and preparing for next week. Next week is scary. |
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10th June 2006
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For those of you who missed the feeding of the
Woodpeckers in Czech (below) - just click on the image of Woody. The onslaught has begun, we started the real roll-out of NLN materials and LearnTrain to the Welsh WBL and ACL sectors this week. On Tuesday I was in Newtown, attending a meeting of the Welsh College ILT Champions. I hope to be able to secure work in early autumn, writing up a report of the progress that has been made over the last five years, so it was quite an important meeting for me (and for them). On Wednesday, Karen and I presented two half day deliveries of the NLN materials and LearnTrain. we were at NEWI to do this and the facilities were very good. We met 18 people - which is a good number for a sector so widely spread. The following day we were at Deeside College, helping them to roll out their cross-Flintshire VLE. Five of the original NLN Mentors were there to help, which was nice. Seeing them all together again made me realise (once again!) just how much knowledge and support for tutors of all sectors was lost when the Mentor scheme was closed last year. It really was a waste of talent and opportunity. Today I'm in Aberystwyth again, looking after Steven and Rosie's dogs and chickens. It works well for all of us because I still have lots of work in Wales and they want a holiday. |
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The clip alongside comes from Google's video
archive. It is from a famous Channel 4 programme which investigated the
production of chicken by our supermarkets. It makes scary viewing. Think before you eat. |
back | |||
| 4th June 2006 |
It seems a while since I penned my last entry - Gregynog seems an age ago. Last Saturday (27th May) eight of us flew out of Leeds/Bradford to Prague, where we picked up two cars and set off for a week in southern Bohemia. We were staying a a 12 bed (Gite/Villa/Apartment/whatever) close to Nové Hrady - just 5K inside the Czech-Austrian border. Betony accompanied Sharon and me. Also travelling were Jim and Sue Scott with John, Sandy and Gavin Rousell. Jim and Sue had been here last year and wanted to share the beauty of the region and the excellent accommodation with us this year. |
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| Photos' | http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/3139378 | |||
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The drive down to our base took us four hours, but we had stopped off
for a coffee and a walk around at
Trebon
on the way. as planned we'd packed enough food between us to prevent
having to go out on the first night so we stayed in and had a real
feast. This began what was to be a real feature of the holiday - wood
fires! Each of the apartments (there were three, each sleeping up to
four people) and the bar had wood burning stoves and we (had to) put
them to good use. The morning after, Sunday, we had to visit the
one supermarket in Nové Hrady to stock up for the next few days.
Although it seems a very small town by comparison to others, it seems to
have plenty of activities and sights. We went back up to
Trebon
for dinner that evening and celebrated Sandy's birthday. We visited Ceske Krumlov on the Monday. This is a really pretty town, about 45 minutes away, with much more going for it than York. Not only is it pretty, with an interesting history - but you can park too! See the pictures for more of an idea. If we went again, we would certainly look at taking on one of the river activities advertised (one takes you upriver 35k and lets you raft your way back!). On the Tuesday most of us went to Ceské Budejovice while Jim and Sue went off on their own. Ceske Budejovice is a large industrial town just over half an hour away from Nové Hrady and the birthplace of Budweiser Budvar Beer. The girls went off shopping while John and I did shopping of our own. We went looking around the stores which circle the outside of town. These often looked like office buildings, but when you went inside and looked there were a whole variety of stores for sale. One shop, selling car parts, had its wares on display in a small tobacco shop-like window. Not boxed, just open - see pictures. On the Wednesday we drove over the border to Linz in Austria. This really was the worst day weather wise, it rained most of the day but snowed and hailed too from time to time. We had a delightful meal in a city centre hotel (an old Beer Keller I suppose) but the rest of the time was a bit damp. Jim and Sue found the river and took some nice shots. This was a well over two hour journey. On Thursday we caught a train up to Prague. There isn't a train locally, so we had to first drive up to Trebon (about 40 minutes away), where we had been told there would be a departure at 0705am. In fact it didn't leave until 0745am and we had to change twice. Still, this gave us the chance to have breakfast in Tabor, another major Czech city. We all split up in Prague and did our own thing. Sharon, Betony and I walked into town from the station and explored the various streets along the way. We watched the Astronomical Clock and wandered around the Old Town Square before taking a trip over the Charles Bridge. Because the weather wasn't so good, we decided to forego a walk up to the Castle and to walk up river to find lunch. This was very tasty and much cheaper than anything we could have found in the heart of tourist country. See photos' To really appreciate the area, on Friday, our last full day there, three of us walked around the countryside and into town. Although it had rained much of the week and been overcast, we managed the walk without getting too wet. It was certainly worth it as behind the trees opposite our accommodation was a large lake with Herons, Storks and a variety of other water fowl. the highlight of the walk (of the week?) was seeing a pair of Woodpeckers feeding their young in the hollow bole of a tree. [see video clip] Wonderful. During the week we did many other things (all recorded in pictures) too. We arrived back in Leeds on Saturday afternoon and now I'm preparing for the onslaught the next six weeks will bring. |
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21st May 2006
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I've just got back from the Welsh
RSC conference at
Gregynog: 2 days of 'stuff' from the Welsh e-Learning arena. Karen
and I had off from our bases at roughly the same time and remarkably,
arrived in Welshpool within minutes of each other. So we had a coffee at
the
Old Railway Station there before setting off 'en-convoy' to find
Gregynog Hall. I followed Karen as we had decided to put our trust in
her new Sat-Nav system. Now I'm ot entirely sold on these things and
sure enough it decided that it knew a better route than that offered by
the hall itself. It took us up hill and down dale and along plenty of
single track roads. If it hadn't been raining (which it seems to have
done non-stop this week) it might have been an interesting journey, but
when we came to the fallen trees across the road - we knew we had to
shift them, because there was no turning around! Still, it all adds to
the excitement. Gregynog is a beautiful conference centre owned by the
University of Wales and is set in extensive grounds. The drive is a mile
long. Another week should see their Rhododendrons out in full bloom -
for us some were out, enough to show us how gorgeous this place would
be, if only it would stop raining. Despite its
beautiful setting, there are several things you should know before
coming here (I didn't). First of all there are no en-suite rooms to be
had. If you want to stay clean and fully abluted - you face a trek to
the bathroom (if you can find one). Secondly, there is no digital
contact with the outside world - no network coverage of any kind. In
many ways this is a blessing, but it just showed me how reliant we can
become upon our instant communication systems. On Wednesday
night, three of us went for a walk around the grounds. I needed to break
in my new sparkling trainers, so the rain and mud was a bonus. It was
probably about 2 miles to the tiny hamlet we eventually came to - and
here they have a little signal for the phone. But they also have the
most amusing telephone box. Set in the corner of a field and offering
'Internet'; 'email' and 'Text'! Click on the picture to enlarge. The
conference continues to be joint techie/teacher event with a blend of
presentations aimed at both camps. The atmosphere between the two is
cordial and as always in Wales I felt welcomed as part of the group. I
met lots of interesting people and saw plenty of presentations.
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13th May 2006
Digital Natives ----> |
I've just paid for the starter motor repair -
my goodness they know what to charge don't they?
What a brilliant week its been weather wise. We managed to get all the
branches we'd chopped down in February on to a fire and now the garden
is looking much tidier. On the work front, I was able to catch up a bit
mid week before tripping off to
Blackpool College on Thursday to present a couple of workshops on
Course creation tools. In my mind I break these down into three areas:
Activity Creation (Ron Mitchell's excellent Picture Grid
Editor, MS Producer, MS Word etc.) and Creation Support
(Windows Movie Maker, Paint Shop Pro etc.). Then the Course
Creation Tools themselves (Reload, MS Excel, MS PPT etc) - these
are the wrappers for the activities created. Because I'm doing some work
with MKM
I also showed their new Custom
Learning Studio suite of products See
Demo):
Custom Course (the wrapper); Hot Spot Toolkit (a really neat image hot
spot creator) and Storywriter Toolkit (a comic strip learning activity
creator). I think it was all appreciated but the Hotspot Toolkit came
out tops! Let me know if you want to see the products in action. We've had builders in our house since early February and yesterday, they finally left. It's peace at last. But we still have to clean up; still have to find the means of paying for decorating, for a new carpet and for a new bed! But now it's done we can wait, why would we want to move up into the new bedroom, when the view from our old one is so brilliant. (See the winter view alongside). During a Skype conversation yesterday with Di Dawson, I was minded to read this paper again (for pleasure!). It is a thought-provoking, six-page, easy to read document which is already five years old and many of you will have seen and absorbed it by now. But many others will not. If you haven't seen it before (and even if you have) - it is well worth ten minutes of your time to make you think about what we are doing in our classrooms and more importantly, how we influence others who teach. Try to think of yourself learning a foreign language (say French?) - some of you will speak it fluently, some (like me - speak just enough to get by) while others will just point and speak louder! Yet none of you will speak the language as well as, or understand the culture of the county as well as those who were born there. |
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| 8th May 2006 |
Click on the movie alongside to see the now
famous Boris Johnson 'rugby' tackle
He an absolute star!! A typical old
Tory buffer. He reminds me a lot of
Gerald Nabarro,
who use to live in Broadway in Worcestershire as a sort of country
squire. While I was searching the web for the clip alongside I came across this. http://eclectech.co.uk/dailymailpicnic.php I quite like it - it's very apt. |
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| 8th May 2006 |
Well that didn't work. I set off early for St. Asaph and managed
to get past the mess around Manchester in good time, so stopped at the
truck Services where the M6 cross the M56. I had a relaxing cup of tea
and a bacon sandwich while I checked emails on my PDA. Then the car
wouldn't start. I had to call out Green Flag and be jump started. The
starter motor on Mondeos (and Transits, which have the same engine) it
turns out, are prone to this. I'm not a mechanic, but several have told
me that it's now well know 'in the trade'. Short story is that I was
without a car for a few days and expect to pay a huge price, when the
bill finally arrives. I hate cars. My planned gig in London has been
postponed. I had been going there tomorrow (Tuesday) but now have the
day free, which is a relief because I have so much admin to do. |
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| 3rd May 2006 |
Just to finish of the France thing - we spent the week at a place
near Pont Farcy, which itself is nine miles from Vire in the Bocage. We
stayed inside for the first few days in front of a roaring log fire and
just read! In Sharon's case she just worked non-stop on University
assignments she has to submit. Bliss. Then as the weather improved (it
was brilliant after Thursday) we went out and about a bit. What a great
week. Luckily the break set me up for the period ahead - non-stop appointments through to then end of July. I've been working this week on preparing and planning for the roll out of NLN materials to Work Based Learning (WBL) in Wales. Karen and I have been emailing, phoning and generally persuading WBL providers to have one of us or one of the ex-NLN Mentors in to talk to them and their staff. We've booked an event at the DVLA in Swansea for 15th June and as soon as it's confirmed I'll put up a link to the event. Got to go now - I'm off to St Asaph for some Wales based training tomorrow. |
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| 28th April 2006 |
We set off for France early on Easter Sunday morning and had a
nice relaxing journey down to Dover. It's really strange to drive along
the M1 and to a certain, but lesser extent, the M25, with hardly any
other traffic. Perhaps one day drivers will take their children out
early on bank holiday mornings to explore empty motorways (well not all
bank holidays of course!) Because of the the lack of traffic we were
able to catch an earlier ferry (Speed
Ferries) and arrive in Boulogne with plenty of time to unwind with a
real taste of coffee and a relaxing dinner in the hotel. I always enjoy
my first 'taste' of France - everything is so different. A major
difference between eating in France and eating in this country is the
service - in France the waiters and waitresses see their job as a
vocation (as do their customers). Over here, that only happens when
people begin to work in the real top class (expensive) establishments.
Then there's the butter, which accompanies the never ending supply of
bread to the table. This is so sweet and obviously NOT unhealthy that I
can't get enough of it (as you may see from my figure!). Contrary to my
usual tastes and choice, I had a steak for dinner and it was wonderful.
In France they don't have three ways of cooking a steak (1-just cooked,
2-well cooked, 3-knackered) like us; they have four! au bleu
(raw); saignant (warmed through lightly); a'point
(coloured AND warmed through) and bien cuit (perfect) - which all
of the chefs know how to cook. So I was well pleased with my a'point
bavette. We reached our destination the following day after meandering down through Normandy along a mixture of motorways and 'N' roads. This is the first time that I've been able to drive through France at this time of year (my previous springtime visits have been by train to Besancon, to visit students) and it was beautiful. It was a delight to see the profusion of spring flowers at the roadside and as the week passed, the leaves began to unfold on the trees and the blossom began to bloom. Delightful. I may add more bits of our visit as time goes by (and photographs) but right now I really must do some work. Here's a tip: visit Alan Carr's PodCast radio show for some off the wall musical entertainment. |
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| 14th April 2006 |
That's it for now then. Easter. It seems to have been a long drawn out month so far (it's gone quickly too - how do you account for that?) Some colleges have had two weeks holiday already and others only broke up this week. so for me, it's quite a frustrating month as I can never be sure if the person I want is on holiday or not. And now it will be the same for them! On Sunday, Sharon and I set out for Normandy to stay at a friend's house and to have complete break. We're staying at a place near Pont Farcy (http://tinyurl.com/ev8mh) which is about 9 miles from Vire. Basically we're about an hour from any coast and about 20 - 30 minutes from any big town (depending on Traffic). So that will fulfil all our needs for a few days. All being well, I will have to do nothing except read, read and read. Perhaps a little eating and possibly a little drinking, but basically - lots of reading. I suspect that despite good intentions (to read nothing but holiday novels picked up in charity shops) I will still manage to find the time to read various policies and reports. But then, isn't that the time to do that? When you don't have to! I'm off to see Emma and Amy later this afternoon - so maybe we'll have an new picture to post somewhere. |
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| 5th April 2006 |
It's nice to be working from home for a change. I've still been busy,
but have managed to see all four seasons since Monday! It's hard for us
'up north' to understand why there is a hose pipe ban 'down south' when
we get so much bloody rain. I am constantly teased for not washing my
car - but the other Sunday I did (after all it's new to me and deserved
a wipe-over). It hasn't stopped raining since! Well, there is the odd
bit of sun (like now - cold but sunny) but when it rains it is
torrential. Never mind though, I'm sure some of it will run downhill to
the 'south'. I've been messing on Chris Swain and Rob Englebright's
Wikki this
week - developed for the post 16 e-Learning community. It's a bit hard
going to start with and will no doubt become unmanageable when more
people use it - but it's fun to try. I'm off to Blackpool tomorrow.
I've just had permission from James Clay to
post a link to his recent JISC Conference presentation -
http://www.wccprojects.co.uk.
It is well worth a look. Please note that it is only up on the
WCC site until the end of
April - so be quick, you don't want to miss it (or any of the other
formats he has posted!). |
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| 2nd April 2006 |
Phew! When I first started as a freelance e-Learning expert last year, Chris Kelland told me that I would be "dead in August and dead in March": How prophetic. He reminded me of his words last week when I handed him the final report on the evaluation of some software evaluation I'd been asked to lead. March has been so busy I feel half dead. August (which I have yet to experience) will no doubt be just as dead as Chris suggested as all of academia will be on their holidays. Sharon has been busy too with he University work (she'd underestimated the amount of assignments she had to finish before May - and the dates of earlier submissions. So, we're off to France for a few days at Easter. I'd looked around cottage up and down the Uk and nothing much was coming out at less than £300 for the week, but for £87 return ferry; £45 hotel and whatever Mark charges for Tuesday - Sunday at his place in Normandy (see July - below) we can have a nice relaxing rest away from phones and internet. We did think of just staying at home but besides the change being as good as a rest - we are both as bad as each other at "just checking my emails!". I've been working on the Subject Learning Coaches Moodle this month - Clare Killen of LSDA, had given me (amongst others) five days to populate the VLE and to get something happening on there. I've been working alongside John Whalley and I think we've done a good job. I hope there's still the chance to contribute when it starts being used, because I've enjoyed every minute. The evaluation job was under a bit of a time limit - had to be completed and invoiced by the end of March but we managed. The results were not too complimentary, so we'll have to see what happens when the LSC respond to the report. Karen has now moved over full time to ELWA and will not be working for BECTA. I will now pick up the Welsh reins for BECTA, but will still be working alongside Karen in her new role. We've got a few busy weeks ahead, but I will somehow find the time to do some other gigs. Blackpool College this week - Mobile Learning. |
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| 20th March 2006 |
But then, the following day (Thursday) - I had to drive to Bradford
during rush hour (and a half). It took me almost as long as it had to
get to Middlesbrough. The Bradford gig was for
CLE
and was attended by eight people. All were from the wider Bradford area,
including three from Keighley
College. The main input was NLN materials but we had a good
look at e-Learning generally. Two others were from schools and yet two
more from a private training agent - so the 'word'' of CLE is getting
out. After this I drove out to Beverley, where I was presenting a basic
ILT workshop for
Bishop Burton College. I arrived especially early as I had arranged
to meet Sal Cook from TechDis
before I started. Sal wanted to speak to me about some work she had
coming up, that might interest me. It certainly did. I believe
that Sal is one of the most interesting, keen and motivated people I
have ever met and would consider anything she thought me capable of
doing. I believe Sal to be one of the leading lights in the UK's drive
for excellence in e-Learning. On Friday, I presented a workshop on the
use of Smart interactive whiteboards for Kirklees Lifelong Learning team
at Park Valley Mills in Lockwood. What a tiring week! When I got back on
Friday afternoon, I had to get straight on the computer, just to catch
up with the week's mail and email. On Saturday I presented another
workshop on m-Learning for Huddersfield
University
- this time the second year MSc students were my audience. I really am
looking forward to Easter - for a feet-up and rest! For more on
m-Learning see Di Dawson's blog:
http://mlearning.blog.co.uk/2006/03/16/title~648343 |
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| 15th March 2006 |
I've just got back from a cracking day with the RSC Northern, at
Middlesbrough College.
They had booked me to do a day long m-learning event with them and I had
been a little worried about making it interesting for a whole day.
When John Whalley and I did our
two ALT workshops we each had contributions to make but today it really
was just my normal stories and lots of hand's on time. To make best use
of rooms, Alistair from Middlesbrough delivered his case study to half
the group, while I showed the other half how to use (and let them use)
the online text server at
http://www.bulksms.co.uk. This worked well and after coffee we
swapped around. Later we let the delegates play with the
links we'd provided and with
the Innovative Practice
booklets. despite the weather having recently been very nasty up this
neck of the woods, the journey up was ok (6.00am start - so Leeds was a
breeze) and the journey back uneventful. Rain early on on the way up and
nothing on the way back. I think those attending got a lot from the day
- so a big success I think. Thank you all. |
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| 12th March 2006 |
I liked this video. And they offer a downloadable
player (plus code) - so I provide it for you enjoyment! All credit to
the original authors - see their site for details. This week I've got quite a bit of deskwork to do for various bodies, but this will be relieved midweek by a visit to Middlesbrough to take part in RSC Northern's Mobile Learning event and on Friday I will be delivering a workshop on SMART interactive whiteboards for Kirklees Lifelong Learning team. |
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|
8th March 2006
|
Well the month is hotting up now! I spent Monday working in the Library
at Newtown in Powys, before staying once more at the delightful
B & B,
Park House, just down the road from
Coleg Powys, where I was attending the meeting of Welsh ILT
Champions on the following day. I'd never thought of doing this before,
but it worked a treat. I was able to work quietly both with and without
my laptop and still have occasional access to the internet, via the
Library bank of PCs. It saved me having to get up at 4.30am to get here
in time tomorrow or the trouble of driving around Manchester as tea time
(well - did that on way home - what a disaster). I've just started some
work for BECTA that needed some desk work, so it fitted in nicely.
Karen joined me that evening and we had a lovely meal at an Indian in
the town centre. The meeting on Tuesday was pretty uneventful, unlike my
journey home. I got to the M6 ok, but missed it. The turning is
immediately after a turning for a service station and I was in
completely the wrong lane. It wasn't too big a problem though, because
the M56 is just as direct at getting me home - just a bit busier. The
road continued to be fine until I reached the airport. Then it
seized up. After a while, having sat there too long, I decided to follow
the free-flowing lane which would take me around the top of Manchester
(the better route is under Manchester). After a short while this seized
up too - good and proper. After crawling towards the Trafford Centre, I
came off and had a coffee at John Lewis. The traffic was unbelievable.
When I set off again it was clear (for about 250 yards) for a while and
in the end I turned around and went back around the bottom. I'd
left Newtown (possible to get to on a clear day in less than three
hours) at 3.25pm and got home about 8.20pm. Five hours! I've been to York today to see MKM again. They've agreed top support me in Cornwall in summer and perhaps in Wales. So that's good news. Here's a site worth visiting - news of Bath's wireless environment. |
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| 3rd March 2006 |
It's been an interesting week - an has gone at such a rate! On Monday
and Tuesday I was working with Karen at BECTA in Coventry and then I
went to the NIACE e-Guide's
conference in Birmingham. So I've been away pretty much all
the week. At the e-Guide's conference, I had been asked to present three
workshops on the use of Mobile Learning (reaching the parts, other
technologies don't reach). The third presentation (scarily) was
web-cast, so if you want to see me performing on stage go to the
web-cast page any time
in the next month.
My web-cast was on Thursday at 13.30pm. I say 'scarily' because the
whole scenario is quite false and is an example of practice adapting to
fit the technology, rather than the other way around. The workshops had
attracted around 14 - 20 people each and it is quite easy for me, the
presenter to make occasional eye contact as I talk. This
encourages me to perform well and the audience to respond. For the
web-cast I was moved to the large auditorium where the web-cast kit was
set up. Here, my 20 or so strong audience had a choice of 300 seats to
sit on and although they mostly sat around the front so they could see
me, I couldn't see them very well. So that I could be seen on the
web-cast, two huge lamps were placed on the stage which prevented my
from seeing much beyond the immediate distance. So that was
disconcerting. It was much harder to build rapport with the audience -
although they seemed to be ok. I also found myself looking at the
projected screen much more than I usually do. Anyway - it was an
interesting experience and hopefully one I shall learn from. This weeks hotels were as different from each other as they could be. The NIACE conference was at the Hilton Metropolitan, close to the NEC. This is an enormous hotel designed for conferences like this. I had been booked into it for Wednesday night. Goodness knows what the rack rate is for the room, or what NIACE had to pay, but you can bet that the casual guest would pay around £140 for a room. My room was tiny. That's not really a problem because you never have time to spend in the room at such events. But rather than having a second bed (one double, one single - what's all that about?), I'd rather have had an armchair. The bed was very comfortable and the quilts and pillows just right. In Coventry, I stayed at a fairly new Innkeeper's Lodge. The strange thing about this place was that the room cost if booked more than seven days in advance was £30 but if less than seven days - £55!! How do they work that out? Anyway, the room was fine, roomy and warm. The bathroom and its fittings were excellent (better than the Hilton) - but the pillows were rubbish. So quite tiring really. The point is - for probably half the price (possibly much less) the cost and comfort of staying overnight, the Innkeeper's Lodge was better value and more comfortable. And it didn't cost me £5.00 to park there. |
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| 26th February 2006 |
The gig at Tower Hamlets was great. It is always nice to work with a
predominantly F.E. audience - we understand each other. It's not that I
don't like H.E. audiences, it's just that there's more rapport with F.E.
The people from Cambridge Training and Development (CTaD)
had set up the event and they were there to promote their excellent
products, CTad have always been at the forefront of mobile learning
projects and materials development. I was not surprised therefore, that
they had enrolled
Bob Harrison to perform as the key note speaker. His work with the
Standards Unit and Toshiba - put him ahead of most in the m-Learning
game. He was ably assisted by Andy Black and between them they prepared
the audience for my own presentation. Bob had shown the
JISC video clip so all I had to do was talk about
John Whalley,
Lilian Soon and myself! Easy. I'd
missed the chance to get cheap rail travel, because I'd been asked too
late - but at least my return journey was reasonably priced! It takes
less than three hours from home to London (same on the way back)
and that include a 30 - 40 minutes drive to and from Wakefield! The
other good thing is the 'Traditional' Cornish Pasties they sell at
King's Cross Station! Because I was in the Capital, I had arranged to meet Susanne Overton-Edwards and her colleague, to talk about how we might help each other with e-Learning in the future. This was a fruitful meeting, if somewhat cramped in the cattle lounge at Kings' Cross. hopefully, more will come of it. |
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| 24th February 2006 |
This is new experience! I'm writing my blog on the train . . . I'm
on my way to London to assist with the presentation of a 'Getting to
Grips with m-Learning' conference at
Tower Hamlets College. This is a
CTaD event. Just tried FTP'ing - worked ok! The week started in Barry, South Wales. I did two gigs there - one for Caters and Hairies, the other for Early Years and Care. Both groups seemed to enjoy the sessions and I certainly felt that the visit was worthwhile. If there was one drawback at Barry, it was that the interactive white boards are under and 'mis' used: Each room, and not just mine, I saw with an interactive white board, had something in front of it. In Karen's first room there were two other boards: a normal white board and a flip chart! My first had a desk in front of it and 'it' was in a corner! The next had all the 'stuff' (pc, video etc.) located in front of the board. This is silly - how can you use these boards when they are obstructed in this way? The fact that I cleared the obstacles away and used the boards showed on the feedback sheets - most said they would try to use them in future! Apart from that, the college seemed to be well prepared for ILT use. I met Keith and John on Wednesday to discuss progress on the Huddersfield University RSN work. On Thursday, I returned to Bishop Burton to show them resource creation tools. More when I get a steady surface to type on! |
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| 17th February 2006 |
Saturday again and another brilliant day! We cleared away most of the
branches that we had left over from last week's foray into the garden,
before having a fairly late lunch. Met JT while we were out, to look at
a new car. Told him to go ahead, so we should have a new motor by
tonight. A Ford Mondeo, 2 litre TDCi, 115 HP LX (not the 130 HP beast we
had been going to get though - this had met with an unfortunate accident
when we went to pick it up). The new motor is not two years old yet and
we've had to put more money towards it than we'd planned - but we were
struggling with quality on our earlier budget. So - fingers
crossed? Wales - I set off on Tuesday morning and drove down through Wales, right down to Llanelli. I was staying at a hotel near Llandybie, which itself is near Ammanford. I stayed at the Glynhir Mansion. Whoops!! I'd phoned on Sunday to see if they had vacancies and they'd said 'yes' - so I booked in. When I arrived, it seemed strange, but as it's old and full of character, I thought no more about it. I'd been surprised that I could not get dinner there, but thought that was just because they were quiet. I was shown my room - no worries and where to get a cup of tea (and a biscuit, fresh milk, olives! etc.) and told that the central heating looked like it had kicked out - she would go and fix it. And that was the last I saw of anyone that night. I even phoned the hotel myself to say that the heating was STILL not working, but they were on answer machine. Sharon tried rattling their cage too - no success. When I got back from the (smoke filled - thank goodness for proposed new laws) pub where I ate, there was still no heat. So I lit a fire in the large living room (in the fireplace - which was well stocked with wood and coal) and thought that if the worst came to the worst - that would be where I would sleep. I was warm enough down there - it would surprise them in the morning, but I'd be comfy! So, I sat back to read my book and as I drifted away in thought, I wondered where the ambient heat was coming from, because there seemed to be more heat in that room than you'd think in such an old building. I found a LARGE oil filled radiator behind the huge settee!! That was me sorted. I took that up to my room, plugged it in, covered the bed with an extra blanket and slept like a log. I'd already been told that I couldn't have breakfast at 7.30am as I wished - 7.45am was all they could do. Nothing was said - so I told her I'd stolen her radiator and she said "you did right!". Good ho. When I got back from three excellent gigs at Llanelli and Ammanford for Coleg Sir Gar - there was a large crowd of people there buying themselves. I was told by someone who I'd not met before that the radiator man had been there all day. OK. This lady served my breakfast on the Thursday morning and told me that they don't usually take guests at this time of year - you have to warm the whole house!!!! There were no tea making facilities in the bedroom - although these were available in the living room. There was no mirror in the bedroom - I had to shave in a local artist's painting! But - for £32 per night (£28 without en-suite) - it was ok. I just won't go again. |
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| 13th February 2006 |
I'm off to Wales tomorrow and won't get back until Thursday. Which in
many ways is lucky. The builders arrived last week and made a start on
the loft conversion. This involves taking the roof off and taking it up
somewhat. Today was remove the roof day! I'm never happy when major work
is going on around the house, it disrupts everything and, like with car
mechanics I suppose, there's always a "problem". Today's problem is the
height of the new door from the new landing to the new shower room. We'd
originally hoped for a mezzanine-like floor above the bedroom that could
(unofficially) become an office. The views over the valley would be
tremendous. But, the architect didn't pay that much attention to the
height of the roof at that point and now - we have a fairly passable
crawl space! Sharon may well be able to use it as an office, but I
certainly won't. So we don't want the same lack of height to be a
problem on the entrance to the shower room. This room has plenty of
height - its just the entrance because of the way the new roof is
formed. I'm hoping they will be done by Easter. Then we can get
the house back to something like normal. We spend a good few hours on Saturday in the garden. The weather was nice and we managed to clear back a good four foot of trees and bushes. Now I need a chain saw, more good weather and lots of space!!! |
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|
9th February 2006
|
Well, today I've been inspired by
Alan Carr of Mid Cheshire
College to play with podcasting. I have to say that I've not been
over enamoured of the rush to embrace this technology. It strikes me
that the furore over podcasting is an example of allowing the technology
its head - never mind the horse! I remember that my primary and junior
school days (a long long time ago) were peppered with sound recordings -
mainly from the BBC. Those of you over a certain age will remember Peter
and The Wolf being read by Peter Ustinov? Yet, despite the development
of sound recording equipment (cassette tapes?) and their ultimate
cheapness, the technology and pedagogy of sound wasn't taken up (by
many). How many of you remember the hours of listening to tape
recordings you made of student assessments - only to drop them because
of those same hours? Alan's work shows some promise - there could be
some good use developing down there at Mid-Cheshire. But many
papers (mainly H.E.) seem to think that simply recording your lectures
is enough . . Well it isn't just listen to my recording of this passage
[first of all find yourself a RSS reader - I'm
using JUICE -
which is free]. Then ask the RSS reader to
go to
http://dsugden.podomatic.com/ or click on the image above for the
xml file. And they say it's easier . . Still to be convinced (although I
do see there is plenty of room for podcasting - I'm not sure it's being
done right just yet). This week, I met a friend for lunch on Monday, before attending a steering group meeting at the DfES in Sheffield. Then on Tuesday I delivered packages for CLE. I spent the morning working in their offices because the builders have started on our house. So it's cold and noisy here just now. On Wednesday, I was off at 6.00am to Wales. I met Karen at the Caer Beris hotel in Builth Wells. She was delivering a talk to key skills tutors at an event there - we were both due in Llandindod Wells, for Coleg Powys that afternoon. I took my time getting there and it took about four hours - the same coming back, but this time with less time stopping. The driving in Wales is fine, but as soon as you get to Chester (and then around Manchester and into West Yorkshire) - it's horrendous. Today, I've been doing RSN work and got so far that I allowed myself a visit to see Emma and Amy this afternoon. Brilliant. |
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|
3rd February 2006
|
I have had to progress a bit of work for the
CLE
this week and managed to pick up the CDs that they had ordered from
Beaumont Street Studios on Tuesday. Beaumont Street are one of the
Kirklees extended learning services outlets and I'd visited them back in
the autumn - only to be amazed by the 'stuff' that was going on there.
They even have a radio station, broadcasting to the whole of
Huddersfield. There was a regional
NILTA meeting on Tuesday at Huddersfield Technical
College
and I'd been invited along. This felt strange. Until September I'd been
the Chair of the regional committee but having departed the
establishment I was representing, I thought it appropriate to resign
that post. So being a fairly 'unofficial' contributor seemed odd. On
Wednesday I charged up the new A1 to Hartlepool, where I was working
with the RSC Northern. The new A1 has been created around the
Ferrybridge area, close to the cooling towers, but is miles closer to
West Yorkshire now than it ever was. The M1 at Leeds had been
chocker-block, so I thought I'd give it a try. It was 10 miles longer
that way than the other. Which surprised me. I was in Hartlepool
to present two sessions on the use of interactive whiteboards (IBWs).
I thought that they both went well. I saw almost forty people there and
all were very enthusiastic about the board's use. The sad thing was that
roughly 40% of them had not heard of the NLN Materials and another 40%
didn't know how to get them in their colleges. This seems to be
indicative of the state of ILT in most colleges right now. Only this
week, I heard of another college that were considering the demise of
their ILT team. Senior Managers seem to think that getting rid of ILT is
an easy option. Faced with ever decreasing funds, it's easy to say "ILT
is now embedded" and "therefore we don't need ILT Champions, Managers,
Officers etc." Yet, as Wednesday showed, there IS a need for such
people, if only because new teachers are arriving every day. Changing
the classroom culture is not easy - or quick! Then I've been doing some work for Kirklees. This has kept me fairly local and made me go out. And what a beautiful time of year to go out. For the last three weeks I've been out walking for an hour most mornings - about 7.00am until 8..00am and this week I've had the pleasure of witnessing the hoar frost along my routes. It's been around Scapegoat Hill most of the week and yesterday, I was able to photograph some of it on my way back from Dewsbury - in the early afternoon. It really does make the mornings worth getting up for. But ---- roll on summer. |
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| 25th January 2006 |
‘Put essence of
David Sugden into an aerosol so I can spread his enthusiasm to my
colleagues.’ Upon my
return from Wales today, I found an email from Sarah Knight who very
kindly informed me that the above statement was found on a delegate's
feedback form following the 'Effective
Practice' event I did in Birmingham the other week.
Makes me blush! Karen and I visited
Deeside College
and Coleg Llandrillo this
week. We also met Chris Kelland of Becta while we were there. Because we
had time on Tuesday, we drove just south of Mold and walked around the
Moel y Baer. The views from
the top were probably wonderful - because of the low cloud, we couldn't
see too far - but Ruthin was perfectly visible - and what was probably
Denbigh. On Tuesday we stayed at a Holiday Inn - nothing exciting
about that, except that you can only access it from one side of the
carriageway (A55) and to go back the other way (towards Chester - to
pick up Chris at the station) you had to go about 3 or four miles
towards Conway before you could turn around. The next night we stayed at
the Maenan
Abbey Hotel - which was much
better, and like the walk earlier in the week - will probably be a good
place to return to in Spring, or at least better weather. |
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| 21st January 2006 |
I made a good start on the Regional Subject Networks project this week
by making a spreadsheet of all the sites we found in the pre-Christmas
trawl. Well, not all - I'm also doing a paragraph or two to introduce
each one, so I haven't finished that by any means. Then it will be a
matter of tying up the forums that are operating in the area.
There aren't many, but the funders have agreed to expand their interest
for the benefit of the ITT teachers. I own two - hairdressers and
caterers, which are quiet, but accessible and then there's Bob Tapp's
business forum which is going great guns. Then I have agreed to speak
with Chrissie Mason at the
RSC-NW about accessing their online forums, which like mine are a
little somnolent at the moment. My work for CLE has been interesting -
and hectic. I've phoned around all of the contacts and made suitable
arrangements with as many as I can but some are just unreachable. That's
another job for another day! A lot of extra work was involved in this
because I couldn't find the exact names of college e-Learning contacts.
The DPA
prevents the local RSC from telling me who these people are and when you
phone the colleges up, the receptionist invariably hasn't a clue who
does 'e-Learning' or 'ILT'! Thank goodness for friends with more up to
date (and better) memories than me. |
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| 15th January 2006 |
There's not a lot on this week. I have to catch up on the Welsh work and
to chase up a couple of case studies (in England too!!). I will be in
Wales most of next week, so it's important to make sure I get to as many
people as I can whilst there. This week, I can also concentrate on some
of the desk work I have for Huddersfield
University
and CLE. I'm at Bishop Burton
College on Thursday afternoon, but I still don't know what I'm
presenting there - that's a must for Monday morning. I was contacted by
an ex-student last week who is working at the Holiday Inn Express at
Brighouse - she's seen this site and wanted to point me towards
hers. It's nice to see how young people progress so do take a look -
you never know: some of her recipes may become favourites. |
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| 12th January 2006 |
Yesterday I delivered a presentation for JISC at one of their 'Effective
Practice' events, aimed at H.E. I thought that it went well - but more
importantly, I liked the way the day was structured. Although the
attendees were techie types and e-Learning practitioners, they were
asked to think about the 'process' of learning and of developing
learning opportunities and resources. If they then take this back to
their establishments and begin to disseminate, things may yet change for
the better. On the train journey to and from Birmingham, I found the
time to read the DfES 14-19 Education and Skills
Implementation Plan. This is an interesting read and well worth
checking out. I think that there is tremendous opportunity for the
development of effective e-Learning throughout this document, but it
isn't mention once. But now is the time to act. Liaise with whoever you
can to find ways of building effective teaching practices into the new
developments. On the business front this week, I have discussed further
work with Huddersfield University
(the regional subject networks have had to be widened somewhat),
CLE
in Bradford (for whom, I will oversee the distribution of NLN materials
to school as part of a special project they have agreed with BECTA) and
CENTRA
in Chorley who have asked me to present a workshop on transformation. |
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8th January 2006 |
Phew. What a week! I set off at 6.00am on Tuesday to work in Wales and returned yesterday afternoon (Saturday), 800 miles later. Because my hard disk had crashed just before Christmas, I wasn't sure whether or not I would be needed at Swansea on the Tuesday. We had discussed this and it was possible that the Hair and Beauty (HB) team had written to say "yes" (or indeed "no") during the period I was unable to read my mails (and that subsequently these communications had been lost). Hence the early start. I had made it to Pont Abraham at the very end of the M4 by 11.30am - which was pretty good going. Probably because it was the first day back (or the second New Year's Day holiday for some), the roads were pretty quiet. I'd already passed Newtown and was well on my way to Llandrindod Wells by 9.00am. The countryside between here and the M4 is stunning - some bits of the road reminded me of places in France which we would go out of our way to see. Well at least I think so; from Llandovery onwards I was shrouded in mist (for most of the week!). As it turned out the HB team did not need me, so my most urgent task for the day turned out to be getting to the hotel we'd booked in Bridgend. As they didn't take clients before 3.00pm, I decided to take a walk around Porthcawl. I suppose that all British holiday resorts have a faded charm which still rests upon earlier glories and Porthcawl is no different - winter weather certainly doesn't help. I walked and walked but just got wetter and wetter. Enough said. By 9.00pm, all who were going to be at Bridgend College the following day had arrived. John Whalley who had driven down from Leeds arrived after Terry Lilley, Karen and me had travelled over the hideous Sarn roundabout for our dinner. Then Andrew Edis arrived after setting off from Nottingham at 6.00pm (a remarkable 3.5 hours!!!). The hotel's breakfast looked hard to take so we all met at the Bridgend Tesco before moving on to the college itself for our day's events. I don't think that this was one of our better days, for all sorts of reasons, but time will tell. We then split up. I drove East to stay at the Pontypool Holiday Inn Express (I was presenting to HB and Early Years and Care (EYC) the following day at Coleg Gwent's Newport campus and to the caterers in the afternoon at Pontypool). John Whalley stayed at Sarn as he was presenting the following day in Neath. Everyone else drove west to prepare for our big day at Pembrokeshire College on Friday. They all stayed at the hotel I would drive on to when I'd finished at Pontypool - the Druidstone Hotel. All week, I seriously underestimated all distances - even driving from Pontypool to Newport took longer than I'd first imagined. These two events were far more successful than the day before and it felt more like old 'mentor' times. The drive from Pontypool to Haverford West (and then even further to Broad Haven - sa623ne) took just less than three hours, although this also included 'lost' time trying to find the right road down to the hotel. At Pembrokeshire College, we were joined by Terry Middleton and Diane XXX and the breakfast we shared in the hotel was magnificent and quite a reunion. The day's work went well and I had seven and seventeen people attending my two sessions. Excellent. Karen was joining me that night at Steven and Rosie's in Aberystwyth so we both set off together and had a very pleasant drive over the hills to Cardigan before darkness set in. As always, Rosie's hospitality was something else and we all had a very relaxing Friday evening, before setting off back about 10.15am. The drive home got steadily worse (weather wise) and by the time I hit West Yorkshire it was sleeting. But never mind, the central heating was on and Sharon was cooking tea (well 'dinner' - we had friends coming round!). |
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|
31st December
|
Well, Christmas is over and we're racing towards the new year. For the
last two new years eve's Sharon and I have eaten with Tony and Gill -
last year at Tony's golf club. This year we will be entertaining
ourselves as the thought of golf clubbing again was too much to cope
with. A long leisurely and romantic meal for two was the order until
Betony said that she wasn't staying at her dad's this year. So a long
non-romantic meal is now planned. Brie wrapped in Palma ham, baked and
served 'en croute' followed by: Home made tomato soup (just a knob of
butter, spring onions, basil, garlic and fresh tomatoes cooked and
blitzed with a drop of milk), followed by: Poached cod and caramelised
onion, followed by flash roast chicken and all the veggie bits with
chocolate cake for pudd! (I don't do pudds - so that was their choice!). On Christmas Eve, five of us walked across the Pennines at Standage Moor and down to Marsden. We'd started by having a celebratory bacon sandwich (egg for Jamie) in Marsden, at the only cafe open (strange that - plenty of people about but less shops open than usual. As a matter of interest, if you're in Marsden - check out the vegetable shop there. Brilliant. You will see in the picture alongside, that we had to get wrapped up. That's Jamie on the left with Gail by his side and John Rousell with Jim Scott. I was behind the mobile phone camera. See other pictures here. Those of you interested enough to access those will see glimpses of my children and grandchild too as we went to Emma's for breakfast on Christmas day and then had my mum and dad round for Christmas dinner. Gail and Jamie returned to Connecticut on Boxing day, so they were in time for Jamie to return to work on the 27th! We spend the rest of the week trying to catch up with household chores, work chores and study chores. There is still so much to do, which is why both Sharon and I are using these diversion tactics (she's trying to pull photos off an XDAII she is using for a LSDA project) instead of doing 'stuff'. I've got such a busy month ahead of me it's unbelievable. But watch this space and see what happens. Happy New Year. |
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| 23rd December |
We picked up Sharon's sister and her partner, Jamie, from the airport
last Thursday. They had flown from Boston (they live in Connecticut) and
were to sleep in our conservatory. It's COLD in there, so we knew that
the central heating (CE) would get some hammer. On the Friday we drove
to Aberystwyth so we could spend the weekend with their brother Stephen
[see] and his partner Rosie. This was a better time
in Wales - we all survived. Unfortunately, we were delayed on the way
back on Monday, so I couldn't make my planned attendance at the DfES
steering group meeting in Sheffield. When we got back, we found that the
CE wasn't working - much panic. The plumber told us what to do, over the
phone, but to no avail. He had to come out later that night. The problem
was solved within seconds! There was a button to press which he'd
forgotten to tell us about. Whoops. (Then my dad rang to say his
CE had done pretty much the same thing - oh dear). THEN the computer died! It now looks like the hard disk is faulty, but at first we suspected a Trojan virus that eats away at Windows. I managed to get a final update (I generally back-up important files weekly/monthly, depending on me remembering) of work files and development files - but all my email files were lost. I have friends working on this now, but it's safe to assume that all the emails I've had and filed since September are gone. Luckily, my PDA has a record of all my appointments for 2006 (and I updated my Yahoo Calendar last week) so that should be ok. Unfortunately I cannot 'sync' to the laptop without removing Outlook and reinstalling it - so I may wait until the main PC is returned before doing that. Anyway - seasonal greetings to you all. Good luck for 2006. :-) |
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|
8th December
|
Yesterday was my birthday. Emma rang early on, to ask what I was
doing at lunchtime.
It turned out that I was entertaining her and Amy
for lunch.
[You can't do that when you're 'employed'!]
Amy was one last Saturday. I can’t believe that way that babies
communicate. It had totally passed me by when Ben and Emma were that age
– but Amy can communicate with her mum in very simple ways that I find
hard to believe. She has a particular hand movement that says “where is
it" and she uses it as part of a game as well as a general enquiry. She
has special sounds for Cat and Dog and uses it in (sort of) conversation
AND when she see the animal too (the fact that the cat was absent but
that she STILL understood what she was talking about impressed me). It
totally passed me by with my kids – brilliant. Then, last night we went
to Da Sandro’s for a meal. We
would have gone to see Harry Potter, but Betony was booked into a girls
party somewhere (with boys) so Sharon and I went out for a meal instead.
Now, you need some information before I go on: Some time last year, I lost my glasses. £200 worth of vari-focal specs that made me feel sick when I wore them. In many ways it was a blessing that they got lost because I was able to replace them (more money – but less than £200) with bi-focals. Now these DID make me feel VERY sick, but I Percy veered and managed to get used to them. Well – last night, because Sharon was driving, I decided to wear my ankle length winter coat, which, I obviously hadn’t worn since last winter. And that's I found my vari-focals! In the pocket! Well anyway, I wore them last night. At Da Sandro’s. As we were leaving, I was stood by the bar watching what was going on while Sharon paid (neat trick?). That wasn’t easy because with vari-focals you have to either be used to them (I’m not) or you have to keep moving your head to try and get a good focus. Longer distances are one position and shorter ones another. Mid-distance is a real bugger. So, there I was looking (staring?) at a young lady at the bar, trying to get a good focus (after all she looked a lot like Emma and I wanted to try and see what differences there were between them). And as Sharon came up to me and the young lady got fed up of being stared at she (young lady) said “Hi Dad” (about the same time as Sharon said “oo Emma!”). How embarrassing is that – I didn’t even recognise my own daughter? |
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|
6th December |
Birthday tomorrow! Last night was the last of three Kirklees ACL sessions. We had hoped that more than the four who turned up would be interested in a 'Basic introduction to Accessibility and Inclusion', but it's hard to get over prejudices. I had spoken with previous ACL students who thought "it's not for me it's for disabled people" - which cannot be further from the truth. At my introductory sessions I always show delegates John Rousell's (link leads to archived web page) wonderful SimDis web pages, which are now hosted by TechDis. These pages allow viewers to gain a brief but fairly accurate glimpse of how someone experiences a disability. The discussion that ensues always leads to a greater depth of understanding, not just of disabilities but of how people experience learning. Whatever we do to accommodate a disabled learner can also lead to a better learning experience for all. Carol, who attended last night told me of some work she had done with and for the Macular Society in Huddersfield. The 'This is IT' team had listened to what the problem was and did something about it. I still have to find out exactly what, but it seems to have resulted in several sight impaired learners becoming proficient in their use of I.T. I visited the doctor about my throat again last week. He's still saying that there's nothing evident, but just in case, I should have a chest x-ray. That takes me back, I used to have to have chest x-rays every year as a young boy, because a family member had come back from fighting in the far east with tuberculosis. But all that stopped as I got older. I also asked to see a specialist, as I need my voice for what I do! I went to York last week too, to meet Rob Arnsten at MKM. We've been having ongoing discussions for quite a while but it looks like we might now be getting somewhere. More in later diaries entries. |
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| 29th November |
I did my second Kirklees ACL session last night but only two turned up.
Nevertheless, we had a good session with both going away knowing how to
make interactive Excel documents. Whether they remember ho to do it next
week is a different matter- but such is the way of the world. I also
negotiated the postponement of more day with Tribal in Sheffield
yesterday. Their projects are taking a while to get off the ground and
I'm struggling to work around the days I have booked in for them. We
agreed that when the projects pick up in the new year, I would be asked
to being work again. Let's hope the projects do pick up! Nick
Jeans, at e-SY info is in much the same boat - but the work he is doing
across South Yorkshire, should help to generate interest in the work
Tribal want to to. On Friday last week I worked at South Trafford College. The snow did keep off (it came yesterday when I was in Sheffield) and I had a good day. I had been booked to do three 90 minute sessions and a 30 minute drop-in at the end of the day. The first session had Business types attending, the second were caters and travel, the third was performing arts and media. The drop-in session lasted over an hour as they were a lively bunch (I would not have expected that for the graveyard shift of a staff-development Friday!) All sessions were good - I could do with more work like this. I think that I have my first work at Dewsbury since leaving. I've been contacted by the one remaining PCET tutor and may (remains to be confirmed) going to present to them on Thursday 8th. The day after my birthday. The pictures are from http://www.frappr.com/iltchampions |
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| 22nd November |
It looks like my guess for the numbers of
Champions registered on Frappr will be way out. It's Tuesday
and there are already 51 members (although not all have provided
photographs). My photo went missing, so I put up another - but
that doesn't show either! It must hate me. I did a gig for
CLE
in Bradford last week - that seemed to go well. The subject matter was
Sport which is not exactly my forte, but I've spent enough time
with sports tutors to know what their concerns are and what their
students are like. Besides that, e-Learning often lends itself
to different subject in different ways, so the real understanding
needs to be the 'e' and the 'learning' rather than the subject
itself. Having said that, last night's presentation at
HTC
on behalf of Kirklees ACL
was pure e-Learning. Having agreed to work with the lifelong
learning sector of Kirklees to promote e-Learning in the ACL sector,
this was my first input to ACL tutors. I've been working with
Richard Brook of HTC on the development and implementation the
agreed plan and last night was a basic introduction to the potential
of office software. We looked at
Forms, Comments,
Hyperlinks, Hot Spots on images
and looked at the interactive potential of
Excel
and PPT.
We will look at these in more depth next Monday - or we might just
continue with the potential of Word - it's up to the tutors
attending. As it happens, I'm working at Bishop Burton College on
Thursday and they require something very similar (how to move
online [on browser?] with very little effort!). On Friday it
will be Smart Interactive Whiteboards at
South Trafford College, if the snow keeps off.
|
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| 18th November |
I wrote to my provider about the visitor counter
above - it never seems to change. They said (and I paraphrase)
"tough". They supply me with all sorts of other details: e.g. I'm
averaging about 50 visits per day - but when you look more closely
many of the visits are from search engine robots and the like. I'd
prefer to know how many real people are reading this drivel! Notice the pictures above - they are from the frappr site. Rob Englebright set up this one for ILT Champions around the country. It's interesting that I can just cut and paste the code they give me in to a cell (anywhere really, but I decided the head of this column would do). It will be interesting to see how big it gets. When I pasted the code there was just Rob and me - as I started to type this there were eight people. So how many by next Friday (25th?) - I guess 45! |
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| 12th November |
I really enjoyed my session in Oldham on Thursday.
The week had really been a pig until then but the PGCE and Cert Ed
students were great. they asked appropriate questions and
seemed aware of the need to change the way we teach, or at least to
acknowledge that our teaching toolkit was expanding. I sometimes
think that it must be a real pain to sit and listen to me for almost
two hours - but I always look around for restlessness and there
seemed to be none. We had computers - but we also had a lot of
ground to cover: my remit being to give an overview of what was
being done with e-Learning in F.E. They seemed very keen, it's just
a shame that I do not have the opportunity now, to back it up with a
real teaching focused ILT project. But I'm sure that Alison
will do that. Next week I think it's back to Wales. I'm in
Birmingham on Monday and then I should be in Dolgellau Tuesday and
Wednesday - but I'm still not sure.
|
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| 11th November |
This entry is just to thank Alison
(of Oldham) for her kind words about last night in the 'new' comment
feature (above). I'm not sure I like the way this works - but it
works, so 'hey ho'. This is what Alison said:
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| 10th November
|
Just a quickie before I set off for
Oldham, where I am presenting an overview of e-Learning to PGCE/Cert
Ed students this afternoon. My three days in Wales mentioned below
became two - one good one bad. I had been going to Swansea, to
support Sara Laker's delivery of a Basic Skills event for the Welsh
RSC. But instead I drove to Newtown, where I attended a meeting of
all the Welsh ILT Champions. They had asked Karen to go, but as
she's on holiday and Sara said that she would be ok on her own - I
went. This was an interesting meeting and one which I hope will be a
turning point in the way NLN is implemented in Wales. I'd stayed overnight in a wonderful B & B, Park House, just down the road from Coleg Powys, where the meeting was being held. As you can see, even the tea tray was impressive (and I got a bottle of wine). Then I set off for Barry - where I was co-presenting with Daz. Sharon had phoned me in the morning to say that there would be torrential rain in Wales and jokingly told me not to get wet! I set off at 14.45pm to try and get at least an hour of the journey done in daylight. By 15.30pm I was stuck at the side of the A483 en route to Llandrindod Wells having become becalmed in the middle of a river that had taken residence in the road. The lone policemen directing traffic through (there was no around - around was worse) the water seemed confident, as did the twenty or so cars in front of me. So off I went and died in the middle. I had to strip my shoes and socks off and push the car (with kind assistance of said Bobby) out of the water. The short story is that the car looks like it has survived but we didn't know that until last night. It spent some time in two different garages and on the back of a truck to Huddersfield. I was loaned a car and got home about 1.00am. Now I have to see if it will make it to Oldham - lots of crossed fingers . . . |
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| 5th November |
Another busy week
has gone by. |
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 |
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| 31st October | Just time to squeeze in a
last entry for October. I started with a sore throat the day I made the
last entry and it's still hanging about. My busy two weeks were a
real nightmare, talking to audiences with a painful croaky voice. It
calmed down a bit last week but then came back. Hey ho! The St
Helens work went ok, I enjoyed it - I think the delegates did too. We
looked at some basic aspects of
accessibility
in one session and at m-Learning in another. I then drove on to
Shipley to deliver a session for
CLE - subject Early Years and Care. This was a great
session, well attended and with good interaction. The real problem this
day, was that my driver's door window fell out. It's a long story,
but it took until last week to get it fixed properly. It's fair to say
that half-term coming as it did, saved me from catching my death of
cold! The Handheld Learning event was good. John Whalley, Ros Smith and I all stayed in New Cross at a place called 113 Pepys Road. A private house with accommodation, which was wonderful. Well recommended. John and I are undertaking some research on behalf of Huddersfield University, so we took advantage of the time together to plan that. By now, we're well into the scoping study we planned. We are researching Subject Networks, with the particular aim of helping F.E. teachers (in West Yorkshire - but where this isn't possible - wider) to find regional help and support for the development of their subject. |
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| 10th October | I'm well into the busy
month now. I've now done a couple of presentations for the
CLE
in Bradford with another planned for Wednesday this week. Work is also
coming in from Kirklees and the Huddersfield
Uni
PCET consortium. My first day on the big contract begins tomorrow.
The rest of this week sees me doing a couple of short sessions for St.
Helen's College before moving on to help facilitate at the
LSDA/ALT
'e-Learning - Making it work' event at London's Bloomsbury Holiday Inn
Hotel. This is followed by the
Handheld
Learning two-day event being held at Goldsmith's College in Greenwich.
Then next week I'm in Wales most of the week. More later. |
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| 30th September | Well, one of the big
companies came up with the goods and a fair bit of work with them seems
guaranteed. I'm meeting the second company again at the end of the month
and will try to play that one a little slower. Other offers are coming
in for project work and I'm quite happy to help with those if the timing
is right. A real bonus this week was being able to share some work with
one of the associate partners. The work involves researching subject
specific support groups for teaching and e-Learning and the early
results are encouraging - there's certainly plenty to do to sort them
all out! I made my first visit to Wales last week, when Karen and I went
over to Wrexham for a video conference with the RSC in Swansea. Looks
like October will be a busy month. |
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| 23rd September | Well, I asked the
Champion's mailing list what they thought and there was a thunderous
lack of debate about the issue. I responded to someone else's similar
question (on another list), saying that I felt like that little boy
seeing the Emperor's new clothes for what they really were. This brought
some agreement. I'm not sure how blogs will be used in Wales and I'm
fairly open minded about it - but this one (my own) is just a diary.
Perhaps if others could more easily contribute it would make the
difference? I've tired to resurrect my Blogger Blog - but again to no
avail. I must be a bit thick because everyone and his dog seems to
have a blog on Blogger. As far as work goes, things keep coming in. The small stuff is welcome and builds my confidence for the future, but the bigger stuff is just as necessary to ensure a reasonable living. I've been to see two biggish companies who have promised work - it remains to be seen how much and whether or not I can fit it in. My real aim is to fill the time which will become vacant after next March, when the Wales thing finishes. So it's a matter of lighting small fires and keeping them embers alight! |
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| 14th September | I've started some work
with BECTa this week. I'll be working with Karen Ford and Chris
Swaine AND the Welsh RSC to
promote the NLN materials throughout Wales. Chris has a project which is
looking at the use of Blogs in Adult and Community learning - we'll be
helping him with that too. In fact I spent all day in Coventry
yesterday trying to see the new BECTA toolkit for Blogs. However, this
is delayed, so we looked at one Chris has made himself. This may
yet be the one we have to use. We'll see.
It's always seemed to me that Blogs are a useful way of sharing your
thoughts with people. This makes them so useful as reflective accounts
in education. But - and here's my worry - what else can they be used
for? It looks like they might just about cope with being the same as a
lot of other things - but what can they do in a unique way - what makes
them so popular? |
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| 10th September | Well I'm back from ALT-C
now [for more info, far better forged than my own poor attempt see
http://fraser.typepad.com/edtechuk/2005/09/last_nights_edu.html]
and sorry to Josie for not recognising that I was sat with her during
James Clay's workshop.] Sal Cooke was on form. She chose to close her strand by really challenging the state of 'Implementation' in H.E. and F.E. She based her talk on staff development and frankly, the debate was depressing. There were no new ideas, no one seemed to have any ideas about 'how' to make 'e' work in these sectors. My own two presentations went ok. The first was delivery of my paper which seemed to be well received. The second was to assist the launch of the JISC publication - Innovations in e-Learning. On the whole I enjoyed the conference, feeling that F.E. had been better represented this year than last. There is still a lot of lag between what H.E. talks about and what F.E. does (not to mention some of the brilliant work being done in ACL and WBL). I managed to speak with everyone I intended to meet, although one discussion had to take place on Friday after I'd returned, as the week was so busy. JISC had held a competition for examples of innovative use of technology: I won this product. I've not set it up properly yet (I've also got a new phone and am technology constipated), so I don't know how well it works. However, the winning idea was in fact a report of work which is going on in WBL, with the use of PDAs. TechDis have already asked for the case study and JISC want a copy too - so when they (it?) are (is) published - I'll add a link. |
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| 5th September | It's been a while. What a strange and 'out of body' experience August was! I met the HR guy about the 12th August and he told me that my post had "been removed from the college structure" and that I was "in a pool of one!". I was therefore invited to apply for voluntary redundancy. This I did before breath left my body but I was asked to put it into an email. Did that too. I was then told that my application would be put to the SMT (why, I don't know because it was their decision in the first place) and that their decision would be forwarded to me later. How much later remained to be seen (in fact I had my first sight of the confirmation 26th August - I left on 31st!). I elected to take my holidays and seek future employment rather than ask for 'time' to do that. The whole situation was made more difficult by the timing of holidays for differing personnel. I had already booked to go to King's Lynn on the college's behalf and to visit Sue Reed at Buckinghamshire CC - so I tried to visit as many prospective suppliers of work while I was down there. Sharon and Betz came along with me (it was a 'holiday' after all) and we shared a mobile home near Hunstanton, with Karen. The weather was very mixed to say the least - the Monday driving to and from Aylesbury was a nightmare, but driving to Cambridge on Tuesday was a real delight (Wednesday - FENC, weather crap!, Thursday - drive around north coast of Norfolk, mixed - Friday OK). It was an interesting week. I met lots of lovely people, all of whom had the same overall motives as me - to make the learning opportunities offered to (wider) F.E. students, more in tune with their needs and aspirations. If I'm lucky, I will be part of some exciting projects yet to materialise. Having returned (on 26th) and found my letter - I was at last able to make real plans. Some might say that I could have made these prior to the letter (and to be fair, I was doing some thorough exploration) but colleagues had been in the same situation earlier in the summer and had found their applications ultimately rejected. The HR guy wasn't in until September 1st - when I was due to meet the solicitor to sign a 'compromise agreement' so it was quite surreal. I'd been told I was going (officially) with little or no notice and to appear for my cheque on the first day of ex-employment. Really strange (and no doubt stressful - and probably why I thought I was still going to work this morning!). My (now ex-) colleagues were very good to me, some of us went for lunch on 1st and others (my ex-catering colleagues) came for dinner on Saturday night. So - now it's the real thing. I am self-employed and have to find work wherever I can. This week I'm at the ALT-C conference in Manchester most of the time. I am delivering my own 'paper' on the use of PDAs at Dewsbury College (I have no problem with this as everyone at Dewsbury has been good to me - my redundancy is the LSC's fault, not Dewsbury's). I am also supporting the launch of a new JISC publication called 'Innovations in e-Learning', which features the same work amongst other exemplars. I will also be networking heavily! When I announced my departure from Dewsbury to a couple of e-mail list I am on last week, I was inundated with offers of support and encouragement and it took almost six hours to answer these. But most surprising was the prospective offers of work from people I don't know - so that's another job this week - to meet and discuss those offers of work. Watch this space. |
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| 10th August | Son Ben's birthday today - 30. Now
that makes me feel old! France was a bit damp throughout but still
interesting. I enjoy looking at (and tasting) their food. Not
especially the 'cooked' stuff found in restaurants and the like because
I think much of French cuisine is over rated, but their fresh produce -
which is wonderful. We have reached a point over here where all our food
is regimented, colourless and tasteless. Over there they still have
tomatoes (and celery, and eggs and beans etc.) which taste like tomatoes
(and celery, and eggs and beans etc.) should taste. So, back to it. I'm
meeting the college's HR guy on Friday - no one's saying but I think
that redundancy for managers is back on the table! |
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| 26th July | Just got back from
Fougeres. It's thrown it down all day! Yesterday and the day before it
was only rainy in the mornings - the afternoons picked up a bit, but not
today. In fairness it did stop raining while we walked around this
beautiful and ancient French town but when we went to picnic in the
woods outside town, it started again, with a vengeance. Sharon got bits
on video, but it was ridiculous - four grown-ups and a minor sat around
a sodden picnic rug (on chairs) holding umbrellas to stop our food going
soggy. The English - en vacance!. We've done pretty much nothing
until today, just read and rested. The trip down from Boulougne was
notable by the amount of peage's we had to navigate and the jams
(Bouchon's) these caused. We managed to steal back some time by going
around Caen to the north instead of the south like everyone else! |
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| 22nd July |
Well it's certainly been an eventful few days. I had plenty to do on
returning from Torquay, including a meeting with John Whalley on the
Wednesday. On Saturday the 16th I had to be at Blackpool bright and
early to work with Wendy Stevenson (and Chris Swain) on an ACL
e-Learning day. On Monday 18th, I had to be at Alton Towers bright and
early for our last 'mentor' meeting. I was quite 'down' throughout this
couple of days as it would be the last time I was to meet the NLN team
all together. Although we had a busy and (happy) exciting time, there
was till an overall sadness to the event. Still - life goes on . . .
(even if it's direction is unsure at the moment . .) And so today, I'm
on my way to France - for a holiday! We met up with Steven and Rosie at
Leeds Castle. The only real hold up we had had was the four miles
leading up to the tunnel/bridge on the M25. We set off at 8.30am
and were at Maidstone Services by 1.00pm. V. Good. We hung about until
it was time to get to the Channel Tunnel (they charge extra if you go
before 5.00pm - we were on a cheapy). We had booked a hotel in Boulougne
and found it with only a little difficulty. Picnic on the bed and then
'to bed' Great - we're in France. |
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| 12th July | I did my gig
at South Devon College in Torquay today (another fabulous day). It was a
shame there were only four people attending - it seemed a long way to go
for such a small number. The journey back was swift and uneventful -
just over five hours with a longish stop for tea. Mind, like always the
cloud was back by South Yorkshire and it had rained when we got home! My
application for VR was turned down on the grounds that "Management are
not being dealt with yet" and "we don't want to lose you Dave". |
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| 11th July | I had a good day at
Sheffield College on Friday, with caterers and hair and beauty
lecturers. Then I went to Nick Jean's for a cup of tea. We set off
for Devon of Saturday morning and arrived at the cottage mid-afternoon.
The cottage has a small pool and this became our routine for the next
three days - a mid-afternoon dip to cool down. The weather was gorgeous.
On Sunday, Karen took us into Budleigh Salterton where we spent several
hours shrivelling in the sun. The sea was cold - very cold. For
once, it was warmer standing in the water, than being submerged in it.
Monday we walked to Ladram Cove. We had intended to walk to Sidmouth but
the weather was SO hot (it turns out that is was the hottest day of the
year so far) that we couldn't manage it. |
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| 8th July | Well I've done it. I went
to speak with the union rep. Hugh, yesterday morning, to see if he
thought there might be an objection to me seeking VR. The college's main
objection would have to be that my work was specialised and that they
could not let me go. I emphasised that there were at least three
others, e-Learning Champions, who could do those bits of my work which
the college needed; two of these are in 'at-risk' groups. One is Hugh
himself - he would be ideal for what I see as the practical priority
area (moving onto a new Intranet and exploring the use of VLE with
H.E.). Another 'at risk' is Shahid, a long term champion from the ICT
department, where three people have to go! The third is Cathy, who is me
but much younger and prettier (and a 'girl'). After speaking with Hugh,
I went to see the HR manager, Sean, and asked him when we could meet.
I explained my reasons and the thought I had put into the request and
agreed to meet him next Wednesday. Then I started shaking! It's amazing
what your body does without your permission. I sat at my desk for half
an hour and trembled (mildly) - obviously stress coming out. I wanted to
go home, but was meeting Gail in the afternoon. So we had lunch
together as well - just so I had someone to speak to. Anne was busy with
a Unison meeting, so I couldn't tell her until later - and she was
upset. I saw Janet over lunch too and don 't think she was happy with my
news. However, at 9.00am this morning Janet ring me and asked if I was
determined to go through with my decision. I'd spent some time
composing an email to her..... |
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| 6th July | More news. The voluntary
terms are much improved but we only have until July 15th to say say if
we want to go. That puts a lot of pressure on me, because I am working
away on Friday this week and then Monday and Tuesday next week.
Also, Friday 15th, I have to set off for a booking in Blackpool the
following day. So that leaves me tomorrow (Thursday) and
next Wednesday (afternoon - busy at HTC on morning) and Thursday to do
anything. If I apply and if they accept me, I will leave on July
31st. In fact I'll leave before then because we have a holiday
booked from July 22nd! It's all very scary. |
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| 5th July |
Well, today the college has made some progress. The union announced that
voluntary terms (VR) will now be offered on enhanced terms. The
legal basic is to be paid a maximum of £280 per week @ 1 week per year
of service plus pay in lieu of notice. We are now to be offered better
terms than this - which is only to be expected when voluntary's are
sought. Apparently the offer will be made this week and will be held
open until the end of July. So, now it's time to think! |
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| In last week's TES, it
was reported that the F.E. minister had accused college principals of
'crying wolf' over the funding cuts. His comments, like those of his
predecessors were nothing but platitudes and ill informed about what's
really going on. The truth is that extra funding HAS been put into
the F.E. system, during a time of challenging targets, all of which have
been achieved. The targets had been set by LSCs as part of an
innovative three year funding plan. However, it would appear that they
had underestimated college's ability to reach these targets and
overestimated the extent of their own budgets. So now, the funding of
courses for adults will suffer. Level 3 students over 19 years of age
(nearly all) have to find 75% of their course fees. They have always had
to find a proportion of their course fees, but many students were
previously able to claim remission of these fees because of their
financial backgrounds. Now, many colleges will not be able to find the
money to give this remission - making it impossible for many young
adults to pursue their route to Higher Education or to improve their
employment prospects. The other result of this is a reduced need for
lecturers and college support staff. |
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| 4th July | Where does time go? It's two weeks since I got to add anything to this, so there's a lot to say [but I'll keep it brief]. The situation at work is no clearer. There are still jobs to be lost but no names on them yet. I've not been in work for a week (I've been on the road all that time) so it may have changed by the time I get there. However, they do say that no news is good news. The union are trying to prevent all compulsory redundancies and to get decent deals for those who 'choose' to go. I'm in two minds - to remain in post would ensure that I could pay the mortgage and keep up my pension payments but for how long? I suspect that the LSC cuts will bite even deeper next year and that things will be tight again. Earlier in the year I was encouraged to look out for a secondment for next year (as this year's was coming to an end). The message received was - find some income or your job will be in jeopardy! So I did - but not only did I get offered one secondment, I have been offered several. I therefore have the option of becoming self-employed. However, much of the work offered is short term, so the long-term future in either case isn't clear. Yet I realise that my personal choices are far rosier than most. Despite the uncertainties, I can see a future in self-employment - as long as Education needs someone to talk about (and lead?) e-Learning developments, I should be ok. At the moment I have plenty of supporters, my worry is that if I stay on at college and then get thrown out next year, the supporters will have gone. If they offer me a decent settlement for voluntary redundancy - I'll go (I need the money to set myself up).
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| 19th June | Father's Day. I went for
the Sunday paper at 8.00am and the weather was already cracking the
flags - just like being in Spain! So, after receiving a lovely card and
present from Betony, I decided to walk over to my dad's later in the
morning and Sharon would pick me up later. By the time I got there I was
dripping - what a lovely start to the day. As we arrived home, Ben and
Siobhan arrived too. So, we sat and talked in the garden for ages. Ben
is settled in his work and despite the changing titles, he still leads
his team of database developers. Not long after he came, Emma arrived
with Amy - so all in all it's been a brilliant day, I've seen all my
kids and their kids too. Great. I still have work to complete
though. FENC are expecting a
report from me after the review of their materials. I've only looked at
the newer XML stuff and there's much much more to do on their web site,
but that will have to wait. The report will focus on their new
stuff, what it maps to (inc. KS4) and what I recommend. Yesterday,
Sharon and Betz took part in the run for life in Greenhead park and by
the time they'd finished they were dead beat! I wouldn't mind but
it was only 5k. |
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| 16th June | Three college tutors were
due to present work at the Regional RSC event today - but one was ill.
Sharon was presenting her work with PDAs in outreach centres and Cathy
was presenting her work with Blogs, Plogs and WebQuests. Cathy was also
being interviewed in the afternoon for next year's
ICT in Practice Teaching awards. The presentations went well and
once again it was great to meet old friends at the conference. I didn't
get too much time to talk to everyone but Marc Keable did manage to get
my laptop showing the CPS voting system a little clearer. The afternoon
interviews were undertaken by Jenny Scribbens and Adrian Higginbotham of
Becta. They seemed excited by Cathy's work - I've certainly never seen
Jenny so bright and cheerful. Adrian seemed to ask some useful questions
and Cathy managed to maintain her cheerfulness despite the length of her
day and the stresses it brought. She deserves a medal even is she
doesn't make it to the next round (but I think she might). More gloom at
work. |
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| 15th June | Back at work on Wednesday. The plan was for all the college e-Learning Champions to attend a one day training event on the use of Share Point. We hope to base our new intranet on this Microsoft product. However, redundancies were announced yesterday so no one was fully committed to what they were doing. The joint natfhe/unison union meeting at lunchtime was not a bundle of fun either as the uncertainties of the future were unfolded. 11 teachers to go - all pinpointed by department and £300k worth of support staff (no number given). The problem is caused by a funding shortfall. The LSC in England seem to have lost all control of their budgets and colleges are being made to pay. Some time ago the LSC set targets for colleges to aim at - I suppose they thought the targets would be difficult to achieve. But F.E. reached the targets and received the promised rewards. Now, the LSC realise that they have overstretched their remit and find it difficult to fund anything other than the Government aims (which also seem to have grown overnight) of education for 16-18 years olds, full level two qualifications for adults and an element of basic skills. Adults and those wishing to pursue level three qualifications can go whistle! The adult and community sector (ACL) seem to be ok for now but future funding looks bleak, but the level three situation seems to be being addressed regionally. My understanding is that locally, in Yorkshire and the Humber, participants in level three course have to find 75% of their fees NOW, but in Cornwall (I'm told) they have five years to achieve this figure. How can any of this be fair? How can the overall education strategy (and the target for 50% into H.E.) be maintained when funding for access to H.E. (level three) is removed? In my field there are other concerns, but I'll leave those for another day. | |||
| 14th June | The presentation for for
the
JISC
e-Ped experts group - which was held at One George Street, right
opposite the Houses of Parliament. I'd travelled down on the
Monday so I could catch up on some reading and not be too tired when I
got to the venue in the morning. I was staying at the Strand Palace
Hotel which was 'ok' but I'm sure I would have been more comfortable
over the road (The Savoy). I found a great place to eat, two courses and
a glass of wine for less than £12!! The group meetings are always
uplifting to attend. Not only do you hear inspirational things
about research and goings on in e-Learning, but you meet old friends.
There was such a gathering here of what used to be the old 'FERL' team:
Alistair, Clare, Sarah and Ros, as well as Ellen, Ron, Eddie and Hector,
all the way from Fermanagh. My presentation was to introduce the case
study JISC did on the use of PDAs at Dewsbury, Thomas Danby and Bishop
Burton colleges. This seemed to go down well. It's surprising how
many people find themselves inspired by things like this - let's hope
they can put the little I showed them to good use. Afterward we all hung
about for coffee and a chat and for me this was the best part of the day
- meeting old friends and colleagues who continue to inspire me. |
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| 13th June | I'm on my way to London to day to deliver a presentation. More when it's done! | |||
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| w/e 12th June | Being back at work was
strange. There is a slightly uncomfortable atmosphere - related to
the impending redundancies. Not that we know about these officially yet
- that looks like a pleasure for next week. The natfhe union meeting on
Wednesday lunchtime was quite sad. A lot of the fire previously
reserved for lecturer demands for a common pay spine was directed at
(actually - diverted to) the seemingly bleak future. It seemed to me
that the two issue were purposely being linked by a management which is
becoming more and more beleaguered by the day. Even now, as I
write this on Sunday 12th, there are reports that the LSCs have not
finalised the cuts they are making. So colleges are trying to plan
for next year only in the sure knowledge that they will get less money -
but not exactly how much less. At Dewsbury as expect something in the
order of £1m less funding - and that we do get will be targeted at 16-18
year olds and adults needing level 2 qualifications. I've done inputs at
work for the health and social care department and for anyone who wanted
to attend - a Windows Movie Maker course. Then on Friday I went up to
Edinburgh for an interview with Napier University. They are
looking for a consultant to work with their TESEP project and I have to
be prepared for A) - being made redundant or B) - needing a secondment
to secure my continued employment. They have a brilliant project up
there and I hope I can be of assistance. I'd still not finished for the
week when I got back on Friday evening because on Saturday, I was
working at Huddersfield Technical College (HTC). The event was part of
the e-Guides cascade programme for Kirklees and organised as a joint
event between the LEA, Dewsbury College and HTC. There were 30 in
attendance and they all enjoyed the day. We concentrated on basics
like
FORMS and COMMENTS but for
many, that is all they need to get them started with e-Learning. |
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| 6th and 7th June | It seems to me that when
you are busy (and possibly stressed - although I can't say that is a
major reason, I tend to cope with stress fairly well) that you forget to
be ill. Then, when you finally get a break and your body starts to
relax - whoosh - in comes the cold and flu. I'm feeling much better
today. Today, I'm travelling to Birmingham for my first attendance
at the ALT further education
advisory committee meeting (FEAC) and then on to London, where I'm
presenting at an LSDA Key Skills event on Tuesday. The FEAC meeting was
good, everyone is passionately involved with Further Education and
because of the current situation, this is a timely meeting. We discussed
current issues and made the decision to go ahead with a F.E. conference
in October (13th) - jointly sponsored by
LSDA and ALT. The key
skills event was well attended and my presentation seemed to go down
well. It is remarkable, even after all this time, that there are
colleagues who have not yet had the time (with some it's 'inclination' -
but much more these days, it really is 'time') to play with
Hot Potatoes. The
software, which is freely available to educators provides a template for
both summative and formative testing and is well regarded
internationally. See
FERL for
more information. |
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| w/e 5th June | Well the rest of the week
was all down hill. Being off work had finally caught up with me,
just like at Easter. Rather late in life, I've begun to suffer from hay
fever and driving up to |
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| Tuesday 31st May |
These days were fabulous. The weather has been much the same as
yesterday, so we have no complaints. On Monday we had a late lunch, set
off for Aberystwyth - where we shopped, walked along the prom and had
afternoon tea in the new tea rooms across from the pier. As soon as we
got back, we got back outside into the sunshine and read! On Tuesday we
packed and set off again in bright sunshine. We bought lunch at
Morrison's and ate it on the beach at Borth - just north of Aberystwyth.
Very relaxing. |
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| Monday 30th May | ||||
| Sunday 29th May | We set off for a walk around Llanon on what was forecast to be a 'changeable' day. It turned out to be an absolutely brilliant day. The sun shone all day and the wind dropped enough to be comfortable. At this time of year the country lanes are lined with flowers of every hue and because of the lack of traffic, you have every opportunity to look at them. Very pleasant. We walked along the sea front for quite a while. It's surprising what you see down there, old rope from ships no doubt, bits of unidentifiable wood, rusted mattresses, plastic bottle by the hundred and three birds eggs, which must have only recently been abandoned because they were still intact. The houses here and their gardens are lovely and must surely look forward to days like this when their full beauty can be appreciated. Rosie did wonder if it would be better to live on the coast like this, or just off it up the hill like she does. We thought up the hill, because it can't be easy for large parts of the year when the sea is blowing up and over the land. | |||
| Saturday 28th May |
We're taking the week off. A few days in west Wales with Rosie and Steven and then a few more in Oswestry with Karen. The drive down was never ending, with lots of holiday traffic around. The road through Wrexham, Oswestry and Welshpool was fine but we ended up stuck in a jam outside Newtown for 40 minutes. Still - we got there in the end. Sharon was suffering from the pollen which because of the high wind, was everywhere, so by the time we arrived we were drained. back to December 23rd. |
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| First entry then. It has not been an easy week. There are not many happy faces in college. We've had a two day strike and a notice from the principal that 'hard decisions' will have to be made. The strike was over pay. The college unions and the AOC had agreed to a two year pay deal some time ago. The idea, backed by the government, was to modernise pay structures and to bring them more in line with main stream teaching. For various reasons the college has found this difficult to subscribe to, mainly because of changes to funding arrangements. Because governors had not met to discuss it as agreed - the workforce voted to strike. Yet, I have some sympathy with the college management. They are presently being pushed from pillar to post by the LSC as they (the LSC) seek to cover up their own funding shortcomings. This is a nationwide problem which is effecting many colleges up and down the country - and a leaner, meaner and more selective F.E. sector will result. However, much of the good work on the past may well go to waste. There is little hope for Adult Education or support for level three qualifications. The government say they are not to blame because the have put £millions into the sector and it is our fault we are in such a poor state. Yet they give money to F.E. via the LSC - who have made the most enormous mess of their role. Only time will tell if they (the LSC) will survive this situation - one can only hope not. But my main worry is whether or not F.E. will survive. How the government hope to get more learners into H.E. when the qualifying qualification (level 3) is not funded, is beyond me. It may be possible in some areas of industry to get the employer to pay, but where SMEs are the norm, it will be impossible. Anyway, I have so much more to say on this matter - I won't waste space here. Needless to say, what the future holds - we can only guess at. | ||||
| 2005 | ||||
