It’s been a while…

I’m grateful we went out to see the eclipse and made a bit of an evening of it. I’m extremely grateful that nothing was on fire when I logged back into work after annual leave.

I’m pleased various family members (and found-family) members have made it all the way to A-levels results. Good job guys. Presumably you’ll do great. I don’t care if you don’t.

I’m pleased the kids got to have a really nice cinema trip. Kat did a full length triathlon this weekend and we got to keep up with her for the whole swim (we could walk up and down the riverbank) and see her four times in the run, while also having a nice charity shop explore while Kat biked around. Kids were good as gold.

• Finishing two books I really enjoyed
• watching a couple of films I really enjoyed (also Minions and Monsters, which is terrible but I enjoyed watching the kids watching it)
• Chocolate
• Cool weather
• Air conditioning
• Surprisingly easy transition at school
• Playing table football with Leo
• Playing Pokemon Yellow with Nova
• Good DIY
• Finally editing photos
• Adapting to the heat enough to be functional apparently

This week I’m grateful for:

• Time in the gym
• Rain
• Umbrellas
• Climbing
• Really good books - I’ve read two wonderful ones by Madeline Miller recently and they’ve been wonderful
• Being proud of Kat
• Nova really enjoying gymnastics again
• Leo making a cake and explaining it all to gran
• Friends finally sorting out houses
• Date days with Kat
• Rebuilding my cadence monitor (again)
• My amazing new camera toy (more on that later)
• Making my first mortise and tenon joint (it looks terrible, the second one will be so much better)
• Fixing up my office desk
• Air conditioning
• Finding a podcast I liked for the drive to work
• Some really good Wikipedia editing (ish)

I’m grateful that Nova talks problems though with me. I’m pleased that she is finding their feet (well…) at the new swim club. I’m grateful for long phone calls from old friends and for words like ‘benign’.

The work grumpiness from last week has fallen away and I’m feeling quite positive. Possibly I’ll flip back next week. I’m grateful for a wonderful date day with Kat; getting out into nature. I’m extremely pleased my basil is going well and indeed that I have a little plant to look after. I am looking forward to eating it.

The kids are grateful for school discos and the end of term. I’m grateful for a lovely quiet walk back from the disco with Nova. Also for water pistols and their first water fights of the year. Kat is very pleased with a new wetsuit.
I’m grateful for submitting my SHEA documents and for the lovely thoughtful references I got to include.

I’m really enjoying that I’m going into work less (also, that I’m going in at easier times). I’m also very pleased that the timetable for next year has been (broadly) agreed and that I (currently) have a slightly easier time of it.

Some less grateful stuff - I’m stuffing from a certain grumpiness at work. I’m waiting to find out who our new boss will be, and the outlook for the next five or ten years doesn’t look amazing. I’m feeling very overweight. Indeed, since Leo was born I have gained weight at a fast weight than them and Leo is now six.

However, this week I ticked off difficult work, I sent vulnerable emails and I got generous replies. I went climbing and swimming, biking and running. I played new games with the kids. I spent the day in a wonderful library having ideas about next year’s teaching. Elsewhere I came up with ideas for other things. Kat and I have been spring cleaning various things from calendars to pantries. I’ve cried at films and got through at a book that has been on my shelf for years. I finally got my raspberry pi up and running. It’s been a really good week.

I also found £1 in a locker at swimming, so that was lovely. Nova has won some sort of award in school and Leo read to me from a book today in a wonderfully clear way. Kat made me a salad using leaves from our garden. I have arranged to visit a museum with dear friends.

Incredibly in all of this I have been quite grumpy most mornings, and a good number of the afternoons.

Well, Leo was 6 yesterday. It was wonderful. I love you so much son, and I’m so grateful for everything you are and everything you are working hard to be.

My favourite things about you are the way you talk “Excuse me I have an I-dee-ah!”, your laugh, and the way you still admit to wanting to be cuddled to sleep. Love you always.

I spent a good chunk of today at the NEC for the National Cyber Security Show and, indeed, wandered into the general Security Event, the Fire Safety Event and the Workplace Event as well. In practice they all rather faded into each other. It turned out to be one large event with several different brands attached to it.

Nova had expressed a very clear expectation that I would bring home freebies. In the end she is going to have to make do with a yo-yo, some notebooks and a selection of pens.

In general I found it quite depressing. There were a lot of large stands selling what looked functionally like the same thing: software that monitors security and has AI built into it in some nebulous way. There were occasional interesting things tucked away in the cheaper stalls at the back, but not really enough to justify the effort of updating my lecture slides afterwards.

Helpfully, the NEC is almost exactly the right place for me to stop on the way to my parents’ house. I am actually writing this from there now. I have already put up some pictures and tomorrow I have some cupboards to fix. So I am trying to get into the habit of checking whether there is anything interesting on at the NEC when I am planning a trip home anyway. Opportunist but I think that I would have been disappointed if I’d have made a special trip to the NEC for this one.

I was more tired than I should have been today and ended up needing an extra stop on the motorway. There have been too many late nights recently.

The Q&A one I delivered as a Q&A itself, because otherwise I would have vanished in a puff of hypocrisy. I think that one went better. Partly that is because the format did some of the work for me, and partly because it is a more honest way of talking about teaching. Teaching ideas are usually a bit messier than conference talks pretend.

The event itself was officially called “Education Exchange: Practice, Pedagogy and Futures”. Naomi Winstone gave the keynote on assessment and feedback in the age of AI, there were parallel sessions all day, and a lot of the programme was about the practical end of teaching: assessment design, feedback, AI, accessibility, student confidence, simulation, belonging, and the various ways people are trying to make higher education work a bit better.

There was a fairly good turnout. I think there were close to 100 people at the keynote, and the sessions I went to seemed to have about 20 to 25 people in each room, which is enough to make the conversations feel real without making them unwieldy. On the other hand we have rather a lot more teaching staff than that…

In general, it is much more show-and-tell than academic conference. I do not mean that as criticism. It is full of people who have made an effort with their teaching recently and want to tell to other people about it, and those people are inherently interesting to talk to. Not only that - it means that all the people who are likely to try something new, and who might need a hand from a like minded person in another department, meet each other.

Thanks to the organisers for putting it on.

I may as well record it here to see if there is much change over the years.

Historical records

These are the older prescriptions I found in my SelectSpecs account.

2020

2013

2011

This week I’m grateful for:

• Quiet time in a library with my laptop and NO pressing deadlines
• An empty inbox
• Making plans for the future
• Leo waking up a little later.
• Nova having a good time at the new swim club
• Getting into my book
• Chocolate
• Playing with electronics
• Our new Roomba

This is a bit materialistic isn’t it, on the other hand I also think it’s good to like what you have.

I’m grateful for spontaneous swimming trips followed by Pizza Express, I’m grateful for playing peg-based guessing games with Nova and snuggling up with Leo. I’m amazed that Kat and I managed to get through a whole film in one sitting last week. I’m grateful for fun away days with work and being home in time to see the kids. I’m grateful for finally sorting out the accounts and the end of term. I’m extremely pleased with myself that I could fix our automatic blinds with a soldering iron.