foolfillment: the blog

My last lecture was today, afterwards I went and had my dissertation printed and bound (nevermind that somehow I managed to get the wrong file printed and will have to go back and get it done again…), on Friday I’ll hand it in and then no doubt go to The Primary for a quick celebratory sherbet with more than a couple of others in my year.

A couple of weeks after that I have a wee test - I love exams on my course, most of the work is done throughout the year so when it comes to an exam they usually aren’t anything to worry about. They can usually be treated as a nice little trip to the Hunter Halls where you can marvel at the intricate stonework for an hour or so.

A couple of weeks after that the GTCS will post out a letter saying where I will be teaching next year, and I also have an oral exam and a presentation to give to the class - both on my dissertation.

First of all though I’m going spend tomorrow installing Feisty Fawn on an ageing desktop computer. (Wish me luck Robert!)

This morning I had my last lecture ever as an undergraduate (assuming that I haven’t messed up somewhere and I actually pass this year!) and afterwards Krysia took the chance to show our class the resource she’s made as part of her dissertation. It’s a website that I’ve been helping her set up and it’s been pretty good to have something to work on other than my own dissertation for a while.

Anyway, now that it’s no longer under wraps I thought I’d share a little bit about it here. It is a site that has been set up to enable newly qualified tech teachers like myself and Krysia to share what we’re doing with other new tech teachers. It’s set up so that it is (fingers crossed) really easy for us to each have a blog where we can upload resources we’ve made, share our experiences in the job, and generally support each other through what is likely to be a fairly hectic and perhaps fraught year. With the magic of RSS everything that gets uploaded can be categorised and aggregated in any number of different ways. A user might want to keep in touch with everything that’s going on, another user might only want to see things about Graphic Communication, another user might only care about Intermediate 2 things, or any combination of these. I think it’s all set up so it’s really easy to do and all me and Krysia have to do is show people the power of it and to get them started.

The idea of it has come out of lots of research and reading that Krysia has done, and what really struck me when Krysia first talked to me about it was the similarities in what she was saying and what is being said and done in East Lothian with Edubuzz. What has come out of it is technoBuzz.co.uk. When we were trying to come up with names we really struggled but technobuzz really struck a chord, the problem we faced was deciding if it was too similar to edubuzz. In the end we went for it and I hope that we’re not ticking anybody off by doing so, but the two projects do have fairly similar outlooks so I hope we’re okay.

I hate to say it but even though we’re technology teachers the majority of my class wouldn’t have the first clue how to use RSS, will never have heard of Web2.0, and haven’t even considered using the internet in lessons. The word blog just makes some people sleepy before you can explain the potential. I really wish on my course there had been something like the lectures that David Muir and Ewan McIntosh have given at Jordanhill on using new technology in the classroom.

That said I’m actually really excited about technobuzz and can’t wait to see how my classmates take to it, I really hope they see the potential this has to make next year that little bit easier to get through and get involved. It’d also be interesting to see what other teachers think of the site - once it has been running for a while and any bugs have been ironed out it could be extended to all techy teachers, or into other subjects.

Spurred on by Ollie, and having lots of other work to do I’ve made a quick video on how to allow scrapblog to use you flickr images, take a look here:
Adding your flickr images to your scrapblog

I’ve been thinking a bit more about where I’ll be teaching next year. As there is nothing I can do to influence the decision I can only guess about where I’ll be living, but I wanted a better idea of the possibilities so I had a little play with Google’s new service My Maps. It took a lot of copying and pasting but I eventually got all of the secondary schools from my selected areas stuck onto a custom map. After a little more playing I’ve added it to my Google Earth places and arranged them into subfolders, and uploaded an image of the aerial view.

Looking at them this way was a bit of an eye opener. I knew that my choices meant I could be placed pretty much anywhere but seeing them all mapped really shows how remote some of the Highland ones are. I’ve not used Google Earth much but I did wonder (after finishing this) that there must already be a layer that has all of the Scottish schools? I wouldn’t know where to look, but surely I can’t be the only git sad enough to do this?!

Well, that’s the first draft completed, pretty much anyway. I’ll make it clear now - I’m not going to be going for a life in research, it’s quite clearly not something I’ve got a talent for!

With a limit of 10 000 words I’m now sitting at about 11 500, so I’ve got a fair bit to cut out. I’m going to take a couple of days away from it now before I redraft it.

Lots of other little things to be playing with in the mean time.

Well that’s the Easter weekend gone, now back to work. Right now I’m busy not putting the finishing touches to the first draft of my final year project.
Over the weekend we managed to get in some walking up on the southern Cairngorms. We had a quick stroll up Morven/Morrone just south of Braemar to see what we thought about the weather and work out where we’d be going the next day if it was nice. Deciding to risk it we walked in to Loch Callater and stayed the night there then got an early start (up with the sun) and were on top of Carn an tSaigart Mor by 8.

It was fantastic weather and great views all around. By 11 we were just about ready to start making our way down from Lochnagar, around the same time as it started to get busy. We were pretty shattered and fed up with eating food that’s been crushed in our bags so we made our way back to Dunbar instead of staying another night.

On Sunday we had a nice walk around John Muir Country Park (without paying for parking) with the dog then a fantastic meal at The Rocks - a nice change from working there!

Now I’m back in Glasgow and it’s windy and threatening rain. Oh well, only a few weeks before I move somewhere else.
And, I’ve just realised that I’ve already been up Carn an tSaigart Mor and Carn a’Coire Bhoideach but I can’t remember it at all, although it was 11 years ago.

I’ve been playing with Srapblog again, here’s a work in progress of my trip to NZ last year, it’ll grow in time (another thing I plan to do in the Summer).

I’ve been a student now for a few years and I’m quite used to being busier during my summers than my term time - going away to other countries, working to pay for those trips, and generally not having time to do nothing like I used to when I was at school.

This year will be a bit different, I’ve got no plans to go away anywhere abroad unfortunately, and I don’t have any long spells with nothing happening - that’s mainly to do with this being my last year as a student and starting a new job in August.

But I do wonder what other teachers, who are used to working 5 days a week in school and all the other hours outside, do to fill their days.

Personally I have to finish my dissertation, write another essay, then fit in an exam, an oral exam and presentation, a graduation, a graduation ball, a wedding, a caving trip (hopefully), a week or so up north walking, a week in Perthshire, a trip to Mull for the Regatta, and all the other things that will no doubt come up.

On top of that I might have to find a place to live, maybe buy things to furnish the new place, maybe buy a new car, and work out all the things that I should have prepared for my first year of teaching.

And in all of that I want to try and get a bit fitter, and learn a bit of French and improve my German somehow.

So with all of that I don’t think I’ll have much time left.