Thursday, August 17, 2006

Submarine surfacing

I just had a look at Nick Dymond's blog and noticed he had posted something about his summer reading. Have a look. It reminded me of my own neglected blog. To be truthful there's not much going on here. We are working on polishing up the new modules for next term and generally getting ready for the start of business. The summer has been uneventful for me--rather as I had hoped--a month of it spent in Canada. I am getting excited about the start of 'school'. For some reason I have always been boyishly enthusiastic about the beginning of the academic year. Which is why with a relatively short diversion I went from being a student to being a teacher--they're rather the same thing in many ways.

4 comments:

Pip Leighton said...

Hi David and welcome back.

I always enjoy reading Nick's blog and it normally spurs me to respond in some way. I'm just too lazy to initiate my own!

As you will be aware I am now living in NY! The concrete jungle rather than the real one but there are great book shops.

Did we all pass our first year? And any confirmed "scores on the doors" for last year's efforts?

I'm also off to Canada (in September) - Ottawa and also to see my sister in Toronto.

Speak soon and maybe even on Skype as I have now registered,

Pip

Nick Dymond said...

I also had every intention of using my blog a great deal more but failed to motivate myself.
That's the trouble with blogs. You start out with good intentions but when it comes to actually doing something about it, you inevitably fail.
I was talking with Steven Warburton and Fitri Mohamad about this very subject a couple of weeks ago. I suggested that, as a way to provide the motivation required, perhaps there should be a mandatory element of the course where individuals published something on their blogs.

David J. Betz said...

Hi Pip and Nick,
I did not recall that you'd moved to NY. I've a close friend who has just left there. He was a desk officer for Iraq in the UN but has now moved on to Vienna to head security for the IAEA. Yes, I believe that everyone passed the first year. Grades need to be confirmed by the exam board but, yes, I know what they are. Call me on Skype. You can find me easily, just search for David Betz.

Nick, we've got to do a bit of a rethink about blogs. Perhaps something mandatory is in order. In general I wouold like to see people making more use of some of the facilitiese available on the Web. For example, wikis are a very useful collaborative tool. There are onlnine mind-maps and other things too. Many people already use Wikipedia so they're familiar with the idea.

Nick Dymond said...

What's a Wiki then? I am familiar with Wikipedia but are Wikis similar things hosted elsewhere where individuals can edit the ideas of others?

Sounds interesting.

Got to sort out my bloglines thing. For some reason all of my preferred blogs, less yours and the 'WIMW Politburo', have been deleted.