Someone please tell me what to write here!
This is worthy of a post in and of itself! http://www.midomi.com is a website that finds the tune you are humming but can’t remember the title of … I was wondering what the song was that the Korean’s were singing so excellently as referred to near the end of my earlier post (Halos won and lost 1 of 2) …
Well, I went across to midomi and hummed a few notes into my MacBook and voila!
And here’s a rendition from our very own Paul Potts 
There were a couple of firsts this week – some in work and some not so. The latter first…
Academic Standards Committee is a very serious place – which this time looked at the various Annual Monitoring Exercise (AME) Reports that come out of the 4 schools and a couple of the academic related departments – namely Quality and LIS – my department.
I’m very happy to report that once again, we received an excellent summary overview from the Deputy Vice Chancellor – and overall high confidence rating from our activity over the past year. Coming after a difficult year for all (restructures and not) is a credit to the excellent people involved in delivering our services. And I’m really very grateful to Michael Webb for his brain – and his usual high standard of assistance in the document preparation. We sit in a genuinely privileged position between the administration and the academic functions of the University – and our potential to act as an enabler and catalyst of success for the institution can not be over exaggerated. Robustness, partnership and innovation do and must continue to lie at the heart of all we are…
Another City Centre Core User Group – and the negotiations go on regarding the risks associated with the remediation of the land. The Value engineering exercise(s) never cease to amaze me – if its possible to do that bit for that amount, why was it the other amount in the first place However, at some point, we’re going to have to make some hard choices and we’ll then need to ascribe some tangible value to the principles we have for this excellent venture …
It was again an absolute privilege to attend a Governors / Academic Board Away Day – albeit only a half day – and, well, not exactly away (it was in the Board Room). That said, we had an excellent time once again looking at the vision and mission of the institution as we move forward. One of my colleagues was away – so it fell to me once again (I did object – but you can only object so much before you look a …) to do the feedback of my breakout group. A combination of passionate feelings in the area, and the fact that I wasn’t feeling at all well (having slept for no longer than an hour the night before) gave me cause to worry, but it went okay – I think (no P45 so far!).
BUT, I lost a halo here as I bought some sweets on the way to the meeting, and, as my astounding excellent colleague Lawrence Wilson will testify, I also ate some biscuits. This statement hides two facts. Firstly, not enough sleep can stop production of serotonin – which in turn, leads your body to crave sugar as a substitute (and fat loss regime therefore requires adequate sleep!); and secondly, “they” say that it’s a sensible leader who surrounds himself with people who have greater credibility and competences in their own specialist areas than he does. Well, that’s the case with Lawrence – I’ve rarely come across somebody who is so utterly good at what he does (Student Services) and I’m glad to have inherited such a nice colleague too!
Now then, days literally full of meetings lead to nights full of email and preparation – but that seems to be parr for the course – so suck it up, boy! The night following the event above was no different.
I had my first opportunity to present to our Learning and Teaching Committee the morning after – and I didn’t finish the email and get started until about midnight. I had lots of material prepared so it was just a question of putting it all together – but its funny how something can appear perfectly sensible and astute at 2am – yet can make you cringe internally when revealed during committee only 7 hours later! Again, I think it went very well and raised a lot of really interesting discussions and follow-up comments/actions. I really really – REALLY like LnT committee – its one of those key cogs of the organisation. My role is vice Chair – and I also Chair a sub-group that I created called the Learning Environment Group. The LEG brings lots of kindred spirits together from around the institutions (from academics to IT to estates to, well, whoever is relevant and interested) to move things forward. Oh yes, the presentation was around Student Engagement and my US experiences recently – please look at the Educause 2007 tag to see blog posts on the topic.
We ended what seemed to be a marathon week with a Caerleon Campus Development Group meeting – something established to look at the development of our Caerleon Campus as the new City Centre Campus comes online. Some excellent things are going to happen – and I’m very excited about the potential for LIS …
Outside of work, there was the usual round of meetings – though no teens club this week. I did however have the opportunity of speaking at the children’s’ carol service in the local retirement home on Saturday… I used the link to the news items about the Savoy closing down and the manager preparing a much better place – similar to comments in John 14 v 2 “I am going to prepare a place …”. Anyway, I also fell again big-time (see serotonin comment in the next “Halos won and lost” post) as you can safely say I ate more of those tea cake things (marshmallow covered in chocolate) than you could fit in a moderately sized bucket.
Well then, Halo 3 … finished it on Saturday. Now, I’ve played lots of computer games for lots of years –but never very seriously. In fact, I’ve never ever finished a computer game – not even nearly. I’ve only ever played for 10 minutes here and there for a bit of light relief/entertainment from whatever has been going on.
But I plodded on with Halo over a few evenings during the last fortnight on “easy” level, as the kids had bought a second hand copy from eBay for my birthday near the end of last month. I had wanted to know what all the hype was about – this game had made more in its first day than any movie in history (though it should be noted that watching a movie costs about an eighth of the cost of this game when it was released!).
Anyhow, the hype turned out to be just that in my opinion – just another shooter, albeit with good graphics. I did like how the voice hints seemed to come just when you needed them with a couple of frustrating exceptions and the odd irritating opening that didn’t appear until you’d wondered aimlessly for ages (or so it seemed). I did not like the bad language that appeared mainly in the early stages of the game – it didn’t add anything to it imo.
Surely they can get some technology in there to allow the user to choose profanity and gore settings? That way everybody could enjoy …
The end (apart from coming surprisingly soon), was a little anti-climatic. There was a never ending drive around exploding ground. This on its own was a little disappointing – no running, shooting, just driving. Then, after spending hours fighting to keep your hero character alive – he apparently dies in a huge explosion that takes out the enemy planet – and its completely beyond your control!
The cut scenes were often quite long and I never got the depth of the plot beyond “blow stuff up”. But the music was very atmospheric – especially since getting my sub-woofer down from the loft and hooking it up after moving!
In fairness, I’ve not played any other similar game beyond the very first stages as said above, so that says something about the game in itself – but I did feel slightly the victim of hype
Well, 10 minutes after finishing, I put it on eBay buy-it-now for a coupla quid more than I paid – and it sold almost instantly. You can sell ANYTHING on eBay this time of year, its NUTS. I would have kept it if Aaron were a little older – but its not the kind of thing I’d leave him to play with.
Right up to the moment… I was on security duty tonight – it was freezing! But there’s a Korean Church that meets at the Heath and I got to listen to them practicing for their Christmas Service next weekend. I stood for a time outside the hall door where they were and have rarely heard such beautiful and moving singing – what a funny thing, the cold just wasn’t any more.
Can you remember the PG Tips advert with the monkeys (no, wait to see where I’m going and get that thought out of your mind now – our Management Board is an excellent affair!) – but the commercials were very funny. There was one that had the monkeys sitting in a meeting and one said “This is supposed to be a Board meeting” and got the reply “Well, I’m bored!” – then “The interest rate’s gone up” – “not in here it hasn’t!” I have my own supply of PG Tips in my top drawer – which is different to the tea I have access to under the staff coffee club – which is different again to the tea I buy to give to my visitors! Wow, life is complicated – and that’s just the tea!
Anyway, Management Board – it was really quite exciting this month! We discussed a new vision for the University first of all (after all the normal formal “minutes/actions from last time” stuff). Newport is in a privileged position. We have a chance to continue doing something very special and fulfil a crucial role for our local community – as well as play a huge part in a changing national and international Higher Education sector. I am moved by (and its why I came here to work!) our current Missions which is To bring learning to the heart of our communities, responding to their needs, inspiring and enabling individuals from all backgrounds through excellence in higher education. So its genuinely fab to be involved in discussions about how we look at building on this as we go forward. We also looked at various other issues from the current smoking policy, to RAE preparations and an issue within my area – Safeguarding Young People and Vulnerable Adults Policy. Very useful meeting.
Now then, perhaps for some, the thought of attending an Academic Development and Planning Committee isn’t something that would normally evoke feelings of passion – but it can! Its a place where in many ways the future of a University is determined. This is because evidence suggests that the predominant factor in whether a student is satisfied and recommends a University – is the course (content and delivery). Therefore, the committee that looks at concept papers for new courses and discusses proposed incremental changes to current ones is paramount in importance! And it can even get amusing when one member of academic staff quite rightly points out some issues in another member’s concept paper, only to find just a few moments later that the exact same problem exists in her own
City Centre Campus Project Management Board is the formal project board for our new and inspirational development – comprising relevant people from the University, Governor representatives and of course, representation from the external consultants. One of latter in particular has (and it would inappropriate to mention his name) a comprehensive air of competence about him – to the degree that you feel you could trust him with any important aspect of your life and he just wouldn’t let you down in any respect! Whatever else he does in life, to have people think that way about you is a wonderful achievement in itself.
Diversity Panel is where some very interesting things happen, aimed at not just fulfilling legislation, but really looking at what we can do to change hearts and minds and remove barriers so as to get the best from everyone and genuinely help the capable to fulfil their potential! We’re looking at some interesting approaches to staff development at the moment, influenced by the spectacular Rachel Stubley from our School of Education – and getting things moving terrifically within LIS by Simon Philips. Now there’s a chap whose dedication and tenacity on these issues just makes me sit back in awe and wonder – I’m very fortunate to be able to work with such calibre!
And there was more besides but its Sunday and statistics indicate that nobody ever reads this far anyway so …
Oh, and two weeks to Christmas – and the Christmas talk season is upon us! I did one last week for a bunch of young people where I used two CDs with the words “HM Revenue – Everyones’ Data” written on them for effect – I then gave them to two of the lads who asked for them. Now of course, there’s a £20k reward out on them and I’m sure the lads thought they were genuine – so I’m expecting a knock on the door at anytime!
Okay then, here’s the last post of a very quick jaunt through the more interesting work highlights of the last two weeks – yes, two cos I missed last week (too pre-occupied with da blubber thing) …
Had a very captivating discussion with reps from the Students Union regarding their presence in the City Centre Campus and how we may be able to help with respect to related ventures – they are such a great bunch of people – the pres, Andrew Cargill (Cargi) and the others get up to SO MUCH! Check out http://www.newportunion.com/ to see info about The Port Factor (X-Factor on roids!) and of course, the famous Radio Noize, named after our VC … click on the link to listen in Realplayer –
http://www.newportunion.com/station_players/radio.ram
We also had an interesting meeting to try and crystallise aspects of the IT strategy for a building that won’t open for nearly 3 years and will have to be relevant for many years after that! Part of that exercise is looking at RFID and we had a couple of demos this week from some of the leading suppliers – but I don’t reckon anybody’s wands really work yet!
Two meetings were held looking at how we design the internal space of what is currently being referred to as the Plateau – a learning resources area that will contain, well, most things! We met with an internal designer and student reps and LIS staff separately …
Oh, I also had a meeting with the fantastic David Longman (Senior Lecturer in ICT in our School of Education) and we talked about so many fantastic ideas that we’re going to get together on – he’s a really inspirational chap!
Part of the above chat was in relation to a meeting that I also had this week with a Stuart Ball who is seconded to work for Microsoft – something quite exciting hopefully, but more on that if/when it comes to light.
We also worked on this year’s submission of the department’s Annual Monitoring Exercise for the department – and one of my colleagues, Michael Webb, was simply fantastic in the help he provided to get it out – TA, M, you’re a HERO!
Finally, also looked at the JD (job description) for the recruiting of a Professor of Learning and Teaching to head up our planned Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Now this is very VERY exciting indeed! Again, more on that if and when …
Check out the next post (or the previous one, I haven’t got a clue) for the blubba challenge update …
So anyway, 3rd post of the evening – a daunting record for me! And its going to concentrate on non-work stuff…
Firstly, a blubba update on the week. Good start – taking it easy in terms of working up the exercise and working down the intake. That’s not a cop out – you genuinely have to ramp things up/down at a sensible pace to avoid your body going into survival mode etc etc!
Lost a couple of pounds – which is a normal target but now as much as is possible in a normal “first week” if you really dropped the carbs etc. That’s because carbs hold water and period of carbohydrate reduction will see a dramatic initial weight reduction (not fat) due simply to the lack of presence of water holding carbs in the system. Having said all that, we went to friends for lunch and tea yesterday and today and, well, I had to be polite didn’t I ???!!!!
Today, “off-day” – did that well, 10/10
But if I’m going to be up at 6am pedalling, then I need to hit the hay!
Hmm, I never posted about the week prior to last (ie from Monday 19th November). It began with a really interesting e-learning benchmarking gathering to look at the outputs of a Higher Education Academy and JISC sponsored internal e-learning benchmarking exercise. Fascinating results that now need to be disseminated and acted upon in the most appropriate manner …
I chair something called the Information Strategy Panel – a Uni-wide committee that looks at most things “information”. It really is a genuine privilege to be a part of it –and I really love it! I remember that I began my first meeting (a year and a half ago) with a Power Point presentation of how I saw the committee going forward and had some Thunderbirds pictures – man, I was SOOOO tempted to also include the Thunderbirds theme tune but with hind sight, that may have been a leap too far at that stage in the game Anyway, the agenda currently has things on it like: committee papers online, electronic diaries, project management protocols, data protection policy, online telephone directories, electronic archiving, fundraising and CRM software, IT policies, University Timetabling, FOI, RAE and web information, HR systems, Registry, HESA etc. We’ve been joined by an excellent fellow called Mat Cooper – who is doing some great work on DP, FOI and other legal related matters.
Also had a meeting looking at cashless cards and the future of a single card approach for security, entry etc as we move to the City Centre Campus – all very interesting stuff! Thing is, don’t know how things like the Oyster card will take off to work as quasi-cash …
UK collaboration group met to look at elements of our partnership strategy – again, a joy to have been involved – we’re getting up to some great stuff and plan to do even more fantastic things in the future!
The Deans Forum is again, one of those meetings that it simply is a privilege to be a part of. Great people and Chaired by the wonderful Professor Anne Carlisle – who until recently was my line manager. She is one of those people that, by her very existence, gives weight to the argument FOR human cloning! (For the record though, I’m not a supporter of human (or any other) cloning!) …
Finally, also had the privilege of meeting with Jennie Sparks, one of our Heads of School – who is helping me out with contacts/info for an article I’m hoping to write soon. She again, is one of the jewels in Newport’s crown!
Oh yes, and of course, I turned 40 this week.
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