Not a rip-roaring success

If the idea of a blog had grabbed the imagination of my technical students I think they might have reacted by now and they haven't but I see them again in three weeks time so who knows?

I think that I didn't have the time to introduce the idea properly. I was surprised when nobody in the room had any idea what a blog was. I thought perhaps a few would have heard of them. This means that I needed to invest much more time in explaining what it was all about. And this is an awkward area since they are there to improve their technical English simply to be able to follow manuals and procedures so if I stray from discussing different types of pliers (eg. needle-nosed or round-nosed) then they see everything else as irrelevant.

Not being there

On Friday I leave for a week long EU project meeting in Ireland and the week after that I am on holiday so there will now follow a period of inactivity.

I had hoped that the new EU e-learning call for proposals would be published by now so that I could go to Ireland with a concrete idea of what the possibilities were. But instead it looks as though we are in for the usual last minute panic to put something together before the application deadline which is, of course, strictly enforced. So I shall just have to talk with my possible partners in vague terms. A pity that this meeting won't allow me to make the most of the rare face-to-face opportunities we have.

You've got links

Or rather, I've got links, at last. Tried the furl option. I'm not happy with the way it looks but I don't know enough html to make it look nicer and after several attempts at guessing what to do, I have left it untidy. This is a great leap forward for me anyway, especially as I prepare to be away for two weeks.

I can't imagine getting students to do this though. I have had too many experiences where the technology looms larger than the intended task.