Toe right

After all this hi-faluting stuff about anti-matter and virtual reality, a more down-to-earth, not to say earthy, nugget of information. A year ago, I was assaulted in a monastery by a synthetic-filled duvet with a sheet tucked in underneath it. The result was a hideously swollen toe and nasty developments in the nail. My immensely sapient GP told me that I'd either been wearing football boots that had been too small for me or sleeping under heavy bedclothes, and reaching a conclusion was less difficult than one might imagine. The nail had been torn off below the waterline, so to speak, and would eventually come off. It would, he informed me, take a year for it to grow back properly.

I can now report that he was absolutely right. It takes a whole year from the time of the trauma for the nail on a great toe to grow back. And I bet you really needed to know that.

Exploring

I really didn't intend to blog much about Second Life, but have been sufficiently intrigued by my recent visits and what happened there to pursue the topic one more time. Wandering about the empty landscape of the Learn4Life island is ...well, frankly, boring. There's a limit to how much I can amuse myself without company in any life, real or virtual, and so far I've only encountered someone there twice. They were civil and helpful and behaved just as educators should.

But this is where I started thinking about the implications of using this environment educationally. I know there are rules about age restrictions in "mature" areas - but how do you ensure that everyone is honest about their age? Go to some of the more exotic locations and you're likely to meet people - and be invited to explore, to be someone's friend, to join them in a teleport to a location complete with furry rugs and log fire and objects which allow you to indulge in a variety of sexual fantasies with whoever happens to be around. I don't know how I'd feel if my teenage daughter, say, was sitting alone in her room having a virtual affair with a strange avatar. Would I dismiss it as part of the learning experience, as safe as reading Lady Chatterley's Lover? Or would I be concerned about the possibility of harassment, or of some crossover into the real world?

And I really don't know how I feel about this - it's not merely a rhetorical device to say so. But I do know that I find it insidious, personally; that the images have a disturbing tendency to recur in an obsessive manner; that I find myself noticing that someone (a real someone) is standing just the same way as some avatar I've seen. Maybe it's because of the visual element. Books don't have the same effect.

I'd welcome input, if anyone else cares to join in!

3:10 to a malt loaf?

A couple of weeks ago I had an amusing trawl through some childhood memories over a discussion of the current film 3:10 to Yuma. 50 years ago - oh, Lord - 50 years ago I was taken by my parents to see the original movie with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, and recalling this experience I wondered at the description of the new Russell Crowe version as a taut thriller. I had the memory that Glenn Ford spent the entire time handcuffed to a bed and that I spent the entire time wishing something would happen. At that age, like Polonius, I needed a jig or a tale of bawdry or I slept - or at least some action, and that was strangely lacking. Maybe I was too young to appreciate the tension, and I certainly felt no sympathy for the miserable-looking Van Heflin.

These recollections led the discussion on to another childhood memory: Youma bread. There was a brief moment of doubt about the spelling, but it's not the same as the filmic town and Googling the correct spelling brought up a discussion about this wee malt loaf here, if you're interested - that's where I found this picture. In its later incarnations it came wrapped in waxed paper - white, green, red, touch of yellow? - and was always very sticky and very dense. It tended to survive well in a rucksack or schoolbag, and cried out for some butter. Talking about it brought back the taste, the smell, the texture - and yet I cannot think how long it is since I ate any. It doesn't exist any more, and I doubt I'd buy it if it did, but it was one of the tastes of childhood.

Baffled of Dunoon

Over breakfast this morning (yes, I was late) I found myself listening to an extraordinarily mind-boggling conversation on Melvyn Bragg's programme. At first it was just background burbling, until this sentence hit me:

"There is something subtly different between matter and anti-matter, and that's what we're trying to find out."

And when I'd poured another cup of tea:

"There's an awful lot more out there .... Dark matter emitting spectral light ....Dark because it doesn't shine, but it has gravity, so it's stuff."

Stuff. What a pleasantly ordinary word. I love it when scientists speak like the rest of humanity. Like when one of them butted in with the information that "you can tell whether the stars are coming at you or going away from you." Oh, that's all right then. What a terrifying thought that they might be coming towards us. Then another voice came in:

"We need some further phenomenon that is going to explain all that we have."

And it was at this point that Melvyn Bragg - whom I admire immensely for his ability to chair a discussion such as this in such a way that he appears to follow it - suggested that God might be there somewhere. He didn't do it as baldly as that, but via Arthur Koestler, as befits a literary man. The scientists laughed agreeably. By this time they were on to quarks - the building blocks of all that we know. There are six in all, in three generations. By this time I was severely fuddled, losing the thread briefly as I clutched at the idea of "a kaon with a very strange quark"(I had to look up "kaon" to get the spelling; this is steam radio I'm dealing with), but they were back to anti-matter by the time I recovered. Apparently they have to keep anti-matter in magnetic bottles. Why? Because it destroys matter. You can't just whack it into a Thermos. But it has its uses - in a pet scanner, apparently. A touching vision of all this wonderful science being used to treat a poorly cat was soon dispelled. It's a PET scanner.

So yes, over breakfast I learned some new stuff. That quark isn't just cheese and that it's much easier to believe in God than in the scientific explanation of the universe. Perhaps that's why one scientist's remark stuck cheerily in my mind:

"Cosmologists tend to get quite biblical discussing this."

And well they might. Amen.

Small is ...

There is a tendency among Scottish Episcopalians to comfort themselves with the mantra 'Small is beautiful'. Most of us live lives of quiet desperation in decaying Victorian buildings with damp walls and leaking roofs which the congregation is too small to warm with the press of bodies on a Sunday. So we remind ourselves of the remark made by a now departed bishop that when Our Lord said that he would be in the midst 'when two or three were gathered together' he had in mind an optimum number, and reflect that nowadays if people put themselves through all this then at least they must be sincere. But is there more to church life in miniature than merely keeping warm and dry?

Well of course there is. The heart-stopping beauty of a summer evening Eucharist when the birdsong drifts on the air and there is a real sense that everyone present is as one; the waiting silence of a dark Advent afternoon ... these are things which keep us going. But there are also difficulties in belonging to such a small family. There's nowhere else to go, for a start, if family life becomes stressful - unless you're in a city, you have to drive for an hour to find another church. If someone leaves, or dies, or simply becomes disaffected and starts drifting, it leaves a huge gap. If the only tenor decides not to appear, there's no harmony, and if the organist takes a day off the CD player is a focus for girning. And if new people arrive - if - the effect can be disproportionately great, for good or bad. And that's only in the congregation - but presumably any congregation has to shake down with new clergy, so I'm not even going there.

And when you know that your days are numbered, financially, and that your diocese is proportionately tiny also, you start wondering. The discerning among you might notice that I've not mentioned God at all in all this. I have a feeling that this is par for the course. When people become obsessed with the mechanics of the worshipping community, God tends to take a back seat. And that's not a good thing. At all.

Anniversaries

Choir stalls
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

34 years ago today I was confirmed in the Cathedral of The Isles, Cumbrae, on my birthday. Today I celebrated my birthday and that anniversary in the same choir stalls where I sang Byrd's Mass for 3 voices at my confirmation. We sang Byrd's Mass for 4 voices at the morning Eucharist, and performed a historical sweep through the music of Scotland at our concert in the afternoon.

But, much though I enjoy the concerts we give ("we" being the St Maura Singers) it is in the liturgical singing of the Mass that I find the greatest reward - not just today, but always. This is especially true with a group such as ours, who know each other so well that barely any direction is needed and who can change tempo in response to an almost imperceptible eyebrow twitch. Add to that a mass setting which I first sang in 1968 and I find myself able to pray the liturgy as I sing it, with all the heightened experience that attends reality rather than performance.

I noticed something else which was adding to my experience today. I realised somewhere about the Sanctus that on this occasion I was freed by the singleness of purpose which being a chorister brings with it to enjoy and participate without distraction. I wasn't having to preach or to pray or to read - I had only to sing to the very best of my ability so that our music could be God's highway, free from obstruction. The music demands concentration and skill - but I was in my element. No worrying about comfort zones here, and no care about congregational politics. Just the freedom to worship and to create beauty.

Quite a birthday, then. I had a birthday cake specially baked for me - the first in years - and candles. And I remembered how, at my confirmation, when +Richard came all the way to Cumbrae just to confirm me, there were 28 candles in the church. At the time I thought it was just one of these Piskie miracles. Maybe I was right.

Flying high

Being someone's mother can be a real pain. Right now, thinking of Edublogger, Mrs E and Baby E travelling to New Zealand, I am acutely aware of how much of a pain. However, I'm relieved to see their plane heading serenely and on time over the Pacific, 238 miles from Los Angeles with just over 6,000 miles still to go. Thanks to Flight stats, a nifty site which reminds me of my own trip to NZ, I can follow their progress, know if they're going to land on time, know that they took off 6 minutes late. (On Emirates airlines, we followed the map of our progress all night over the Indian Ocean. Nightmare) I feel strangely reassured - but glad that I at least was not compelled to check the computer at 4am ...

On another tack entirely, I'm off to the Cathedral of the Isles again, to sing Scottish music from the time of James 4th to the present day with the St Maura Singers. This quartet has been on the go since 1968, though purists will be glad to hear that our current soprano is of the generation below ours. In fact, the combination of the quartet and the Cathedral is largely responsible for my being a Piskie - even for my being a Christian. God the Musician?

I like that idea.

Civilisation

I mustn't go on about Second Life, but feel I owe this post to the person I met the other evening - actually it was midnight - on the Learn4Life island. Previously I've wandered alone through the location's meeting rooms and cafe, but on this occasion this male figure was standing, clutching a torch, on the beach. I think it was a beach. Anyway, with a bit of help and some of the civilised discourse I would expect from a Scottish educator, I was able to teleport to Paris, circa 1900, and join him in a goblet of Absinth in a bar. Later, after he'd left and I was considering whether to log off and go to bed or to have a look for the Eiffel Tower, I was approached by a second man - well, it was a male avatar - and invited to sit and chat. More absinth. By this time in real life I'd be on the floor, but no, there I was perched decorously on a bar stool and conversing in three languages. (All in text - I haven't progressed to sound yet) We were joined by a third man who told me about the free parachute jumps from the Eiffel Tower. It was all very civilised and written in proper English rather than text-speak, so I felt quite at home - see last post for the contrast.

But I have a question for any Mac-using Second Lifers: I have problems already with sitting on seats - the ctrl/click produces the suitable gesture on the part of my avatar, but as often as not that's as far as it goes. And when I found the lift to the Eiffel Tower no amount of clicking on it would have any effect - though I know I was in the right place because I saw two Spanish-speaking chaps do the same and vanish skywards. Help needed, please - I'll get bored if I can't influence my environment.

To say nothing of the effects of too much absinth.

Threatened in Second Life?

The setting sun casts a lurid red path on the dark sea. Behind me are tall buildings, their windows unlit. The road ahead of me is empty, but to my left, through an archway, I can hear sounds - voices, a snatch of music, quiet tapping. Uncertainly, occasionally bumping into the wall beside me, I make my way towards the square between the buildings.

A strange collection of people is gathered there. A tall man dances in a circle, his long black tail describing figures of eight as he moves. He is watched by a long-haired figure squatting on the ground and a girl with an old-fashioned peg leg and heavy bondage leathers who is gyrating on her real leg and swinging her hair. Other, less grotesque figures move purposefully about or stand as if hanging in space. The sky is darkening, and the persistent tapping suddenly results in a printed message on the screen. "What the f... are you doing here?"

This is Second Life, and I am a newcomer. I was looking for the Learn4Life island, but having arrived too late to catch anyone there I've come exploring. I have assumed a cringeworthy name and fairly grotesque appearance, and right now I'm not moving in the hope that no-one will notice me - or at least realise that I'm online. I feel as threatened as I would if this were a real environment, and I feel ridiculous. What is interesting, though hardly surprising, is that no-one is actually doing anything very interesting. The conversation, if that's what you can call the sudden outbursts of profanity and text-speak gibberish on the screen, is banal and repetitive. Some of the protagonists obviously don't speak English as a first language, but no-one is really saying much anyway. Every so often, someone turns and looks at me. One man seems to put his hand round me - then through me. It is strangely disconcerting. I find the relevant menu and tell him to get lost.

A voice is gibbering like a chipmunk as I hit teleport and head off. I'll certainly be back, but I'm beginning to wonder where the educational possibilities actually lie in this - unless we somehow persuade avatars to have meaningful chats about symbolism in between changing their appearance. Most of the action I've seen so far is as tedious as the real lives in which it is rooted. Feel free to enlighten me - but I'm not sharing my Second Life name with you!

Heirlooms and avatars

Coffee Table 1
Originally uploaded by Mac44.

I've just spent the evening admiring our new coffee table. Well, no - I admit I watched some telly as well, but kept glancing back at our latest acquisition, which we bought last week in the Craft House Gallery, The Hirsel Country Park, Coldstream. It's the work of a Borders craftsman, Ian Hunter, and it's made from a single piece of elm burr. We weren't looking to buy anything - but when we saw it it took us all of five minutes to decide that a totally unique piece of furniture would be exciting.

On another tack entirely, I was seduced by this post of Edublogger's into signing up for Second Life. As an attempt to meet up with anyone I knew it was a total failure - I think I took too long finding out how to get from one place to another, and arrived in an empty complex 90 minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin. I may find out some day what went on - but in the meantime will need to resist with considerable ferocity the temptation to waste any more time in a parallel universe.

Suddenly a table made with an ancient piece of wood seems very, very real.

Biting the bullet

When I was teaching, I rarely used any prompt other than the text we were studying. Yes, I'd annotate poems, short stories, drama, and I'd stick markers in novels to remind me where important events happened or there was an example of some feature I wanted to highlight, but that was as far as it went. If I was doing something particularly intricate with a Higher class, then I might have some notes scribbled in a jotter to which I'd refer to check I wasn't missing anything, or to ensure that the class weren't confused by poor sequencing on my part, but on the whole I preferred to go where the class and the text would lead me.

Not so with preaching. Until today, when I've had to deliver a sermon I've written out the whole thing verbatim, and read it. Because I'm used to public speaking, I was able to look at the congregation fairly convincingly, but I always felt shackled - and as a result felt the whole thing had been a bit stilted. I did this, obviously, because I didn't feel sufficiently confident in this role - and perhaps also because my audience was always completely silent and apparently attentive. Maybe I always relied on the interaction with the class to make me a good teacher - I certainly valued it and would challenge the passive class to say something, even if it seemed out of place.

Today, however, I managed to move a step closer to my goal. I preached a sermon from a page of bullet points - and I found myself enjoying it. I was able to enlarge on ideas using images which came into my head as I spoke, and I was rewarded by the smiles - and even the nods - of people in the congregation. The theology was simple to the point of being simplistic - but no-one seemed to mind. I shall keep on with the study - but I shall not go back to the written sermon. Cheers!

Stately or what?

Just a glimpse of our rather splendid bed head - part of a wonderful tower room complete with impressively gothic door and window. Happily the bed is not gothic and we slept in luxurious comfort. Great!

Pastures new

Visiting friends in the Borders, I'm struck this morning by how different it feels not to see the sea when I waken. The view from the front window - which in the room I'm in is through a round, four-part window set in a Virginia Creeper-clad tower, is predominantly green - trees still not autumnal, grass neatly trimmed, pale grey/blue sky. Later, I shall moblog a picture of this room, for it is truly amazing. I've managed to pick up a few pics and comments on the Scottish Learning Festival, but using a PC throws me something awful and I can't access some of my links because they won't appear on my sidebar for me.

I am also unable to finish either of my Scrabulous games on Facebook, because it will only load a blank board and no tiles. I guess it uses an app which this computer doesn't have. Is it truly sad, to be so addicted? Please don't anwer that - it's a purely rhetorical question. Besides, I'm off out for the day. Much healthier!

Out of the frying pan?

Having escaped from the horrors of the new Dunoon Grammar School, we found ourselves this evening rehearsing in the building which is possibly one of the best small concert halls in the West of Scotland - Kirn Church Centre. We felt better, we sang better, we sounded better. And yet we discover that this building too is about to disappear, thanks to dry rot, high maintenance costs and dwindling numbers of people prepared to spend the necessary cash on such places. We could feel jinxed - but no. We'll just hope the weather treats the building kindly so that we are not ejected prematurely.

And now I'm off again for a few days - missing this year's
Teach Meet
by an oversight. I hope it goes well, and that there will be interesting blogging to catch up on. To anyone who feels it's my turn to buy them a drink - it'll have to wait till next time!

Abigwoffeldoon....

This photo, originally sent to me by Duffy while I queued at Passport Control in Stansted Airport, shows the final moments of my last classroom in Dunoon Grammar School. if you look very, very carefully you may see a scrap or two of the yellow paint I chose to brighten up a north-facing room - a colour scheme which the painters loathed because they were sick of it by the time they'd done, but which the classes loved because it made them feel cheery in the middle of winter. The business end of the big digger thingy is resting where my bookcase sat. Quite moving, really ...

And because the old school (well - this bit went up in the last 25 years) is being demolished, our choir is moving too. After last week's horrendous practice in the new school building, with the sound of the pipes vying with our attempts to sing in tune even as we succumbed to various allergies, we've found another venue for our rehearsals. Apparently we may have to move on from there too, as the building has dry rot and other horrors, but for the meantime we're content.

I just hope that some of my teaching was less flimsy than my room.

I hope some of you get the literary allusion in the title of this post. Do tell me!

Teaching skills:taught or caught?

Yesterday, as Mr B and I drove across the country, sat on the ferry (4 times) and drove to Largs and back, we talked about teaching. Sad, isn't it - you'd think we might have given up on that sort of thing, but there you are. We were examining the skills that can be taught as opposed to inherent skills - and we were thinking about the skills of teaching.

All too often I've had my suggestions for effective management and teaching brushed aside with the comment: "Ah, but that's you. Other people/I/he can't do that - will never be able to do that."

And for a while I accepted this - after all, it's slightly smug-making, and besides, I had a job to do. But revisiting the subject I'm inclined to think there's stuff that could be taught at college, and ways of showing potential teachers how to make their own lives easier.

What matters most in a teaching day? I'd suggest that it's how you feel at the start of each new period. Are you looking forward to this class because you know you and they are going to have a good time together? Or have you a sinking feeling because this is the class from hell and you know that in an hour you're going to feel you do a really stupid job and you have achieved nothing and the kids hate you and you hate them?

If the latter, and if this recurs day in, day out, year in, year out then your life is hell and you're probably in the wrong job - but how do you redress this? Or, better still, what strategies would have helped you from the start? I'd suggest that the key lies in how you relate to your friends, to people you meet socially, to people whose path crosses yours. I'm talking here about your adult contacts, your peers. Think about how you behave with people you like. Then compare that with how you behave to the average class. Are you the same person? Or do you assume a persona which you cast off the moment the bell rings at 4 o'clock?

When I returned to teaching after an 8-year break for child rearing the main difference I noticed in myself was that the person in the classroom was the same person who went home to my kids. I no longer put on any persona - certainly something I had done in my first couple of jobs. And the pupils responded in such a way that suddenly everything seemed easier. As time went on, I realised also that I'd stopped worrying about status, about making mistakes, about admitting to a mistake or a lack of omniscience. I was able to take real pleasure in having a pupil suggest something I'd not thought of - and we celebrated these moments. Often I'd find myself in tucks of laughter at something a pupil had said, so that we could all have a good belly-laugh together.

So how would I teach this to aspiring teachers? I'd suggest they look at their interaction with friends, and then with pupils, and aim to make them the same. They need to enjoy the company of their pupils just as they do the other people with whom they come into contact. And they need to learn how to show that enjoyment without ever losing sight of the nature of the pupil/teacher relationship. That last, of course, becomes much easier with age - but I still think it can be learned at an early stage.

And if you're the kind of person who finds it hard to walk into a party and start socialising? Well, you've a harder row to hoe, but there is a final ace to play. Whether you're naturally gregarious or not, you have to have a passion for your subject. If you don't think it's the most important and wonderful subject in the curriculum, how're you going to teach it with any conviction at all? And maybe that's something you can't be taught. But if you're not passionate about the stuff you'll be teaching for the next x years, then maybe - just maybe - you're in the wrong job. And God help your poor, bored pupils.

Late hols, anyone?

This rather miserable little image is partly the result of my not being chez moi - don't like to fiddle too much with a strange Mac to get what I want. However, the book I've just finished reading, Late Season by Christobel Kent, was just what I wanted for a holiday read. This is the second book I've recently read by this author, the other being "The Summer House". Both are set in Tuscany, and both show a dark side of the backdrop to a thousand holidays.

Kent uses an obvious but nonetheless successful technique in both novels - and perhaps in others. Each follows two stories - one of incomers to the region, one of the residents who observe them. This allows for the two viewpoints to develop, increasing our interest as we wait to learn how the characters will eventually interact. She uses the device of flashback to flesh out the characters, and in "Late Season" a certain suspension of disbelief is asked of the reader as the denouement reveals convoluted relationships. But the end-of-season sadness, present even as the sun shines, is beautifully captured, the details of life in a holiday house real and compelling, and the tensions among a group of friends, one of whom is dead a year before the story opens, subtly developed.

Kent writes well and tells a good tale. The result is an above-average holiday read. All right, all right - I know you're all back at work!

Ignorance isn't bliss

I had one of these moments today when you don't know whether to be insufferably smug or deeply despairing. I settled for a bit of both and a curmudgeonly blog post. The occasion of this dilemma was a text from one of my former pupils, currently on placement in a school - not in Argyll - whose name is distinguished by having in it 2 ws, 2 ls and two os. You know who you are ...

Anyway, my FP was in heated debate with some English teachers who don't know their subjects from their objects and were about to mark as an error a sentence in a pupil's essay which read something like "Come to the park with Rachel and me." They apparently agreed it should be "Rachel and I". My FP, undaunted but requiring support, texted for confirmation that he was correct in shrieking at them that the pupil was correct. In a subsequent phone conversation, he reported that he had repeated my rule of thumb about removing the other person in the sentence - a rule devised for those for whom grammar is a mystery, and one which works a treat every time. He was recalling this from at least S2, if not S1, for that was when I'd spend at least a period on testing and teaching this point. I used to tell the pupils that they could have fun spotting all the people who habitually got it wrong - including, I would say, those who should know better.

And I would argue that English teachers fall into that category. Not only should they know this simple rule of thumb; they should know the grammar behind it. Dammit, if English teachers don't know about subjects and objects, and have at least a passing acquaintance with verbs and prepositions, what are they doing in the job? We may never have to teach parsing and analysis to a class of 10 year olds (for I was 10 when I reached my peak) but if we don't know what underpins our language then I believe we're failing our pupils and the next generation will have to rely on foreign linguists to make up the deficiencies.

Apparently his temporary colleagues were not well pleased to be told off by a student. He tells me they went off to look up a book in the hope of somehow proving him wrong. Good. They may yet have learned something.

Travel Lodge classroom?

Paid my first visit to the new Dunoon Grammar School last night. Choir practice night. We've had one rehearsal so far this term, but we had that one in Holy Trinity church - an airy space, to put it politely, with a great acoustic and only the twilight birds to disturb us. The school music department ticks none of these boxes. The moment the automatic doors opened to admit us, before we'd even spoken to the polite (and new) security guard, we knew we were doomed.

DGS is a piping school. It has a proud tradition of excellence in piping, and like every excellent band they rehearse. They were rehearsing last night. This never used to matter, as they practised in another building on the school site. Now they're in with the rest of music. What would a sensible school designer do? Do I hear a small voice muttering about soundproofing? Whoever put this one-size-fits all building together obviously paid no heed to the voice of the former PT Music (who happens to be Mr B) when he raised the need for soundproofing in the department, and the pipes sounded out loud and clear no matter how many doors we closed.

Because the piping tutor is a seriously decent spud, a compromise was reached. We shut ourselves in the room with the grand piano and got on with it, trying to ignore the now more distant pipes (remember that poem about the pipes at Lucknow?) But we couldn't ignore the glaring lights bouncing off the white walls, the fitted carpet which deadened every note we sang, the heat and the claustrophobia-inducing low ceiling. The room was at least half the size of the one we had used previously (now demolished) and the whole experience was stressful and unsatisfying.

So what makes a good classroom? I know music rooms have their own peculiar needs, and I know too that at least one former colleague is enjoying her modern languages classroom (though I suspect this has much to do with the fact that it faces north and she no longer has to fry in the heat of her old, south-facing room). But if I were still teaching, I'd be looking for an airy space with controllable heating, adequate windows which I could open, glare-free lighting as close to natural light as possible and a walk-in cupboard to reduce the sensation of clutter brought about by open shelving. Oh, and I'd prefer not to have unpainted MDF fitted furnishings, and I'd like sufficient space to change the layout of the room to suit the occasion. I'd also like a slight resonance to make my job easier, and rely on good classroom management to avoid undue pupil noise, rather than the acousti-booth effect.

Did I notice anything I liked? Yes. There were loads of power points as well as equipment for Powerpoint or similar presentations. I just hope they have the computers to plug into them. But we're looking for somewhere else to hold choir practice in.

Skype babe

Skype babe 2
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Now this is what all grandmothers need - especially if they live on the other side of the country from the object of their affections. As befits the daughter of Edublogger, Catriona has made an early foray into the world of VOIP, appearing on her father's webcam this weekend. Now I'll have to get one - can't have her staring at a blank screen - or was it the same pic that I was seeing? - while she talks to me!

But isn't Skype wonderful? And aren't computers just the bizz? So this post is for all the saddoes out there who think people don't interact if they're stuck in front of computers. I said I'd never quote the Blessed Margaret again, but I'm going to after all:

Only rejoice!