I'm going to @mediaAjax

There are times when I love working in the University sector: we benefit from flexible attitudes to working and CPD (sometimes! Depends on management, budgets etc.)

Today I got my ticket for @media Ajax November 19th — 20th, 2007 at The Church House Conference Centre, in Westminster, London SW1P 3NZ, UK.]: The @media Ajax conference brings together some of the leading figures in the field to explain how to best exploit this "magic", from concept and design through to the underlying code. — sounds great! … now just gotta get my classes covered on those days!

The student journey

Maybe not a typical student in HE (we hope they reach the "enlightenment" stage before the 1st year!) and unlikely to be from the UK, but a good story detailing the journey from a compulsory-education-slacker to an empowered, independent learner. Hopefully inspiring stuff for other students: http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/2007/05/graduate.html

I recently received a mail via Facebook from a former student who graduated a while ago and has since started to work at the BBC ... it's nice to hear that we made a difference (eventually?!) and/or that they're getting on well :-)

@media 2007

London's @media 2007 was last week. Good content as ever, oddly the venue had no public WiFi (as usual!) Emotional "goodbyes" from Molly Holzschlag and Joe Clark at the start and end, respectively, bumped-up the emotion (I'll miss their talks: they've both had an influence on my web development educational practices.)

I particularly liked it when the "Hot Topics" panel (chaired and hopefully podcasted & transcribed by Jeremy Keith) aired my question about the relevance of higher education to web dev. careers versus "self education", which seems to be the most common. An ex-university audience-member said that courses responded too slowly and were taught by arrogant, uninterested lecturers to reflect current practices! Happily a chap from Salford, IIRC, jumped-up to say that not all lecturers were disinterested in standards-based education — it was why he was there — but that he believed he was probably alone. I was sorry not to be brave enough to leap up and shout "You're not alone!" & then missed him as he left ... ah well, perhaps he'll appear on the attendees list at microformats.org??

Added: A useful set of summaries and links from AlastairC & technorati atmedia2007 tags...

Facebook

OK, so I'm late for the Facebook party but, in the words of Monty Python, I'm 37 ... I'm not old! ;-)

Most amusing thing so far (other than: where do people find the time?) is the following found on the YOU KNOW YOU'VE BEEN IN UNIVERSITY TOO LONG WHEN... group:

BEFORE I CAME TO UNIVERSITY, I WISH I HAD KNOWN...

That Psychology is really Biology, that Biology is really Chemistry, that Chemistry is really Physics and that Physics is really Maths.

;-) how true: A-levels don't prepare you for that!