The publisher Thieme Meulenhoff invited all (former) writers to visit their 'boekenbal'. To be perfectly honest it was not all that exciting. It was a clear reminder how important writers are for a publisher of educational materials. It was also a reminder of the fact that a lot of the writers are a little old.



To give you an idea: do visit the photogallery. And don't bother looking for me on any of the photographs, I had a quick look...

Almost a year ago I bought a cheap and simple lomo action sampler camera. It is not an original, but I wanted to try it out. Sadly, a number of photographs didn't make it to the print stage. Two of my better products are visible here. No there is nothing digital about these photographs ;-)



For more information on lomography visit www.lomography.com. As a geographer I was especially interested in the world browser. It is a collection of photographs depicting what people see as their surroundings, these images are not selected on the basis of economy, power or prejudice. On the other hand, they are not intended to be representative either. So see what people want to share as their world, their pride but also their worry's.

As a pair of true Geographers we took the scenic route through Glasgow and visited Karien's specialty: neighbourhoods in decline which are being restructured. I had visited the Gorbals before but this time we had more time to wander about and let it sink in.

But don't you dare think that Glasgow is just about grey neighbourhoods... There is a lot more and there are a lot of initiatives to get the community involved in all sorts of projects. However, Glasgow is still a city with a large portion of the population relying on semi-skilled jobs and these are the jobs that are less and less available.

While I was in Glasgow I visited the eLISU team at Glasgow Caledonian University. Mary Cuttle was most helpful and we had a very interesting discussion on how Blackboard has taken hold at their university. We discussed the problems of the VLE being used as a photocopier, a non-disruptive tool in teaching. Is this a bad thing? On the one hand it allows a speedy broad acceptance of the tool. Mary felt that on the downside teachers feel they are already doing e-learning, simply because they are using Blackboard...

I was interested to hear the ideas they were starting up to encourage the use of blogs and wikis in education. They are involved in video projects. So anybody who is free 5th till 7th of July, do visit their conference.

They granted me a quick peek at PLATO, a system not detecting plaguerism, but educating students on what plaguerism is. Especially the interactive exercises seemed a great idea. Is this not something SURF s... more

We just spent a great weekend in Glasgow. I really enjoyed coming back, and this time we even had some time to see the sights and some of the neighbourhoods. Of course we did a lot of travelling on the subway, where we kept on running in to this very apt advert.

I took the opportunity to visit the eLISU team at the Calendonian University, but I will tell more about that in the next installment. We also walked around the Gorbals and Ibrox, especially in heavy drizzle that can be quite disheartening. More about that later too.

But we ate some excellent food, stayed in a simple but very welcoming B&B (the Hillhead), visited the Mackintosh house for an art lover (a little too dark for my taste) and enjoyed Glasgow nightlife (although we are not that young anymore...).

As a parting gift, I received a book token from the WebCT support staff members at Utrecht University. It seems like ages ago already.

Today I decided what to spend this book token on: The book (yes paper, not e-book) On Education, written by Harry Brighouse. It addresses the questions which underly my daily work: What is education for? Should it produce workers or future citizens? Should we be teaching our children certain values, or just the tools to allow them to adopt the values of their choice? I have not read it yet, I still have some other books to read first, but I am very intrigued.

This fits in very nicely with a suggestion made by the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA): Housewives should pay back the student grant they borrowed to pay for their studies...
more

Morris is fine as pastime, but we thought we would try something different. So five of us zoomed off to Wynbunbury (look that up on the map) and we received an excellent crash course rapper dancing from to great instructors from the Stockton Morris men.

It was excellent and I hope we can keep this up. After a lot of practice I hope we will be able to perform some day in the future in the Netherlands (the UK is still a long way to go ;-)

For anybody who is wondering what on earth rapper dancing is visit this website.

Last week was a special training night at rugby. Eric and I were presented with our diplomas. In fact it was such a big event somebody even bothered to take some photographs ;-)

Only yesterday I was charmed by a remark one of my kids made. She is only nine years old and we were trying to explain how a play is written down. She spent a while listening and then came to the following conclusion:

'Oh, it is like writing in MSN without the smilies...'

This just goes to show that the world is changing rapidly and the older and the newer generations are really growing up using different tools and references. The speed of change became apparent when she tried to save a Word document later that day. I explained she had to click the floppy disk icon. She looked at me blankly and then I realised even floppy disks are no longer part of her world...

It is such a contrast when comparing it to a suggestion an older colleague made only a few weeks ago. When discussing the implementation of ICT in education, he suggested testing teachers for a digital driver's license... I wonder how long this will still be an issue.

Yesterday evening I visited a concert with one of the classics of Dutch pop: Frank Boeijen. The tickets where a birthday present and I must say, it was very nice present indeed.

I had never seen Frank live before and I was quite impressed. He still has his so typical voice and introvert style. Mathilde Santing accompanied him and she contributed her more extrovert style and out-up-front voice. All in all definitely worth while.