Thursday 13 January 2011

Sick Note

So this is my first blog . . . And it feels a bit strange . . .

Background: I am a teacher.  English of many different varieties (Lang. Lit. ESOL / EFL).  I teach in Oxford at the College of Further Education.  I'm also a teacher trainer and I am about to start teaching on a new University Diploma in ILT and we are asking the teachers on the course to record their professional development & reflections on a blog.  There have been some reservations about the idea of "going public", so I thought the least I could do was take part in the same way as all the others.

So this is me.  Going "public".  I suppose I should have a sort of mission statement about what I hope to get from this experiment . . . although I'm not exactly sure yet. Certainly, being able to discuss the technical ins and outs with t.he rest of the course is the main idea at the moment . . . but I do hope that in some sense this will be the tiny acorn from which a great oak of some description springs forth.

Why "sick note"?  Why indeed . . .

Earlier this week, I had my second and third days off sick in 8 years of working at the college.   A murderously bad flu.  So I found myself at home on a Monday (but not on holiday) for maybe the first time in my life and thought it might just be the ideal time to do some low impact work.  I've had a word document with various weblinks & thoughts relating to ILT / multimedia & general use of IT to enhance learning for several years now.  And I add to it at least once a week - often more frequently than that & occasionally a little less frequently.  But its always there.  Being added to.  But never actually used.  I tell myself at work that I must make time to reflect & explore and it's terrible lying to yourself so I though this week - off sick - not at work, but not on holiday - it was time to stop adding to the list and time to start reading it.  Time to join the dots - or at least the disparate array of links and half-thoughts - into something that makes sense.

So this is me.  Starting small . . . armed only with a blog and good thoughts . . . with no particular direction home . . . and certainly in blogworld (for now at least) a complete unknown (with no followers) . . . and surely destined to be . . . like a rolling stone?

So when the ILT Diploma course gets up and running proper and I am forced to be a bit more serious . . . and actually set some vaguely 'SMART(!)' targets & remember this was all inspired by a day off sick and the idea of doing things . . . differently . . . I can rest easy with the fact that my first blog concluded with a bit of Bob Dylan . . . and (stretching things a little now) hope that my "going electric" will be every bit as enjoyable as Bob's . . .  . . . Hmmm - maybe I CAN do 'SMART' targets after all . . . . .

Signing off blog#1 now with a link to someone else who advocates (if not 'going electric') then definitely doing things differently . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=youtube_gdata_player

4 comments:

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  2. Being sick is normally an excuse to watch 'To buy or not to buy' in my experience. Very cunning of you use it as a platform for ILT exploration. 'To boldly go where no sick note has gone before', to paraphrase Kirk and his team.
    Nice to end on some Bob Dylan. My only musical contribution would be to add a link to the man who inspired him, Woody Guthrie:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfq5b1bppJQ

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  3. Your blog page looks really good well done, hopefully I will get use to using it soon.

    Yvonne

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  4. Hi John, it looks like you have made a very good start in no way small, I am very impressed! It sounds like your sick day was very productive!

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