Two days off this week (Mon and Wed). Conference Tuesday. That just leaves today and tomorrow to clear up.

I had been going to come in on Mon and Tue of next week but have decided to take leave instead and spend a little more time with my foreign relations.

So what was the 'bird of the day' thing I mentioned yesterday?

Well a colleague, R, was appalled at my lack of knowledge of birds when we went for our team Christmas meal the other day. She's taken it upon herself to email me a photo each day which I have to identify (I've got a little pocket book to help) and provide one interesting fact for. I managed to get the first one right more by luck than judgement, since then I can only say my results have been 'patchy'. Still, I am learning something - I just hope I can put it to use before I forget it. I just don't 'see' enough birds.

And with that, this blog is closing down until the New Year and January 5th when I'm back at work again. (This holiday contains the most days the university closes down for for several years - 8 days!) Unless of course, I'm inspired to logon over the Christmas break! :-)

The university annual learning and teaching conference today.

(The one I submitted a paper for I may have mentioned but they had too many contributions to include everything - and I was a day after the deadline thanks to illness etc).

The opening panel session where students were grilled for 45 minutes was interesting. But possibly not in the way intended. I felt for the students who got some pretty convulted and poorly expressed questions from the 200+ academics (and others) in attendance. On the other hand, they gave some pretty unclear answers as well. (Never mind revealing that none of them knew what the word 'values' meant).

In retrospect, were it my show I'd have appointed a properly neutral 'moderator' to field the questions and support the students. And I've have considered having either prepared questions or questions submitted during the session (on paper) or via phone text or twitter or some such and then 'vetted' for clarity before being passed onto the chair.

Then two sessions to attend - but with 6 options to choose from both times it was a nightmare of wanting to go to everything and feeling you'd not made the best choice after the session. Each session consisted of two papers/presenters or whatever. Both times I felt that I'd got much more out of the one I got be virtue of having chosen the session for the other option! But all four items I caught were interesting in their own way.

The highlight for me though was the keynote speech after lunch from an external speaker who'd traveled some way to be with us. He talked about 'troublesome knowledge' and the conceptual breakthroughs that students need to make to achieve understanding. Knowledge you can't 'return from'. (And having explained to my boss why I found having a laptop to take notes and with live internet useful during such sessions - rather than just taking pen and paper notes - it was fun to do as I'd suggested and find his PowerPoint slides from a previous iteration of the presentation on the web - meant I could annotate them directly and bypass the whole dead tree part of the process.) (Perhaps she finally got the larger point that my office isn't big enough to cope with even a tiny amount of paper!)

I probably should have gone home after the conference finished, but it seemed a fractionally early and besides I was looking forward to my 'bird of the day' so went back to the office to get some clearing up done.

Of the academics who is appointed to liaise with me for his department had his leaving 'do' this afternoon. I trundled over to the admin office where it was to be held only to arrive just as the fire alarms were being set off by one of the admin ladies making toast. Cue the whole building (staff, students, the works) out into the carpark in the rain.

I was moving outside along with three of the admin staff I vaguely knew. (Well one's a friend of my sister and recognized me from drinks, the other two have seen me about, but the office is so big and I'm never introduced to these ladies so I was right on the edge of recognizing them at all.) Anyway, thanks to the rain one of them suggests we sit her car which is welcome.

One of them was concerned for my reputation if was seen getting into a car with three attractive young ladies, which was sweet. I did point out when the dancing to the music on the radio started that such jiggling of the car and the windows steaming up weren't going to help the rumors!

Back at the leaving do, the good Doctor was sent on his way in fine style. A 'This is your life style' presentation from the department head I find the most approachable and would perhaps get on with best were to meet socially. I also discovered that the academic in question was four years younger than myself which was very scary given how much he felt very much my 'elder' and 'better'. His deep African voice will be much missed.

This morning we had one of our special training sessions that wasn't so much work related. It was a food themed one for Christmas with war (and post-war) rationing as the theme. It was quite surprising to learn how widespread rationing had been across the States and for how long. The assistant who put together the US government statistics also found some great photos.

But the food was good too. 'Mock apricot' cake (made from carrots and surprisingly like apricot if you had a good imagination), 'Mock crab' - a paste made from cheese and tomato and egg, a satsuma even.

You see this is why I hate this kind of stuff.

It's why I have so many doubts I should even be doing this job - certainly in no hurry to have more of it (i.e. via promotion).

I managed to seriously mislay very important paperwork that I was taking extra special care of. It's the notes I made in D's appraisal and I took it home at the weekend knowing Friday and Monday would be too hectic to write them up. I brought them back into work on Monday but was then in a team meeting all morning and off in the afternoon sorting out daughter and dentists.

Came to work on Tuesday fully intending to write up the notes with the bit of time I had free. But couldn't find them. Must have left them at home where I'd put them to be 'safe'.

That evening, yes, you've guessed it, can't find them anywhere. And spent some considerable time looking. Phone work at 9pm and asked the security folk to check a drawer where I thought they were (for safety again) but they reported no luck. Nearly drove round at 11pm (40 mile round trip) to check myself as I couldn't face getting to work next morning and not finding them.

Sanity/tiredness/depression prevailed and I did actually go to bed and attempted to sleep.

But you can guess what I was doing as soon as I arrived at work. Very stressed, really cross with myself, pain across my chest - the whole works. How on earth was I going to be able to go to D and say I've lost these 3 or 4 pages of notes which would be exceedingly hard to recreate after the fact. Wondering if I could do it at all without telling her. (I don't think I could have done - either physically or morally).

In fact, I managed to track them down in just five minutes in a really 'safe' place that I must have missed on Tuesday. The upside was that I was so relieved, the actual job of turning them into a proper document positively breezed past and by lunchtime they were ready for a proof read and handing over for signing.

Phew.

Thank goodness the team leadership reverts to S for his two years in the summer. Means I've got three years or so before I have to do that again. So now I'm not a fan of appraisals from either end.

Herding cats this morning.

It's one of our mega team meetings when we get the part time staff in and thrash through various issues. This time a plan for the coming year. (My appraisal required it).

Not quite three hours but we did spend the time usefully which was one of my fears.

PM off to deal with daughter and teeth.

Today's 'trial' is presenting a workshop over in a nearby center of excellence on teaching and learning in virtual worlds. Mainly one of the computing academics is leading the session (the other two can't make it) and I'm there in a support role really to tell stories of life in SL and to login and be a 'presence' with my laptop.

We had hoped to have a couple of people to chat too. But they couldn't make it. Rather than talk to myself as a demonstration, I happened to find that one of my old Second Life tutors was online and she graciously agreed to drop in for 10 minutes and tell us what she did in SL. Gorgeous jewellery and all (which I think I commented on when I was doing the online course).

Sesssion went well with some 20 staff turning up and lots of questions. I contributed more than I thought I might and my colleague was glad I could make it. (Which is a relief as I sometimes feel a bit of a spare part with my lack of skills in SL.)

Well, the appraisal went well enough. Bit short of a couple of hours thanks to the over run of a thursday morning staff training session (who knew business databases could be so funny?).

But that was the easy part. Now I've got to write it up. No time today with the an enquiry desk, Christmas buffet lunch, students and a googling workshop. Not to mention running the AV at a Christingle service this evening.

D's appraisal in an hour or so.

Definitely apprehensive about it. Not so much because I think the time will be 'difficult' but because it's not something you can practice to be good at. And I'd hate D to feel that the process was just the tick box exercise that appraisals can sometimes feel like.

Still, once we're done there's our team Christmas lunch to look forward to. :-)

Bother! These entries appear on the website with absolutely no hassle whatsover. But I don't seem to be able to adjust the date/time which is annoying. Even if I can edit on the web page subsequently that kind of defeats the whole point.

Irritatingly there's an option (on 'Advanced Post Options') that looks as if it would let you do what I want but it's all greyed out. Presumably this is the price of 'Freeware'. Not helped by the software not having been updated this year. But it might be worth dropping the author a line as otherwise it looks like exactly what I want.

Goodness! That was easy.

I've been looking for a way of doing blog entries 'off line' as it were. It might help me post more frequently if I could use my laptop to write posts whether or not I was connected to the internet and then post them when I was connected. Would have been brilliant last week at the conference when I actually was posting regularly but only had an internet connection periodically.

A colleague (who'd seen me struggling with this at the conference last week) has sent me a handful of links, one of which caught my eye and doesn't even need installing. w.bloggar

I can't believe how easy it was to create Wednesday's post without any hassle at all. But I'm trying it on my desktop with internet - next step is to do the same on my laptop. On the bus (i.e. no internet) and see what happens. But so far so good. Now let's see if I can mess with the date stamping...

Just finished the first (of a pair) of Google workshops. Now retitled 'The Google, the Bad and the Ugly' from Good Googling. Four people turned up - which isn't bad for these but does keep me questioning whether we should bother. Still, they seemed to like my (bad) attempt at a photoshopped movie poster along with the theme tune as an introduction. And the feedback was kind enough.

That was the lunchtime edition, tomorrow's early evening edition I'm getting my assistant D to run as I've been feeling a bit under the weather all week. Or is just stress at the prospect of having to do my first appraisal (of D) tomorrow morning?