Seb Schmoller

Seb Schmoller

Live blogging at Uni of Greenwich at Med

Live blogging at Uni of Greenwich at Medway

Made me smile

Inside Time - The Newspaper For Prisoners & Families via kwout

Philosophy

Etienne Wenger: "Learning is a social journey as well as a cognitive process in that it involves our whole being. By transforming our ability to participate in the world, it is a transformation of our identity."

Arsene Wenger: "I didn't see it but I think the referee was wrong"

Live blogging @ ELT2

Live blogging @ ELT2

Thought for the day............

Watch this

Turn up the volume and watch this. Watch it a few times and send the link to your friends. It's Tony Hirst's call to arms and it's brilliant. Then go out and do stuff....

A future

(Click on the image to see full size)

Next week

Big gig a go-go next week! Monday I'm visiting another prison - I suppose I'm pushing my luck and eventually they might decide to keep me but this time it's my "local" in Maidstone. Tuesday is the final SLN eLearning team event, ELT2, so we're topping and tailing the arrangements for that - anyone who can do Brighton should book, still a couple of places left. On Wednesday I'm lucky enough to have been invited to a small but important conference on offender learning. Experts from Germany and Sweden will be there with senior folk from HM Prison Service.

It might seem strange to be excited by this stuff but I don't get out much :-)

Imaginary friends

FriendFeed - Imaginary Friends via kwout

Wonderful - a technology for creating imaginary friends!

DSC00037

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Explore@Bristol

Explore@Bristol

Anniversary

Just spotted that tomorrow is this blog's birthday! The first post was on 27th May, 2005. How's about that then?

From the BBC homepage

BBC - Homepage via kwout

SociaLearn

I bet loads of folk who read this blog can offer something............

This looks interesting

kwout | my kwout via kwout

Seesmic

I've joined Seesmic - video-twittering (maybe?) You'll see a widget on the right which takes you to my first Seesmic effort. I think the technology is great and I can certainly see how I might use it but what is really, but really cool is that each first effort gets a reply from a real person who is talking to the "first poster".

Who said that the web would get rid of service???

I'm off to give it another go!

This is how the world should work

This is how the world should work - click on the image to read the sign :-)

Brains

Loving this advert!

82, 000 and (no) change

Offenders have severe learning and skills needs: half of offenders in custody have no qualifications and almost 40 per cent have a reading age beneath that expected of a competent 11 year old. Addressing this is challenging as offenders are likely to have negative experiences of education in the past – almost half of offenders were excluded from school.

Meeting Needs? The Offenders learning and skills service - National Audit Office report (March, 2008)

The report goes on to suggest that the £110 m/annum spent on the Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) is not delivering "to the level of which the service is capable" (NAO, 2008).

According to Debra Baldwin, Head of Prisoner Skills & Employment for NOMS nearly 70% of offenders have never been employed and if a parent is an offender a child has a better than 50% chance of ending up in gaol.

70% of convicted felons have two or more recognisable mental disorders

60% misused drugs and/or alcohol

32% were homeless prior to conviction.

Offender learning is a very seductive drug, most who come in contact with it become addicted for all sorts of reasons not least because it's "the right thing to do" and, like all junkies we think we can kick the habit when we want but I think we need to wise up.

The prison system in this country is actually serving as a final destination for those poorly served by compulsory education; 50% of those in prison were excluded from school, 30% were regularly truanting from school. Of course this raises another issue - should the school system be the place where those with mental illnesses can be diagnosed? And if it is what services have we in place to support people? But there can be little doubt that the current policy of building "Titan" prisons; prisons built to accommodate increasing numbers of offenders, won't deal with the real issues - in the UK today we wait until those who can't deal with modern society offend and then lock them away. And that's simply not working.

Reader's

Reader's
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

I go past this building on the way to East Malling (of train station fame). the product is famous the world over and it all started at this little place in Teston, not far from where I live. Click on the image to see it biggerer.

Teenagers and embarrasing ailments

I thought that might generate interest!

Health care in Spain will now extend to offering a service for teenagers in Second Life. They are able to use an anonymous service to discuss health issues.

"This is a way to talk about their doubts about taking drugs or sexual relations which they cannot do in a traditional consultation."

Check out the Guardian story, hat-tip to JW for spotting it.

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Croydon

Croydon

I'm on the train

I'm on the train

Quick post - already Twittered this

A view of what OU study means to a particular student - http://is.gd/dcg.

BTW

It's now possible to rate OpenLearn units and the SLN project is reaching its end. If anyone found "Working Online" useful or interesting or that it cleaned whiter than white and got all the stains out please hit the link and rate the unit. You know it makes sense :-)

Revolting

The citizens of Blunogville have once again become uppity. If time allows please click on the link to visit this peaceful idyll and do it daily :-)

"...to encourage people to holiday in Britain"???

Judge for yourselves

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Conference

I'm at a two day conference at Walton Hall. Doug Clow's blog gives a flavour of some of the content. More later

Hauptverwaltung

Hauptverwaltung

RIP Humph

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Jazz legend Lyttelton dies at 86

Hump has gone. For those who aren't familiar with his work he was a jazz trumpeter and he chaired a comedy programme on radio from 1972 to his death. The programme, "I'm sorry I haven't a clue", was very simple and very funny and famously the home of "Mornington Crescent".

If you've not heard it try and find a way to listen to the edition being broadcast at 12:00 (BST) on Sunday, 27/04

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On the tube

Rotated image so that you wouldn't need to sit sideways to read it

Charabancs anyone?

Sign
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Larry Lessig - Law is stifling creativity

Baaa!

Flickr have improved their service so that sheep coverage can be enhanced. This video was taken outside my house.

nooooooo!

Laptop has died. I've rushed it over to a blokey in Ashford but it's not looking good. Being rubbish at these things I've not got a backup and I can only hope that the data on the disk is still readable as it has photos of the children which I can't replace as well as work and OU work. Totally not happy about this :-(

Before the off

I took this and sent it just before we went in to the degree ceremony. Martin Smith is the the red and yellow chatting with Heather McLannahan while Jenny Lynden looks on.

Why Bradford?

Just to explain why I was in Bradford. It was a NIACE conference on offender learning, specifically eLearning policy. Fascinating stuff including an interesting presentation from the Head of Learning and Skills at HMP Wormwood Scrubs and it was great to meet Cos Michael from the Prisoners Education Trust.

The People's Republic

Love this web site (image is the link) - hat tip to Tony Hirst for flagging it up on Twitter. Check it out and you'll see that he is an honorary citizen!

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For Gill

DSCF2080
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

I mentioned the bedroom to Gill and realised I hadn't posted the photo so here it is.

Bradford

I took this from the bedroom. This big patch of building site is in the middle of Bradford. It's going to have 100 shops, offices, apartments and a multi-storey car park. Bold plan for a bold city! I had a walk last night and it's a lovely place - and great curry too.

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Leeds

I don't think I've been to Leeds railway station before - it's fascinating. It seems to be built on a slope so the platform next to this one is much higher. The platform lengths are divided into sections identifed by letter so if I've not been in 2C I've no idea where this train will land up. I'll need to change some money soon - are beads still the main currency in Yorkshire? :-)

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

Tecknologi

Sending this simply because I can - I'm on a train with a free (but slow) wifi connection! How cool is that?

Simple twist of fate

Many years ago I worked as an auditor for a group of funeral directors. They were a national company and I was responsible for the businesses north of Birmingham. One day I arrived at a satellite office in Kidsgrove and as I waited for someone to let me in I saw a plaque to say that RJ Mitchell had been born there. On Friday I saw a train with his name on it - how spooky is that? Of course there will be some reading this who don't know who Mitchell was but he has a page on Wikipedia so he must be famous :-)

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Boyz night in

The weather precludes anything which means staying outside for long so Cal and I have had a film-fest. Stocked up on food yesterday and got stuck in to "Casino Royale". We saw it at the cinema shortly after release and I'm still a fan though I think it gets lost a little in the middle. Today we had to go out (cab service for Rowan) but we slotted in "National Treasure" and "Die Hard 4.0". We saw National treasure 2 at the cinema recently so it was interesting to see how much it followed the formula/plot of the first. Bruce Willis in vest and blood is predictable but fun and comparing the 21st C plot with the original is fascinating.

Cal is going home tomorrow and I've still got another four films to watch!

Sheep shot

DSCF2059
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Sheep and lambs in the orchard behind the house. This post is for those who live in towns.

I love personalised adverts

Not sure that the hair loss advert is really going to attract me too much!

5 Ways To Have Fun with Twitter When You're Bored - ReadWriteWeb

5 Ways To Have Fun with Twitter When You're Bored - ReadWriteWeb

Laura blogged this and I love it but I did have to read her post a few times to work out what she's calling Martin - I really should wear my glasses when reading blogs......

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£10.4bn skills council scrapped

The Learning and Skills Council is to be abolished, as local authorities take charge of training places up to 18.

View Original Article

Predictable really - the government emasculated the LSCs years ago and they've been lining them up for abolition. Of course there will now be a period during which anything which goes wrong will be due to "the previous setup" followed by a period while "everyone is getting used to the new arrangements" and while all this is happening FE colleges will be further starved of funds and adults (young and older) will miss out on opportunities to improve their skills.

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Cloudy

Went to Rochester yesterday - the weather was foul but we had afternoon tea (well coffee really). The three people in this photo were with me - Calum, Jemma and Aska - Japanese exchange student.

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Don't forget Tibet

This dramatic photograph shows crowds, including priests, openly displaying the Tibetan flag - in Tibet - while being watched by police. The Chinese authorities claim that 10 people have been killed during the current unrest while Indian news agencies put the numbers at more than 80.

Check the BBC report for more details.

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School left in dark gets apology

Autistic pupils at a school that was without heating and lighting for five days receive an apology from a council.

Three days after the thieves stole the electricity cables the authority provided a generator but it broke down within 24 hours. Jill Hewett, whose son Josh is a pupil at Grange Park, said: "If this was a big school, a mainstream secondary school, with say a thousand children in it, this problem would have been sorted out within days.
View Original Article (BBC Kent)

That this school caters for pupils with special needs shouldn't come into it. A week without heating and lighting, in one of the wealthiest areas of the UK - itself one of the most developed countries in the world, is simply unacceptable isn't it?

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The first casualty of war?

Ministry of Defence teaching materials that give an unbalanced view of the Iraq war are being used in schools, teachers' leaders have said.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7294219.stm)

It seems that some of the more brutal realities of the war in Iraq have been missed from materials provided for use by schools and while we're at it military recruiters play down the potential dangers of a military career when talking to schoolchildren.

It's probably me but I'm not really surprised by this - I'm not being cynical but pragmatic.

Let's look at the recruitment issue first. The military "consumes" people each year through natural wastage - after 20-some years, at an age between 40 and 50, the longest serving foot soldiers (generally those below sergeant) are slung out with a pension. They need replacing and that's why the recruiters visit schools. If they included images of ex-servicemen and women with catastrophic injuries or of body-bags it's hard to imagine that they'd fill their quotas - even now there are problems getting enough people through the doors. Last February the New Statesman highlighted some of the shortfalls and some of the strategies being adopted to try to fill the gaps.

Thus can we also be surprised that a government still stuck in a costly war isn't flooding schools with statistics about civilian casualties?

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Blunogville

Blunogville is my city on MyMiniCity. By inviting visitors (that'll be you guys) we can make the city grow and prosper and thrive and I can have a big palace and live in splendour and you can all toil in the fields and send me tithes and I can get the whole Droit de seigneur thing going and we'll all live happily ever after - or at least I will, you guys will all be villeins and I think there is a certain amount of grief in the job spec but hey ho.

So visit Blunogville please? :-)

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Cheap jokes

Names
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Spotted this while flitting round Morrisons. Someone has already started with the comments on Flickr

Config.sys is corrupt a/r/f

Brakes stuck on train so driver was told to 'reboot' it. When I worked in IT support that was always the first thing we'd suggest!

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

Blockage

The whole lane was blocked - no idea whether they are unstuck now.

Later: Sent the photo and brief text from the phone on the way to work. The blue lorry n the right is a Pickfords van and is being loaded. The orange lorry is trying to squeeze by and the driver's mate was on the roof of the cab checking clearance on both sides as he edged forwards. This is Forge Lane and it's a busy lane between southern Maidstone and East Farleigh and a bridge over the Medway.

A history of blogging

From Twitter: The evolution of cat blogging

D'oh!

"One of the guys took off... straight through a glass window, he didn't even bother pushing the button, he just ran straight through it."

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I'm almost tempted to suggest that they know a bloke in Kent with a pilot's licence....

Read the full story to understand why robbing a bar while it's hosting a bikers' meeting might just not be the smartest plan in the world

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Couldn't make this one up

A pilot whose light aircraft crash-landed in a garden in Kent has been arrested on suspicion of cultivating cannabis. Sid Clark, 47, of Tonbridge Road, Barming, near Maidstone, has been bailed pending further inquiries. The plane crashed in Lyminge on Saturday, carrying a prisoner on day release from jail.

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So the story so far. Light aircraft crashes in a garden. Pilot is interviewed on TV and admits that he made a mistake in the fog and mistook some trees for a landing strip. He'd hired the plane and the owner is not a happy bunny. Oh and his passenger turns out to be a prisoner on day release from HMP Blantyre House - they were taking a day-trip across the channel........

And now the police have popped round to the pilot's house and stumbled across a few hundred plants.

I suppose the moral is that if you are growing your own and fancy a jolly to France with a serving prisoner and the weather is a bit off it's probably best to make sure you are absolutely straight - know what I mean?

Full story on the BBC Kent site

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We built this city - heard it in Asda today

For Mouse folk

DSCF2016
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

I promised to show you where the apples grow. To the right of that barn, behind the trees, are the orchards. I've uploaded more photos showing views from the front and back of the house.

Whoops!

I've been talking about Internet censorship in a few places over the last few days and here it is again - this time it looks as though Pakistan managed to pull YouTube over for an hour.

Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube has been blamed for an almost global blackout of the video website for more than an hour on Sunday From BBC

I think there are some real issues in amongst all of this. I live in a tolerant, Western democracy with few restrictions on what I can say, see or do yet an engineer somewhere on the other side of the world restricted my access to something while working on blocking a web site from the inhabitants of a specific country. Of course this isn't the first time such a thing has happened and the US, Canada, Algeria and others censor Al Jazeera. The news agency's web site is frequently targeted by lone hackers and political meddling.

Rheingold finishes "Virtual Communities" with this paragrah

If electronic democracy is to succeed, however, in the face of all the obstacles, activists must do more than avoid mistakes. Those who would use computer networks as political tools must go forward and actively apply their theories to more and different kinds of communities. If there is a last good hope, a bulwark against the hyper-reality of Baudrillard or Forster, it will come from a new way of looking at technology. Instead of falling under the spell of a sales pitch, or rejecting new technologies as instruments of illusion, we need to look closely at new technologies and ask how they can help build stronger, more humane communities--and ask how they might be obstacles to that goal. The late 1990s may eventually be seen in retrospect as a narrow window of historical opportunity, when people either acted or failed to act effectively to regain control over communications technologies. Armed with knowledge, guided by a clear, human-centered vision, governed by a commitment to civil discourse, we the citizens hold the key levers at a pivotal time. What happens next is largely up to us. - http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html

I think that we, the citizens, must keep a close eye on what governments around the world are doing to try to curb our Internet access "for our own good"

Facebook numbers down

Martin predicted this but the numbers are in and Facebook is losing users in the UK.

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End of an era

So the curtain will finally fall on Netscape Navigator. AOL are pulling the plug on support although Netscape 9.0 will still be available for download. Those who've read the stories about the birth of the web and browser wars will understand how important Netscape has been and why its place in the history of online communication is assured - and Eric Bina was working for Netscape added the HTML tag which allows the image above to be displayed. Support stops on March 1st so take a moment to think about its passing on that day.

Nanny knows best

Let it be known, once and for all: if a smart, computer-savvy 16 year old wants porn, no technical barrier will be able to stop him. This is a natural law, similar to the laws of gravity or thermodynamics.

Great quote and not a bad story either. The Australian government has spent A$85M on trying to create tools to filter the Internet. Of course this was doomed to failure and when a teenager cracked the filter in half an hour they might have got the message but now the Australian government has decided that ISPs should censor what they carry. The proposal is that those who want the unfiltered version will have to contact their ISP and request it.

Of course some countries routinely censor what their citizens can access on the web so Australia is hoping to join Iran, China, Syria, North Korea, Thailand and others in "protecting" their citizens but Amnesty International keep a site, Irrepressible.info, against web censorship and it's hard to see how Oz can avoid being added. Censorship is censorship.

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UGC

Part of the promise (and threat) of the web has always been user generated content. Of course this post is an example of UGC and I'll let you decide on its value. I'm on safer ground flagging up a more organised UGC site. I spotted this on the SmartMobs blog (hat tip to Marius). Allvoices features a smart looking map and it aggregates news stories geographically based on photos, blogs, video, etc.

The mission statement is

"The goal of Allvoices.com is to create a global community that shares news, videos, images and opinions tied to events and people that have impact. Unlike a traditional news portal, our style of presentation creates new contexts in which stories are tied together in order to provide multiple points of view."

and it looks like an interesting use of technologies to do something that couldn't otherwise be done.

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The End of Mr Y

Just started reading this book. It's hard to dislike any author who starts a book by destroying a building on a university campus. The building the author targets is still there but in 1974 a building did collapse in the way which Scarlett Thomas describes - a disused railway tunnel beneath the building caves in. Thomas doesn't name the campus in her book (or she hasn't so far - I've not read much) but I'm sure that many readers will recognise it anyway.

Elearning at Brighton

Elearning at Brighton

Questions

Rob Spence (cheers Rob) found Labi Siffre's blog in response to my posting the link to the song. The latest post is wonderful - art question you will never hear - check it out

Try as I might............

Please believe me when I say that I tried to hold off from writing this post but I'm afraid I simply couldn't resist.

The last time City won at Old Trafford the scorer was Dennis Law, with a cheeky back heel, and United were relegated - that was in the mid 1970s. Since then we've had a few draws but we've not won. The last time we won both games against United in one season was 69/70 but on the day when both sets of fans came together to remember what Manchester lost 50 years ago it was City who got the points! Great photo from the BBC shows the fans holding up scarves provided to all fans by MUFC.

Blue Moon!

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It must be...........

Just felt like sharing this as I love the song

Take a look at those lawmen.............

..................7 February 2008, 9.00pm, BBC One

Erm

Maybe it's me but I found this story rather worrying.

The Ministry of Defence has expressed concerns that some wind farms interfere with military radar, making aircraft flying over the turbines "invisible".

I'm not a military strategist but announcing that our defence early warning system can't detect incoming if they navigate over wind farms does rather strike me as offering them some clues about how to stage an attack. The Thames estuary is now rife with turbines so that might offer an easy approach to the capital (not letting out many secrets here - anyone can see them from Herne Bay). In fact I would imagine that an underhand enemy might trumpet their achievements in meeting the Kyoto targets using large, floating, wind farms and actually be using aircraft carriers camouflaged with radar-defeating windmills.

I know I'm worrying unduly because the MOD have a great record in making sure that important information is held securely.

The times they are a changin'

After the last guy I think the poor people across the pond deserve a change. This is the bloke I'd vote for.

It's nearly that time of year

Support the guys at Anti-Valentine - you know it makes sense! (Some language may offend)

East Malling

East Malling
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

Today I twittered about the trip to London and also took photos with the phone and camera. You can see all the photos on Flickr. I think I noticed things I might not otherwise have seen simply because I was looking to take the photos. I certainly hadn't noticed the number of cameras on Herne Hill station - there must be at least eight on each platform.

An observation

A shortcoming with living alone is that you have to use your own toothbrush to clean the tread on your boots.

MyBlogLog

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

Check it out

If you haven't already done so. It's a site about the potential cuts in funding to the OU

Today

60 years ago today, in New Dehli, Nathuram Godse shot and killed Mohandas K Gandhi. The Mahatma is officially known as "The Father of the Nation" in India and his creed of non-violent civil disobedience directly led to the independence of India.

Raise a glass of something non-alcoholic in his memory?

Love this

Guinness: Tipping Point
Uploaded by Razorbuzz

The beer is good too!

Knees

There is simply no point in having knees unless you jerk them - frequently. The latest balls from Balls is that schools should teach cooking - and it's compulsory.

Of course making up education policy on the hoof isn't a new idea so this has famous antecedents but this one is pretty special for all sorts of reasons. First up the hardware - rather like teaching IT or metalwork cooking needs some capital investment and space. you can't simply go into a general classroom and teach cookery because sooner or later you'll need knives and sinks and wash basins and cutting boards and cookers and microwaves and all that good stuff. You also need people able to teach cookery. While there are some wonderfully skilled teachers out there and many can teach maths as well as English or geography and history but cooking isn't something that can be "crammed" the night before a lesson. and where is the time coming from? The school curriculum is already crowded with all the other compulsory subjects so what will be pulled to slot this in? and how will it be assessed? I've got cooking qualifications and i promise they aren't easy to test.

Of course I'm not the only one flagging this up - the link I've given rehearses the same arguments - but I really think this deserves a wider audience. Further evidence that education is too important to be left to politicians?

ELQ Again

Some good stuff here and here

DSC00024

New LCC group are all keenly watching the screen

Thoughts from Sy

Sy and I used to share some office space. Suggesting we worked together would almost certainly breach all sorts of laws about accuracy; I'm not sure either of us worked but even if we did the idea that our short bursts of work-like activity coincided stretches the imagination beyond bursting point. Anyways..... Sy is a techy and now he's blogging too!

I recommend his posting extolling the virtues of an environmentally sensible lifestyle as an entry point to the world of Sy but sample the other goodies on display too.

OFFS!

Try as I might I can't find evidence of Mr Ed Balls, Children's Secretary, spending any time at all involved in educational research. I can, however, find evidence of this story having been run ever since the invention of children.

Children should spend less time playing computer games and more time reading with their parents, the Children's Secretary Ed Balls has said. There was a danger that reading was getting pushed out by television, the internet and computer games, he warned
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7177045.stm)

I can imagine parents meeting in the 15th century to complain that children should be out playing rather than reading and that Mr Caxton had a lot to answer for!

I wonder if someone will finally realise that rolling out a politician to kiss children might impress a few Sun readers but most of can read and we're not at all taken in by this kind of crass self-promotion and his argument is baseless and spurious.

Government in "Stunning lack of joined-up thinking" shocker

The Conservatives are adding to protests against government plans to cut funding from students taking a second undergraduate degree.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7175513.stm)

You probably won't be too surprised to know that I'm very interested in this subject. If this proposal isn't stopped the OU stands to lose over £30M and that's going to affect everyone rather than just those students who the government think should be targeted. I've got letters from a handful of MPs - two opposing and one from Bill Rammell, Minister for Lifelong Learning, explaining that it's far fairer if they shift what is - to government - pennies and ha'pennies because it's a great vote winner with those who think that a degree is something that only rich folk can get anyway.

Get behind this - if only by looking at some of the proposals - because it stands a chance of damaging adult education in this country in ways that HM government simply haven't considered.

Ministers want Britain's top IT and science companies to encourage "career switchers" to go into teaching.

Ministers want professional scientists, mathematicians, information technology experts and engineers to help fill the skills gaps in classrooms.

Many of England's science teachers have not studied science to degree level.

I'm afraid that this stated desire to get people out of commerce into the classroom is, however well meaning, a perfect example of simply not having a clue.

Let's ignore for one moment the money - even as a mediocre IT professional I was earning about as much as the headteacher of a large secondary school. Bumping up the salary to attract people simply leads to wage inflation across the board. Let's not focus on the work itself - without doubt there will be some tough times but at the end of the day very few teachers will find that they have to drop everything and get on a plane to NY or Stuttgart because a server has crashed or the project team have hit a snag - it's not 9 to 5 but it's also reasonably predictable. Let's look at the biggest disincentive - the other teachers. Don't get me wrong - I know lots of teachers are hard working professionals doing a sterling job in trying circumstances but we've also all met those teachers who are straight out of teacher training and don't look old enough to be out alone. Many have few social skills and depend on a world where the people they interact with have to call them "Sir" and offer some kind of respect whether it is warranted or not. Would you chose to spend too long in the staff room with these folk?

In my world nobody would be allowed into teaching until they had spent five years in the world of work after graduating. Going into the classroom without "life skills" is doing the teacher and their pupils a great disservice.

More than 250,000 qualified teachers no longer work in England's schools, the Conservative Party says.

My plan might help deal with this too.

So here we are again!

The end of another year. Been a busy one for most of us; I've moved house and I'm still unpacking and trying to work out why I bothered shoving some of the stuff into boxes rather than straight down the tip. Mark Jopling (Historian of Kingston) wrote a great piece about one little slice of WWII and how it happened in Bishopsbourne - read it here.

Hope everyone has a great time tonight and a peaceful and prosperous 2008!

Have a good one!

Veg prepped, more food than you could shake a stick at and a handful of decorations tastefully strewn around the house. Yesterday I took a hired van and both daughters to Ikea so I now have furniture to sit on!

I hope everyone is sorted for the festivities and that you have whatever sort of day you wish yourself. Whatever you celebrate use tomorrow as a space to celebrate it.

The one you were looking for

This is the web site you are probably looking for. It's "Norad tracks Santa" - every year the lovely folk at the North American Aerospace Defense Command use some of the high tech kit at their disposal to track Santa and grab some real-time video as he travels round the globe delivering presents.

For Mouse

Sheep
Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

The sheep were in the field across the road today. And then the road was closed for a moment as the sheep were brought out of the field and up the farm yard behind my house. They did all this just for Mouse so that I could grab some quick snaps - the whole world knows that Echo Mouse loves sheep photos :-)

Robert

Robert