Nearly over

What a strange time - looking forward to Vancouver and seeing Katrina, sad at saying goodbye to my new found friends in Windsor, trying to write a comprehensive list of my activities since I have been here and trying to capture my learning. I am devising a standard answer to the frequent question "So what have you learnt?" or "Has it been worthwhile". The standard answer (which comes without difficulty) is "Yes", but what have I learnt?

Well lots and lots, specifics and generalities, about the job: how to do it and how not; about specific activities of educational developers: through the extensive preparation for workshops on PhD supervision, constructive alignment, learning spaces (preparation that expanded to fill the time in good Parkinson's Law fashion); about myself and how I deal with situations and react to others (useful for retirement planning and as a manager); how to blog (and use it as a reminder of some of the things I have already forgotten about). But for me the best is the personal connections that have been made and the knowledge that ideas, findings, thoughts that I will have in the future will have been prompted by my experience here at Windsor. So thank you Alan for your farsigthedness of having this Visiting Educational Developer Programme to put Windsor on the map, locally, nationally and internationally. You have certainly established a southern hemisphere connection and I look forward to the reciprocal visits.

I will write another post tomorrow - after the farewell event and before Canada Day and will probably try to keep going in Vancouver - but the first challenge will be to see if I can change the name of the blog without upsetting Moira, who has an RSS feed to it (what's that?!!)

Photo of last night's BBQ after all the rain had finished falling for the day - but it did start fairly soon thereafter. Michael, Diane and Nick. Note the remains of the pavlova made by Nick (yet another hidden talent!)