STLHE

It is the evening off in a week of events, conversations, presentations, workshops, banquets, dinners, round tables and so on. I have traded yet another evening's quality conversation about education, location, students, ideas, family, friends, second life, Downpatrick etc with new and established friends for an hour with my feet up watching a programme about Bamburgh Castle and Northumberland. Makes me feel homesick - Bamburgh Castle is such a wonderful spot and I will post a photo of my daughter and cousin on the beach at Bamburgh to give you a sense of the North Sea beaches.

So far the conference has been excellent - a wonderful range of workshops, concurrent sessions and round tables. As I was busy doing my own workshops on Wednesday I didn't have the opportunity to attend others, but the reports were good. As a conference volunteer, I have been assigned to a mind a room (or more precisely the presenters in that room) for the concurrent sessions. This may sound like a sentence, but in fact it has been really good as I have not had to make any choices among the sessions on offer. I have been even more fortunate, as I have learnt about building a community of TA workshop providers to improve the integration and engagement of the faculty with the programme; ongoing research into the teaching research nexus and the way in which Inquiry learning can contribute; some really good ideas about getting a large first year cultural studies class to engage in their learning through mini-journal writing and receiving feedback; the longlasting benefits of an international field study visit on the participants; and the benefits of blogging. A wide range of topics and there were others too. One of the tips about blogging was to have at least 4 posts in the bank to cover when it is holiday time, people don't feel inclined etc. (I'm afraid I can't write about the future before it becomes the present so I can't benefit from the advice at this point in tiem.) I really enjoyed linking narrative to Gardner's multiple intelligences. MI seems to be a them for conferences in this neck of the woods. But I was amazed at the inventive things which people do int heir classrooms to help their students learn. Singing the periodic table!!? Tonight's poster competition was excellent. The quality of the posters was great and so were many of the explanations shared by the poster owners. The information that can be covered in a poster is amazing - research questions and theories; responses findings analysis etc. I know who won, but you will have to wait till tomorrow for that news.

My head needs some space and time to make sense of many of the things I have heard about and talked aobut during the two conferences. Biut I have also met people from Vancouver who have invited me to visit them when i get there in afortnight. Aren't I lucky!