I got back the results of my information literacy course today. I got a 65 on my second assignment, which is worse than I hoped to get, as I did well on my first assignment and got a 75. So my final grade is a 70, which is a good grade, but I had hoped to get above 70 to help pull up my overall average in courses I've taken, especially since my first assignment grade was so high. Oh well, I guess that's just how it is. I will hopefully do better next semester as I'll only be taking one course.

Yay, it's a long weekend this weekend, and Victoria has the whole week off. So I get two days off and she gets five, plus weekends. We hope to spend it relaxing, maybe go plane spotting and have some Japanese food.

I noticed tonight that the sky seemed partially lit still around 10pm, which was interesting, as I don't think it would be further south in North Carolina. Reminds me of how far north we are.

The weather has turned a little bit colder again, but hopefully it will get warm and stay warm soon.

Things have been busy at work recently, so I haven't been able to get many of the projects I am working on moving. Last Wednesday we did a big event around Digital Fluency, one of the big university goals around preparing staff and students to live and work in today's digital world. It covers four main areas: IT skills, information literacy, critical thinking, and online interactions. I'm one of the main people for the online interactions side of things, so I helped create two of the stands for the event. We ran the event in the student union in the morning, with a repeat in the afternoon. It lasted almost 3 hours each time.

Then on Friday I helped out at with an LTA (learning, teaching and assessment) induction planning day, which was at Westin Park Museum. We are hoping to formalize induction around LTA so that everyone can take advantage of it when they join the university.

Yesterday I spent almost all day helping induct two new e-learning student assistants. One of them won't work for me, but will be working with the Blackboard system administrator. However, she is on vacation for the next three weeks (in Canada) so I am doing a lot of their induction in her place. It's good having new employees as we have a lot of work to do over the summer. The bad part is it will take a fair amount of my time to get them up to speed. They aren't coming in again until next week though so I have some more time to be prepared.

Next Monday is a national holiday and we get the Tuesday off as well, so it will be nice to have a long weekend. It coincides with Victoria's half-term school break, which is a week long. So we should have a nice time this weekend, though she has been given some end of year tests to mark (boo!). The standardized tests in England are all non-multiple choice, so they must be hand marked by all of the teachers. Central exam authorities sample work for consistency between teachers and uphold standards. It seems very robust, but also a lot of work. Imagine if the SAT was all hand-marked and free response like the writing section and you can start to see the scale of what they have to do (plus imagine doing that for about five different times during your school career). It doesn't help that the government has been introducing more and more tests for students, including some of the younger students. Recent news reports have been talking about students being over-tested without many benefits really being achieved.

I got back my first result from my second semester courses I have been taking. I got a 70 on my discourse analysis paper, which is like a low A. I am happy with this result, as it is my best final grade so far, and I had to work really hard in this course since I was not familiar with the materials. I think it will take another couple weeks to get the result from the information literacy course though. In June I've set aside some time to look at converting this assignment into a paper submission for a journal.

Well our really nice weather has been continuing, with warm temperatures and plenty of sun. I've even broken out the shorts today for the first time in awhile. It's prompted us to do a bit of a spring clean as there seems to be lots more dust when the windows are open. I think maybe the dust is increased because of the incinerator which is about a miile away.

Victoria has a lighter class load next week, as all of the year ten students will be doing a work placement for a week at local businesses. We sometimes get some at the library where I work, and they are generally nice. Victoria said the lighter class load has made this weekend feel like a holiday, so that is great.

What a difference a week makes! We've gone from about 8 degrees celsius last week to 20-25 degrees this week (that's from the 40s to the 70s in fahrenheit). And it was nice and sunny today. This meant that the light from the sky lasted until almost 9:30 tonight, though the sun set earlier. It's the sort of weather you can only dream of in Britain, and it's finally arrived this year. I just hope it keeps up for the weekend and, if we are really lucky, is still around during Victoria's last school break before the summer, which is the last week of May.

Bill and Strange Panda seem to have been busy updating their blog if you are interested.