Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Um...Err...Ahem...

So much for my blog. It's a bit hard to start and restart. Like my PhD research, sometimes I get the urge to write and sometimes not.

I'm a bit depressed about my work and study at the moment. I've been on sabbatical from June to December, yet don't seem to have achieved much. I feel terrible burnt out a the moment.
I just came back from 6 weeks in Hong Kong at the HK Polytecnic University.
However, because my work visa didn't get through on time, I ended up only doing visiting not working. My family where there from the beginning of November till mid November so at least I got to holiday a bit with them, though we didn't really do anything apart from shop.
After they returned to Sydney, had a small conference ICKD 2019 and then got invited to the ETTE (Excellent Teachers Teaching Excellence) conference at HKPU, and participated in the Learning Analytics workshop with my sponsor, Prof Erif Tsui and met the EDC where I promised to talk to them about changes at UTS and about the Graduate Attributes Project and the Curriculum Information System and CUSP systems at USyd.

I was invited to present the director of the EDC, head of ITS and the AVP of Leearning and Teaching about UTS' decision to move from Blackboard to Canvas.
As an incidenal question about the Gradbook lead to a deep discussion about the CIS and CUSP systems where I demo'ed reports and charts which were of great interest.
I was then asked to present about this that afternoon. - talk about last minute presentations to senior educators!!!
I've been asked to return to HK in Jan. Though I will probably be at my own expense ??

Anyway, I've returned to Sydney to my family for Xmas. In time for my eldest daughters birthday.
I feel like a stranger here now. Especially with my wife.

I would like to say how I really feel about their reactions to me but this is private and too depressing. All I believe is that I could probably spend most of the year away without them noticing.

I guess this is a really strong incentive to get papers into A graded conferences like ITICSE and AIED? Them either of my universities might help pay for it.

Oh well, life sucks but you have to carry on. Somehow ...

Monday, September 10, 2018

Blog restart

It's about time - I've started a PhD so will be regularly posting in this blog again. Please be aware that this is a personal blog and will contain a mix of personal observations and research notes. I might be retro-blogging based on my experiences so far in 2017 and 2018 so some blogs might be jumping around the place!!

So be temporal-spatially warned!!!