A busy weekend draws to a close. Friday saw us heading up to Durham for my mum's birthday party on Saturday. It was great to catch up with family at the party and over the weekend. She had booked a band for the evening and we had a great time doing lots of English Folk dances and watching the Irish Set Dancers in our midst perform some figures - now we just need the time to process the videos in iMovie.
This morning we headed back down south - thankfully we had a clear run with no real holdups along the way so we made it back to Winchester in time for Platform School of Dance's annual show.
Alice did a Rock & Roll number and a Mambo with her Saturday Latin class and I did a Jive with the rest of the Tuesday evening adult Latin group - more videos in need of attention. This was quite possibly my first time dancing on stage - only time will tell if it will also be the last..... I have a sneaking suspicion that having got us to do one this year the pressure will be on to do so again in next year's show.
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Brag!
Over almost 12 years in a range of Management roles at IBM I have taken part in a lot of annual appraisal meetings, interviews, 1-1s, career discussions etc in which I have heard people talk about what they have done.
I'd noticed of course that some people seemed to be better at communicating what they had been up to than others. People's reputations also varied hugely, and not always in line with what I thought I could see of their work.
In a chance conversation with one of my US colleagues over coffee one day he recommended I read Peggy Klaus' book "Brag! The art of tooting your own horn without blowing it."
I did and found it to be a very interesting and thought provoking read that gave me an insight into what I had observed in all those meetings.
Today I got to give a talk at work based on some of the ideas from the book plus some thoughts of mine relating to our particular work environment.
I get a real buzz out of doing presentations like this on topics that interest me and where there are often no clear right or wrong answers. My audience obliged with lots of questions and discussion and the materials that I had prepared proved to be a good fit for the allotted time.
If you are looking for ideas and advice on how to ensure that you are effectively communicating your achievements and desires for the future then I really recommend Peggy's book to you.
I'd noticed of course that some people seemed to be better at communicating what they had been up to than others. People's reputations also varied hugely, and not always in line with what I thought I could see of their work.
In a chance conversation with one of my US colleagues over coffee one day he recommended I read Peggy Klaus' book "Brag! The art of tooting your own horn without blowing it."
I did and found it to be a very interesting and thought provoking read that gave me an insight into what I had observed in all those meetings.
Today I got to give a talk at work based on some of the ideas from the book plus some thoughts of mine relating to our particular work environment.
I get a real buzz out of doing presentations like this on topics that interest me and where there are often no clear right or wrong answers. My audience obliged with lots of questions and discussion and the materials that I had prepared proved to be a good fit for the allotted time.
If you are looking for ideas and advice on how to ensure that you are effectively communicating your achievements and desires for the future then I really recommend Peggy's book to you.
Thursday, 13 May 2010
Feeding my CV into Wordle
As a way of seeing what my CV says about me I thought it might be interesting to feed it into Wordle (wordle.net) and see what happened. Well here's the result....
After nearly 22 years in software development it's no surprise that they come through. I do like the way that some of the words have fallen to create things like "responsible technical manager" and "worldwide career". Leadership and innovation don't seem to quite have the prominence I would have expected so perhaps I need to go tweak the CV a bit in those areas.
After nearly 22 years in software development it's no surprise that they come through. I do like the way that some of the words have fallen to create things like "responsible technical manager" and "worldwide career". Leadership and innovation don't seem to quite have the prominence I would have expected so perhaps I need to go tweak the CV a bit in those areas.
Friday, 16 April 2010
Gadget Show Live
Last week the girls and I went up to the NEC to attend Gadget Show Live. We had a great time. We arrived late morning, spent a few hours looking round the exhibits and finished up by attending the 4pm Live Show.
There was so much to see - for us a few highlights were ...
3D - masses of technology around this space. We tried on different sorts of glasses some projecting images in front of our eyes and some used in conjunction with a screen. Our favorite was the 3D TV, viewed normally it was a fuzzy looking image but put the supplied glasses on and WOW the image really came to life. Rugby ball appearing to fly out of the screen certainly made people jump :-)
Old tech - lots of chance to play with some tech from the 70's and up to current day. Great to be able to show the girls some of the early games machines and just how blocky the early games were.
The live show was good fun - chance to see the presenters "in the flesh" and also a range of other items. We especially liked the flying penguins, Titan the robot and the amazing dance/light routine. To get a flavour of it here's a video someone recorded of the dancers and from there you can navigate to their videos of Titan and then the Penguins. At the start of the live show the presenter said words to the effect of..... "you will have noticed that your tickets say no photography or recording of the show..... how crazy is that, this is the gadget show.... record, photograph, post it, live stream it to the internet - we don't care" :-)
After the live show it was time to head back to the car in the depths of the N5 car park and drive home.
So ... did we leave the show laden with tech? Well I bought a Winkku mirror for my bike. Alice tried to buy a Vectron Wave from Air Hogs but sadly they aren't for sale in the UK until July :-(
Helen used the show as a chance to check out the wide range of remote control helicopters on sale and will probably get one of those after a bit more online research. Taking out a trial subscription to T3 magazine also got me a small speaker to go with my iPod.
There was so much to see - for us a few highlights were ...
3D - masses of technology around this space. We tried on different sorts of glasses some projecting images in front of our eyes and some used in conjunction with a screen. Our favorite was the 3D TV, viewed normally it was a fuzzy looking image but put the supplied glasses on and WOW the image really came to life. Rugby ball appearing to fly out of the screen certainly made people jump :-)
Old tech - lots of chance to play with some tech from the 70's and up to current day. Great to be able to show the girls some of the early games machines and just how blocky the early games were.
The live show was good fun - chance to see the presenters "in the flesh" and also a range of other items. We especially liked the flying penguins, Titan the robot and the amazing dance/light routine. To get a flavour of it here's a video someone recorded of the dancers and from there you can navigate to their videos of Titan and then the Penguins. At the start of the live show the presenter said words to the effect of..... "you will have noticed that your tickets say no photography or recording of the show..... how crazy is that, this is the gadget show.... record, photograph, post it, live stream it to the internet - we don't care" :-)
After the live show it was time to head back to the car in the depths of the N5 car park and drive home.
So ... did we leave the show laden with tech? Well I bought a Winkku mirror for my bike. Alice tried to buy a Vectron Wave from Air Hogs but sadly they aren't for sale in the UK until July :-(
Helen used the show as a chance to check out the wide range of remote control helicopters on sale and will probably get one of those after a bit more online research. Taking out a trial subscription to T3 magazine also got me a small speaker to go with my iPod.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Photo challenge finished in style
Well I managed to complete my photo challenge in style. For Helen's birthday party we took some of her friends bowling and on my last go of my last game I had a high scoring round (completely against the run of play) and when I looked at the scoreboard I realised I had scored 83 which was my last number ! 
For this year I think I will change tack and build a set of photos of doors/entrances that have some significance - for example places that we visit during the year.
For this year I think I will change tack and build a set of photos of doors/entrances that have some significance - for example places that we visit during the year.
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Last few photos needed for challenge
It's nearly a year since I started my photo challenge of taking shots of all the numbers between 0 and 100. It's been great fun to spot the numbers and the whole family has got involved. The resulting set on flickr is a great summary of the last year, all I need to do over the next fortnight is find the following... 74, 76, 78 and 83 to complete the set. The subject should be relevant somehow to my year or places I have been - bright ideas and suggestions gratefully received on subjects or events I should get along to.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Conference for Secondary School Governors in Hampshire 2010
In my role as a parent governor at Henry Beaufort school I spent today at the Marwell Hotel listening to talks and discussing issues related to "Stronger governance - improving pupil outcomes".
This was the first such conference that I had attended so I didn't really know what to expect - I have to say I was very pleased with the day and will certainly be looking to attend in future years.
There were some great talks and a fantastic opportunity to meet and talk with governors from other schools across Hampshire.
Sue Hackman was the first speaker of the day. She is the Chief adviser on School Standards at the Department of Children Schools and Families and used the"Your child, your school, our future" whitepaper as a framework to talk to us about a whole range of issues mainly related to analysing performance. This could have been a very dry subject but she did a fantastic job of articulating the importance and meaning of various metrics available to schools. In particular she spent some time looking at the kind of reports that the RAISE online system can generate. These can, for example, help a secondary school to identify whether pupils are achieving the results that their performance in primary school suggests they could. There was also quite a bit of discussion around "the middle rump", those pupils who aren't in the top or bottom groups. It is easy to focus on helping those at the bottom and working to stretch those at the top - both good things to do - and end up making some of those in the middle group feel resentful that they don't warrant any special attention. Whilst you could argue the whole system is set up for them they may, all the same, not be feeling it.
After a break for coffee, and the chance for a chat with a governor from another Winchester School, we had 2 workshops. The first "Setting Targets in Secondary Schools" followed on nicely from Sue's presentation and looked in a bit more detail at some of the figures for Hampshire and what sort of progress is expected as you move through from Key stage 2 - 4. As part of this we also looked in some more detail at the area of the comparative attainment levels of Children in Care and some of the work being done in Hampshire in this area.
The second workshop looked at School Improvement Plans and in particular what some of the barriers/challenges faced by governing bodies are as they seek to be supportive of the school and a "critical friend".
After lunch we turned to look at Local Children's Partnerships. John Clarke took us through an overview of the idea - basically setting up a partnership between all the schools/colleges in an area and other bodies such as district councils, local NHS, police, social care etc. This partnership would take responsibility for all of the children on its patch and work to improve their outcomes. As part of his presentation he mentioned a book called "The Spirit Level" by Wilkinson and Pickett which he said drew a conclusion that increasing inequality of wealth in a country correlated with a decrease in an "index of health and social problems". I need to add that to my "must read some day" list to see what's behind the claim - the graph certainly raised a few questions in my mind - always a bit suspicious of charts whose scale is marked "low"...."high", where the data aligns neatly on the plot and which rely on an "index" whose constituent elements don't all seem to be independent (I would have thought for example that including obesity and life expectancy might end up double counting).
Moving on from the conceptual idea we then heard about the East Hampshire Education Improvement Partnership and the impressive real life examples of what they have been doing. No measures of success presented, I suspect because it's early days yet, but very encouraging to see the levels of cooperation they have created and what that has enabled them to do.
The conference was drawn to a close and, once we had completed our survey forms, we were allowed to head home.
I felt it was a day well spent - tasty apple crumble and custard for lunch certainly helped :-)
Certainly feel better equipped to take part in the discussion on RAISE Online and FFT data we have lined up on tomorrow night's Full Governing Body meeting.
Plus I got to meet some new people - including Fiona Grindey who, following today's event, has set up the "Hampshire Governors" facebook group.
This was the first such conference that I had attended so I didn't really know what to expect - I have to say I was very pleased with the day and will certainly be looking to attend in future years.
There were some great talks and a fantastic opportunity to meet and talk with governors from other schools across Hampshire.
Sue Hackman was the first speaker of the day. She is the Chief adviser on School Standards at the Department of Children Schools and Families and used the"Your child, your school, our future" whitepaper as a framework to talk to us about a whole range of issues mainly related to analysing performance. This could have been a very dry subject but she did a fantastic job of articulating the importance and meaning of various metrics available to schools. In particular she spent some time looking at the kind of reports that the RAISE online system can generate. These can, for example, help a secondary school to identify whether pupils are achieving the results that their performance in primary school suggests they could. There was also quite a bit of discussion around "the middle rump", those pupils who aren't in the top or bottom groups. It is easy to focus on helping those at the bottom and working to stretch those at the top - both good things to do - and end up making some of those in the middle group feel resentful that they don't warrant any special attention. Whilst you could argue the whole system is set up for them they may, all the same, not be feeling it.
After a break for coffee, and the chance for a chat with a governor from another Winchester School, we had 2 workshops. The first "Setting Targets in Secondary Schools" followed on nicely from Sue's presentation and looked in a bit more detail at some of the figures for Hampshire and what sort of progress is expected as you move through from Key stage 2 - 4. As part of this we also looked in some more detail at the area of the comparative attainment levels of Children in Care and some of the work being done in Hampshire in this area.
The second workshop looked at School Improvement Plans and in particular what some of the barriers/challenges faced by governing bodies are as they seek to be supportive of the school and a "critical friend".
After lunch we turned to look at Local Children's Partnerships. John Clarke took us through an overview of the idea - basically setting up a partnership between all the schools/colleges in an area and other bodies such as district councils, local NHS, police, social care etc. This partnership would take responsibility for all of the children on its patch and work to improve their outcomes. As part of his presentation he mentioned a book called "The Spirit Level" by Wilkinson and Pickett which he said drew a conclusion that increasing inequality of wealth in a country correlated with a decrease in an "index of health and social problems". I need to add that to my "must read some day" list to see what's behind the claim - the graph certainly raised a few questions in my mind - always a bit suspicious of charts whose scale is marked "low"...."high", where the data aligns neatly on the plot and which rely on an "index" whose constituent elements don't all seem to be independent (I would have thought for example that including obesity and life expectancy might end up double counting).
Moving on from the conceptual idea we then heard about the East Hampshire Education Improvement Partnership and the impressive real life examples of what they have been doing. No measures of success presented, I suspect because it's early days yet, but very encouraging to see the levels of cooperation they have created and what that has enabled them to do.
The conference was drawn to a close and, once we had completed our survey forms, we were allowed to head home.
I felt it was a day well spent - tasty apple crumble and custard for lunch certainly helped :-)
Certainly feel better equipped to take part in the discussion on RAISE Online and FFT data we have lined up on tomorrow night's Full Governing Body meeting.
Plus I got to meet some new people - including Fiona Grindey who, following today's event, has set up the "Hampshire Governors" facebook group.
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