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Arriving a bit early to meet Pat McFadden MP at the House of Commons to discuss the exciting Bilston academy (see below) in his constituency I had a moment to look around the central lobby - which I'm usually hurrying through.
It's easy sometimes to take all this splendour for granted, and it does need a few reforms, but. . . . Parliament really does hold some history, doesn't it?
Visiting Wolverhampton where I am involved with a pretty exciting new Academy linked to a also-new Urban Village with a dream team of sponsors. While I was there I was lucky enough to attend the opening of a fab and eye catching set of bill-boards surrounding the new site of the Academy/village.
As you see the images are of the wonderful irrepressible children from Wakefield Bilston High School in Bilston where the Academy will be. Rather encouragingly, because it was the students' excellent work they got to open it (short speech, cut tape, eat sandwich etc) as an audience of VIPs including the local MP stood back to watch. The posters have a HUGE impact visually and some of them also feature local history. Learner Voice? These posters shout out pretty loud about how good the learners are in Bilston...
I'm running a series of Horizon Scanning events for UK gov. These involve getting some very smart people together to map out what we know about the future of computers, cognition, etc.
To help make it special we are meeting in the North tower of Tower Bridge, so I just popped blog to check the broadband etc (don't ask. . . )
So when a young lady finds herself on board a raceboat and in need of a bath. . . well that's what a sink is for surely? I'm not sure this sink work is a precedent to guide the rest of the crew though, although the washing bit might be a useful general direction. . .
Amongst other things I'm Professor of New Media Environments at the "Centre for Excellence in Media Practicee", in Bournemouth University. It is a wonderfully creative and playful place of course, as you would expect of a uni packed with media students and with such a close relationship to the industry, from BBC to Dreamworks.
But I would still get lost all over the campus if it wasn't for inspired signage - "my" floor is marked by huge photos of spaghetti letters - if you look you can see some keyworks picked out in pasta. Wonderful.
HUGE crowd gathered at the BBC to hear Steve Jobs live from the US announcing some very cool new kit. We are waiting. . . What a party, what fun!
Oo.. and I seem to have a VIP invite. That may mean beer!
(added later) It did.
Just finished the whopping annual education technology show BETT. Our stand went very well with its steady presentations by 'wise owls' with their experience of Learner Voice projects and children using a multitude of pocketable gadgets to express their voices. Our stand was long and bright as you see. After an enjoyable but exhausting week I'm a bit less than bright myself!
There is something both beautiful and scary about a full-on gale driven blizzard coming at you on a mountain. And when you are up at 3000m you can get blue sky above too because the storm is below you! Trying to ski in this (and no, it wasn't a good idea) I contrived to crash on a steepish Piste and knock myself out. This at least have me some fun talking about a black-out in a white-out but it did hurt too. Oh well, fun though.