Time to blink

In the last two weeks I have taken up driving lessons and finishing off some CPD has taken up the remainder of my spare time. My work life has been frantic: for the first time ever I'm obliged to colour code my calendar to enable me to keep on top of whether I've got training, meetings or research to do. These are my excuses for missing a week of blogging.

Since I'm here, I'd like to let you know what I've been up to and how my new role is developing. My job requires me to do a few things:

1. To know about and keep staff abreast of all the eLearning resources at the college
2. Train staff in said resources
3. Support staff in using said resources
4. Provide advice and guidance to staff who have a vague idea of what they want to do but no idea how to go about it
5. Research additional tools etc that we may adopt in future.

I have to confess that my favourite aspect is Number 4, even though it's not at all frequently used right now. Training and supporting is really rewarding and the research is interesting. The admin is just admin (I quite like it, because I like things being tidy, but it doesn't thrill me) but the real challenge is the advice and guidance and thinking (as the management team would have it) "Outside the box".

I've been doing a lot of training recently: Moodle, SMARTBoards and bits and pieces including Box of Broadcasts and that's going to take up more of my time very shortly as I recently discovered a whole 2/3rds of the college have been holding back and giving me time to find my feet before descending on me. I've also started promoting the sporcle site as a good resource for quizzes and activities.

So far I've mostly been engaging with the people who are really excited about using a wider range of tools in their teaching and a few who are so scared of the idea that they wanted to get in some training early on. Either way - these are the people who have sought me out. What happens next is that I need to start hunting down people who are avoiding me.

I have noticed - and others have too - that the different departments that don't share students don't really communicate regularly on a professional basis. It's a very friendly college, so there is a lot of socialising, but I'm building a network throughout the college to promote inter-departmental communication. Ultimately, I intend to start a regular TeachMeet here, but keep that under your hat ;)