More (or less) original insights from an old blogger
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p>I’ve been taking a photograph a day to post on Flickr for 66 days now, and to celebrate I thought I’d post the slide show. Rugby, Rain and the views on the way to and from Work are the recurring theme so far. I wonder what’s to come! There are a number of these 365 photo a day groups on Flickr, but if you want to join the group I’m in, head over to Project 365.
Today’s 365 Photos Project choice came down to this abstract view of the new student accomodation and an autumnal view of fallen leaves taken in Singleton park. The leaves won out today, but I liked this too and thought it was also worth sharing.
The Indian Summer ended today when high winds and torrential rain arrived. Within minutes, there was minor flooding on my path home across Singleton Park to Brynmill. It was also nearly dark at 5.00 pm so winter’s almost with us.
Since I discovered them a month or so ago, I have been tuning in to the webcasts of Brian Harvey’s course “61A Introduction to Computer Science” from the University of California Berkeley. A couple of things struck me. First, the breadth of this introductory *course which seems to take in the whole of computer science from functional programming through to logic programming and seemingly all types of programming in between. Second, the length of the semester in the US: from August 27 through to December 10 (about 5 weeks longer than the *Michaelmas term in Swansea). That’s forty-odd lectures and seperate lab sessions! If we had the same length of time, we could really give some depth to our teaching.
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p>”When do they do research?” I hear my colleagues cry out in alarm. I don’t know, but I suspect that to be a lecturer at Berkeley, research activity is still a requirement1)! Is the work ethic indicated by this level of student and staff commitment part of the reason that the USA suceeds were other countries fail?
It’s even more amazing when you consider that the students are paying really serious tuition fees for the privilege!
1) It turns out that Brian is actually employed by UC Berkeley as a full time teacher now, but he has a pretty impressive CV nonetheless!
There are all kinds of interesting nooks and crannies on campus. Here’s a mock gothic window in Singleton Abbey. I like the heads had the bas of the arches.
Today I introduced blogging to my students in EG-259.
