I like to play video games to relax. I always have, ever since I had a Spectrum 48k. I tend to go through phases of what I like to play though. At the moment, it’s third person action-adventures, but often it’s something more strategy-based. One time last year, my wife asked me what I was …
There’s a well-used trope in sitcoms, in which the protagonist manages to arrange an evening where they go on two dates at the same time! Hilarity and humiliation always ensue. Well, that was basically me last Friday. I had been asked by two sets of conference organisers if I’d give a Keynote talk. It’s always …
Last week I was over at our National Horizons Centre meeting with Dr Jen Vanderhoven and Prof Vikki Rand, our Director and our Bioscience Research Centre lead. We were talking around various topics, including what to focus our efforts on over the next year. I keep saying that the School of Health & Life Sciences …
As we all know by now, when it comes to academia, I’m pretty chill. I’m both easy and breezy, and I am hardly vengeful at all. So it takes a lot to make me sit down and type furiously at this keyboard brimming as I am with righteous indignation. Although the fact that an earlier …
While I was having a bit of a digital clear-out before the Christmas break, I stumbled across this piece which I had written back in 2017. To be honest, I’d totally forgotten that I had written this and I thought it’d be interesting to revisit it in light of the developments that have occurred during …
Read more “Developing and disseminating digital tools – 3 years on…”
So, I’m a terrible person. Hilarious, but terrible. I was in the kitchen last week and saw the remnants of my youngest’s birthday cake (made by the uber-talented Becky Gowland) and I couldn’t help but notice how it looked a bit like a slice through bone. Obviously my next thought was to take a picture …
Read more “This is the way – Baby Yoda and the power of the Force (on decision-making)”
We’ve pivoted. We’ve shifted. We’ve migrated. Take your pick – but whichever one you go for, university academic staff have moved our face-to-face teaching online to allow us to support our students during our various COVID lock-downs. But now a number of friends and colleagues who work at other universities have been told to start …
Just because it’s sunny here, doesn’t mean that I’m not working hard! At the start of this year’s AAFS, I attended a day-long workshop called High-Impact Practices in Forensic Science Education. It was Chaired by Gina Londino-Smolar and Dr Karen S. Scott and was supported by the Council of Forensic Science Educators. The main aim …
When my twelve year old called me a nerd recently, I pointed out that ‘nerd’ pays the bills. And then pointed out that he was an even bigger nerd than I was. And then we laughed, high-fived and went to do our respective homework because that’s how we roll. Clearly, he’s not wrong. And gaming …
Well, seeing as the whole world is rapidly heading to hell in a hand-basket, it seems entirely appropriate that we’ve been road-testing a game called Catastrophic. Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like games and gaming, and I think there are aspects of this that can enhance our teaching sessions. Over …