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Nice presentation made to students at the University of British Columbia as part of “JumpStart 2010″ UBC’s international orientation by former student Andre Malan (andremalan.net). Includes a very good presentation. As well as an orientation presentation (in Prezi) of Personal Learning Environments from a student’s Point of View (POV), it concludes with some suggestions of suitable tools. Would be worth Student Support Services taking a look and adapting for the Swansea University case....

Today is the day that A levels results are released to students and their parents. For the first time in as long as I can remember, the news media has not been obsessed with grade inflation. The estimated 175,000 students who won’t get a place has moved that old chestnut off top spot. That said, universities which told a Guardian poll last week that they were full are suddenly able to take well qualified students (Clearing 2010: Universities offer lifeline to top students, The Guardian)....

An odd one this … but bear with me. Sprachbar is part of the Deutsch for Ausländer (German for foreigners) programming of Deutsche Welle, the German equivalent to the BBC World Service. To quote from the website Sprachbar is an offering that introduces you to the subtleties and secrets of the German language. You will listen to explanations of current headlines, quotes from literature, figures of speech and grammar. I like it because my wife is German and though my writing and speaking skills are minimal, my aural comprehension is quite good, and I can actually understand these short, humorous explanations of the idioms of modern German....

Simon Wardley introduces cloud computing with an interesting history lesson on the commodization of technology. Includes an introduction to the OSCON 2010 Cloud Computing Summit. Memorable quote: the only [service providers] who call their customers “users” are drug dealers and software vendors. Update: Simon has posted his own introduction to the Summit in Arguably, the best cloud conference in the world?, Bits or Pieces. [blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/AYH11lsC] Released by http://oscon.com under the Creative Commons Attribution license....

As part of my training for the Macmillan Gower Macmarathon, Renate and I walked to Verdi’s in the Mumbles yesterday. Across Singleton Park and down to Mumbles Road via Derwyn Fawr, up to Verdi’s and back to the bus stop at Oystermouth, this is a total of 5.3 miles. We did it in 1 h 50 walking time. Still need to build up some strength before September 11, including some more challenging walks in Gower, but feeling pretty good....