Swansea University, where I work, has quietly established a WordPress blogging system that anyone who has a University login can use to create a blog. This means that I no longer need to worry about providing something myself and should also make introducing blogging to my students a breaze. I created my blog, which I’m calling @the.coalface, and I intend to use it for reflective issues around e-learning, my teaching, research and University life in general....
[](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SB899gWLtvI/AAAAAAAABb0/HZmxUV064fw/s1600-h/DSC_0065.JPG) It’s May Bank Holiday today and we went for a stroll around Clyne Gardens which is always at its best at this time of year. Azaleas and Rhododendrons are in full bloom and are a riot of reds, purples, yellows and pinks. As usual, more pictures have been posted to [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpjobling/sets/72157604901590749/). [](http://picasa.google.com/blogger/)
[](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/R-k0sl76N7I/AAAAAAAAA7k/edIIkJtL61o/s1600-h/DSC_0027.JPG) Today it was Easter Tuesday and we beat the weather and managed a stroll along the coastal path from Mumbles Pier to Langland Bay. Here’s a view along the path towards the coastguard station at Bracelet Bay. More photos on [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpjobling/sets/72157604243690444/). [](http://picasa.google.com/blogger/) Comments: iwoods2807 - Nov 1, 2010 Love it!! Not a day goes by where I don’t think … hey, where’s the “Learn This” button. The peril of being a futurist!...
In a report in this week’s Technology Guardian (March 13, 2008), Tim Anderson discusses Microsoft’s announcement that Internet Explorer (IE) 8 will be standards compliant by default after all. This is a reversal of its previous position which was that it would be IE 7 compliant by default to avoid “breaking the net”. (To become standards compliant, web authors would have to set a tag in their code: this is known as Version Targetting and was seen by some Web Standards Advocates as a minor threat while others were less sanguine....
Michael Kölling is a Senior Lecturer in Computing at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He was one of the the key developers of the [BlueJ](http://www.bluej.org/) programming environment and is one of the authors of [Objects First with Java](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Objects-First-Java-Practical-Introduction/dp/013197629X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205426224&sr=1-1). His demonstration to folks at Google HQ of [Greenfoot](http://www.greenfoot.org/) , his new Java programming environment for young learners, has just been published on [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcwx-I6Arwk). By providing a programming environment based on graphical objects that move in artificial worlds, Kölling hopes to make programming compelling to high-school-age kids and thereby reverse the current UK trend of students thinking that ICT is only about office programs and spreadsheets (and thereby convincing most of them that computing is boring)....