See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bkHmS8

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.

In a circular email from the EPSRC forwarded to Engineering and Physical Sciences staff at my Institution via our Research Office, it seems like the public engagement of science is going to be an early victim of the Government’s new austerity package. > As part of an ongoing review of how we allocate our resources, EPSRC will no longer be funding public engagement activities via the **Partnerships for Public Engagement (PPE)** Scheme.

In four week’s time, on the 11th September, Renate and I will be taking part in the Gower Macmarathon Walk from Rhossili to Mumbles. A distance of 22 miles. We’ve set up a page to help collect sponsorship (see widget to right) and hopefully some of my readers, followers, friends and colleagues will be able to contribute. I’ll be posting more news here and on the JustGiving sponsorship page as I get into training for this event.

URL: [http://www.makeitgreat2010.com/](http://www.makeitgreat2010.com/ “http://www.makeitgreat2010.com/”) Office 2010 will be tightly linked with your social networks. Follow this link and login with your Facebook account. It’ll make a promotional video with you as the star and your public Facebook network and photos as the co-stars! Pretty and potentially viral. Seriously, if MS Office 2010 can deliver, it might be a Google Docs killer! Caveat: maybe not so great if mobile access only works on Windows phones.

Thinking Aloud, a long running BBC Radio 4 show, is a weekly discussion of the latest research in social science. It might seem an odd choice for a lecturer in engineering. But since it’s been a Podcast, I’ve been hooked! It may be the host, Prof. Laurie Taylor, who’s erudition and humour is infectious, but it’s more probably the subject matter. When couched in academic language “discussion of the latest research in social science” seems a dull dry subject.

Last week I wrote a blog posting on the Swansea Learning Lab about the new-to-uk Amazon Kindle and a followup in Reflections about textbook availabilty and prices. I’ve actually been a long term subscriber to O’Reilly’s Safari Books online service (http://www.safaribooksonline.com/) , which for $42.99 (about £27) per month (which includes VAT), gives me access to the entire O’Reilly catalogue as well as many offerings from Addison Wesley, John Wiley and other familiar textbook publishers.

I’ve been a long-time admirer of the [Head First](http://www.headfirstlabs.com/index.php) series of books since the dim and distant days of [Head First EJB](http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005719/). I have quite a collection of these books myself and often recommend them to students who want to do some self-directed learning, say to learn [Java](http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596009205/) or [HTML and CSS](http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101978/). Every book starts by explaining the pedagogical principles (developed by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates) behind the books and these principles are [enumerated](http://www.