Yesterday, I received my copy of Martin Weller’s book 25 Years of Ed Tech. Inspired by Chapter 2 The Web (1995), I travelled back in time to my own first attempt to teach online. I visited the Way Back Machine (web.archive.org) to discover that the first official University website (www.swan.ac.uk) was archived on 11th December 1997. Navigating through that web site, I discovered that the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering website (which I built) was archived a few months earlier.

On Monday I attended the launch and first public lecture of the Swansea University’s centenary celebration Swansea 2020 and the launch of the Centenary Essays site. At the lecture, Sam Blaxland, the historian appointed by the University to write the history of the University’s first 100 years, gave us an excellent overview of the highlights of that centenary and how he went about writing the book which will be released in June.