Zeugma

SIMPLE wins another award

SIMPLE was awarded the prize for Innovation in e-Assessment at the JISC E-Assessment Scotland Conference held last week in Dundee.  The e-Assessment Competition attracted 28 entries from all over Scotland, including schools, further education colleges and universities. According to e-Assessment Scotland, the Innovation award highlights ‘an example of best practice in e-Assessment, which clearly demonstrates the full potential of the technology and its practical application.’ I was present to accept the award on behalf of the SIMPLE project team.  SIMPLE was competing against the entire field including impressive products and projects developed by medical schools, learning services units and commercial providers, and was a deserving winner in this category. The award is a tribute to the outstanding work of the whole project team.

Legal educator bloglist

Colin Miller has posted a useful list of US law blogs on SSRN  – 2009 Legal Educator Blog Census, Version 1.0 – a list of ‘anyone who might be involved in the education of students at law schools in the United States’.  I scanned it for blogs dealing specifically with legal education.  Maybe I missed them, but apart from the Best Practices blog, maintained by Prof Mary Lynch, I couldn't find a single one.  Maybe the legal ed postings are guest postings on sites given over to other topics.  Still - pretty ironic, given the title of Colin’s piece. 

The web tape

During visits abroad I like to get a sense of the place I’m in by early-morning jogging.  You see a city or campus anew, literally so.  The morning of the den Haag conference I headed out of the hotel along Jan Hendrikstraat, past the Grote Kerk, along Torenstraat, doubling back along streets quiet in the grey light, the occasional cyclist gliding by.  Unexpectedly I came across a tiny park.  I jogged around it once, past an unarmed security guard in front of an entrance to a substantial house surrounded by impressively high railings.  The park’s path, though, led into the house’s modest grounds, with just a web tape across the entrance.  The house looked too large for an embassy – what was it?  Second time round I couldn’t resist stopping to ask the guard.  She replied, ‘It’s the working palace of our queen’. 

Symposium Gaming in het Onderwijs, Leren in een Virtuele Wereld

Earlier this month I was in the Netherlands, den Haag, at the Haagse Hogeschool, giving a workshop on SIMPLE at the wrap-up conference of the Cyberdam project.  I was invited by Diny Peters who, with Pieter van der Hijden, is one of the key movers in the project.  I call Cyberdam SIMPLE's sister project in the Netherlands.  It’s a great initiative, funded by the Dutch government, to take forward gaming and simulation approaches to all levels of education – not just higher education.