Blog relaunch…

SpaceX Falcon9 & Dragon lifting off last week (22 May 7:44 UTC) (photo: SpaceX / Chris Thompson)

Right, well I’ve just noted the date of my last post at my (aborted) attempt at a blog earlier this year and I am less than impressed with myself. 5 months later and after a lot of prodding from @teachingofsci (who blogs here; he’s been nominated for a blogging award don’t you know) I’ve managed to drag my fingers to the keyboard to crank up the blog again at its new home on WordPress. This sudden call to action is also partly due to the breathing space of a week with no teaching because summer half term starts tomorrow (at 3:05 pm).

I’ve decided that if write down what I intend to write over the next week now, then I will have to get the posts written. So here goes.

Coming soon on TSIAW:

• Things I’ve Liked. Just like @teachingofsci I have been collecting favourites on Twitter, starring my RSS feeds and building up my bookmarks, and thanks to the excellent suggestion by @cleverfiend I am automatically storing all of these in one place – my Evernote account using the clever event->task service ifttt. So I will review and write about these in small blog posts as regularly as I can (starting with this weekend).
• Virtual CPD vs School based CPD. I get a great deal of support and professional development from colleagues on Twitter. It truly is an amazing network of people that I have met (online and in real life) during the last 2 years that I have been on twitter. I am going to write a post comparing the CPD I can get in the school setting with virtual CPD (via Twitter and elsewhere) to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. I will be writing in general terms about the CPD I get in school for professional reasons.
• My tuppenceworth on the DfE. I have recently been following the many pronouncements of Messrs Gove, Gibb and Wilshaw. I have remarked about the various  statements (and the reporting of these statements) made by the trite trio on twitter a lot recently, and I think I should reflect on some of my views in a more coherent manner (it’s not all negative).
• Some physics. I really like @alby‘s website http://wordpress.mrreid.org/. He’s a physics teacher that regularly blogs about science that interests him and I have used a couple of his posts as springboards for lessons that I have taught. I also find that I retweet lots of science in the news without saying why I liked it or thought it was interesting (thumbs and phones and 140 character limits can put you off sometimes). So to kick this off I think I’ll write a little post about the transit of Venus due to happen on  5th/6th June. ✔ Posted!

Ok, 4 posts in a week. That should keep @teachingofsci quiet.