I’ve done it. I’ve stopped prevaricating and finally done it.
More details will follow, I’m sure. But things to do, you know.
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
As I write, GP1 should be well into his PE Standard Grade exam. And I’ve just read a post on Ewan’s blog about the school curriculum. I have one son (GP2, 12) choosing subjects for Standard Grade, another (GP1, 14) choosing subjects for Higher.
So?
I want… the children to study a broad curriculum that they [...]
I picked up NeoWorx courtesy of Ollie and have sort of managed to install it in the sidebar. The Map seems to be working but I also tried to put a counter on and flags and they seem less successful. I shalll continue fiddling with it and see what happens. It’s reassuring to have some sort of [...]
Over lunch yesterday I happened to read this piece in the Guardian about study leave. It pretty much encapsulated my feelings about my 14yr old son staying home for “revision”. I did suggest, rather tentatively I must admit, to one of the teachers a while back that some form of mentoring by one of the [...]
It was S1 Parent’s evening last night and we seemed to zoom round, magically finding empty chairs and very few queues, but it still took 2 hours. This was despite spending very little time at any desk - just long enough to hear what an angelic specimen GP2 is and how they would all love [...]
We watched the end of a TimeTeam programme last night about North Sea landscapes and climate change and wished we’d seen the whole thing, even if Sam Wollaston didn’t think much of it. GP2 stomped off to bed in a huff because it was too late for him to stay up and see the end [...]
Countdown to the exams is most definitely on. They all kick off next Tuesday with English. The good news is that the 3rd years aren’t being sent home on a month’s study leave. The bad news is that I’m still saying “you can do that after you’ve done some work”. I did ask GP1 yesterday [...]
Perhaps this is a Friday afternoon set of directions. Or maybe just someone at GoogleMaps wants to know if anyone ever follows their directions.
This will take as long as you’ve got:-
go to www.google.com
click on “maps,” above the search bar…
click on “get directions”
type ” New York” in the first box (the “from” box)
type ” Paris” in the second [...]
I developed a whole new level of respect for people, all sorts of people, at the weekend. Saturday night I was too tired to talk but did somehow manage to drive back from Glasgow without causing a major motorway incident. However I did have a little bundle of metalwork to clutch in my hand to [...]
Two quotes down, 3 big tenders to go. I’m hoping not to be away too much in May when the exams are on, and have just quoted for some work designed to keep me at my microscope for several weeks, but this is the start of the main field season and the best weather. My [...]
School’s back, the house is quiet and it’s almost the weekend already. I’m off to Glasgow on Friday with a bunch of similarly mad people for the Scottish Open Masters swimming. Why, I ask myself, as I sit here stuffed up with a cold and a sore wrist to boot, did I think it might [...]
In my real world, my desk is groaning under a pile of tenders I need to deal with. The immediate question is - how to prioritise them? There’s always a lot of second guessing goes into putting tenders together, looking for this year’s salary. Who else is bidding (my husband’s company for one!)? What do [...]
At least it is in our house, as you might deduce from this picture. How many nuclear power stations could we shut down if everyone gave up ironing? I’d rather go out in the garden - here’s the Forsythia in bloom this year. Evidence from the last couple of years suggested it had given up the [...]
I spent a large chunk of yesterday and most of this morning trying to install a new subscription to my McAfee antivirus package. I eventually tracked it down, via various help forums and message boards, to a conflict with IE7 and the need to download some extra stuff from Microsoft. I wanted to shout “why didn’t [...]
We went surfing at Belhaven Bay. Warm sunny afternoon, good waves. Fantastic!
Life as a marine biologist can be interesting; it’s always a challenge to try and put names on everything we see underwater. It can be fun; I get to go diving all over the UK and have seen bits of Scotland very few others have visited. It can be uncomfortable; measuring oysters in 2m of water [...]
Two 12yr olds overheard in the car this morning (subject choice being a current hot topic):-
GP2: “I’m not going to do biology. It’s so boring. Physics is good though.” (So this biologist parent has done a good job there, then.)
Friend: “Biology’s great! Why would you want to do Physics when you just have to imagine [...]
Before:-
“All right, I’ll go but I’m not going to the whole thing.”
“Why not?”
“It’s chemistry. You can’t expect me to concentrate on Chemistry for that long.”
“But you want to do Chemistry Higher. You’ll have to get a good grade.”
“Yes but…”
“And you’re quite capable of concentratiing on computer games for hours.”
“That’s different.”
and so on.
After:-
“It was [...]
Hah - I hope that made you look. GMDSS. An acronym that doesn’t have anything to do with teaching. We finally made it to Port Edgar on Sunday morning for the course to upgrade our VHF User’s licence to this new brand of radio. This was the course we forgot about when my father-in-law died in [...]
I’m not too sure what’s started me off on this again. Perhaps it’s that S1 reports are due home today and my 12yr old is contemplating what subjects he’s going to take next year. Or perhaps it’s the continued mutterings in the media about such things as English 14yr olds giving up History and the country [...]
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