A New Beginning

A new beginning
What do I do for a living, and what I get up to in the outside world?
I Work in a UK university as an Application Manager and my team are responsible for our student facing systems. We look after and develop applications. Our aim in these applications is to try to ensure our students and staff’s time at University is as productive as possible. Be it in the public or private sector large organisations tend to gather useful data in silos and the gatekeepers tend to guard their data jealously. Our aim is to unify this data and present meaningful information to our students and staff. We do this via a mixture of technological solutions and bridge building. It would be fair to say at first it hard, but once we had the first two or three integrations department saw the usefulness to staff and students and came up with their own ideas.
Below is a list of systems we have developed/support; each of these systems is personalized to the student by retrieving relevant information from a number of University systems   

·         Moodle VLE

·         Mobile App (based on Ombiel’s CampusM product)

·         Student Portal

·         A file repository system based on Equella

·         A video repository system based on Kaltura

·         A number of web services that tie our systems together and allow the students to see as much as we can a seamless approach

·         The Internal Student Survey that is run three times a year

·         PC Availability

·         Learning Technology (Technology for smarter working e.g. tablets, AR, QR codes with Learning Innovations)

·         Photo Upload as part of Self Enrolment

·         Student exam results on line

·         Student Resit results

To give an idea on usage our student portal had 4 Million login events during the first two terms on the 14/15 academic year and it had 98,840,954 hits.
To give an idea on how many different devices our students use the portal was contacted on 501,960 unique IPs addresses.

Public Art

When we visit new towns and cities I always like looking  at public sculpture I believe they tell us more about the place then all the official views put together. One of my favorites is the one above, if you dont know it, it celebrates the Last Alarm a roll call of Fire Service staff who give their lives to save others and of course its from Toronto.

Hello Again

Well as they say that was a long time between drinks!

Well playing badminton is over, the long battle with the knee is over and the knee won. In the end my physio offered me the choice of walking or carrying on playing badminton. But on the plus side she did introduce me to the rowing machine. I don't think she planned for me to work so hard at it, but that is one of the draw backs of being competitive, if you take out one way of  being competitive  you are likely to find another.
 

Juries in the dock in the UK

This is written as a response to an article in the Guardian 26/01/2010

Before the justice system gets all pompous about juries and their behaviour, it would be worth letting them see the world from the position of a jury member. The dingy waiting room, the food vouchers that don’t cover the cost of the food and of course god forbid you want fresh fruit. How about we make Judges and the barristers act as jurors as an exercise in seeing how the other half lives. But let’s be kind and only run it for two weeks no long cases for them.

Day one we start with queuing waiting to be searched. Sign in and wait. After a period someone will call names, it may be yours or it could be someone on the second week being called for a case. But you will be called. Now you get to see the video and a quick talk by someone who may have presentation skills but then again they may not, it’s the luck of the draw.

Now the waiting starts, the rest of the day some of your cohort will be called but let’s assume you don’t, you wait until 4pm then you are sent home. Next morning you come prepared you bring some work, book to read etc. but the search now takes longer and you get dirty looks from the security guards. Again you sign in and wait, did I say the room has the poor lighting and the chairs will have seen better days. You wait someone will call names, if you are lucky you will get a case, if not you will wait until 4pm, and be sent home. When I did mine I had 9 days of not being called then on my last day I drew a six week case!

So at last you are called, you are taken to a court and let’s assume you are sworn in and not send back to the waiting room (believe me you have seen more the enough of the waiting room). The judge warns you about talking to anyone about anyone the case, not to use the internet etc. Now you find you have a notepad and pencil if you are lucky to make notes. So you are ready to be a jury member but at this point and any number of times during the case you will be sent out of the court to the jury room while the judge and barristers discuss legal issues, this may be for ten minutes or two hours. But you will be bored, no books as you have left your bag in the court room.

Back to the court room, the barristers may be good. Sometimes you want to shout ask the bloody question and stop waffling. This of course is repeated day in and day out, a mixture of trying to follow the witnesses and being sent out

Again you take notes by the way you can’t take your notes out of the court room and write them up. Two days, or six weeks later this is all you have to go on. And no you can’t have a transcript of the case.

The case ends, the judge does their summary. Now you have a decision how much weight do you give the judges summary? Do you follow them blindly if so why have we spent x days trying to follow the case, on the other hand they have significantly more experience then you.

Back to the jury room where you debate the case, it can be quick or it can be a long time but your decision will affect the accused and others it’s not something you can take lightly. And now you find out how good or bad your note taking is as the twelve of you try to recall the ins and out of the case

Your time as a jury member is up; you will have been bored, paid too much for food and drink spent way too much time sat in the dingy jury waiting room

An update at last

Well folks its a long time between blogs. I been a bit busy, new job working hard at the allotment at the weekend but not playing badminton.
I am now working on two new projects live@edu A Microsoft hosted email solution for education and Share point acting as a portal both good fun, but like all IT projects sometimes you just want to bang your head on the nearest wall.
Badminton is bad news, the knee is not getting any better, this may be my last competitive season with a max of 2 or 3 games but I have found rowing machines

All England Badminton Championship

Just spent an enjoyable week watching the All England at the NIA. I think the NIA is a great venue but the seats and the food are terrible. Junk food for 6 days is more then a person can stand. The one thing badminton fans have in common is that they take exercise and most likely look after their diets. So please NIA more fruit, salads and decent bread please. And as for the seats they are an exercise in torture; they may be OK for a gig but when you are there for 5 or 6 hours for a number of days it is a right pain. For those who don't know the seating at the NIA you cant fit your feet on the floor unless you have very small feet or are willing to have your legs angled under your seat for hours at a time. Or you can put your feet on a 2 or 3 inch high thin separator but that means your legs are at an odd angle and your body weight is not spread on your bum but centred on one part so a numb bum!

English Nationals Badminton

On Friday (1st Feb) is the start of the nationals and the start of a three day badminton watching marathon. If you get the chance I would strongly recommend going, they are held at the Velodrome in Manchester. Not sure if this is the case for the players but for the fans it is a very relaxed event and you can find your self drinking coffee with Gail Emms (who sadly has just dropped out this year) or discussing tactics with a national coach