James in Bristol

Hey guys,

I'm in a Youth Hostel in Bristol at the moment, spending the weekend sightseeing (and I also saw Bad Boys 2 which was pretty cool, a bit long and a little gory but eh).

When I left you last in my last exciting email episode, I was staying at Becky Zylberberg's house in Leyton, London. So many thanks to her. Met some interesting cool people living with her, and had some interesting brownies which seemed to contain more of something else than chocolate. Spent some time sightseeing and doing touristy things in London, saw Big Ben (cool), Buckingham Palace (okish, didn't go in), The good ol' monopoly streets like Pall Mall, The Strand, Regent Street to name a few (pretending to be the shoe by hopping on one foot was tempting but probably wouldn’t have gone down too well with the unsuspecting public). Saw Trafalgar Square (nice), National Gallery (nice), Leicester Square (nice apart from the Asian girl trying to get me to read the Bible to save my soul), Piccadilly Square (nothing really), Millennium Wheel (it's big but that’s about it), Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (cool), Westminster Abbey (nice except on principal I refuse to have to pay to enter churches), St Paul’s (see Westminster Abbey), Westminster Cathedral (ok), and Starbucks (ok).

Anyway that was all done before being picked up near Heathrow by Derek, a good friend of etechgroup who works for Apple and this project that I was going up to Bristol to work for. He was nice enough to drive me to Bristol (well the school I was going to work for, called Sir Bernard Lovell which sits just outside Bristol in a place called Oldland).

Before I go on let me explain my job situation.
Etechgroup is working on something called the Extranet which is an essential part of what is known as the Kingswood Partnership Pathfinder Project, which is a consortium of 8 schools around the Kingswood area, St Bernard Lovell being one of them. In a nutshell it seeks to combine the resources of the 8 schools to allow students and teachers to utilise resources they don't have at their school (eg one teacher may access grade 6 art material at another school known for it's art resources, etc). The other part of this is developing a new educational concept known as an ILP (Independent Learning Plan). This will exist online, allowing students, teachers and parents to define their own learning modules (such as a student wanting to learn about fishing, or how to become a bakery chef). This has some influence on students getting jobs later on. I am one of the people currently involved in conceiving, improving, developing and pioneering this new concept which hopefully will be the model that schools across the UK (and perhaps the world) will adopt as their education module. Blah Blah Blah.

So, having arrived in SBL (St Bernard Lovell) I was working closely with people involved in the project, holding training sessions, providing support, and developing the ILP. However the plan was originally to work for 3 days with SBL, which Etechgroup was paying for, and also paying for my accommodation (which was in a converted Barn loft in Tog Hill Farm, which is the highest point in the area for 50 miles).But the school seemed very impressed with my work, and as a result have hired me to work for them for the next month full time on a good rate Woo Hoo! They are hiring me to develop content for the extranet, hold more training sessions and teach some kids web design using the extranet as a basis (so the kids are pretty much test subjects). I'll be developing the model of which we will use to educate other kids on the same topic at different periods of time throughout the year using the same resources etc).

Also a staff member at the school has offered cheap accommodation at his house that is 15 mins from the school. Only reason I’m in a Youth Hostel this weekend is because I wanted to be in Bristol to do some sightseeing before going straight back to work. (I'm working in a small country town exactly between Bristol and Bath.)

Anyway, that is my news to date. Future plans are to go to Bath, and to see if I can get an international licence and then see if I can hire a car or combi van for the one week when school is out and I might not have work, which I am thinking of using the week off to drive down to Cornwall and all the coastal towns to the south west of England as I’ve heard it's beautiful, (beaches and countryside). That’s the idea anyways.