It’s been an awesome day. Went to Liverpool to meet up with Jess and went to a place called the ‘Gostin Arcade’ or something. We found a piercing studio and after waiting an hour or so I got the top of my left ear pierced with a stud. It’s quite small but I love it :D It didn’t hurt too much either, pretty simple. Apart from in the wind outside afterwards.

I just took a picture of it using my webcam so the quality is a bit crap. The stud has to stay in for 3 months or so before I can change it and it is supposed to be washed 3 times a day for a month - don’t think that’s gonna happen really.

School’s out! It’s half term right now, this being the first weekend after breaking up on Friday. Anyway last night I went to Abi’s 18th birthday party at the Mollington village hall. Incidentely I realised it’s where “Cowboy Joe” used to do his stuff and scare young children. It all started comming back to me. The party was pretty cool; there was a bar, a chocolate fountain and a live band - ‘The Stand Offs‘ which Andy P plays the drums in. They were good, especially with their cover of The Artic Monkeys (I bet that you look good on the dancefloor). Yeah, nice one guys.

Surprisingly I took full advantage of the bar and became possessed by Strongbow. Haha. Can’t believe I’m actually up now but some kid was screaming/crying outside somewhere and if anything will wake me up, that will for sure. It was a good night and it was cool seeing the people I should see a lot more of. Even if I did see them last week. And I will next week :)

This week I’m going to try and not drink too much so I can drink at the parties this (next?) weekend without dying. Tomorrow I am going to Liverpool to see Jess and have some fun like last year! Yey.

You may have noticed that I have ‘gone on’ about eduX, which is a virtual learning environment (VLE) which I have developed over the past 6 months or so. You may have also wondered what the hell it is. Therefore I am going to write just a brief article on VLE systems.

According to wikipedia:

A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a software system designed to facilitate teachers in the management of educational courses for their students, especially by helping teachers and learners with course administration. The system can often track the learners’ progress, which can be monitored by both teachers and learners. While often thought of as primarily tools for distance education, they are most often used to supplement the face-to-face classroom.

Online or virtual education is set to be big and fashionable within the educational sector of the UK, along of course with the USA and many other countries with a mature internet intrastructure in place. Schools, Universities and Colleges are already venturing into teaching online and in fact have been using systems like VLEs for some years. However at present it seems that many institutions are unclear as to the real benefits of a VLE and essentially if it can improve teaching and reduce workload on teachers. The fact is, it is very clear that e-Learning can rise to both requirements. A VLE has so many advantages and additions to the structure of education already in place. An online VLE allows students and teachers to access courses from anywhere in the world and at any time. This encourages students to develop independent work ethic and improves teachers’ organisation and management over their pupils or students. A VLE also increases the degree of interaction between teachers-students and students-students regarding work. eduX features an internal private messaging system and discussion boards for every module.

eduX and some other VLEs also feature an assignments section so students can keep track of work teachers have set over the VLE; a file repository for students to download files which have been uploaded by teachers; a useful website links page; an online workbook companion; online testing and automatic marking; student mangagment and progress report; and finally a discussion board. There are other features that VLEs possess and which eduX is constantly developing to improve the whole learning and teaching experience.

Check out the eduX VLE.
Discover more about virtual learning environments.

It’s been an awesome day, which is ironic as most people I have spoken to today have been depressed because it’s St. Valentine’s day. What’s the deal with that? It’s only a day - did you think that people loved you every other day of the year? I got one nice message and it wasn’t from my parents :) I also gave one to a very special person - my school librarian. Except I didn’t give it to her directly, I was too shy. So I tactifully left it next to a holepunch. Skills. I didn’t leave a name. Because I don’t really want her to be my valentine. Just to let you know, people who leave a big ? after a message don’t actually want you, they just feel sorry for you. And if they do then they’re a dumbass anyway because there isn’t much point if they don’t know who it’s from, is there?!

I hope you’re confused now.

On Sunday night / yesturday I completed my latest venture - eduX! I’m so happy. It’s been BETA for months and we have been recoding the whole thing to be much more effcient and stable. There will, of course, be a few bugs to smoothen out as it gets a good beating by my school but it’s pretty much a stable/final release. We are going to keep on improving the functionality etc in new versions but after 6 months version 2 (stable) is complete :D Woo.

Andy’s party on Saturday was a bit insane. I got quite wasted and didn’t really sleep at all which still shows. It was awesome, and I’m glad my friends are all slowing becomming 18.

Half-term starts on Friday. Before then I have a gizillion essays and notes to write seeing as I was off loads recently. I won’t do them all. I’ve just realised no one will really give a shit about what I’m writing so I can’t be bothered to write any more.

It has been an interesting past 10 days or so, more than most of my winter weeks so far. At the start of February I was in Norfolk by the coast at a field centre for my Geography A2 course which requires some sort of investigation as one of the modules. It was unfantastically freezing almost the whole week; especially analysing sanddune succession for 4 hours right from the shoreline. We also did a CBD study of Norwich and a river study. It was pretty fun actually, even though we did write ups and the data analysis on top of a long day of fieldwork in the evenings.

Our group was in the centre with pretty much only Londoners of varying friendliness. We seemed to get on pretty well with one group of year 10s who had the typical “innit blad, dat buff man” slang which was awesome! I love it. Every night some kind of event would happen in our room, occasionally dueled with the other guys’ room down the corridor for occasional pillow-bashing victimisation :)

Our room had a radiator which was constantly on the highest possible temperature - a shock as you just come inside from the artic chill. It was even worse at night. There was a thermostat thing placed behind a window just so you couldn’t reach it. We were convinced we could get to it and turn the heat down so we prized the window open using some scissors to get to it. One of us goes to grab it and starts turning as the thing just comes off! It wasn’t actually connected to the frigging radiator!! So after all that we got a fan in our room since we couldn’t do anything to the radiator - well apart from cover it in duvets and spare mattresses.

All 5 of us ended up in one corner of the room to benefit from the fan without any ‘wastage’. I was the only one on a top bunk as the others were either on the floor or on the lower bunks. So I had some comprising to do to secure my breeze and ultimately some sleep.

I didn’t mean to turn that into some sort of you-really-had-to-be-there story. But I did so I’m not going to delete it now. Sorry.

Anyway that was a week ago. The past week has been alright. I have been really pushing on eduX to get to stable release, it’s really overdue from our original January release date. I can’t wait to complete it - it is a powerful beast with amazing potential! Yesterday I redesigned,(from an urge) the eduX homepage which looks a lot more appealing than before. The VLE system just needs some smoothing out to eradicate the constant bugs. Argh. Then we need to validate it, which hopefully James will sort out.

yesterday I was off school because I have (hopefully had) a really bad cold with a waterfall kind of nose which has been eroded by boxes of tissues. Tonight I am going to Andy’s 18th party which should be fun :) I need it.