Vice Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Awards 2008

At DeMontfort University, students can recommend members of Academic Staff for a Distinguished Teaching Award. Just received this email - as it says, I didn't make it into the final 10, however, I'm really chuffed that I was recommended by my students. It's even more important to me this year as 2007/08 was my first full year of teaching at DMU and with a brand new module too. Copy of email received:

Congratulations Justin!

You were nominated by your students for a Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008. This was a record year when over 400 student nominations were received for more than 200 staff. I am sorry that on this occasion you didn’t make it to the final 10 who received an award from the Vice Chancellor in June. Nevertheless, we wanted to let you know that your students think highly of you and your contribution to the student experience is valued as the following quotation testifies:

In the past months he has made more effort to help out each student, email replies to queries the same day and email information to students that don't even have anything to do with the module [...]. He has taken time out to provide help and information not just with the course and module but with the university as a whole in an enthusiastic and helpful manner. He always seems to have a smile on his face and helps out with any problem you may have ASAP.

It’s great to know that the students value your teaching. Keep up the good work!

Don't want this to appear as I am blowing one's own trumpet so to speak, just nice to know that my teachings appear to be going down well :)

BBC Radio Drama

A few weeks back I was involved in a BBC Radio Drama Training Day. The session was based around attempting to brainstorm ideas, write a script and then record two different dramas all within one day. Personally, it was great to be involved in the writing of something, as creating narrative is not something I have done a great deal of before. One of the "dramas" created was entitled "Short Fuse" (a title we had to use), so my electronics background helped a great deal with getting the odd physics type pun in here and there!

A rough mix, kindly edited by one of the students I was working with can be found here: http://www.audiotheque.co.uk/audio/download/97/

A very good day all in all.....

Summer School

Last Thursday I ran a couple of 1 hour studio sessions to a group of Year 10 students from local schools. To make the session as interesting and as fun as possible, I got them to have a go at re-dubbing the dialogue for a 20 second clip of The Simpsons. ADR Studio was used, in conjunction with ProTools and both of the sessions went extremely well. I was observed for the first session by a colleague who had been doing similar things both in and out of schools for the past 15 years and he commented on how excellent the session was. Most of the children engaged in some way, either by providing a voice, or by engineering the recordings and by the end of the session, the completed clips were played back to group which they enjoyed immensely. I plan to run further sessions throughout the next Academic Year.