I’ve been thinking about new mechanisms for teaching for a while; a post from Savas spurred me into thinking about it more; basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that lectures are boring for both the students and the lecturer. I was thinking to replace them with some funky form of website; rather like the ones that I do for practical classes, but with more content and less working through.

I asked my students about it. About half of them thought it was a good idea, half bad. The main concerns were whether it was going to be more work and more time sitting at a computer reading a website. Good points both. I think that the more work concern may be misguided, though, as it’s based on the amount of stuff they learn in the practical classes; it’s nowhere as much as they learn in a lecture although the knowledge is deeper. Others thought it was a good idea; most probably the ones bored of my rambling anecdotes.

I’ve decided that I am thinking too much though. This time of the year is stupidly busy; my mind tends to be constantly active. It’s good in some ways, but bad in others. I’m not stressed about it, as I’m used to it, but my mind tends to flit backwards and forwards and I find it hard to relax; even when I am not thinking about work I think about other things.

I think this was responsible for the mini-nightmare I had last night; I’m not a heavy dreamer; I rarely remember them and when I do they are not the technicolour with stereo sound that other people report. Anyway, in this dream I had to travel to Edinburgh for some reason. So, I got the boat up (look, it’s a dream, it’s not meant to make sense). The trip up went fine, but on the way back it was a disaster and I lost my luggage; I woke up pretty suddenly and really stressed. Ah, the sad mundanity of my life.

Originally published on my old blog site.