Starting at Myerscough College

In July 1999 I had put in my notice to Preston College and accepted a new post at Myerscough College just north of the town along the A6. Preston held me to a 3-month notice period but agreed that I could be released one day a week to work at Myerscough.

Myerscough had a wonderfully landscaped campus, as befitted a land-based college. They taught farming, horticulture, floristry, forestry and arboriculture, green keeping, veterinary nursing, mechanics - just about everything related to growing crops, raising animals, maintaining farm equipment, sports greens but also with some diversification into veterinary, sports of all kinds including motor sports, a golfing academy, equine and riding, landscaping and management skills.

I knew that the college had recently moved away from the Management Information software that I was familiar with to the same company's Dolphin software running on SQL-Server rather than Oracle. So there would be a bit of training needed to get to grips with a new system. I asked the company to provide an entity diagram. When this arrived it was a real spider's web of lines criss-crossing all over the place and certainly was not something to be understood easily in a one-day week series of visits.

Plus the college's network was really creaking. This seemed to have been designed by people who didn't understand how education worked at all. In fact, I wondered whether they had designed it with anything in mind other than the geography of the college. For instance the Equine Centre had one computer user in the office. It was at the far end of the college. The I.T. Centre was right next to the I.T. Office and had around 60 PCs. This had the same bandwidth of network capacity as the Equine Centre. Not only that but all the PCs were rigged up to download a fresh set of Microsoft Windows on each boot-up from the central servers. This isn't a bad idea in a college because students like to fiddle. It meant that even when a student had managed to delete or change some or all of the operating system, it would set back to standard when next booted up. But then all other software was treated the same way too.

Servers are just large computers. In 1999 "large" is a relative term. You probably have much more computing power in your pocket right now. So imagine a class in the I.T. centre when 60 students are told "Switch on your computers, login and open Microsoft Excel". It takes a while when all of those 180 commands have to be processed by a single server...

The office that I shared with the Network Manager who had joined the college only in April and was probably feeling much the same shock as I experienced. This room was in a brand new building which had been officially opened by no less than Queen Elizabeth II along with Prince Philip during that summer. Not on one of my days there at Myerscough... sigh... Anyway, the network got redesigned, the Equine Centre had its sole use of a sixth of the entire college's bandwidth revoked and things got better.

The horses muttered a bit but I pointed out that their hooves weren't really suitable for a lot of typing... What really made the difference as far as the students were concerned though was my replacement of the old, by then almost ancient, DEC minicomputer that was in use as the Internet Server and replacing it with a new PC that was actually up to the job. As far as the students were concerned, that one bit of upgrading earned me the right to wear my undies over my trousers and draw a big S on my chest if I had been so minded. Thankfully for all concerned - I wasn't so minded...

The Plant Centre. There were glasshouses galore. The main ones seen here were open to the public and contained seperate units with plants and fruits and vegetables of all sort, requiring many different levels of heat, humidity and so on. In one segment of this building was a room at the centre of which was a banana tree, hanging heavy with bananas. Staying longer than two seconds meant that you were soaking wet and dehydrated when you came out.

Behind this row was another similar sized set of glasshouses where plants were propagated, nurtured and otherwise kept alive whilst in delicate conditions. Likewise requiring conditions to be ideal. This was all controlled by the most ancient of computers I had seen yet. Bear in mind this is July or August 1999. The Millennium with its widely anticipated risk of bug disasters was just four or five months away. Nothing had been done at the college to prepare for it other than to rely on the software providers for the larger Managment Information, Finance etc systems to carry on working.

Here I was, just wandering at lunchtime with a camera in hand when a chap in a blue boiler suit and a watering can in his hand, on finding out who I was, took me into a glasshouse and waved a hand at this computer that was the size of a chest of drawers and said "Will this be alright in the New Year?" I looked at it for about two seconds, said "I doubt it," and left him to tell his own boss. If risking literally many tens of thousands of pounds worth of plants with a possible clean-up operation that would have taken weeks or months was not worth spending a couple of thousand on a new PC and software to avoid, then I don't know what would be.

This was the central walkway through the Plant Centre glasshouses.

October came and I left Preston College and started working full tme at Myerscough. At that point the network was still in a state. In I.T. we were starting to feel aghast at what would be the cost of putting it right, but the Principal came into my office one night. It was 7:30pm and it was known I was working long hours every day, trying to get on top of things. He sat down and spread his hands out. "Just do what you have to do..." I was open about the cost. We split the work into phases with the first phase being the redistribution of network capacity around the campus. It made no difference to the Equine office, but a hell of a difference in the I.T. Centre. We added two more servers onto the academic side of the network and made sure there was separation of the network with students on one side and staff on the other.

I redesigned the college's Internet website and despite some ribbing about the use of earth colours (they weren't described in those terms by others) it obviously appealed to would-be students because enough interviewee students mentioned the website as the reason they chose to apply. I started a regular college news feature and given the sort of college it was there was always something at least once a week to put on it to make the college more atttractive to students.

It was a hectic time but very enjoyable. And I made sure that most lunchtimes I took the camera out for a walk to get fresh air and a bit of quiet time. This path lead from the campus to its sports fields and past the green-keeping buildings.

Work Index

Working at The Nautical College Fleetwood

Having already written a whole string of articles on my final job before retiring, I should go back, if not to the very beginning, then to the start of my time in the Post-16 Education Sector. I had already spent a year and a half working in the District Education Offices in Blackpool when I was seconded to the Nautical College at Fleetwood to act as Deputy Registrar and Finance Officer. This was in September 1985.

Not that the work entailed a lot of this, but it's a bit more interesting than photos of an office... The college was fairly small as Further Education colleges go. There were just two academic departments: Maritime Studies and Marine Electronics. One dealt with basic seaman skills all the way up to a Masters certificate - i.e. becoming qualified as a Captain. It included navigation, ropework, sailing and all the other skills necessary to keep a ship safe at sea or on any body of water including rivers and canals. Marine Electronics dealt with radio procedure and maintenance, radar and probably lots of other stuff I didn't get to know about.

There was a huge simulator of a ship's bridge where students had to navigate into and out of harbours, with or without visuals on screens before them. Without screens simulated sailing in fog... Down on Fleetwood Beach was a weird little building - currently at time of writing up for sale I gather - raised on stilts and full of working radar monitors. (I'm not at all sure they are still inside!)

In addition, at the mouth of the River Wyre was this small platform where students either already or wishing to work in the Offshore platform industry could undergo training on safety procedures, a certificate on which was a requirement to work on oil and gas rigs. New workers took a 5-day course which included a day's fire-fighting training with Lancashire Fire Brigade and existing workers had to renew their certificate periodically by taking a shorter 3-day course. The courses also included a simulation where a mock helicopter fuselage was plunged underwater, rolled over and then they had to escape - literally.

There were a number of different lifeboats and fast rescue craft. FOSC-5 (the fifth boat on the platform run by the Fleetwood Offshore Survival Centre) was a jet-engined rigid hull with a rather satisfying roar and a certain amount of WHUMFF once in the water!

It cut a dash and when on manouvres particularly during the summer holiday season it invariably drew a crowd of onlookers.

There were also some rather more basic craft. Here a fully enclosed lifeboat (you don't want to be in an open one if a rig is on fire...) is the subject of an exercise with FOSC-5 standing by in case it is needed.

The college also had this small ship. The Lancastrian was built originally as a yacht for a millionaire. It turned out to be a bit top heavy for him and rolled about quite a bit much to the discomfort of students and any visiting dignitaries who might be given a "treat" ride on her. She is shown out of the water having had stabilisers fitted. Made no difference really...

This is what the other 99.99% of my job entailed. However I did find a room full of unused Commodore Pet computers each with a fabulously luxurious 32K - yes K not MB, not GB - of memory and I wrote a piece of financial software on one which saved the data onto cassette tape and which led to the college buying a larger machine (125K whoopee!) and my career in computerised Management Information Systems got started.

Work Index

Keith Duckitt

Keith Duckitt of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) looks on as the Chairman of the National College Management Information Services Board (National CMIS Board), John Rockett, shakes hands with the Chairman of the National Association for Information Technology in Further Education (NAITFE), Malcolm Himsworth, to merge the two organisations and form the National Information and Learning Technology Association (NILTA) in July 1995.

I attended Keith's funeral yesterday, a sad occasion as all funerals are, but a celebration of a man who was much loved by those of us in the Further Education Sector of those days and a veritable mover and shaker in the implementation of new technology in learning.

He is pictured doing what he did best - bringing people together to get things done. One of the tributes given yesterday mentioned that many people have said of Keith; "If it hadn't been for Keith, I wouldn't have been where I am now." I am one of those.

Keith Duckitt 1940-2008 RIP

Large Version of the Photo: Keith

Is Anyone Left Alive?

Ye gods, I've just sat through the most depressing presentation I've ever had the misfortune to endure.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people who speak to conferences never ever smile, show enthusiasm or express any emotion at all. Are there special classes you can take on how to bore an audience rigid?

This guy could have offered a million pounds gift to everyone in the audience and no-one would have even clapped. After three minutes he had sent everyone to sleep by talking in an unexpressive monotone whilst using phrases like "I'm really excited" and "we're desperately keen to do this"... Well, mate, you had everyone fooled.

The only reaction he got around the table I was sitting at was when he had the barefaced cheek to say after droning for what seemed like hours; "I can't cover it all in such a relatively short presentation..." Any longer pal and they'd have been cutting their wrists!

So who was he? No names - but he was a very well known person in the Further Education sector, talking at a leadership conference to an audience of governors, one of whom muttered afterwards, "Well after that I think FE deserves all it gets..."

The stupidity of it is that he will be invited to speak again at another conference somewhere. Personally I think anyone displaying such a charisma deficiency should be quietly put out of their misery ... or is that everyone else's misery?

If by chance he sees this - I have enough witnesses to prove my case. So read and weep and then read this article: How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint.

And finally - one slide had black text on a dark purple background??? For crying out loud...

London Workshop

Yesterday Clive and I were in London to deliver the third of JISC infoNet's Project Management Workshops for JISC Development Projects.

We were at Brettenham House on Lancaster Place - a short skip to Waterloo Bridge from which I took this photo during a lunchtime sniff of fresh air.

Brettenham House houses some office space for the JISC Executive and also the JISC Meeting Rooms in which we held the workshop.

The workshop seemed to go down well, the comments on feedback forms included:

Organisation of Workshop Content
"Good Use of the day to take this overview"

Tailoring of Session to Audience
"Both facilitators excelled at this"

Presentation Style
"Style was excellent - informal and interactive but also very informative"
"Great!"
"An authorative yet entertaining double act!"

Activities
"Very lively and a good opportunity for peer sharing of knowledge or expertise"
"Fun and engaging"
"Well-timed and very valuable"

If you work in Higher or Further Education in the UK and would like more details of this or other workshops by JISC infoNet then contact us directly, or contact your local JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC). [Edit: The Jisc RSCs are no longer active]

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AoC NILTA Conference 2007

I'm currently at the AoC NILTA Conference in Leeds and it has been an excellent conference this year. This has been the 19th NILTA Conference if you count the "parent" organisations of NILTA, namely NAITFE, the National CMIS Board and SCITFE the first incarnation of all.

One or two people present have been at all 19 of them. I can't quite claim that, I started out in 1993 as Associate Chair of the National CMIS Board so have been to enough for people to look at me with concern, wondering whether I'll collapse with age... or perhaps waiting for me to grow up - no chance of that I'm afraid! Lots of people yesterday were saying nice things about me to my boss, some without realising who she was, so my thanks to them!

Some good and pertinent sessions and keynote speakers. I especially liked a couple of phrases by Barbara Ganley from Middlebury College in America who was speaking about the use of blogs by her creative writing students. She spoke about "learning in cycles of disruption and repair" and the need for building into your courses some opportunities to fail, so that learning can come from it. Initially this might sound strange - we want students to fail? Well not in the long run of course, we want them to achieve their qualification, but walking away with a certificate is not the only goal I hope. It's when we fail in something that we take a step backwards, assess things like what went wrong and why, learn to identify and solve problems and learn what is repeatable and what should not be repeated.

The second keynote was from Nigel Paine who gave a very enjoyable and thought provoking session. He focussed on Change and the rate of change and the slowness of many educational cultures in dealing and accepting change and embedding new ways of learning. "We have got to let things from the past go," he said - a phrase that might challenge a few cultures perhaps. The tendency can be to evolve slowly, adding and supplementing but without always reviewing, releasing and discarding those things which have become tired, outdated or no longer relevant to today's young people in Further Education.

JISC infoNet, my own organisation, is currently involved with a series of one-day workshops on Change Management, delivered by myself with Clive Alderson, which introduce strategy and techniques for supporting Change in organisations. Another of our resources which has been generating lots of interest is the Planning & Designing Technology-Rich Learning Spaces infoKit. With many colleges currently involved in new building projects or refurbishment, the kit, released last week is timely and contains many resources, including a database of images of college and university innovative building projects, hosted at Flickr.

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