Now that (a) the new academic year is under way, and (b) the admissions process for entrants this year is well and truly over, and (c) the next round of undergraduate applications is not due to start for a couple of weeks, it's about time I started blogging again since I will have some time to draw breath.

So, for no particular reason other than I'm always on the lookout for things to help improve my lectures, here's my first link after the summer hiatus: Tomorrow's Professor Blog: 818 Quick-thinks: The Interactive Lecture

A study by Ruhl, Hughes and Schloss (1987) compared lectures presented without pauses with lectures where, every 12-18 minutes students paused for two minutes and discussed and reworked their notes (without interaction with the teacher). Students in the latter group performed better on free-recall quizzes and on a comprehension test. In fact, the differences were so large that they would have raised the performance of the experimental students' one-two letter grades (depending on grading scales used).

Sounds like a good complement to the One-Minute Paper scheme I use at the end of every one of my lectures.

I'm listening and watching to the Video for Merlin's "Inbox Zero" talk | 43 Folders. Good stuff.

Update: 51 minutes into the talk Merlin mentions http://inboxzero.com which redirects to his 43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero.

I've been helping to organise the Jeff Barr, Amazon Web Services Talk at Strathclyde University, Graham Hills Building, Room 5.14 on Monday 23rd July at 5pm.

The organiser - Steven Livingstone aka weblivz - has just sent round the following confirmation to those people that had already expressed interest in the event:

As you may know i have been trying to get the Amazon Web Services talk confirmed for a while. Thanks to Duncan Smeed at Strathclyde University we have managed to get a great venue in the centre of Glasgow.

Jeff Barr, Senior Manager at Amazon Web Service Evangelism will talk about Amazon Web Services. He is in great demand and we're lucky to get him in Glasgow during his "European Tour", where his meetings include groups at the BBC Future Media Journalism, Oxford University, Xml Summer School as well as visiting many European countries over the next two months. His talk will be focused mainly on the technical side of Web Services.

The event has now been confirmed for Monday July 23rd in Glasgow at 5pm.

Full details can be found at http://tinyurl.com/3bkevb

There are a maximum of 100 places so please make sure you confirm your attendance.

The best way is clicking the "I'm Going" on the Eventful link above.

Given that there is less than two weeks before the actual event it seems that the best way to publicise it is my 'viral' means. So, please help by picking up this news and blogging about it and/or sending the details to anyone you think might be interested in attending.

Within the first hour of the above announcement 10 people had already confirmed their attendance. It will be interesting to monitor the pattern of responses over the next week or so. Hopefully, there'll be an excellent turn-out for Jeff's talk.