Tag: Yuri Gagarin

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Woe is me. It’s my 28th birthday today and, for the third year running I’m ill. Last year I still went out for a meal, could taste nothing, and had a thoroughly miserable time. This year I’m staying in bed. 🙁

To add to my woes, I’ve been re-reading what certain characters from history managed to achieve in their 28th year of existence. Here’s a flavour:

• Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.
• Jimi Hendrix died after a short but influential career.
• Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.

What have I done? Nothing quite so illustrious:

• Spoke at BETT 2008 with Dan Sutch of Futurelab about barriers and resistances to change and at the TeachMeet.
• Presented at the Schools History Project Conference alongside Nick Dennis.
• Became E-Learning Staff Tutor at my school.
• Completed two CD-ROMs of interactive whiteboard resources (History) for Folens publishers (Invasion, Plague & Murder and Renaissance, Revolution & Reformation)
• Passed my Ed.D. thesis proposal and gained a new supervisor.
• Joined a gym and got myself (slightly) fitter.
• Sold our house just before the full effects of the eceonomic slowdown hit home and moved into a rented property on a farm in semi-rural isolation.

Not quite in the same league! I am, however, considering writing a book. It won’t be ‘available in all good bookshops’. In fact, it won’t be available in bad ones either! Like Doug Johnson and others have done, I’m considering using Lulu.com to make my proposed book freely downloadable and available to purchase in paper format for a reasonable fee.

Technology wise, I upgraded in the last few weeks from a Macbook to a Macbook Pro, went through several netbooks (Asus Eee 701 -> modded OSX-powered Advent 4211 -> Asus Eee 1000), bought an iPhone, returned it, and then finally changed my Nokia N95 for an iPhone 3G 16GB, and bought a wonderful digital SLR camera in the shape of the Canon EOS 1000D.

What are my plans for my 29th year on earth? Hmmm… I’ll limit myself to three:

1. Apply for and obtain a job that means my wife, Hannah, doesn’t have to work.
2. Write half my Ed.D. thesis around the concept of digital literacies.
3. Start a new project – either through Folens or independently that brings together some of the ideas Nick Dennis and I have been discussing. 🙂

What are YOUR plans for 2009?