Publisher's event

"Yes, I strongly agree, but does that mean anything to you?"

Sometimes, I feel i have the best job in the world. I get paid to go to special event organized by publisher. Publishers like to hear from our feedback about their books we used for our teaching. Today I went to London to attend one such event, along with colleague WF. The meeting also involve the author of the textbook whom some colleagues knew before, DH. When we arrived at the head-quarter of the publisher's office, which was based in Canary Wharf in London, everything presented in the room was like "state of the art" equipment, even the company mission or motivator statement was there about being individual, team and market leader.

The whole session of the meeting starts with DH telling us about the book, his motivation to do so, and we can see he SPENT a lot of time doing those. DH very smoothly took us through the whole process of his writing of the book and how he want to do it in later edition, etc, all appear to me very well organized and ambitious. In our discussion meeting, I also met lecturers from Warwick, Sweden and Switzerland.

I use DH's book for teaching, sometimes feel a little "too much information" and at times, not sure if he put himself in the shoe of the students. Often I used the textbook's examples, but put it down in a style to suit the students' level of understanding and my preference. I brought this up, referencing a competitor's' text, which some in the meeting also used, hopefully he see maybe helpful to him for his revised version of the textbook later.

I was actually more keen when come to the use of technology in relation to the textbook. There were questions given to the students end of each chapters. This helps us lecturers a lot because it indirectly gives students the advantage of "self-learning". What's more appealing however is the ability to track students performance on-line and the flexibility on the choice of questions I can release to students. Given that I have more than 200 students for a single course and given that I want to let them practice additional exercises, the way this works definitely benefits me. I can also draft up statistics on the performance of the students and let them know where they stand, compared to the whole group. They can use this to assess their standards and help them learn more effectively. This method of e-learning lessens my workload and also allows me to monitor them effectively, which seems efficient way of managing the whole progress.

I enjoyed the meeting today. What's even better is that, I brought my baby laptop on the road with me. On my way back, I find myself a little coffee corner in the St Pancras International Train Station , checking mails, suffering the web, writing my blog and with a cup of tea. I just felt the wireless technology has enhanced the minimalist's lifestyle interestingly, which is a fun and also very relaxing experience, :D