Hi! Well, the weather bulletins are telling us that more rain is forecast for Cumbria today. As if they haven't had enough already. Let's hope that everything possible is in place to make it as least dangerous an experience as it could be. News items are still full of the policeman who lost his life last week, trying to save someone on a collapsing bridge. Such heroism really does make me stop and wonder about what it is human beings have the capacity to do at times. We're so used to hearing in this country about the bad deeds, that such a story comes with a slight frisson of surprise. Yet the world is full of such acts of heroism, kindness, selflessness and hope.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. I survived my first Elluminate tutorial last Saturday. I was so nervous, but as soon as the students arrived - and three were there before me - I lost that sense of being on trial and failig to live up to what was required and simply taught again. It really felt natural, although I didn't leave my seat. Such a strange reality we live in these days. Perhaps it always has been strange, just as things move quickly past us, we either grab them and jump on board, or are left darkling - so to speak.  The students are wonderful people. Out there trying to right wrongs and make the world a better place. They write with heartrending clarity about what they see everyday and how, for most of them, this is a way of helping them to see what they are doing in a context, and also to clarify their thinking around what they are doing. They definitely could do with action research. And funnily enough I haven't been entirely silent on the subject.

One of my students has been involved in work in Qatar, in which huge amounts of money were poured into a project to improve the educational quality of teaching. Action planning was used extensively, but as I read through her account, I became more and more convinced it was similar to the Avon project in 1990 to bring all secondary school teachers under the auspices of an action research project to make them all do their action research projects. It failed. What a surprise. o my shame, I was involved in it. In my defence I knew bugge all about action research, but, well, I was in it. And because the teachers had no autonomy about their projects, it failed. And this is what I see in this project. I have written to the student involved, and await an answer...

Teaching on Saturday felt really like getting back on the horse. I only realised what I had been missing when it all kicked off and we went through the slides and then to the discussion. The slides were liberally dosed with frogs, with breakout-room sessions rejoicing under the soubriquet of Frog Room, Toad Room (where the weaknesses of a particular document were to be discussed) and the Newt Room if more students turned up than expected. (A breakout room, by the way, is a space separate from the virtual main classroom, where students are linked together with sound and script facilities, and can debate issues. This Elluminate technology is amazing.)

The picture that heralds this news entry is of part of a family I met in China, the Zhangs, and Wenjing (the eldest girl), her sister, and Wenzi, her brother. I taught Wenjing English for a couple of years before she went to University. She wanted, like all the young kids I met in Guyuan who wanted to go to university at all, to go to Beijing Normal (not specialised) University, which has the reputation that Oxbridge has in England. She was SO detemined to succeed and would prepare meticulously for our talks on Saturday evenings. Her verve, her determination, her enthuasism, touched me deeply. On Saturday, I was tapped back in to that kind of zeal. It was exhilarating.

This morning later I have a Skype conversation, a technology I am getting more used to. I still have my hang-ups about technology, but without this technology I would have lost contact with most of the people I care about, and that doesn't bear thinking about.

Love from, Moira