With my first lecture and class done, the last two weeks have been the time for getting stuck in. Although a good number of universities in the UK have only been back a few weeks, semester is halfway done here, so I’m jumping into the middle and trying to get my head around the timetabling. The good (?) news for any academic administrators / staff that have to deal with timetabling each year is that I can confirm it’s a complicated here as anywhere with classes of varying start time, length and location!
Last Monday I had the opportunity to meet more of my colleagues in the AAHVS group and to present my research with a side of wine and nibbles. I aimed to keep it short and not too techy – certainly no-one fell asleep and there were some really interesting and interested questions from the crowd, along with an invitation to present the technical bits in their full glory at Computer Science forum later in the semester.
By far the most exciting development though is the opportunity to teach a course of my very own design. The Archaeology of Ancient Britain will be a mix of prehistory, archaeological method and digital techniques including GIS and Google Earth and maybe even a trial of my 3D environments if I can get them out of beta in time. I am thrilled to have this opportunity and will be canvassing as hard as the presidential candidates for students to take my course!