I am attending to a blog developing workshop right now and I hope I can expand my knowledge on blogs. So far it has been only social updates. But I am intending to use my blog more for educational purposes. Soon you will be able to see my lectures, tutorials and course materials.

Is it possible to pricemark the attention span ?

I gave a serious thought to the above. Call me a money minded capitalist, and I am proud to be so. Perhaps it is the greatest denial of our time. Most would say that they have a feeling for the patients who are under there care and I suspect they are nothing but hypocrites. True that we as health care providers do need to have an understanding of how a patient shall feel. But most senior people use the same ideology to get the dodgy workload cleared by their traninees and junior colleagues.

Getting back to the topic proper, I had a pile of answer scripts to be marked on my desk right now. Having had a cursory look at few sheets, I have the feeling that these need to be marked thoroughly. Then I started marking them, one by one, giving meticulous attention to each of the statements. After about one hour, I was done with two scripts, and there were fifty more to be assessed. Then I realized that it was going to consume an enormous amount of time. The golden question was, how much I was going to get paid for marking each script.

It is sad that the Uni authorities want us to believe a mere 0.25 USD per script is the reasonable price. You might agree with me that 'peanuts' is a lighter term to describe such a payment. Therefore I decided to curtail my attention span to match the price of an answer. I was feeling bad about it at the beginning but what else can I do.

I began to scan for the 'words' that are expected to be present in the script. If the words were present, I would allocate marks for each one of them. And I was done with the bundle of papers within forty minutes and another ten minutes later the marksheet was posted to the course co-ordinator.

Pricetagging the attention span what do you think?

That was disgusting

I am not sure I am angry or sad after what I heard from a very good friend of mine. He is extremely intelligent and a hardworking person decided to give up the perks of clinical practice in order to pursue a PhD in a leading University. He was doing well, until he realized that his research idea and protocol was hijacked en mass by a senior person.

Although I did not have a chance to speak to him literally, I could very well feel his anguish through the chat on MSN. In a place that promote attempted murders to higher ranks, can you ask for more!!

Anyway in research and academic life, the lesson is, NEVER trust anyone!!!!!

Fight for a room
I was trying hard to get a room in the faculty. Seven months completed after returning, still do not have a proper room. The problem is people are trying to get THE room whereas all what I want is A room. The room I was told to occupy is not vacant and I am supposed to share it with two interns. I have no idea how am I going to share that.

Things are going to be very difficult when I have to mark papers etc...where I have to maintain the confidentiality of the work I am doing.

Where I am staying now is a very small place indeed (it is even smaller than the room I lived in HK. Those of who know about the place may now know how small that place is.

The irony however is that the place has many vacant rooms. Some people seem to have occupied two rooms. The problem is uniquely Sri Lankan, it is not that we lack resources but we are very poor in prioritizing the requirements and unequal and unjust distribution of resources.

As far as I can perceive the Dean has taken a genuine trouble to find me a room, probably after seeing the plight of the 'room' I spend the most productive hours of the day.

Anyway what can I do? rather than waiting and biting time and WAIT for THEM to give ME a room.

E learning tools practical

View more documents from juwfds.

It is the second day of the workshop and getting interesting with each hour passing. Blogging seems to be an effective method to communicate with my peers and students. Behold, I will publish my teaching material as soon as I discover how to post links to the lectures and handouts I have made.

Teaching Methodology Workshop

Finally here I am sitting by a computer in the e library and started my BLOG.