Van Gils Blogs

This week we celebrated Koen’s birthday. 3 times to be exact. On Monday I worked from home so that I would be there when he got back from school. Inge came over and we had pancakes in the evening In that sense Koen can be quite predictable at times!

Wednesday Koen had a party with 7 of his friends. In terms of parental guidance, it was only Eva and myself. We decided to take the kids to the “speelgoed and blik museum” (a toy museum) in Deventer. Walking over there was a bit of a challenge as it is not that easy to keep 8 kids on check. All in all it went rather smoothly though. The museum itself was quite fun. I think they particularly enjoyed the miniature trains.

Saturday, as an intermezzo, I took Koen to Drente to celebrate Sunne’s birthday party out in the woods. It was nice to see them reunited. Walking in the woods with a big group is always fun, especially with good guidance. Either way, it was worth the trip

Last but not least, Sunday we had family and friends over for Koen’s party. More presents for him! Looks like I’ll be building LEGO stuff for a few days with him…

P.S. I started biking again, more on that soon I hope
P.P.S. bathroom is almost completed! Pictures will follow when we’re done

Over the last 9 weeks I’ve been busy teaching the course enterprise architecture in practice. Next Tuesday the students will be taking their exams and, hopefully, hand in their assignments. I’m pretty pleased with this course, even though I still have a lot of grading to do I’m convinced the students will do well. When all the results are in, I’ll write a new posting on the strategic archtiecture blog. I was triggered to write this post by an E-mail from one of my students:

Het eerste vak dat wat mij betreft gedurende alle weken op master niveau is gedoceerd. Interessant, soms te veel onderwerpen, en een zeer inspirerende docent. De workload van dit vak is groot, in ieder geval voor mij. De manier waarop bepaalde onderwerpen werden belicht vanuit heel andere definities dan ik gewend was zorgden ervoor dat ik veel tijd nodig had om de schakeling van “oude” naar “nieuwe” definitie te maken (als dat al helemaal is gelukt). Daar moet je dus gewoon een tijdje op broeden voordat er weer werkstukken kunnen worden geproduceerd. [...] Bas, ik heb met zeer veel plezier gekeken naar jouw bezieling. Jouw didactische vaardigheden zijn erg goed. Het was dan ook merkbaar in de groep dat het enthousiasme oversloeg op de studenten. Het is ook erg motiverend om te zien dat een docent ook elke week weer inspanning heeft gepleegd om de lesstof aan te passen wanneer hij ziet dat hij zijn doel nog niet helemaal heeft bereikt. Er wordt niet alleen inspanning geëist, maar ook gedaan [...]

In short: this student was very content with proceedings and stated that this is one of the first courses that actually had the desired level (Master students) and that the course had many new / interesting viewpoints, and that the students were inspired by my teaching style. Lots of compliments!

In my opinion, a great course consists of more than good material (which, of course, helps a lot). Two other ingredients for success are great students (motivated) and an inspiring teacher. Looks like we made that happen for this course.

Since he was born, Koen has had a small discoloration on his left eye. We never really worried about it as he is able to see things clearly. However, when I was at my favorite optician I noticed a new device with which you can take very detailed pictures of the eyeball. I dragged Koen over, just for the fun of it, and to figure out what is really going on with his eye. Here’s the result:

the discoloration is nothing to worry about indeed. Just some pigment dots that happen to be cluttered together. Good to know, fun to see.