I am on sabbatical. Yes, I will have one year study leave without teaching at home! This is the first time I have done this. As of now, I officially have time to concentrate on my research for a while.

I fear that I might have too much planned already. What started out as a thought of a quieter, less busy year is already turning into what looks like a very busy time. But that’s okay – there are things coming up that I enjoy doing.

First, from today, I will be in Berlin for a while, teaching a block course at the Freie Universität Berlin. I will then teach the same material there again in long form in Spring next year, when I’ll spend three-and-a-half months in Berlin. During my time there, I am planning to work with the department on improving teaching techniques, material and tools.

After my initial Berlin stint, I am planning to spend some time trying to build up a network of Greenfoot Hubs and to write – jointly with David Barnes – a new edition of the BlueJ book. And we are planning a lot of work on Greenfoot as well. More on all of that later, I hope.

Who knows, maybe this also means that I will be able to update this blog more often, and to provide a little more regular updates of what we are working on.

For now, it’s time to dust of my slightly rusty German. My plane lands in an hour, and there should be a good German beer waiting for me somewhere.