I was a Scottish Technical teacher, which means that as part of my day to day working I have dealt with a range of technical and technological issues and concepts.

As well as working in traditional ways with different materials such as wood, metal and plastic I have also been involved in teaching Technical Drawing, electronics, computer control and pneumatics.

I am now a teacher trainer in Scotland - within the University of Strathclyde. I still call myself a teacher trainer as I have to train my students on a number of different processes.

My hobbies include digital photography and travel but mainly woodworking and the promotion of traditional craft.

As a teacher trainer I work mainly on one course - the PGDE, this is a one year course which combines learning subject knowledge with teaching skills, hence I have only taught a short range of topics within this course, much less than when I was an actual teacher. The course has to prepare students for what is out there so we cannot deal with what is to come only with what is there and digital manufacturing is not in our schools yet.

Hence my knowledge and skills are out of date and inappropriate for this course.

I can see that this course will provide me with the skill, knowledge and most importantly the motivation to become involved in future technologies.

To this end I am thinking of ways in which to combine the work and skills of the fablab with the traditional woodworking that I already do.

I feel that there are ways to move forward with technology which would enhance the traditional methods of working rather than replace these.

Initially digital ways of working replace traditional but eventually find their own ways and show that they can enhance what we did.

From the discussion that we have had around the fab academy already I can see that working full time may make life interesting whilst studying.

We do not have a fablab within the university quite yet but are working towards it so my work will be split between the university and the Maklab in Glasgow with tutorial help from Manchester.

All of this means that there will need to be careful time management from myself and my colleagues. However I am looking forward to the work and have come up with a