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Category Archives: the trouble with technology
Education – a ‘troll’ free zone?
A blog like this cannot avoid commenting on the case of Caroline Criado Perez who has received rape and violence threats, and insults via Twitter after she campaigned successfully to have a picture of Jane Austen on new UK banknotes. … Continue reading
Teaching horses to talk
I am reading William Bowen’s neat (in a number of senses) new book on the economics of elearning: Higher Education in the Digital Age. It is a highly accessible book on a very opaque subject – sometimes you feel the … Continue reading
Ice Age Women
Over the weekend I visited the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum. This small but wonderful exhibition has as its theme the argument that our Ice Age ancestors 40,000 years ago were intellectually modern human beings whose aesthetic … Continue reading
Gender gaming – real and virtual
Last week I attended an excellent conference: Girls and Digital Culture at Kings College London. It ran in parallel with London Fashion week at the Courtauld Institute next door. The august pictures of Kings College famous alumni that front the … Continue reading
Its a girl thing- but is it a science thing?
I have been suprised at the almost universal condemnation of the short video produced by the European Commission as part of a campaign to attract more young women to ‘do science’. You can see it on YouTube if you missed … Continue reading
Women deal better with being lost in Space
I was a science fiction reading young teenager in a small northern British town when the first Space programmes were launched. I remember pictures of a debonair Yuri Gagarin and a serious Valentina Tereshkova looking like innocent twins in their … Continue reading
What I saw in China 2: low tech ‘non-jobs’
Despite the high end high tech products and industries in the major cities of China – and in the hands of many Chinese people –we saw lots of incidences of over-manning: of people working in ‘non-jobs’. China is the only … Continue reading
What I saw in China: 1. Noisy technologies
I have just come back from a three week holiday exploring parts of China. While I was there I was too overwhelmed to blog, but since I have been back I have been reflecting on some of what I experienced. … Continue reading
Can face-to- face universities offer consistent high quality online and distance learning?
For some years those of us working in distance learning institutions have been encouraged to see ourselves as simply part of a continuum of ‘blended learning’. Our older siblings: traditional or face-to- face institutions, declared that they could use e-learning … Continue reading
The boys’ night out
In all the media coverage about the visit of Prime Minister Cameron to President Obama, nobody seemed to think the 800 mile round trip on Airforce One to see a basketball game was anything worth mentioning. I am not a … Continue reading