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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on creativity and routine
Most creative individuals find out early what their best rhythms are for sleeping, eating, and working, and abide by them even when it is tempting to do otherwise. They wear clothes that are comfortable, they interact only with people they find congenial, they do only things they think are important. Of course, such idiosyncrasies are not endearing […]
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Here’s Lookin’ at You Kid
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I’m going to the river where the current rushes by
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On waiting for something to happen
As often happens when I’m ill, I’ve found myself musing existentially about how I approach life. I found last year immensely difficult and felt like I’d started 2023 with a running start before I was felled once more by the eternally recurring coronavirus. This meant enforced deceleration (for reasons of quarantine, feeling awful and avoiding […]
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The concept of cathexis
I’ve long been drawn to psychoanalytical theory but I find it quite difficult. One of the problems is that these theorists rarely give examples beyond their case history, which tend to be opaque if you’re struggling with the underlying conceptual framework. The other is concepts tend to be used in different ways. I nonetheless routinely […]
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Generative AI and the future of assessment: an open discussion at the Manchester Institute of Education
This is an internal event we’re organising at the University of Manchester but I’m sharing it here to gauge interest in a subsequent public facing event: Since it was launched in November 2022, ChatGPT has enthralled millions around the world with its uncanny ability to respond to queries in a conversational manner. Its apparent capacity […]
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We might be dead by tomorrow
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Gabor Maté on the reality expressed through depression
I thought this was an immensely powerful image in a remarkable book which is full of them. In The Myth of Normal pg 220 he argues for a view of depression as a defensive responsive to an unliveable tension between our self-expression and attachment needs. He argues for recovering the objective conditions which created emotions […]
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The Use of Digital Artefacts in Teaching and Researching: Guidelines for Practice
I wrote these best practice guidelines with Haira Gandolfi at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education in 2020. We’re sharing them here in case others find them useful. The use of digital artefacts in teaching and researching presents a number of practical challenges relating to the administration of files which need to be stored, […]
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Some thoughts about generative AI and the future of education
A few more thoughts which were swirling around in my mind as I’ve been thinking this through: So what do we do in the near term? I’ve not watched these yet but I’ve seen Charles Knight make some interesting comments about this on LinkedIn. The video below is one of a series which I intend […]
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I am older now and we did it when we were young
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Too much Zoom in the post-pandemic university
After the longest holiday I’ve had for years, I’ve started to feel seriously depressed about the quantity of Zoom meetings in my calendar over the coming weeks. I’m currently at an intensive workshop with long term collaborators where we’ve spent all day/evening talking to each other. It’s enjoyable to immerse yourself in interaction with others […]
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Irvine Welsh on angst, addiction and writing
After spending the last couple of months rereading Irvine Welsh novels, as well as reading the few I’d never touched, it struck me that I’d never heard him talk. Nor did I know anything about him. I was unsurprised to find out he was born in Leith and had been addicted to heroin there for […]