CoVid Confinement. Opportunities for Higher Education....
In writing this article, I am minded of the Gabriel García Márquez novel title: ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ (i.e. something good and getting stronger coming out of something bad). Here, I am thinking about what we teachers, students and institutions in Higher Education can learn from the unavoidable ‘learning and teaching at distance’ experience we have been having presently during the CoVid Confinement, and the opportunities for positive change we might seize as a result. If the author of the above book doesn’t mind, my parody of his title for our time and situation might be: ‘Learning and Teaching in the Time of CoVid’ . Background. Firstly, may I say that what I am about to...
Predictions post CoVid
Some (Personal) predictions in relation to the post CoVid period I am sitting at home still trying to work out what has happened and somewhat in shock as to how perilously sensitive are the systems upon which our economies and societies are founded if a virus we can’t even see can wreak havoc with the entire global economy in just a matter of months…. So, I thought I would ‘prognosticate’ (‘guesstimate’?) a bit as to what the future might just contain for us….. and here are some of my thoughts on the matter in no particular order. I am no ‘seer’ … it is just with the passing of time and ‘age’ one tends to see long-range patterns...
La Famille Fonce (vers une vie ‘Low(er) Impact’)...
OK, I’m going to talk about my family. NOT because we are a lighthouse for a low impact life or a showcase for sustainability BUT rather because we are at least en route and have had some successes and some failures thus far. My wife and I lived our younger years in an idyllic area close to the beach and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, so even 40 odd years ago we were used to protecting countryside and seaside. We began to see things change: we almost never saw snow as the years went on (In fact, when I was very young indeed and living between Manchester and Liverpool, the first snow I ever saw was mostly black...
Keep a Light On [Dare to Care]
A song for those who ‘Dare to Care‘ .……in the midst of the CoVid nightmare that they wake to every day currently…. The song’s called: « Keep a Light On » [aka: ‘Dare to Care’]…….. Here’s another link in case the big one in words above doesn’t work for you: https://youtu.be/IPKyO932I0s I had the ‘Keep a Light On’ idea and a couple of lines and the melody tripping round my brain for a week or more. Finally broke away from marking university assignments for an hour or so in the late afternoon/early evening sunshine yesterday. Wrote the words. Stood in front of the PC camera and played and sang without a run-through. Inevitably I screwed up a ‘bridge‘, but...
![Keep a Light On [Dare to Care]](http://www.tonyversity.com/students/wp-content/uploads/et_temp/me-sneer-guitar-150x150-9514_150x114.jpg)
CoronaVirus and Crisis Management
This is Carcassonne. Why Carcassone? Well, because Carcassonne has known a crisis or two in its time. At one point the castle was beseiged and people were starving to death inside. They tried one audacious idea: to cook the very last animal they had and throw it over the walls to the beseiging army as proof the seige would go on for ages as they had so much food! Apparently the seige failed and the invaders left. Hence the name given to the city too: ‘carcasse’ -> Carcassonne! To bring us closer to our time, here is Blackadder’s take on ‘Crisis‘ – British humour – you’ll love it! Ok, I’ll get to the point. A year...
Anatomy of a Service Failure
« I just want to get the hell out of here! » You could ‘hear’ everyone in the queue thinking this aloud, but sometimes their thoughts became words and angry exclamations and sometimes those dealing with those in the queue were equally vocal, and at one point I thought it might even end in a measure of physical violence as the atmosphere had become so volatile. No, not a football crowd, but a queue of people who had paid £6.00 each to enter an airport security ‘Fast-Track’ service (because the queues in the ‘free’ security service were massive) only to discover (if everyone felt like me – which seemed to be the case) that it wasn’t fast and neither did...
About Me
Here is the link to my professional site personal profile if you are that desperate to know a bit about me, my career and life and thoughts in general! Surprising how many actually read it!