Category: Random

  • Mind Mapping, Knowledge Cartography 2015

    I originally started requiring students to use mind minds as a tool to visualise  the structure of single articles, separating argument and analysis from supporting evidence. Over time, our use of mindmaps has grown, to encompass mapping debates across multiple sources in order to construct a literature review, and from an essay planning tool to…

  • Small is even more beautiful now

    Thirty years ago, I felt that  the state was the enemy of a free people; I still believe that is true even if liberalism has lost its way and become ‘neo’ which is an interesting pun if love The Matrix.  Be warned – Rant mode is full on below this line!

  • That $5 trillion isn’t gone away you know…

    The $5 trillion wiped off the value of global equities as the Chinese market collapse spreads hasn’t all vanished – it’s just gone somewhere else in search of a different bubble.  What is really spectacular is not the collapse of Chinese markets, but the capacity of people to ignore the obvious indicators that it was…

  • Reading into Digital Humanities (Summer 2015)

    New Semester in Six Weeks! The summer is flying by, this years cohort of Masters students are deep in writing their dissertations, most of the places for next year have been filled, BA offers will be going on in a few weeks,  and new students are asking “What should I read before we start”.  Reading…

  • The Obligatory Greek Crisis Blog Post

    Greece stumbles between disaster and catastrophe this weekend; no one knows how it will turn out, no one is even clear on what they are voting on. We may never be clear on what is or has happened, but it seems to me that there are some things we can start to develop some perspective…

  • Curiosity to Objectivity

    I find there is a serious flaw in academics strait-laced pursuit of “objective truth” as a holy grail, not only in the humanities but even in the ‘hard’ sciences.  No one start out with a cold research question, and anyone who claims to do so is wrong.

  • A reading cycle

    Students who come to my courses often get a bit of a shock – I try very hard to not lecture. My classes are flipped, blended and discussion based. Often students are not aware of what they are getting into when the join my options, so this is a utility blog post to explain how…

  • Kill the Course Reading List

    if you love your students, you’ll kill those course reading lists – they do no good and can do great harm. The full course reading list is a crutch for mediocrity which I no longer provide.

  • TYdays at UCC – #dhty

    Over four days in April, we hosted almost 200 Transition Year students for four days of workshops in Digital Humanities at UCC.  Each day we introduced a fresh batch of young learners to aspects of our DH practice here in UCC in a brisk run through digital learning, text markup and making with Arduinos

  • Small People make Small Gods and Small Prophets

    I don’t think think is fair or useful to satirise someone who has been dead for 1400 years. Free speech, which is the cornerstone of freedom and dignity, allows people the right to do that, and I agree with that right, but I also gives me the freedom to assert that cartoonists who satirise dead…

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