Category: Random

  • Fun with Hansard

    Francis Bernard Beamish, of the Cork brewing family, served from time to time as MP for Cork in the mid-1800s, and when I was doing my research masters on the history of Beamish & Crawford, I dug his contributions out of the printed volumes of the House of Commons Debates. He didn’t have a lot…

  • Building an open essay writing process

    Assessment in the Humanities in university still depends heavily on “the essay”, either as a paper or in an examination. Any survey of syllabii in the humanities and liberal arts will bear this out – the bulk of our marks go for the abilty to write essays of varying length, from 1,500 words up 6,000-8,000…

  • Is there a future for artisan MMORPGs?

    I’ve been playing Star Wars:The Old Repuiblic lately, to see what the state of the art in MMORPG is, and its ok, but as a long time tabletop RPG gamer, it is not very satisfying. I can get lost in it, occasionally, but I’m a bit fed up picking up 7 credits and a pinch…

  • Librarians are useless…

    and we should stop wasting public money training any more of them. It is 2012, the book is dead, and it follows that the library, as the big building housing books is a waste of prime space on campus, and therefore the people wandering around the stacks are relics of a dead age. Like the…

  • A Broader Digital Humanities?

    I chanced across an discussion last night on twitter which aligns with a problem I have been considering – how can the digital humanities include social sciences and science, if at all?  This relates to the question of creating an undergraduate curriculum of some sort in Digital Humanities which would be truly interdisciplinary, that would work for…

  • Theory=Model=Game

    Neil Ferguson‘s mis-adventures in gaming are highlighted on Richard Mehlinger’s blog on HASTAC in a a post which reinforces the dangers of non-gamers getting swept up by the gee-whiz of digital games. I’ve always been wary of digital games for teaching, which is why I’ve always used old fashion non-digital game play and design in my history…

  • End of Empire, Enter the Commonwealth?

    There has been a great deal of excitement this week about the National Archives publication of images of selected documents on the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921; the full text of most of those documents has been available online for many years as part of the CELT collection at UCC. The online exhibit is good, and…

  • Gaming Reality History

    Teaching contemporary International Relations with in-class simulations is sometimes challenging when the simulation scenario may be radically changed by what is happening in the real world, but that is the challenge my HI3112 International Organisations students are dealing with this week in this terms conference game on the Horn Of Africa/Arab Spring. “Upstairs” literally as well as figuratively, the MA class are dealing with the problems of designing a…

  • B. Radical

    For a couple of years now, the question of fixing our creaking Arts degree has been floating round, and there is to be another round of “review” this year.  Based on previous experience of reforms and new programmes, I think it is an impossible task, and we are better off starting with a clean sheet…

  • First Week..new courses, changed courses…

    First week of full term, and I am installed in my new office and dealing with changed and new courses – changes to Hi3112 International Organisations, and a new course Hi0090, Personal Development, which is basically a leadership course which I am looking forward to. Until it gets a Blackboard site, the introduction and materials…

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