1. The first of two items on academic writing. Tomorrow, Friday 9th July, at 14:00 UK time Ana Frankenberg-Garcia from Surrey University here in the UK will be talking about Academic English Collocations: from corpus data to assisted writing with reference to ColloCaid, a text editor that she and her colleagues have developed that provides users of academic English with collocation suggestions. More info and registration here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/academic-english-collocations-from-corpus-data-to-assisted-writing-tickets-162302056821
2. You’ll need to register on the THE site to read this second piece on academic writing, but that’s free and easy: a thoughtful piece on the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Education that suggests the arguments need to be re-framed because AI is always going to win https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/does-rise-ai-spell-end-education
3. Thanks to Dario Banegas for bringing this to my attention: the Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT) https://spelt.org.pk/ panel discussion on Teaching and Researching English in Difficult Circumstances at 15:30 UK time on Saturday, 17th July. More info in the poster attached below.
4. So, then, who wrote this? To look at the international system with reference only to sovereign states is to miss a key piece of the discontent puzzle: the growing dominance of private interests over public institutions, which is locking countries into policies that are not socially or environmentally sustainable and weakening societies’ ability to respond to the changes and dangers of the world around them. It warns that this dominance is so engrained that profound changes are required at every level, from the local to the global.
To my surprise, and possibly yours, it was the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in their recent report, Perspectives on Global Development 2021: From Protest to Progress? https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/405e4c32-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/405e4c32-en There’s no free download, alas – and maybe there should be, to encourage those “profound changes (that) are required at every level, from the local to the global” – but the whole report’s available online.
5. And, finally, and thanks once again to my colleague Andrew Skinner, two short videos about the film The Reason I Jump by Jerry Rothwell, based on the book of the same name by twelve-year-old Naoki Higashida: the trailer https://youtu.be/f2DoU1MzLos and an interview with the director https://youtu.be/8FF7FHEqrUY
Here’s The Guardian review of the film as well https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/09/the-reason-i-jump-behind-a-groundbreaking-film-on-autism
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