A little later this evening, as I’ve just driven home to Cambridge from Yorkshire, much enjoying BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Miser’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013k5l and BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Woodlanders’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000vp38 en route!

1. I’m meeting Ben Knight in the pub in Cambridge next Tuesday evening, but not until after he’s given his talk on ‘Helping your students become independent learners’ at 13:00 UK time next Tuesday, 24^th January https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/helping-your-students-become-independent-learners I guess he thinks he might need a drink?

2. What makes a great novel? How is a novel woven together? How can we best appreciate works of fiction? Find out on this University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh International Book Festival FutureLearn course, How to Read a Novel https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/how-to-read-a-novel

3. There’s a stellar line-up at 20:00 UK time on Thursday, 27th January for the Best and Brightest of English Language Teaching (BBELT) conference preview event: more info and registration here https://americas.britishcouncil.org/new-ways-of-teaching/events/bbelt-preview Those of you with long memories will notice that the BBELT acronym has been re-interpreted!

4. I very much hope that this UK Royal Society blog post, We are not powerless in the face of online misinformation, is right https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/01/we-are-not-powerless-in-the-face-of-online-misinformation/ PDF of the full report, ‘The online information environment: Understanding how the internet shapes people’s engagement with scientific information’, here https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/online-information-environment/the-online-information-environment.pdf and below.

5. And, finally, some predictions from NESTA for 2022 to mull over over (MS Word didn’t like that repeated ‘over’) the weekend in their Future Signals series https://www.nesta.org.uk/feature/signals-2022/

Will your next avocado be grown in Aberystwyth? – probably not if you live in Bogotá – and The rise (and rise) of screen time for kids – equally probable if you live in Bogotá – are two of the nine think pieces currently available.