1. An online event at (from?) The Cambridge REAL Centre on Thursday 22nd January at 16:00 UK time, the presentation of their report, Palestinian Education Still Under Attack: Restoration, Recovery, Rights and Responsibilities in and through Education Also in person if you happen to be in Cambridge that day, and I’ll see you there! More info and registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/report-launch-palestinian-education-still-under-attack-tickets-1979715132253 and press release here https://content.educ.cam.ac.uk/content/after-more-two-years-war-palestinian-children-are-hungry-denied-education-and-living-dead Full report here https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/real/publications/Palestinian_Education_Still_Under_Attack.pdf and PDF attached.
Education has long been a source of pride and remains crucial to the identity of Palestinian families. In the face of repeated crises, the long-standing commitment of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and their partners has been pivotal in defending the right to education and ensuring that Palestinian children and youth can continue to realise their right to learn, aspire and thrive. Since October 2023, education in the Gaza Strip, and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has faced devastating attacks by Israeli security forces and settlers. These assaults have undermined the right to education for more than 1.5 million children aged 6 to 15 years. This report documents the impact of these violations on children’s ability to access and enjoy their right to education.
2. Hope this one works for everyone; let me know if it doesn’t and I’ll see what I can do.
How WhatsApp Took Over the Global Conversation
The platform has become a core technology around the world, relied on by governments and extended families alike. What are we all doing there?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/01/19/how-whatsapp-took-over-the-global-conversation
3. From Katja Hoyer’s Zeitgeist blog last week, Inside East Germany – The Last Year: what a West German saw in Dresden in 1990
https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/inside-east-germany-the-last-year
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, West German writer and journalist Martin Gross was fascinated. Here was a real revolution in his lifetime. He decided he wanted to see up close what happens when people power moves history. So he moved to Dresden at a time when everything was changing for the people there and all across East Germany. A few months later, in October 1990, their country vanished. Gross had observed the last year of the GDR. He wrote a book about what he saw and heard. But when “The Last Year” came out in 1992, it was largely ignored. Nobody wanted to hear such stories. It was ancient history, or rather, it was not even that, just yesterday’s news. Now his book has been rediscovered and reprinted, Gross’s perspective as a keen outsider at a time of great historical importance has been reappraised and reappreciated.
4. This paper by Tin T. Dang and Margaret Robertson from La Trobe university, E-behaviors and e-community formation: An investigation on Vietnamese EFL students, has enjoyed a recent resurrection after the untimely demise of the journal in which it was first published https://researcherpubs.com/index.php/tila/article/view/22 PDF below as well.
This study particularly attempts to investigate the habitual behaviors of undergraduates in Vietnam who study English as a Foreign Language when they interact with a Moodle site during an English course. It specifically focuses on students’ expectations and awareness of online communication, their preferences related to instant messenger and blogging, and influential impacts on the formation of the online communities.
[file x 1]
5. And, finally and generously, Iqbal Ahmed has offered readers of this blog the chance to win a copy of his new book, The Snows of Kashmir, which ‘takes readers on an epic journey through the Himalayas starting from the town of his birth, Srinagar, and continues with a long road trip to Siachen Glacier via Kargil, Leh and Nubra’. More info on Iqbal and his books here https://coldstreampublishers.com/
Send me an e-mail or a WhatsApp or comment on the LinkedIn or WordPress versions to register your interest. I’ll put all the names in a hat next Wednesday, 21st January,
Roy Cross's Blog 