1. FutureLearn’s list of “the most important skills and characteristics for teachers in a handy 10-point list”, What makes a good teacher? https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/what-makes-a-good-teacher Guess what’s included in their list before you read the piece!
What does it mean to be a good teacher today? With new educational tools, technologies, and training emerging every single year, it can seem like the teaching profession is constantly changing. Here at FutureLearn, we believe there are certain fundamental qualities that all teachers need, whatever the context.
2. There’s a new, free Language Assessment Professionalisation Programme from ALTE & Eaquals https://lapp.education/ Five modules, five hours each, covering the principles, purposes and impact of testing, achievement & proficiency testing, classroom-based testing and managing results and feedback – it’s all there!
3. Three from The Conversation:
The impact of abolishing wealth tax in Sweden https://theconversation.com/we-got-lazy-and-complacent-swedish-pensioners-explain-how-abolishing-the-wealth-tax-changed-their-country-272041
“Us pensioners can see the destruction of what we built, what was started when we were small children,” Kjerstin, 74, explained. “I was born after the end of the war and built this society through my life, together with my fellow citizens. [But] with taxes being lowered and the taking away of our social security … we’re not building anything together now.”
Why we love literary anniversaries https://theconversation.com/why-we-love-literary-anniversaries-273375
(…) literary anniversaries are significant as they create a shared sense of heritage and a feeling of unity within communities and cultures. As Shakespeare scholars (have observed) when considering the Bard’s many anniversary celebrations:“Each event has also been an occasion for the community commemorating him to celebrate itself.”
The book that changed my mind https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-my-mind-12-experts-share-a-perspective-shifting-read-271243
Our beliefs aren’t fixed. They’re shaped, stretched and sometimes overturned by the ideas we encounter as we move through life. For many of us, books are the moments where that shift happens – a sentence that lingers, an argument that unsettles, a story that re-frames how we see the world. We asked 12 academic experts to share the book that challenged their assumptions and changed their thinking in a lasting way.
4. A free online event at 15:00 UK time next Wednesday, 28th January, from The New Scientist, Unfinished Business: how do we end HIV?
https://www.newscientist.com/science-events/unfinished-business-how-do-we-end-hiv/
Of the 40 million people living with HIV, nearly a quarter are not receiving life-saving treatment and new transmissions are not falling as fast as many experts hope. So how can the world meet the UN’s target of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030? Join New Scientist’s panel of experts in a roundtable discussion examining the future of HIV care and the collective efforts required to end the epidemic.
5. And, finally, this year’s T S Eliot Prize winner, Karen Solie, reading her poem Wellwater https://youtu.be/b_rn5tG7XZE
More about the T S Eliot Prize, Solie, and the other poets on the shortlist here https://tseliot.com/prize/prize-year/the-t-s-eliot-prize-2025/
Roy Cross's Blog 