Thursday, 29th May (Cambridge)

Posted on May 29, 2025 by roycross

1. Paths to Restitution is a piece about the Africa Museum in Brussels by Jeremy Harding for the London Review of Books https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/jeremy-harding/paths-to-restitution

The museum’s acquisition of works by contemporary Congolese artists is a consequence of the long effort to turn it from a temple of racist kitsch into a modern, ‘decolonised’ institution. Its earliest incarnation dates from the World’s Fair in Brussels in 1897, whose ‘African’ component was staged in the Palace of the Colonies. The palace became the site of a permanent colonial display the following year. Leopold II of Belgium had been running the Congo Free State as a personal fiefdom for more than a decade, issuing franchises to European companies at terrible cost to the Congolese.

I hope this works for non-subscribers; let me know if it doesn’t please, and I’ll see what I can do..

2. Writers Demand Immediate Gaza Ceasefire is the title of an open letter from nearly 400 writers here in the UK https://medium.com/@horatioclare/writers-demand-immediate-gaza-ceasefire-65ae44bd7241

We, the undersigned writers of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, ask our nations and the peoples of the world to join us in ending our collective silence and inaction in the face of horror.

3. Good notice, I hope, of the Green Action ELT event from 11:45 to 17:30 UK time next Friday, 6th June, Green Educator Conference – Teaching For A Better Future More info and registration here https://green-action-elt.uk/events/ Full programme here https://green-action-elt.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/TFABF-programme.pdf and attached below.

TFABF-programmeDownload

4. There’s an ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages) webinar at 15:00 UK time next Wednesday, “Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils”. More info and registration here https://www.ecml.at/en/Resources/Webinars and more info and an introductory video on the RECOLANG project itself here https://www.ecml.at/en/ECML-Programme/Programme-2020-2023/RECOLANG

The overall aim is to support the social and institutional recognition of home languages and to enhance learners’ plurilingual repertoire. The RECOLANG project aims to rethink language assessment, particularly the assessment of those languages for which there are few (or no) assessment resources, and which are not seen as part of national education systems. Why is it relevant to assess home language competences of migrant pupils? How do you assess language competences not learned at school? How do we get started? How to encourage learners? How to get involved as a teacher, parent or pupil?

There’s a very comprehensive project bibliography here (and below) https://www.ecml.at/Portals/1/6MTP/project-audras/documents/Recolang-bibliography-EN.pdf?ver=2024-09-27-084113-073

Recolang-bibliography-ENDownload

5. And, finally, the awe-ful moment a Swiss village disappeared yesterday: watch and listen from the other side of the valley from about 3’49” in https://www.youtube.com/live/FNS7p5l1Wpc

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Tuesday, 27th May (Richmond)

Posted on May 27, 2025 by roycross

1. A measured but firm response from Harvard University President Alan Garber to the latest assault on his university by the Trump administration https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/05/Letter-from-Harvard-President-Alan-M.-Garber-to-the-Honorable-Linda-E.-McMahon.pdf PDF also below.

Harvard’s efforts to achieve (its) goals are undermined and threatened by the federal government’s overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard’s compliance with the law. It ignores the many meaningful steps we have taken and will continue to take to live up to our principles and improve the lives of people across the country and throughout the world. That is why we have gone to court to address the government’s unlawful attempt to control fundamental aspects of our university’s operations. Consistent with the law and with our own values, we continue to pursue needed reforms, doing so in consultation with our stakeholders and always in compliance with the law. But Harvard will not surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear of unfounded retaliation by the federal government.

Letter-from-Harvard-President-Alan-M.-Garber-to-the-Honorable-Linda-E.-McMahonDownload

2. Joseph (Joe) Nye, generally considered to be the inventor of the term ‘soft power’, died recently. Here’s the last piece he wrote, published posthumously in Monocle, The late Joseph S Nye on what “soft power” means in Trump’s new world https://monocle.com/affairs/joseph-nye-soft-power/

Soft power is the ability to affect others through attraction rather than coercion. Its consequences are often slow and indirect, and it is not the most important source of power for foreign policy – but to neglect it is a strategic and analytical mistake. The Roman Empire rested on its legions but also on the allure of Roman culture and citizenship. As a Norwegian analyst described it, the US presence in Western Europe after the Second World War was “an empire by invitation”. At the end of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall collapsed not under a barrage of artillery but from hammers wielded by people whose minds had been affected by Western soft power.

3. Celebration Day is “a new annual moment (here in the UK), held on the last bank holiday Monday of May, to honour and celebrate those who have shaped our lives but are no longer with us”. Here’s Toby Jones reading the poem, Portrait of a Romantic, by A S J Tessimond in memory of his father and talking about his father https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTLi2VwWA8Q

And here’s Nathaniel Parker reading Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen in memory of the film maker Derek Jarman https://youtu.be/fPQMjuUW1eo

4. Here’s a ‘long read’ for The Guardian by Shaun Walker, ‘I am not who you think I am’: how a deep-cover KGB spy recruited his own son https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/10/deep-cover-kgb-spy-recruited-son-peter-herrmann-illegals

Rudi Herrmann took a deep breath and asked his son Peter to sit down. “I have a story to tell you,” he said. Rudi had been preparing for this conversation for several years, running over the words in his mind. He was about to tell his 16-year-old son that everything Peter thought he knew about their family was a lie.

5. And, finally, Michael Rosen’s poem in response to Keir Starmer’s recent and already infamous ‘island of strangers’ speech, My Island of Strangers, describing how ‘strangers’ saved his life when he was desperately ill in hospital with Covid https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/17/my-island-of-strangers-poem-michael-rosen

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Thursday, 22nd May (Richmond)

Posted on May 22, 2025 by roycross

1. Short notice of tomorrow’s (23rd May) TeachingEnglish series of three mini-webinars from 12:00 to 15:30 UK time on AI for inclusion https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/webinars-teachers/ai-inclusion-webinars Presenters from Vietnam, Greece, Spain, India and Myanmar!

Details of the TeachingEnglish programme up till the end of June here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/community/top-stories/april-june-2025-understanding-my-learners

and PDF of the calendar of training courses for teachers for 2025-26 here (and below) https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/2025-03/2025-2026_TeachingEnglish_training_course_calendar_QR.pdf

2025-2026_TeachingEnglish_training_course_calendar_QRDownload

2. The International Booker Prize winner was announced on Tuesday. This year’s winner, originally written in the South Indian language Kannada, was Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhashti https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/everything-to-know-heart-lamp-winner-international-booker-prize-2025

I backed the right horse: my copy came in the post yesterday!

3. This one from The Conversation is a bit close for personal comfort, Do people really want to know their risk of getting Alzheimer’s? by Claudia Cooper https://theconversation.com/do-people-really-want-to-know-their-risk-of-getting-alzheimers-256340

4. Death in Trieste is a series of five fifteen-minute programmes for Radio 3 by Seán Williams about the real life murder in Trieste in 1768 of Johann Winckelmann, the most famous art critic of his day https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5QPk5QsmCFvJX88CndNH51c/death-in-trieste

One Wednesday between nine and ten in the morning, there lay a German gentleman in his 50s in a pool of blood, dying. What seemed like half of Trieste huddled around the poor man. He struggled to breathe for over six hours before he passed away. His thirty-something “friend” also gasped for breath, but he was now on the run: having stabbed and strangled his fellow guest in the neighbouring room, in what was said to be attempted robbery. And what was later found to have been premeditated murder.

5. And, finally, Eric Cantona at his glorious best https://youtu.be/INiT1cA_Eqk

On the evidence of this concert, though, he should probably stick to football https://youtu.be/1rPhOD57zbA

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Tuesday, 20th May (Cambridge)

Posted on May 20, 2025 by roycross

1. Aqueduto, the Association for Quality Education & Training Online, “is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to researching, supporting and showcasing quality in online language teacher education programmes” https://aqueduto.com/

Here’s a recording of a recent webinar of theirs with Joe Dale, Using AI Tools in Online Language Teaching and Teacher Education https://vimeo.com/1084896278

As some of you will already know, Joe runs a popular Facebook group, Language Teaching with AI. More info on that, including a ‘join group’ button, here https://www.facebook.com/groups/languageteachingwithai/

2. Tiffany Jenkins has just published (and had good reviews for) Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life. Here’s a post from her blog explaining why “Strangers” and why “Intimates” https://substack.com/@tiffanyjenkins/p-163487163

Today, the separation between the two spheres has dissolved. We treat strangers like intimates and intimates like strangers. Intimacy infuses the public sphere. The awkwardness of social kissing has replaced the handshake, and politicians ask us to call them ‘Tony’ or the equivalent moniker. Politics is intensely personal. Biographies of great men and women are dominated by their private lives, which are usually portrayed as toxic, and the private antics of the artist determines our position on their inclusion in the canon.

3. The Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity, NPLD for short, is “a European-wide platform bringing together 41 member organisations from 13 countries, including regional governments, universities, and NGOs. The network represents 21 regional and minority languages, working collectively to ensure their recognition, protection, and integration into public life”. They have just published a ‘position paper’ presenting “concrete policy recommendations for European, national, and regional authorities”. You can find more info on the position paper and a download here (and attached below) https://npld.eu/npld-adopts-new-position-paper-setting-strategic-priorities/

More on the NPLD and its support for Occitan, Sorbian, Frisian, Sardinian, Corsican, Basque and fifteen other languages here https://npld.eu/

NPLD-Position-Paper-2025Download

4. Although not of interest to everyone, this UCL webinar with Janice Hinckfuss & Mustafa Coban from Coventry University at 16:00 UK time this Thursday, 22nd May, may be of considerable interest to some, Adapting a Writing Enriched Curriculum model to a UK university context More info and registration here https://ucl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZXiNLYkDTViw_7rWx21GUg?dm_i=6T0T,16U2F,4XPH8E,5KHDK,1#/registration

5. And, finally, if you’re a migraine sufferer, you need to read this piece for The Conversation by Amanda Ellison, Professor of Neuroscience at Durham University, Why your migraine might be making you crave a large Coke and fries https://theconversation.com/why-your-migraine-might-be-making-you-crave-a-large-coke-and-fries-256309

Amanda’s piece includes a short video by Dr Jessica Lowe, whose Instagram tag is <doctorbrainbarbie> https://www.instagram.com/doctorbrainbarbie/

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Thursday, 15th May (Richmond)

Posted on May 15, 2025 by roycross

1. My NILE colleague Rose Aylett was Anne Fox’s guest on the 306th edition of the Absolutely Intercultural podcast recently, Power in language, Critical pedagogy, Spectactors (sic), Taboo topics https://www.absolutely-intercultural.com/?p=5378

We’ll be talking about how you can use language to project (or not) power. We’ll also hear about how art forms, such as theatre, can be used to help people recognise the many ways that a conversation could go. Rose talks about Augusto Boal and his “theatre of the oppressed”. And then we’ll ask the question about whether there are any topics that we should not discuss in the classroom.

2. No fewer than 15 free five-week (or less) courses on climate issues from the various climate teams at Edinburgh University https://shortcourses.ed.ac.uk/courses?subject=Environment+and+Sustainability

I think I’ll start with the basics, Climate Change: Carbon Capture and Storage https://shortcourses.ed.ac.uk/course/climate-change-carbon-capture-and-storage

3. Katja Hoyer’s latest post on her Zeitgeist blog, What’s left of World War II? Is as interesting as ever https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/whats-left-of-world-war-ii

‘This cake is delicious,’ I shouted at the old lady behind the counter. ‘What’s that, darling?’ she shouted back. I held up my paper plate, which contained a generous slice of Victoria Sponge. Whoever had made it had gone to great lengths. The icing on top was carefully crafted in the red, white and blue of the Union Jack that had covered the whole thing. There was just the right proportion of jam and cream between the fluffy sponge. ‘Goood!’ I shouted as I pointed at the cake with my fork. ‘Excellent,’ the lady bellowed back, ‘I’ll pass that on to June!’

4. From The Democracy Collaborative, Enabling Conditions for Community Wealth Building https://www.democracycollaborative.org/whatwethink/enabling-conditions

We’re facing a systemic crisis. Climate danger. Inequality. Racial injustice. Collapsing faith in democracy. It all adds up to a crisis of our system. And systemic problems require systemic solutions. The Democracy Collaborative is an action-oriented think-do tank seeking to build a democratic economy through political-economic system change from the bottom up.

PDF here https://roycross.blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/dcfa8-enablingconditionsfinalpdf.pdf

and below, and more about The Democracy Collaborative here https://www.democracycollaborative.org/

Enabling+Conditions+Final+PDFDownload

[file x 1]

5. And, finally, A brief history of the numeric keypad for the DOC website by Francesco Bertelli & Manoel do Amaral https://www.doc.cc/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-numeric-keypad

DOC describes itself as “an editorial platform that explores meaning in the world of design and invites digital product designers to expand their references beyond the UX bubble. We publish stories worth publishing and we keep ideas worth keeping. Everything else is noise. We pause. We breathe. We assimilate. We seek meaning. We document the world of design through the lens of curiosity and awe”.

Thanks due, as so often, to Stephen Downes, the indefatigable producer of OLDaily for that one!

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Tuesday, 13th May (Cambridge)

Posted on May 13, 2025 by roycross

1. Two recommendations from Gary Motteram to start with today: thanks, Gary!

A MOOC from FutureLearn, AI in Education, which explores “how AI is reshaping education and reflect(s) on how you could respond critically or reimagine educational practices”.  https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ai-in-education Free to join unless you want a certificate.

Plus, a podcast series on AI and Education from Manchester University, Generative Dialogues: Generative AI in Higher Education, hosted by Helen Beetham and Mark Carrigan. A recent episode looked at AI in Education: Critical Perspectives and Future Challenges https://open.spotify.com/episode/05mw2mUmikyK9i6qNC9QrD

The conversation centers on how AI has disrupted the traditional “contract” between educators and students, with participants debating whether we’re educating for the future society students will inhabit, or for idealized past standards. Felix poses the crucial question: “Are we educating people to become productive members of the society of the future? Or are we educating people to live in a society that we believe should be?”

2. The Reform Party here in the UK have completely spooked (defined by Merriam Webster as to make frightened or frantic) the Labour government into radical (and very un-Labour-like) reform of the immigration system. Here’s the key points https://www.gov.uk/government/news/immigration-white-paper-to-reduce-migration-and-strengthen-border and here’s the white paper, Restoring Control over the Immigration System https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821aec3f16c0654b19060ac/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paper.pdf PDF below as well. I shall feel a bit ashamed when I visit my mother’s nursing home tomorrow.

restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-white-paperDownload

3. This piece for The Conversation by Elliot Doornbos and Angus Nurse makes it clear that the smugglers of tiny ants make good money: Insect trafficking poses a risk to wildlife and human health https://theconversation.com/insect-trafficking-poses-a-risk-to-wildlife-and-human-health-255273

Four men were recently arrested and fined for attempting to smuggle more than 5,000 ants out of Kenya. Aiming to sell them as part of the exotic pet trade, these ants were being stored in individual test tubes and syringes with small amounts of cotton wool for transportation.

Who do they sell the ants to?

4. It’s the virtually here that intrigues me in the title of this Bill Gates blog post, My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/save-lives/reader/20-years-to-give-away-virtually-all-my-wealth Virtually = all but the odd billion.

One of the best things I read was an 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth. It makes the case that the wealthy have a responsibility to return their resources to society, a radical idea at the time that laid the groundwork for philanthropy as we know it today. In the essay’s most famous line, Carnegie argues that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about that quote lately. People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that “he died rich” will not be one of them.

5. And, finally, a gift article from The New York Times, The Best Books of the Year (So Far): the nonfiction and novels we can’t stop thinking about https://tinyurl.com/dvn46ty5

I’ve so far read (and enjoyed) only one, Flesh by David Szalay, and have just ordered We Do Not Part by Han Kang. I’m now wondering, though, how Istvan, the hero of Flesh, can be, according to the NYT review, simultaneously coarse and boorish and surprisingly sensitive.

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Thursday, 8th May (Cambridge)

Posted on May 8, 2025 by roycross

1. This one’s a bit nerdy. Pupil absence in Autumn and Spring 2024/25 from the FFT Education Datalab, which, by its own account that I have no reason to doubt, “produces independent, cutting-edge research on education policy and practice” https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2025/04/pupil-absence-in-autumn-and-spring-2024-25/

What should we make of the big increase in persistent absence between the first and second years of secondary school, I wonder? Too simplistic to say that ‘big school’ is a huge, alienating disappointment to many young people?

2. Warren Buffett has just retired. Bloomberg try to explain his astonishing track record as an investor in this piece https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-05/warren-buffett-s-astonishing-track-record-in-five-charts

By one long-term measure, from 1965 to 2024, Buffett’s return was 5,490,338 % while the best of the opposition over the same period could only manage 526,557 %. A friend of mine suggests that “some of what impresses is just the magic of compound interest”. Powerful magic!

3. Two more echoes of The Heart of Darkness:

i) The Gang of Four song, We Live as We Dream, Alone https://youtu.be/p_vpBsQdzNs

ii) A PDF of a poem by John Drew, Heart of Darkness, which begins

 She was sitting up top on a bus out of Hackney,

The young woman with spiky hair

and glitter all over her face.

She was reading a book, putting it down

every few minutes

To primp the spikes in her hair.

‘Heart of Darkness’ by John DrewDownload

4. A recommendation from Paul Lay, the Senior Editor of Engelsberg Ideas: Despite his ludicrously patrician tones, the art historian Brian Sewell’s Grand Tour, made for Channel 4 TV and now on YouTube, is a compelling valedictory journey into the heart of the Italian Renaissance https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5JqSuIvtmAOG0ijDJJskYk8j9efOQRFE

See what you think of Mr Sewell’s vowels: strangulated is the word that comes to mind, but don’t let them put you off!

In the interests of balance, here’s Mr Sewell himself discussing his accent https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/the-perils-of-talking-posh-6353161.html

Is my speech really so odd that strangers in trains feel compelled to telephone their wives about it, that the Daily Mail and The Mirror invariably describe it as “plummy”, that in a new biography (not of me) the author says of it “every vowel definitively strangled”? In my head it sounds a little light and perhaps a little slow (friends mock me for saying “ears” for “yes”), but this is because I do not litter it with such filler phrases as “you know what I mean” or “and stuff” or “atcherly”.

5. And, finally and papally, a great story from The Public Domain Review about a previous papal conclave that overran slightly, A Popeless Situation https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2025/05/now-and-then-2/

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Tuesday, 6th May (Cambridge)

Posted on May 6, 2025 by roycross

1. This year’s 41st NATESOL conference has as its theme Learners and Learning and is free to attend online. Full details of the programme in the flyer below and booking here https://www.natesol.org/event-details/natesol-annual-conference-2025

Abstracts of all the presentations, including Niall Curry’s plenary, Aligning corpus linguistics and language education: a learner-centred approach, and Khawla Badwan’s talk, Unthinking language through its users: a child-wor(l)d language education here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bea4HZ948AH7ogLADtXzWsdhaBXwocsqY4b2aUnQxHw/edit?tab=t.0

Programme_NATESOL annual conference 2025Download

2. ReCALL is the journal of the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning. It’s just published an open access special issue on Migrants’ and refugees’ digital literacies in life and language learning https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/recall/latest-issue

Here’s the editorial from Linda Bradley, Nicolas Guichon & Agnes Kukulska-Hulme https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/recall/article/migrants-and-refugees-digital-literacies-in-life-and-language-learning/F373D75688968D971D032038D635D5D2

PDF of the editorial below as well.

migrants-and-refugees-digital-literacies-in-life-and-language-learningDownload

3. Jessica Mackay’s latest very comprehensive list of CPD opportunities for language teachers includes – yikes! – several events today and tomorrow (and a lot more besides) https://eim-ub.blogspot.com/2025/03/upcoming-cpd-opportunities-spring-2025.html

4. I mentioned the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon last week, for many of us summed up in the famous photo of people queuing on the roof of the embassy to escape by helicopter. Here’s a piece by Phil Tinline for Engelsberg Ideas, The helicopter, symbol of American hubris. It seems that photo wasn’t the embassy, though: it was the nearby CIA office! https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-helicopter-symbol-of-american-hubris/

Tinline also mentions the famous ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ helicopter attack in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which I remember being played at deafening volume in the Arts Cinema in Cambridge when I first saw it in 1979. Here’s that clip https://youtu.be/VE03Lqm3nbI I’d always assumed that Coppola meant the film, at least in part, as an anti-war film, but he’d have us believe not in this piece when interviewed by Kevin Perry about his ‘Final Cut’ version for The Guardian in 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/09/francis-ford-coppola-apocalypse-now-is-not-an-anti-war-film

Peter Bradshaw’s review of Apocalypse Now: Final Cut has no doubts, however, and I’m with Bradshaw https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/07/apocalypse-now-final-cut-review-francis-ford-coppola-dennis-hopper  From Marlon Brando’s extraordinary cameo to Dennis Hopper’s crazed photojournalist, Coppola’s epic ‘definitive’ cut of his brilliant 1979 war film is triumphant in restating the inhumanity of empire.

Anti-war or not, I love this quote from Coppola: “You have to realise, when I was making this I didn’t carry a script around,” he says. “I carried a green Penguin paperback copy of ‘Heart of Darkness’ with all my underlining in it. I made the movie from that.”

5. Why are productions of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape like London buses? You wait for ages and then two come along at the same time! There are two playing in the UK at present: with Gary Oldman at The Theatre Royal in York and with Stephen Rea at The Barbican in London. I went to see the latter on Friday with a friend and much enjoyed it.

Neither production is on YouTube just yet, but here’s the original 1958 Royal Court production (with Patrick Magee) https://youtu.be/otpEwEVFKLc

And here’s the other half of what has often been a double bill, Endgame, in a 1991 BBC production (with Max Wall & Charlie Drake) https://youtu.be/dWY3wuYiTM8

Thanks to Michael for those two videos!

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Thursday, 1st May (Cambridge)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by roycross

1. What surprises me about this piece from BOLD, How to support highly sensitive children in class, is the very high percentage of children who are affected by a condition I’ve never heard of! https://boldscience.org/how-to-support-highly-sensitive-children-in-class/

Imagine if every sound, sight, or emotion felt a little bigger, brighter, or more intense. That’s how life can be for the 30% of children who are highly sensitive to their environment. Being highly sensitive is a natural, genetically based temperament trait—not a disorder or clinical condition. Highly sensitive children process thoughts and feelings more deeply and often react more strongly to stimuli like noise, light, or sound. This can make school a challenging environment.

2. The British Council has tweaked its Continuing Professional Development (CPD) framework for teachers. Here’s the details https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers

and here’s the new framework itself https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/2025-04/CPD%20Framework%20for%20teachers%202025%20-%20Guidance%20Booklet.pdf PDF below as well.

CPD Framework for teachers 2025 – Guidance BookletDownload

3. DuoLingo is growing hugely with the help of AI, this recent press release of theirs tells us: Duolingo Launches 148 New Language Courses https://investors.duolingo.com/news-releases/news-release-details/duolingo-launches-148-new-language-courses

Duolingo, the world’s leading mobile learning platform, today announced the launch of 148 new language courses, more than doubling its current offering and marking the largest expansion of content in the company’s history. This launch makes Duolingo’s seven most popular non-English languages – Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin – available to all 28 supported user interface (UI) languages, dramatically expanding learning options for over a billion potential learners worldwide. “Developing our first 100 courses took about 12 years, and now, in about a year, we’re able to create and launch nearly 150 new courses. This is a great example of how generative AI can directly benefit our learners,” said Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo. “This launch reflects the incredible impact of our AI and automation investments, which have allowed us to scale at unprecedented speed and quality.”

4. Ethan Mollick’s latest post on his blog, One Useful Thing, Personality and Persuasion: learning from sycophants, reports more than a little worryingly on how easy it is to tweak the personality of Large Learning Models https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/personality-and-persuasion

Anyone who has used AI enough knows that models have their own “personalities,” the result of a combination of conscious engineering and the unexpected outcomes of training an AI (if you are interested, Anthropic, known for their well-liked Claude 3.5 model, has a full blog post on personality engineering). Having a “good personality” makes a model easier to work with. Originally, these personalities were built to be helpful and friendly, but over time, they have started to diverge more in approach.

5. And, finally, yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Here’s a free piece from History Today https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/fall-saigon and here’s one of many iconic photos of that day from Wikipedia

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Tuesday, 29th April (Richmond)

Posted on April 29, 2025 by roycross

1. AI AIn’t going away, however much it might be misbehaving. Here’s a great set of resources from TeachingEnglish, Pathways: AI in language teaching https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/professional-development-pathways/pathways-ai-language-teaching

2. Here’s an important report for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the Ambition Institute by Loic Menzies and Marie Hamer on CPD (Continuing Professional Development), A System that Empowers: the Future of Professional Development https://ippr-org.files.svdcdn.com/production/Downloads/A_system_that_empowers_April25.pdf PDF below, and here’s the press release https://www.ippr.org/media-office/train-the-teacher-close-the-gap-report-urges-new-training-entitlement-to-raise-school-standards

A_system_that_empowers_April25Download

3. A piece for Psyche by Katie Barclay on the history of the family, The history of family offers a liberating view of custom and love https://psyche.co/ideas/the-history-of-family-offers-a-liberating-view-of-custom-and-love

AITAH for not giving my step-sister my half of her mother’s life insurance,’ reads the headline on a post in the ‘Am I the Asshole’ subreddit – an online community where individuals bring their personal conflicts and problems and ask for judgment. Reddit’s users, largely American males aged 18 to 30, were asked to arbitrate a family conflict. Thirty years earlier, the poster’s father had died and left him the family home in his will, on the condition that his stepmother could remain in it for her lifetime. After his father’s death, the stepmother had thrown out the poster; he wasn’t yet 18. Subsequently they had little contact. When the stepmother died, the poster had finally gained access to his house.

4. I binge read all of Annie Ernaux’s translated work two years ago when she won the Nobel Prize. Here’s a New York Times gift article on her and her work by Rachel Cusk, Annie Ernaux Has Broken Every Taboo of What Women Are Allowed to Write: the novelist Rachel Cusk on what makes the Nobel laureate’s fiction so shocking https://tinyurl.com/bdeep58a

Plus a short video of Annie explaining why ‘she’s nobody when she writes’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLkpEHhBHe4

5. And, finally, for those of you like me who can never remember which word is which letter in the NATO phonetic alphabet [file] Don’t think I’ve infringed any copyright!

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