Tuesday, 1st July (Richmond)

Posted on July 1, 2025 by roycross

1. This one from Anthropic will take some time to explore thoroughly, Claude’s language learning tutor, which offers “customized language tutoring based on your goals and proficiency” https://claude.ai/artifacts/inspiration/2af221b6-367f-4b4f-9fe9-25710f5f8feb

A number of the languages I once (sort of) spoke are now on life support and I wonder if this might help?

2. A piece for Himal by Jason Stanley, who, to give you a bit of background so you know where he’s coming from politically, was until recently the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University but has now accepted an appointment at the University of Toronto based on what he describes as ‘the deteriorating political situation in the United States’, How fascism works in India https://www.himalmag.com/politics/india-modi-fascism-hindu-nationalism-muslims

India’s fascist turn under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist rule, says Stanley, has multiple parallels with global fascist tactics and history, including in Nazi Germany and Trump’s United States.

Not sure it would have been too difficult to work out Stanley’s politics, mind you!

3. Two pieces from Literary Hub

Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers https://lithub.com/against-ai-an-open-letter-from-writers-to-publishers/

We want our publishers to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.

What Would Happen If the Chatbots Broke Free of Their Masters? by Paul Bradley Carr on “the danger—for Tech Bros—of empathetic, knowledgeable Artificial Intelligence” https://lithub.com/what-would-happen-if-the-chatbots-broke-free-of-their-masters/

The tech industry I first wrote about as a young, eager technology journalist circa 1999 felt like it was filled with heroes. A brave new world in which plucky upstarts like Amazon (“The World’s Biggest Bookstore,” run out of a Bellevue garage) would bring hard-to-find books to the masses, or at least to my small town that lacked its own bookshop.

4. Nautilus, which describes itself as “a different kind of science magazine (whose) stories take you into the depths of science and spotlight its ripples in our lives and cultures”, offers two free articles a month – slightly frustrating as there’s lots of good stuff there! Here’s my own two freebies for this month (and it’s only the 1st):

Finding Peter Putnam: The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind by Amanda Gefter https://nautil.us/finding-peter-putnam-1218035/

Chasing Lost Languages by Laura Spinney, https://nautil.us/chasing-lost-languages-1221167/

If humans have been talking for 200,000 years—for most of our species’ existence, that is—then an estimated half a million languages might have been spoken in all.

5. And, finally, the strange story of Burj Al Babas https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/turkey-castle-ghost-town

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Thursday, 26th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 26, 2025 by roycross

Three on politics to start with today.

1. An engaging series for BBC Radio 4 from David Runciman, Postwar, in which he tells the story of the 1945 UK general election which rejected Winston Churchill and the dawn of a new age. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00249zx/episodes/player?page=2

2. A piece for The Conversation by John Curtice, How Britain’s new political divide delivers voters to Reform and the Greens, in which he suggests that Britain’s political tectonic plates may recently have moved irreversibly https://theconversation.com/how-britains-new-political-divide-delivers-voters-to-reform-and-the-greens-259613

This, of course, is not the first time that Britain’s two-party system has been under challenge. In the early 1980s the Liberal/SDP Alliance threatened to “break the mould of British politics”. In spring 2019, at the height of the Brexit impasse, the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats appeared poised to upset the traditional order. This time, however, the challenge to the Conservative/Labour duopoly seems more profound.

3. And a piece from Ipsos, Reform with Ipsos record 9-point lead over Labour, as public satisfaction with government nears lowest point recorded under a modern Labour administration, telling a very similar story https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/reform-ipsos-record-9-point-lead-over-labour-public-satisfaction-government-nears-lowest-point

Ipsos’ newly relaunched Political Monitor shows Reform UK on a 34% vote share, the highest Ipsos has ever recorded for them, and nine points ahead of the Labour Party. Just under a year since the 2024 general election, Ipsos in the UK’s new findings show how dramatically the political landscape has changed:

Labour’s 25% voting intention is the lowest share Ipsos has recorded for Labour since October 2019.

The Conservatives’ 15% is the lowest share Ipsos has ever recorded.

Keir Starmer and the government’s satisfaction ratings have fallen significantly since last year, with around three in four (73% and 76% respectively) now dissatisfied.

4. A new (non-political) position paper from Oxford ELT, The Impact of Assessment on Teaching and Learning: Creating positive washback https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/expert/positive-washback?cc=gb&selLanguage=en PDF below, in case that’s easier for you.

  • Explore research on how testing and assessment shape classroom practices
  • Find practical guidance on how teachers can prepare their students for exams while also addressing their broader language learning needs
  • Explore recommendations to help schools and policymakers foster positive washback
  • Discover how emerging technologies are reshaping the way educational institutions approach testing and assessment
positive-washbackDownload

5. And, finally, if you live in Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, or Vatican City, this one’s for you, Map of the Week: Every Country Britain HAS NOT Invaded https://blog.richmond.edu/livesofmaps/2023/10/13/map-of-the-week-every-country-britain-has-not-invaded/

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Tuesday, 24th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 24, 2025 by roycross

1. Compare and contrast, if you will, the latest edition of Ethan Mollick’s Guide to AI … https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/using-ai-right-now-a-quick-guide

Interesting that Mollick very confidently declares:

For most people who want to use AI seriously, you should pick one of three systems: Claude from Anthropic, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. With all of the options, you get access to both advanced and fast models, a voice mode, the ability to see images and documents, the ability to execute code, good mobile apps, the ability to create images and video (Claude lacks here, however), and the ability to do Deep Research.

2. … with the UK Government’s guidance on Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/generative-artificial-intelligence-in-education/generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-education

The Department for Education (DfE) is committed to supporting the AI Opportunities Action Plan. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) presents exciting opportunities to improve people’s lives, including by making our public services better. AI will support with the delivery of the Plan for Change and our opportunity mission. If used safely, effectively and with the right infrastructure in place, AI can support every child and young person, regardless of their background, to achieve at school and college and develop the knowledge and skills they need for life. 

No mention of Claude from the UK Government, who plump for – or at least mention in dispatches – ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini.

3. Episode 1092 of Mignon Fogarty’s ‘Grammar Girl’ podcast was What your accent is saying about you (and your identity), with Rob Drummond from Manchester Metropolitan University talking about the role the ‘Accent Van’ played in the Manchester Voices project https://youtu.be/puEjb98nDpI

Your accent may be saying more than your words. Sociolinguist Rob Drummond explains how accents shape our identities, how they differ across social classes, and why changing your accent can affect how you’re perceived.

4. How to teach English to refugees and displaced learners? Find out here! https://www.youtube.com/live/5ePE_b1hzr8

5. And, finally, But the Flowers Remain, a film by Joscha Kotlan & Maximilian Ihlenburg whichdocuments the rhythms of daily life for one family in a secluded mountain village in Romania https://aeon.co/videos/life-moves-slowly-in-a-romanian-mountain-village-shaped-by-care-and-the-seasons Also available here on YouTube https://youtu.be/euAP-zVMx7Y

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Thursday, 19th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 19, 2025 by roycross

1. Here’s a piece by Johanna Alonso from Inside Higher Ed (IHE), The Handwriting Revolution https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/curriculum/2025/06/17/amid-ai-plagiarism-more-professors-turn-handwritten-work

Five semesters after ChatGPT changed education forever, some professors are taking their classes back to the pre-internet era.

A free account with IHE allows you five free articles a month. I’ve got a nervous twitch in my right hand just at the thought of having to write an examination paper ….

2. You can sign up now for two TeachingEnglish courses that start on 1st July:

Helping teachers to learn, which is a course for teacher trainers and educators https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/teachingenglish-helping-teachers-learn

Teaching English through literature, which is a course for teachers of English at all levels https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/teaching-english-through-literature

I’ve attached the handbook for each course to give you a better idea of what they’re about.

Helping_teachers_to_learn_workbook_2025Download
Teaching_English_through_literature_workbook_2025Download

3. Not everyone’s into testing and assessment, I realise, but if you are, here’s a real treasure trove, the full archive of the Cambridge journal, Studies in Language Testing (SiLT) https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/english-research-group/published-research/silt/

Volume 38 is one of the more accessible volumes for the general reader and traces the history of Cambridge’s own exams back to 1858

Examiners in those days travelled in academic dress, carrying a locked box containing the question papers. They were paid about one pound four shillings, the equivalent of about £50 at today’s (2013) prices. The records show that the exam markers were paid, per pound, 9 shillings and sixpence for Arithmetic (about £20 now), 12 shillings and 6 pence (about £26 now) for History and 18 shillings (£37 now) for Classics papers – per pound in weight of papers, that is!

4. Also from Cambridge, a webinar with Rosemary Bradley & Jiří Horak on Developing oracy in the primary classroom. Two sessions: one at 10:00 UK time next Tuesday, 24th June, and a second at 16:00 UK time a week today, Thursday 26th June https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/resources-for-teachers/webinars/developing-oracy-in-the-primary-classroom/

Teaching oracy skills helps children become effective collaborators and communicators. In this webinar, we’ll explore the Oracy Skills Framework and how you can apply it to your primary classroom. We’ll look at a range of practical ways oracy can be incorporated to help young learners interact confidently, develop ideas together and build essential communication skills for life.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary – and in the interests of Oxbridge balance – oracy is the ability to express oneself fluently and grammatically in speech.

5. And, finally and (possibly, if the word exists) staminally, Mark Kermode has been posting a weekly review of a classic film for very nearly ten years. They’re all collected here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvkgGofjDzhx-h7eexfVbH3WslWrBXE9

Remind yourself what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon https://youtu.be/KOjrn3trcuI

or Aguirre, Wrath of God was about https://youtu.be/D36Zy9fXRg4

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Tuesday, 17th June (Richmond)

Posted on June 17, 2025 by roycross

1. This Thursday, 19th June, at 15:30 UK time there’s the last NATESOL event of this academic year, an interestingly different ‘special panel discussion’ with Robert Merrell from Manchester Adult Education Services and two adult ESOL learners, Rabia and Lul, Revisiting ESOL Entry learners’ needs & our teaching approaches. More information and free registration via NATESOL’s website here: https://www.natesol.org/

Robert and his two Pre-Entry learners are going to share what Entry ESOL learners need nowadays. Practical teaching techniques and useful suggestions will be exchanged. The discussion will be of interest to all teachers of English as a foreign or second language.

‘Pre-Entry’ is the ESOL equivalent of ‘absolute beginner’, just in case that’s not obvious, and my assumption is that Rabia and Lul are no longer Pre-Entry level learners!

2. BBC Radio 4 have just done a very good two-part adaptation of King Lear with the oldest ever Lear, the appropriately aged eighty-nine-year-old Richard Wilson, still best known here in the UK for his role as the curmudgeonly Victor Meldrew in the One Foot in the Grave sitcom (the humour of which may not have travelled very well?), supported by a stellar cast.

Here’s Part 1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002d887

here’s Part 2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002dkzx

and here’s The Daily Telegraph review https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/9113b0d51c87753a

3. The Beautiful Betrayal: How AI Reveals the Unravelling of Real Learning is a thought-provoking piece by Carlo Iacono on his Hybrid Horizons blog, which ‘explores human-AI collaboration’ https://hybridhorizons.substack.com/p/the-beautiful-betrayal

I’ve been (…) watching people grapple with generative AI, and what I’ve observed runs counter to every dire prediction about shortcuts and intellectual laziness. When a user crafts what they believe is a perfectly reasonable prompt and receives an AI response that’s technically correct but somehow fundamentally off, something remarkable happens. The tool’s interpretation becomes a mirror, reflecting back not just what they asked, but the poverty of how they asked it. “But that’s not what I meant,” they protest, staring at the screen. And in that protest lies the beginning of wisdom. The AI, in its peculiar combination of sophistication and obtuseness, forces a reckoning. Unlike a human teacher who might intuit meaning from context, who might bridge the gaps in a poorly formed question with experience and empathy, the AI responds only to what’s actually there. Every assumption left unspoken, every piece of context taken for granted, every logical leap glossed over – all of it becomes suddenly, painfully visible.

4. Have you ever heard of Ocracoke Island in North Carolina? Nor had I till Maja Mandekić brought it to my attention. It’s The US island that speaks Elizabethan English according to the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20190623-the-us-island-that-speaks-elizabethan-english

I’d never been called a “dingbatter” until I went to Ocracoke, North Carolina for the first time. I’ve spent a good part of my life in the state, but I’m still learning how to speak the Hoi Toider brogue. The people here just have their own way of speaking: it’s like someone took Elizabethan English, sprinkled in some Irish tones and 1700s Scottish accents, then mixed it all up with pirate slang. But the Hoi Toider dialect is more than a dialect. It’s also a culture, one that’s slowly fading away. With each generation, fewer people play meehonkey, cook the traditional foods or know what it is to be “mommucked”.

5. And, finally, confirmation of my memory of that Silent Way class with Mario Rinvolucri that I mentioned last Thursday from Rod Bolitho’s tribute-letter (nice idea) to Mario in the April issue of HLT:

But let me (Rod) talk to you (Mario) for a moment about how we first got together in Cambridge in 1977. I was fresh back from 3 years in Germany and the people at Bell pitched me head first into the role of Director of the RSA Dip TEFL programme, run on behalf of the recognised language schools in the city. You offered to teach a couple of slots on the course and I was advised to agree to your offer but also warned that you could rub people up the wrong way. The first session you led was on Gattegno’s Silent Way and it was a very intense experience for everyone present, myself included. When I talked to you about it, you said the intensity was deliberate as you wanted people to concentrate and to remember the session.

Well, Mario achieved his intention: I can remember that session with him nearly fifty years ago like it was yesterday!

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Thursday, 12th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 12, 2025 by roycross

1. The June issue of HLT (Humanising Language Teaching) has just come out and is as good as ever https://www.hltmag.co.uk/jun25/ but I’m ashamed to say that I missed the April issue, which was a wonderful tribute to one of the best trainers I ever worked with, Mario Rinvolucri https://www.hltmag.co.uk/apr25/ We started our relationship with an argument – Mario was demonstrating the Silent Way and refused to tell me how to say ‘thank you’ in modern Greek, the language he was teaching us, and when we next met, over breakfast in my kitchen in Zagreb, he was unrepentant (and so was I). We met many times and he was always challenging, in good ways!

The June issue has two eloquent tributes to Luke Prodromou, who also died recently, from Alam Maley and Ken Wilson.

2. Richard Smith, who pointed us in the direction of David Wilson’s splendid book, The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching, on Tuesday, has also kindly recently made his own ELTJ article on The History of ELTJ available without a subscription https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/75/1/4/6070219?guestAccessKey=423250c6-6c86-4fbb-8c81-07d39fdf559c&login=false You can download the PDF from that page, too.

Here’s the abstract: This article traces the 75-year history of ELT Journal, using this as a means to cast light on trends in ELT over the same period and to acknowledge various sources of thought and practice. In the first part (1946–1971), the focus is on how the journal contributed to the establishment of a methodological orthodoxy which was relatively unaffected by academic applied linguistics but which drew sustenance, rather, from a tradition of theorized experience and practical linguistics dating back to pre-war times. In the second part (1971–1996), the focus is on tensions between this orthodoxy and newer ‘communicative’ ideas—still, though, with an emphasis on practical experience as well as academic insight, while the final phase (1996–2021) is viewed as being characterized, above all, by attempts to ‘decentre’ away from mainly UK-based expertise and towards an opening-up of professional discourse to previously neglected voices. Viewing the history of the journal in this manner reveals continuities as well as shifts in perception of how English should be defined, whose voices ‘count’ in the field, and of the value or otherwise of research and theory in relation to practical concerns.

And if you’re a regular reader of ELTJ, you might like to complete their eightieth (!) anniversary reader survey here https://tinyurl.com/5fhms23r

3. LanguageCert is offering four sixty-minute webinars in June, each looking at one skill. More details and a registration link here https://www.languagecert.org/en/preparation/webinars/webinars-for-teachers The first in the series is Focus on Listening Skills at 10:00 UK (summer) time on Thursday, June 19th with Paul Bouniol:

An interactive 60-minute webinar clarifying what ‘Listening’ involves and the sub-skills that teachers can target in their lessons to address the areas where candidates sometimes underperform. The session will focus on what teachers can do throughout the year to develop their learners’ Listening skills and suggest support material they can use to prepare them in the best possible way.

4. Here’s Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, and now effectively the leader of the opposition to Trump, talking in dignified, resolute manner about recent events in his state https://youtu.be/pXQQNUeb4Sw

And here’s a piece by Natasha Lindstaedt for The Conversation reflecting on current events in the USA, Trump’s clash with California governor over LA protests has potential to influence next presidential race https://theconversation.com/trumps-clash-with-california-governor-over-la-protests-has-potential-to-influence-next-presidential-race-258713

Earlier this week, Trump gave an address at the newly re-renamed Fort Bragg at which he was cheered by the soldiers standing behind him (which is fine, as he’s commander-in-chief) and Biden was booed (not fine, as purely political and someone must have ordered the soldiers to boo), and the Fulbright Commission board resigned en masse in protest against the politicisation of the award of scholarships and grants; this Sunday, there’s a military parade in Washington to celebrate The Great Leader’s birthday …

5. And, finally, an old joke that’s worth repeating (I hope):

A sheep farmer is tending his flock when a city slicker rolls up in his BMW, hops out and asks, “Hey, if I tell you exactly how many sheep you have, can I take one?” The farmer nods, so the city slicker opens his laptop, calls up some satellite photos, runs some algorithms, and announces, “You have 1,432 sheep.” Impressed, the farmer says, “You’re right. Go ahead and take one.” So the city slicker loads one of the animals into the backseat of the car. “Now,” says the farmer, “I’ll bet all my sheep against your car that I can tell you what you do for a living.” A gaming sort, the city slicker says, “Sure.” “You’re a consultant,” says the farmer. “Wow!” says the consultant. “How’d you know?” “Well,” says the farmer, “you come from nowhere even though I never asked you to. You drive a flash car, and wear a smart suit. You told me something I already knew. And you don’t know anything about my business. Now give me back my dog.”

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Tuesday, 10th June (Richmond)

Posted on June 9, 2025 by roycross

1. I’m publishing early today, in the hope that some of you get chance to attend Geoff Mulgan’s UCL ‘Lunch Hour Lecture’, Shaping Better Public Institutions, at 13:00 UK time today, Tuesday 10th June. More info and registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lunch-hour-lecture-shaping-better-public-institutions-tickets-1364004055849?aff=oddtdtcreator

Our societies are shaped by public institutions – from parliaments to primary schools, regulators to ministries. But there’s a widespread perception that they have stopped evolving. While business and civil society have invented radically different organisational models- from Tiktok to Wikipedia – most public sector institutions look very similar to 30, 50 or 100 years ago. This lecture will diagnose the problem, share examples of more innovative approaches around the world tackling topics like climate change, mental health and AI, and describe how the next generation of institutions could be designed, making the most of ideas from computer science to biology as well as public administration.

2. Not quite (!) such short notice of this free NILE event with the founder of NILE, Dave Allan, and guests talking about 30 years of teacher development, at NILE and beyond at 16:00 UK time tomorrow, Wednesday 11th June. Sign up here https://nile-elt.zoom.us/meeting/register/7MXSlK31Q_etZCLy6kW3-Q#/registration

3. Thanks to Jaime Saavedra for this one from Microsoft – best read with a pinch of salt, but nonetheless persuasive – From skepticism to success: How AI is helping teachers transform classrooms in Peru by Juan Montes https://news.microsoft.com/source/latam/features/ai/world-bank-peru-teachers-copilot/?lang=en

Marco Antonio Pedraza, a sixth-grade primary school teacher who migrated as a young man from the countryside to bustling Lima, used to spend his own money to purchase specialized teaching materials for the three neurodivergent kids in his class. He had only a vague idea of what AI was and was skeptical about its potential. Then Pedraza was introduced to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, the AI companion that helps with work tasks. A group of AI experts recently trained him on how to write effective prompts to quickly generate personalized activities for the students just by typing a few traits of each. He was amazed by the results. “It was a revelation,” says Pedraza, an experienced public school teacher with a humble background. “These days, a teacher requires technology to effectively assist the kids.”

4. Cora Yang has just published a very useful guide to the use of AI in coursework on LinkedIn. Here’s the original post https://tinyurl.com/yxsh9xj9 and there’s a home-made PDF attached for those of you who don’t do LinkedIn.

I went through the International Baccalaureate’s “Evaluating 13 scenarios of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in student coursework” document and synthesized it into this “Scale of AI Use.” My goal was to create a simple, visual guide that both teachers and students could use to quickly gauge whether a use of AI is acceptable, needs caution, or is a clear case of academic misconduct. I wanted to create more than just a resource for my own students; I wanted to share it with the wider community. I’m posting it here in the hope that it can support more educators and students as we all learn to navigate this new landscape together.

Cora YangDownload

5. And, finally and expensively, The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching by David B. Wilson has just been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing and costs a whopping £81.99 https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-4603-1 Thanks, then, to Richard Smith for pointing us in the direction of a dozen highly readable free sample pages here (PDF also attached) https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-0364-4603-1-sample.pdf#page=19

The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching SAMPLEDownload
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Thursday, 5th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 5, 2025 by roycross

1. An OECD report on the growing disjunct between education and employment, The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/the-state-of-global-teenage-career-preparation_d5f8e3f2-en.html PDF below as well.

This report sets out key findings from PISA as they relate to teenage career development. The report shows that across OECD countries, students are now expressing very high levels of career uncertainty and confusion. Job expectations have changed little since 2000 and bear little relationship to actual patterns of labour market demand, including in working areas of high strategic importance. The education plans of students moreover are more strongly shaped by social background than by academic performance.

The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation OECDDownload

2. Here’s an interview from Engelsberg Ideas with my second favourite Yorkshirewoman, Fiona Hill, Fiona Hill on Donald Trump’s nuclear nightmares https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/in-conversation-with-fiona-hill-on-donald-trumps-nuclear-nightmares/

But in the case of Russia in Ukraine, I think we’re pretty certain that Vladimir Putin was contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons in 2022, when the tide was turned against the Russian military, when they were pinned down on the ground in the Kherson region and around the Dnipro River. We’ll all recall that there was analysis and all kinds of discussions at the time about whether Putin was willing to detonate a small-yield tactical nuclear weapon in that context. He wanted to use it as a game changer on the battlefield, and he amped up the rhetoric. That is, I think, very important.

3. Here’s an interview from the DEEP YouTube channel with Carne Ross, the founder of Independent Diplomat, about the Iraq War and his reasons for resigning from the UK Foreign Office https://youtu.be/AYsVZZ_Q4s0

4. The Camtree Digital Library’s collection on Exploratory Action Research can be found here https://library.camtree.org/communities/dc5e3ea9-886b-43e0-9784-b78b4740ac6f and there’s lots more to explore here https://library.camtree.org/home

The Camtree Digital Library publishes peer-reviewed research reports produced by educators from around the world. Library content is freely available to all readers. Camtree supports educators to reflect on their practice and conduct research to improve learning in their own contexts and organisations, through its website at https://www.camtree.org. Camtree is based at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge.

5. And, finally, a piece from The New York Times that confirms what I’ve always thought (hoped?) about coffee, That Cup of Coffee May Have a Longer-Term Perk https://tinyurl.com/4c6rzdfk

The researchers found a correlation between how much caffeine the women typically drank (which was mostly from coffee) when they were between 45 and 60 years old and their likelihood of healthy aging. After adjusting for other factors that could affect aging, such as their overall diet, how much they exercised and whether they smoked, those who consumed the most caffeine (equivalent to nearly seven eight-ounce cups of coffee per day) had odds of healthy aging that were 13 percent higher than those who consumed the least caffeine (equivalent to less than one cup per day).

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Tuesday, 3rd June (Richmond)

Posted on June 3, 2025 by roycross

1. First up today, the recordings of three good talks from this year’s Cambridge Festival https://www.festival.cam.ac.uk/:

Hiranya Peiris, Professor of Astrophysics at Cambridge, on Decoding the Cosmos https://youtu.be/PtYHKPGPh3U

Philippe Sands, Professor of Laws (plural!) and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London, On Impunity, Pinochet and Patagonia https://youtu.be/96VlfWBAQxo

David Spiegelhalter, Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge, on The Art of Uncertainty: Living with Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck https://youtu.be/d8hYzhjKiiQ

2. I could imagine (and I hope I’m wrong) that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which I’ve just discovered, is one of the many projects whose future funding is uncertain at present under the Trump administration https://plato.stanford.edu/index.html

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work.

Here’s three random readable entries:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/

Ludwig Wittgenstein https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/

The Chinese Room Argument https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

3. I had a little surf over the weekend following in the wake of Karl Ove Knausgaard, starting with this piece from Harper’s ‘on finding mystery in the digital age’, The Reenchanted World https://harpers.org/archive/2025/06/the-reenchanted-world-karl-ove-knausgaard-digital-age/ (Harper’s allows you two free articles a month.)

The first time I saw a computer was in 1984. I was fifteen years old and living in a sparsely populated area near a river, miles away from the closest town, in a far-northern country at the very edge of the world. A sign lit up above the convenience store that closed at four o’clock every day; otherwise, the visual stimuli were limited to fields and trees, trees and fields, and to the cars driving along the roads. In autumn and spring it rained so much that the river overflowed its banks—I remember standing in front of the living-room window watching the water cover the field where we played football, the goalposts rising up from it. There was one TV channel, two radio stations, and the newspapers were printed in black and white. The news from Iran and Israel, Egypt and South Africa, England and Northern Ireland, the United States and India, Lebanon and the Soviet Union all took place far away, as if on another planet.

The Harper’s piece led me to Knausgaard’s New York Times interview with the surgeon Henry Marsh, The Terrible Beauty of Brain Surgery https://tinyurl.com/mry9v92m

Marsh was in Tirana to demonstrate a surgical procedure he helped pioneer, called awake craniotomy, that had never been performed in Albania. The procedure is used to remove a kind of brain tumor that looks just like the brain itself. Such tumors are most common in young people, and there is no cure for them. Without surgery, 50 percent of patients die within five years; 80 percent within 10 years. An operation prolongs their lives by 10 to 20 years, sometimes more. In order for the surgeon to be able to distinguish between tumor and healthy brain tissue, the patient is kept awake throughout the operation, and during the procedure the brain is stimulated with an electric probe, so that the surgeon can see if and how the patient reacts. The team in Albania had been preparing for six months and had selected two cases that were particularly well suited to demonstrating the method.

And that NYT piece led me to The Guardian review of Henry Marsh’s book, Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/13/admissions-by-henry-marsh-review

The book draws on more recent experiences than ‘Do No Harm’ (Marsh’s first book) – in London, Texas, Ukraine, Nepal and with ambulance-chasing London lawyers (memorably described as “rooting in a great trough of insurance premiums”). When the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard met Marsh, and wrote about him for the New York Times, he was struck most by his openness and honesty. That honesty is abundantly apparent here – a quality as rare and commendable in elite surgeons as one suspects it is in memoirists.

4. The new issue of EL Gazette came out today, full of good stories as usual https://www.elgazette.com/elg_archive/ELG2505/mobile/

5. And, finally, another gift article from The New York Times, The Cockney Accent Is Fading, but This Dish Is Here to Stay https://tinyurl.com/4uvw7wsy

Shop owners in the U.K. are fighting to win government protection for pie and mash, a working-class meal with deep roots.

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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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