Notes from the classroom

Hello 2021: A new year — some old reflections:

2nd January 2021 in Culture and Technology, Education & Technology, EduLearn, Essays, Future Learning Lab, Notes from the classroom

It’s a new year and a new beginning … or possibly another repeat. A challenge at the start of a new year is to remember the pledges and resolutions from last year. Much depends on perspective. Some resolutions never made sense in 2020 or before: Be a better person, exercise more, eat less, talk more or less, write letters, visit parents, and you know — all those things that you either do or do not, regardless of resolutions. One perspective from 2020 centers on teaching, on being a teacher, on

Leaning on a class to make sense

3rd September 2016 in Global Development, Global journalism, Media and terrorism, Media Watch, Notes from the classroom

Every fall semester I teach one of my classes in English, with about 20-30 foreign students visiting our university for a semester. We had our first meeting yesterday. And as always I wonder before class starts whether there is enough in the chosen lecture theme to get them out there on the floor, debating. They need to. A class with 55-60 students total and where no one talks for an entire semester is a failure. Have I hit the right buttons in my preparations? I was thinking that question to

Arthur C. Clarke on Education

6th December 2015 in Books reviewed, Education & Technology, Global Development, New media, Notes from the classroom

There is a university that most of us have never heard of, unless you have reason to, or come from a place near by; it is called the University of Moratuwa. At one point in time it was known as the Ceylon College of Technology. If from Sri Lanka, certainly if from Sri Lanka, you will know of the many prizes students from this university have won in international competitions organised by the likes of Google and Microsoft. And one reason for it is Arthur C Clarke, who was the

We are the world, right?

2nd October 2015 in Education & Technology, Global Development, Notes from the classroom, Pop Culture, This week

Notes from the classroom: The importance of being there A lecture with my international students sums up this week, for me. I teach a course in global political communication. I have about eight different nationalities in my class. And this week we were to talk about how the international media frame and cultivate the theme of “global survival issues”; like poverty, climate change, ethnic class division and locked-in despair. Does it matter how the news media report on these challenges? Europe is on fire with refugee challenges. We all sort of tend