The term post-truth was, according to Oxford Dictionaries, the Word of the Year 2016. It was defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016 In USA of course the term became widely used in the context of… Continue reading Post-truth and a good argument
Category: technology
Photography and social research
I have often felt in doing research that I have missed out on using photographs, but when it comes to it I am not sure what an image tells us. Or rather my suspicion is, to borrow a phrase from Ryle [1], that an image gives you a ‘thin’ description’, it shows you what is… Continue reading Photography and social research
Language learning: a thing of the past?
Language classes started again at our university and I have re-enrolled at intermediate German. From a technology point of view why bother? Online translation programmes are free and efficient and speech recognition has improved to such an extent that there is frequent talk of mobile translation devices that can really work [1]. In fact progress has… Continue reading Language learning: a thing of the past?
Big Data and Education
Reading through contributions to debates on big data and education (see [1] – [9] below) reminds us that there are two perspectives on education: education as science and education as wisdom of practice. Education as science is about generalisation (if x what is likely to happen?), measurable outcomes (chiefly grades, if appropriate retention too) and… Continue reading Big Data and Education
Pessimistic narratives about technology (continued)
‘They’ are collecting data on us every day, who we phone, where we move, what we buy, who we see, what we do and say. Some at least of this is benign; if ‘they’ know more about where we go then we might be able to have a more rational transport system; if they know… Continue reading Pessimistic narratives about technology (continued)
Pessimism and technology in school
Two recent news items posted to the BBC news web site have helped contribute to a pessimistic narrative about using technology in school. The more recent of these is an evaluation of online charter schools which found that in 17 US states these schools were associated with ‘significantly weaker academic performance’ in maths and reading… Continue reading Pessimism and technology in school
Social Science and Difficulties With Theory
It is difficult for those not following the field to get the importance given to theory in social research; researchers are continually asked to be theoretical and to align themselves with a position of some sort or another. To be theoretical is to lift your research to a ‘higher plane’; to deal with the world… Continue reading Social Science and Difficulties With Theory
Big Data
There is a lot of interest, and indeed funding, around Big Data. Big Data is a catchy – and suitably vague – phrase which is used to draw attention to the increasingly large amounts of data available to policy makers, natural scientists, and social researchers. Definitions of Big Data are still up for grabs but… Continue reading Big Data
Michael Hammond 
You must be logged in to post a comment.