Inside View

Learning from Neighbours

IRELAND WON'T beckon Bulgarians to the land of a thousand welcomes but in South Tipperary, we know from our Polish friends that it's an insult in Bulgaria to give an even number of flowers to anyone. Even numbers of flowers are placed on...

Disingenuous at Best

NOEL DEMPSEY, the soon-to-be-replaced Irish Minister for Communications, has released one of the most disingenuous public tendering documents. Dempsey's an intelligent man, probably the smartest head seated around the cabinet table, but ...

Money in Sunday News

A QUICK SCAN of the Irish Sunday newspapers reveals plenty of stories (and some inserts) concerning money. That's a nice topic to consider around Christmas time, innit? Even when you factor out payments (pronounced "dig out" in Irish) to...

Making Money with O2 Active Life

ALTHOUGH I CAN save lots of money when buying products and services from O2-Ireland online, I have learned that my local O2 channel sales partner looks after me better over the counter than I get from online support. Just before Christma...

Serious Weather in the Sunday News

ALL THE IRISH Sunday papers and recurring reminders on radio stations throughout Ireland remind us that we're in for some serious weather ahead. That means the snow on the Galtee Mountains (above) near my home will continue to be in my...

Goodwill Unemployed Conference

A DAY-LONG CONFERENCE for unemployed happens in Dublin's National College of Ireland on Tuesday 30 June. It is the Think2Act held in the Mayor Street campus of NCI, organised by Dr Celine Mullins of Act 4 Business and Eibhlin Johnston of...

Tricking Them to Read

MY PRESENTATION (14-minute video) to the e-learning summer school (#ELSS10) with the Dublin Higher Education Alliance sparked some questions that I will answer in a separate blog post. Below the break, I cite the primary resources th...

Tricking-them-to-read

Pathways on Storylines

I WATCH STORYFUL AND the New York Times every morning, learning how their editors decide to open pathways to deeper insight behind breaking news. Some of the information flow I see curated by those two trusted news providers give me idea...

Social Objects as Realia

Bernie Goldbach in Limerick | Image of a duck I DIDN'T SPEND enough time in the University of Limerick's Language Learning Conference because I had to attend a major exam board in County Tipperary within an hour of finishing my 25-minut...

Told to Get a COVID Test

THE REPORTING OF more than 600 daily cases of Covid-19 for the first time since late April was a “cause of concern”, the chief medical officer warned today, the same day we were notified by a close contact that she had COVID. A few hou...