Clive van den Berg’s (Q106259021) “eland” welcomed me to Braamfontein when I came up from Pietermaritzburg for a job interview in 2009 with SAIDE (took me a while before I created their Wikipedia page). In the wild, this buck is the second biggest antelope in the world. The Kudu (I’m told is the third largest). …
Category archives: Unfiled
Knowledge Graph
I like being understood. Like most people, I prefer it when others get me. When I go back to Pietermaritzburg, am with my school and university friends, or when with family, it feels as if I am with people who get me. Know both me and my context. I think that we make sense of …
Discovering Family Charts.
It’s been a month of changes, which have come in many shades. Cara got to visit Katy in Berlin for the July Holidays. Just after her return, Daisy died (24 July 2025). In a few weeks’ time, Simon will be heading over to Dorset to teach at Milton Abbey and the rest of the family (except Amy) …
ALT routes
I put on my learning technologist cycle helmet and went to work for ALT. For three month, I re-entered the minority world’s Information Superhighway (Thanks, Al) / the Networked Society (hey Manny) / the Fourth Industrial Revolution (ja, Klaus) . Whatever metaphor we choose to adopt today, I occupied the role of professional development for …
Anna is 20
I’m ambivalent about working from home. It’s precarious not having a regular salary and unpredictable, especially with no long-term contracts. We are not a trust fund couple. The choices we have made have been possible because of textbook royalties. Unlike many fathers, I’ve also had the privilege of watching my children grow up and being …
Demonstrate ….
Edtech Strategy Development Technologists have made modernity possible, and technology is a creation of modernity (Bray 2003). Education technology may be situated in modernity, but its purposes can differ, since participants are informed by a social context and spatial structures. Some assume that technology shapes and transforms education. To them, progress is linear and keeping …
A lost decade
I read last year (2024) that 5 new universities were being planned. With News 24 declaiming a graduate unemployment rate of 24%, I have wondered whether another handful of new institutions is the best way to spend our country’s limited resources. The StatsSA report in the tale of the two new universities shows that academics …
One wrong word….
This Easter, we had a lovely visit to the Midlands. We normally avoid travelling on a long weekend, but Mike, Kelly, and the gals were in South Africa for a wedding. So we left home at sparrows (4:30 a.m.) to beat the long weekend traffic, arrived on the meander at a very respectable hour and …
DH 2023
Please note that I first published this piece about the Digital Humanities conference on Substack in December 2023. Meant to post it to my blog, but I didn’t. I have also made a few Grammarly corrections. Introduction My first in-person conference since 2020. Yes, it was so good to be back with people (not screens). …
Re-imagining Africa’s Knowledge Futures
On Tuesday and Wednesday (25-26 March 2025), I had the pleasure of attending a key event for those who are interested in Digital Humanities. Entitled “Re-imagining Africa’s Knowledge Futures in the Digital Humanities”. The summit was organized by Dr Denzil Chetty (and the team), who lead the Advancing African Digital Humanities Ideation Hub (AADHIH) at …