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Thailand Diary: nine days on Koh Phangan
I arrived in Bangkok on a beautiful morning, checked into my “suite”, a small, boxy room with no design logic and felt immediately at ease. This is the paradox of Thailand. The comfort factor is extraordinarily high even when the physical circumstances are modest. No matter how ugly Thai modernism may be, there are always…
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Book review: Tim Berners-Lee, This Is for Everyone
There is a particular kind of reading experience that feels less like consuming a book and more like walking alongside someone who helped shape the world you grew up in. Tim Berners-Lee’s memoir This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web, written with journalist Stephen Witt and published by Macmillan in September…
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The Quiz and AI: Reconsidering what outcomes really matter
The emergence of generative AI has sparked ‘wicked problem’ questions among educators: What is a quiz for? Is it still useful? Measuring what students know through quizzing them suddenly feels inadequate when an AI system can answer factual (and deliberative) questions faster and more accurately than a human. However, beneath this dilemma sits something more interesting:…
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Digital Archipelagos: A personal reflection on DHA2025 and its evolution in Australasia
Genesis, definitions, and memory Digital humanities remains a contested term, as all definitions must be! The field has been variously described as the intersection of computing and humanities disciplines, a methodological commons, and a site of computational engagement with cultural materials. Such contestation is healthy, signalling vitality, yet it also generates considerable waffle. I am…
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Source to Sea: tracking the Snowy River from Kosciuszko to Marlo
Australia’s Snowy River springs from the alpine snowmelt on Mt Kosciuszko, carving a 352-kilometre route through gorges, plains and forests before meeting Bass Strait at Marlo, Victoria. Our multi-day journey followed this legendary waterway, tracing its heartbeat. From Gippsland dairy flats to Kosciuszko’s rocky headwaters, every bend revealed a version of the Snowy, wild and…
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The Future of the Essay in the Age of AI: A Practical Guide
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has fundamentally disrupted one of higher education’s most enduring pedagogical tools: the essay. For centuries, the essay has served as both a means of learning and a method of assessment, asking students to demonstrate research skills, critical thinking, argument construction, and disciplinary knowledge through extended written work. The arrival of tools…
