Dyslexia and all that.

One of the things I've learned whilst doing this job is that 50 people who have dyslexia can be as different as 50 people who have a car. Or a cat. Or an Adele CD. Actually scrub the Adele bit, but you take my general point.

The symptoms are different from person to person and so is how someone may react to a diagnosis of dyslexia. The two extremes of which seem to be shame and elation. The reaction of elation is reminiscent of someone coming out as they embrace their dyslexia with both hands (I've seen it and it is terrifically entertaining!), but those aren't the people this post is really aimed at. I've met with a few students recently who seemed quite upset by their new found status as dyslexic (personally, I prefer to say that someone has dyslexia) so to those students and to anyone who has dyslexia I'd like to say this;

You are as smart and fabulous as you were the day before your diagnosis.

Now. If you think you may be dyslexic or are interested in seeing how the university supports people with this issue, have a look here.

Women's rights in India

I'll keep this one short as I'm on holiday.

I was listening to Women's Hour this morning and it turned out to be about the protests of women in India following the much discussed gang rape of a woman on a bus.

It's very moving and you can find it here.

A green paper on education and young offenders

I saw this story in the newspaper today and thought it worth sharing.

Frankly, I'm glad to find ANY story which don't don't involve horsemeat at the moment.

Anyway. Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, is about to release a green paper proposing major changes to how youth offenders may be educated whilst in detention.

You can read the Guardian's take on the story from here. 

You just know it's one of those policy decisions that's going to create a stink, but I'll link to the green paper when it's released in a few days time.

E-books on demand update

Hello.

This is (yet) another reminder to exploit the hell out of the scheme we've currently got running whereby you can rent/buy your own e-books. We're expecting the money to last about 3 more weeks, but don't quote me on that. There will be an official announcement when the money's gone.

I've sat with a few final year students recently who've found highly relevant books for their dissertations and rented them through Dawsonera. So I can know this opportunity can really pay off.

I don't want you to miss out, in fact I'm a bit surprised that more people haven't used the scheme already; free e-books. Forever. On the subject that you want. What's to think about?????

Now go in through DISCOVER and get renting.

*whispers this bit* and remember it needs three of you to click on the same book to trigger an automatic purchase...

Troubled families online discussion

Hello.
I missed this when it was live, but it's still worth a look if you're interested in the government's 'Troubled Families' scheme. The Guardian does these 'online discussions' (a panel of experts answers questions from the general public) quite often and they're usually good value.

You can reference it of course as a webpage if there's anything in there that is worth including in assignments.

Now I've explained what it is, you can read full online discussion here.

Radio programme on Multi-agency Safeguarding Hubs

I'm a Radio 4 kinda guy.
This is hardly a revelation as I'm always pushing their output in your direction.

However, yesterday morning whilst working at home I heard an episode of Victoria Derbyshire's Radio 5 programme, and I'm very glad I did too. Amongst all the usual travel updates and news there was a long report on the development of Multi-agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASH makes such a good acronym in this case) which I'd read a little about, but didn't really know how it was supposed to work.

The programme sat in with a unit and looked at how it was created to improve communication between all the different social agencies and departments. Because it's on iplayer the programme will disappear in 6 days, but you can always download it to keep it for longer.

You can listen or download from here.

A book to help you understand journal articles

I spend quite a lot of my working week looking for books to buy for you. This can be a trawl at times because authors rarely write books on exactly the subject I'm after on your behalf. Authors are like that. They rarely do what I tell them.

But occasionally the right book gets written and I'm able to tell you about it. This is one of those occasions. If you're a first or second year (or even a final year student who should seriously know better!) who occasionally struggles with journal articles this is the book for you. It's called 'How to Read Journal articles in the Social Sciences' and may be exactly what you're looking for.

It's simply written (tick), is quite short (tick), tells you how to analyse abstracts and method sections (big tick) and has some nice tips on how to avoid going word blind when confronted with too much material. Chapters 4 and 5 are particularly useful and suggests a coding system to record what you read. 

I'm even going to tell you where it is in the library; go to the 3rd floor and find shelf 300 CHO (the author is called Chong).

What are you waiting for? Go get one...