Music for writing

James Lamb, a friend and colleague from our years on the MSc in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh and subsequently from shared projects like Edinspace and Elektronisches Lernen Muzik, has posted recently with an excellent playlist of tracks nominated by students.

Introducing Volume 2 of Music for Writing, the product of this exercise that we undertook last year to explore the music that students, researchers, teachers and tutors use to accompany and influence the task of academic writing.

The title of this playlist is a play on the phrase used to indicate the tempo of a piece of music, as well as the description attached to typing efficiency. So, music and writing. The title is also explained by the fact that the tracks collected here are generally of a much higher tempo than on Volume 1: Classical Composition.  Personally, I think both collections have their place, perhaps reflecting that we undertake different types of writing and that these varying compositional forms merit distinct types of aural accompaniment. But don’t just agree with me: why not use the comments function below to indicate whether and how this playlist might influence of disrupt your own academic writing (or if you nominated a track, tell us how it works for you).

The playlist is excellent so why not give it a listen and comment on how it could possibly influence your own writing. Or, nominate a different track altogether. At least affirm to me that I am not the only one that writes academically to a single track looped incessantly. A different track each time, mind you, but always on Repeat One.

 

Music for Writing (Volume 2): 120 words-per-minute by Elektronicheslernenmuzik on Mixcloud

By Michael Gallagher

My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.

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