I would ransom all the years from now till my passing to meet you again.
Your sharp light, your innovation.
You are my guide in this fog of belief, this haze of knowledge.
I call on you from afar, my friend of so many years, my solitude.
I need to conjure you from these lifeless fingers, I need you to rest in the muck of my bosom, hope dropping like a leaky faucet, tapping incessantly like only hope can, offering time, a rhythm, a beat a pulse.
My pace quickens at the thought of you, my heart dances like the pinings of a stroke, the calm before the tempest.
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.