By Joshua Kim. The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Annual Meeting more than a wonderful conference.
It is a model of why blended learning is the most effective format we have for teaching.
I’ve been absent for a couple of years to this gathering, and after spending a couple days in New Orleans with my learning technology peers and colleagues I have a new appreciation for the value of this face-to-face gathering. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. My retirement plan has me working until 2069. In that year I will turn 100, and maybe then I’ll take up golf.
Why won't this edtechie ever retire?
First, have you seen the cost of higher ed lately? We have two offspring set to hit the postsecondary industrial complex in 2015 and 2017. Enough said.
But I have other reasons beyond tuition costs to want to stay working at the intersection of learning and technology. Here are a 3. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. The fabulous Barbara Fister, you, and I like to read books about the future.
Some thought provoking, or at least engaging, dystopian fiction can bring some restorative balance to general “future will be pretty awesome” themes of the nonfiction books that I tend to read.
Two fun, fast, and smart books that I’d like to recommend for your brain are Marcus Sakey’s Brilliance and Ramez Naam’s Nexus. The fact that these books are cheap - $4.99 and $1.99 respectively for the Kindle versions - may persuade you (combined with my recommendation) to download. Let us know.
Brilliance can be read as a book length argument that aspies and other newly recognized on the spectrum ways of thinking may offer alternative (and sometimes superior) ways interfacing with the world. Read more...
By Barbara Fister. I was a bit taken aback by responses to my thoughts about short-term versus long-term thinking as libraries make decisions. I see libraries making practical trade-offs all the time without always considering how those decisions may bite us a few years from now. As an example, we traded print subscriptions for Big Deals. This made sense. We had to trade hand-picked subscriptions of local interest for what came with the Deal, but we could get a lot more for the money. Read more...
By Matt Reed. My Dad had a wonderful belly laugh. I couldn’t always predict when it would happen. The laugh made an impressive appearance when we were watching Airplane II, of all things. In an early scene, Robert Hays sees a door on the plane marked “Danger: Vacuum.” He opens the door cautiously, only to be assaulted by a vacuum hose and nozzle that try to wrestle him to the floor. My Dad laughed as hard as I had ever seen him. Other people in the theater actually turned around. Thirty-something years later, I remember it vividly. Read more...
By Matt Reed. Governor Haslam, of Tennessee, has proposed using state lottery revenues to create an endowment to fund the tuition and fees for new high school graduates at community colleges within the state.
I’m guardedly optimistic. The concept sounds good, but could easily become a Trojan horse. Read more...
By Matt Reed. In my sophomore year of college, I took a history course on Tudor and Stuart England with Prof. Dudley Bahlman, who was as close to a human incarnation of Mr. Magoo as I have ever seen. (If cameraphones had existed then, I would have snapped a few shots of him on his moped.) He was in his last semester before retirement when I took his class, and he wore his dinosaur status with pride. There was no social or economic history for him. For him, classes were lectures, history was royals, and stories were laugh-out-loud funny. Read more...
By Justin Dunnavant. Every semester I try to find new ways to improve the way I write and teach. In previous years I’ve committed to learning Photoshop to create better visuals for presentations, painting to boost my creativity, and sculpting to get a better understanding of pottery production (an important skill for archaeologists). Last semester I devoted the bulk of my attention to WordPress to learn the basics of web design. WordPress is the internet’s largest blogging platform and is the foundation of nearly 20% of all webpages on the internet. Many popular blogs and websites run on WordPress. Although there is a bit of a learning curve, it’s a worthwhile platform for graduate students to learn. I initially set out to learn WordPress to improve my teaching; I later discovered it’s a great tool for starting a professional career and fostering dialogue around your research. With my basic understanding of WordPress I’ve been able to create a class website, a personal landing page, and a communal research blog. Read more...By Rose Hendricks. Managing time productively may be one of the most challenging aspects of graduate school. Somehow you need to juggle research, classwork, and teaching, while hopefully setting time boundaries to pursue a life outside grad school at the same time as taking care of yourself by getting enough sleep and eating well. Sometimes I feel that seemingly-important distractions are everywhere. I might be reading an article for a class and decide I should check out one of its references. Read more...By Andrea Zellner. Making things is fun. The Maker movement, as it’s commonly known, is centered on the idea that when it comes to technology especially, it’s better and more fun to do-it-yourself than rely on off-the-shelf products. Here on GradHacker, we’ve discussed different ways we’ve gone about doing this to varying degrees. It’s true that GradHackers as a group tend towards doing things ourselves. Read more.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
