By Tracy Mitrano. I don’t think I have ever heard a term of intellectual property in a State of the Union speech before!  How exciting!    And why?  May I recommend Jaffe and Lerner’s book, “Innovation and Its Discontents” for an early, solid treatment of the problems in this area that journalists on occasion have followed up on.  (See link, for example.) 
Why would the President raise this issue to high level of a State of Union address?  I assume because it has become clear to just about everyone, major corporations not least, that the system as revised in the early 1990’s is so flawed as to be serving almost no one except the filing attorneys in the favored state of Texas.  In short, there is a growing consensus that innovation is suffering for the failure to address the unintended consequences of the most recent round of legislative patent revisions. Read more...

By Tracy Mitrano. In 2005, after teaching a weeklong course on Internet Law and the MiNE Program at Universita Cattolica del Sacre Cuore in Piacenza, Italy, I wrote an article entitled "The Internet, The Pope and The iPod."
Reading about Pope Francis’s remarks to the illuminati assembled at Davos reminded me of that otherwise long ago forgotten piece. Read more...

By John Warner. The longer I do this college instructing stuff, the more convinced I become that it’s impossible to teach what I most want my students to learn. What’s more, it’s probably also impossible to measure whether or not they’ve learned what I want them to learn, and definitely not possible within the timeline of a single semester. Part of my problem is that I have a difficult time even articulating what I most want them to learn. Read more...

By John Warner. Clay Shirky is so concerned about the state of higher education that he can’t help but want to destroy it. In a recent blog post, he argues that we are in the midst of a new (or not so new) “reality.” This reality, to Shirky’s figuring, is the end of higher education’s “Golden Age.” The solution – which is no real surprise coming from someone who has made his living as an Internet futurist – is to embrace our digitally mediated future. Read more...

By Susan O'Doherty. Last week, Bill, Ben and I left our hotel in Shanghai at 5:30 AM China time (13 hours ahead of Eastern US time). Our second plane landed at JFK at around 2PM, half an hour late.. The second flight, from Beijng to New York, was difficult — the seats were cramped, even for a smallish person like me. Bill and Ben, on either side of me, were eating their knees, and of course spilled over into my space. When the passengers in front of us reclined, our tray tables were forced into my chest/their midsections. I am usually a good plane sleeper, but sleep wasn't an option on this trip. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. Does Google’s $3.2 billion dollar acquisition of Nest Labs have any relevance to higher education?
Why should it matter to us if Google buys a maker of fancy thermostats and smoke detectors?
Drawing a connection between Nest and the Google / higher ed potential requires a few leaps. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. Last week my institution announced that it is joining the edX consortium, and will start offering open online courses this fall.
Over the next weeks and months I’m hoping that our IHE community can utilize this platform to engage in a discussion about how to best leverage open online education to improve an intimate, campus-based, learning experience. Read more...