By G. Rendell. Now that I've spent (too much) time and effort denigrating the right-hand side of the IPAT equation (environmental Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology), it strikes me that the biggest problem isn't over there on the right (and this from someone rarely reticent to blame the Right for just about anything). Sure, Population is mathematically a non-factor and sociologically an attractive nuisance. Technology is just the handmaiden of Affluence; it can be no more until and unless society rethinks some fundamental assumptions. And Affluence is just a euphemism for consumption. Read more...
05 mai 2014
The silent "e"
A Slight Tangent About Time and Learning
By Eric Stoller. There is always enough time to learn new things. It's a matter of attitude and focus. For example, when I'm working with higher education practitioners on how they can effectively use social media, one of the phrases that I hear most often has to do with "not having enough time." Time availability is a slippery conundrum. It's all about individual as well as organizational variables. Read more...Twitter Users Tweet About the Death of Twitter
By Eric Stoller. It happens with every single communications technology, platform, and/or service. Someone says that "x" is "dead" and a firestorm of posts is ignited. In this case, the current "dead" and/or "dying" platform is Twitter. Coincidentally, most of the conversation about the death of Twitter is taking place via 140 characters...on Twitter. Read more...So Goes California
By Tracy Mitrano. Remember the old jingle about “…as General Motor goes, so goes the country…”? For privacy laws, many have borrowed it to suggest that “…as California goes, so goes the country…” It was true for data breach notification, and with the addition of new attributes that constitute those laws, for example birth date. A significant new variation relevant to higher education has just been published: Privacy and Information Security Initiative Steering Committee Report to the President. Read more...
It’s About Time
By Tracy Mitrano. Since most of the country – including students and teachers – don’t even know what the Family Rights Education Privacy Act is, it probably won’t mean all that much to mainstream journalists that the White House today released a review that called for a revision of FERPA. But to K-12, and colleges and universities across the country, it is a big deal. Not just because school district and institutional counsel will have to interpret the proposed regulations and their respective associations begin lobbying the Department of Education. But because the reasons for this revision are good ones, and one hopes that the advocates of Big Data will not intervene so forcefully or effectively in only the way that their lobbying money knows how to gut the purpose of these revisions. Read more...
The Degree Vertical
By Steven Mintz. The number one challenge facing public higher education is to exponentially improve rates of student engagement, persistence, and graduation, especially among those demographics, such as commuter, working, and part-time students, with historically low retention and completion rates. The standard explanations for student failure focus on high schools (and their supposed failure to provide students with the preparation and study skills necessary for post-secondary success), college professors (who allegedly prioritize scholarship over teaching and mentoring), and the students themselves (who purportedly privilege work and campus life rather than their studies). Read more...
Spring Books
By Joshua Kim. It has been a couple of months since we last checked in on the books that we’ve been reading.I’m curious about what you’ve been reading in the last couple of months, and I have some recommendations for you:
Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Sava. Read more...
Can Book Lovers Stand Up to Amazon?
By Joshua Kim. How should book lovers think about Amazon.com?On the one hand, Amazon has been the best thing that could have happened to book geeks. Amazon’s development of the Kindle and Audible ecosystems has ensured that we can get new books in digital formats, at prices closer to what we used to have pay for paperbacks. Read more...
5 Ideas for Reading More Books
By Joshua Kim. When do you find the time and energy to read books? Neither (time or energy) is in particularly abundant supply in our lives.
How many e-mails will you read and write today? How many meetings will you have? How much information will you need to absorb?
We all want to read more books, but this goal is often more aspirational than feasible. Read more...
3 Internal Questions for Non-Profit / For-Profit Online Program Partnerships
By Joshua Kim. Many of us have been closely following the 2U Semester Online story. The fact that the 2U and its partners have chosen not to continue the Semester Online program should not obscure the larger story about the growth of not-for-profit / for-profit partnerships in developing online learning programs. These partnerships will continue to grow, as more schools become comfortable with the idea of bringing in a for-profit partner to develop academic programs, and as the for-profit online course development industry continues to consolidate and mature. Read more...
