By Qiang Zha. China appears to be gaining in the global brain race during the past decade. Following the well-known “Thousand Talent Program”, the Chinese government recently launched a “Ten Thousand Talent Program,” that, unlike the former, focuses on home-grown talent and pledges to support 10,000 leading scholars in sciences, engineering and social sciences during the next 10 years, pushing the top 100 to aim for Nobel prizes. There are notable two things here. First, China has begun to focus on leading innovation. Second, the focus has shifted towards cultivating domestic talent. Read more...
From Conversations to Things
By Barbara Fister. Last week I was thinking about how librarians think of knowledge as a collection of things and faculty in the disciplines think about it as a conversation among people. This morning I realized, thinking about the Georgia State University e-reserves lawsuit and the ways nations are negotiating the limits and latitudes of fair use in the classroom, that publishers, like librarians, tend to think of scholarship in terms of things. Librarians do it because we have had to take care of things and provide access to them. Publishers do it because the sale of things (or the licensing of things) is how they pay their bills and, in some cases, make their profits. Read more...
De-Icing the MOOC Research Conference
By . I am currently sitting in Dallas Fort Worth airport hoping to escape the ice storm that hit Dallas during the MOOC Research conference. Despite the atypical elements, this is one of the best conferneces I’ve been to in a while, right up there with OpenEd (kudos to George Siemens, Amy Collier, and Tanya Joosten for a job well done). The quality of people was amazing and the vibe, as Mike Caulfield already mentioned, was almost dreamlike. I also had the distinct pleasure of finally meeting a number of awesome folks who I’ve been following on the internet for a long while now, in particular Bon Stewart, Martin Weller and Martin Hawksey. More...
Bill Gates' Education Nirvana
By John Warner. How does this school sound?
“The mission of __________School is to develop intellectually capable young people the creative minds, healthy bodies, and ethical spirits needed to contribute wisdom, compassion, and leadership to a global society. We provide a rigorous and dynamic academic program through which effective educators lead students to take responsibility for learning.
We are committed to sustaining a school in which individuals representing diverse cultures and experiences instruct one another in the meaning and value of community and in the joy and importance of lifelong learning.” Read more...
Strategy Papers
By Margaret Andrews. For the Strategic Management course I co-teach, we chose one industry and gave each student team an organization within this industry to study from a strategic point of view. The industry was higher education and the organizations were the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Western Governors University. Each school had two student teams studying it. Read more...
T-shirts and hamburgers
By G. Rendell. What follows is a bit fragmented, because my thinking here isn't yet fully integrated. Still, due to events in (and insufficiently in) the news, the subject seems timely.
The subject? Low wages for workers, and the impacts they have on all of us.
The events? Recent worker protests against Walmart, upcoming worker protests against McDonalds, and ongoing protests against garment manufacturers in Bangladesh. Read more...
#NASPA14 Introduces Members' Choice Sessions
Why I'm Not Replacing My iPad
By Joshua Kim. This week I changed jobs at my institution. As part of this shift I had to return all of my devices to the team that I was leaving.
One of the devices that I returned was an iPad mini.
The question that I’ve been pondering this week is should I replace the iPad?
I’m typing this post on a new MacBook Air (feels just like the old MacBook Air), and while I wavered a bit between the snazzy 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display there was no doubt that I needed a laptop to do my work. Read more...
An EdTech Dad on the Campus Tour
By Joshua Kim. Dear colleges and universities of the world. I will soon be sending you money.
Daughter #1 will land on your campus in 2015. Daughter #2 in 2017.
Who should I make the check out to?
While I am not clear what influence I will be able to exert on either daughter’s higher education choice, I am clear on what I will be looking for.
On the campus tours to come I hope to gather the following information. Read more...
Remembering Your Humanity as a Grad Student
By GradHacker. I am someone who does the “grad school thing” pretty well. While my time as a grad student over the past four years has certainly been sprinkled with disappointments, my overall experience has been a positive one. I’ve cultivated invaluable relationships with fellow grad students, professors, and mentors; I’ve had opportunities to present my research at professional venues and network with scholars from other institutions; I’ve taught a handful of different undergraduate courses and garnered numerous lessons about how to be a fair and engaged educator. On paper, it all looks pretty good. Read more...