By Eric Stoller. When I first heard about Yik Yak, it was being referenced in an article about cyberbullying at Chicago high schools. Recognizing that anonymous posts via the mobile app were hurting students via threats and intimidation, Yik Yak blocked access within defined electronic geo-fences. It was actually a classy maneuver. Read more...
By Barbara Fister. Librarians love to talk about technology when they talk about the future. One narrative is that the future will be fabulously liberating because everyone will be connected and creative and we won’t be beholden to stodgy old gatekeepers; we’ll all be creative entrepreneurs. Another is a fear narrative about how the future will be without libraries unless we take immediate steps to change radically in some preferred way. And there’s a third position, more common among non-librarians, that the library was a glorious thing until barbarians threw out the books to make room for computers. Read more...
By Lee Skallerup Bessette. I’m teaching a one-credit class this semester in the Preparing Future Faculty program called College Teaching. In it, we are talking about, well, unsurprisingly, college teaching. Last week was our first class and we started by discussing what makes a good professor or teacher. The students had read the first chapter of The Courage to Teach, and they wrote about an experience or person who shaped their attitude towards education. We were in the right mind-space for talking about good teachers. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. The successes of educational technology (edtech) will no doubt be celebrated once again at this year’s EDUCAUSE Annual Conference (9/29 to 10/2 in Orlando). By Joshua Kim. What are some of the touchstones of digital culture?By Joshua Kim. The best way to understand learning tech people is to do a little thought experiment. 
By Matt Reed. You know how there’s a special circle of hell reserved for people at conferences who stand up during the q-and-a and start with “this is really more of a comment than a question”? This is really more of a question than a post. I hope that doesn’t consign me to the flames. Read more...
By Michelle Lavery. Once upon a time, I published a paper about rock snot and ended up talking about shag carpeting on the evening news. Shall I explain?My first publication dealt with a species of algae known as Didymosphenia geminata, commonly known as “rock snot.” By Erin Bedford. I have a confession: right now, as I write this blog post, I should be writing a chapter of my thesis. And it’s not the first time that I’ve put off writing this chapter by doing something else. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if you’re reading this when you should be writing something as well. I’ll tell both of us to get back to work soon, but first, I want to look at why this might be happening and how to keep it from happening again. Read more...
By Marcelo Knobel. A new edition of a rather new Brazilian university ranking was just published. It is the third edition of the RUF (Ranking Universitário Folha), organized by one of the country’s leading newspapers, the “Folha de São Paulo”. Although strongly criticized, the rankings are an unavoidable trend in the higher education sector, and this Brazilan example follows this current fashion of competitive comparisons. On the positive side, one can see that there is a clear intention to improve the quality of the data used and the weight given to each variable, leading to a more refined result. Read more...
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