By Kaitlin Gallagher. All good things must come to an end. I’ve had a wonderful time writing for GradHacker over the past two years, but this will be my last post. Many of my previous posts have centered on how to manage the stress and the overwhelming nature of grad school. My guest post before I became a permanent author was about the mid-degree crisis I was facing. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. Hello. My name is Josh, and I am a Twitter free rider.
I read your tweets (sometimes), but I don’t produce tweets for you to read.
I appreciate when you tweet about something that I write, but I am tweeting about what you write.
I use Twitter in the worst way - for promotion.
Each day I make a bitmark, a link on bitly, which then automatically posts a tweet and a Facebook post. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. Who among us in not excited by Google’s driverless electric car?
No steering wheel. No break pedal. No gas pedal. No gear shift. You do get a start button and a panic button.
I think that it is great that Google is building these driverless cars. 34,000 people die every year in car crashes, which although down from a high of 54,589 in 1972 is still a level of carnage that boggles the mind. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. I’m getting ready to send Audible, owned by Amazon, another $229.50.
Giving Audible these dollars today will mean that I can buy my audiobooks at $9.56 each.
This is a good deal.
The selection of audibooks on Audible is growing quickly. Read more...
By Joshua Kim. Perhaps the most important document that we should read and discuss on campus says nothing at all about higher ed.
It is the leaked 96 page New York Times Innovation report, called Strengthening Our Newsroom: Digital First, written by 10 Times employees. Read more...
By Matt Reed. A new correspondent writes:
I was just appointed the Department Chair position for my medium sized department starting this summer. Would you recommend any good books on being a chair? I see several specific to the Department Chair role -- is there a specific one you would recommend to start with? I should note I am at a large community college (about an hour and a half away from yours) and am a long time professor moving up.
First, congratulations! Chairs have the chance to make the kinds of differences that add up over time. They’re often unappreciated, but they matter. Read more...
By Matt Reed. One of my favorite classroom exercises -- I didn’t invent it, but I used it -- involved a close reading of “Mary had a little lamb.” It’s a surprisingly ambiguous sentence, if you pay attention. For example, what does “had” mean? Does it mean “once, but no longer?” “Ate?” “Gave birth to?” “Copulated with?” And in “a little lamb,” what does “little” mean? Just a few bites? A lamb that was itself small? Or modestly endowed? Shorn of context, it could mean that she owned a small lamb, or that she ate a few lamb mcnuggets, or that she gave birth to a baby lamb. Context matter. Read more...
By Matt Reed. Having worked in the community college world for the past eleven years, I’m used to a certain tone-deafness about community college from “opinion leaders” in and around higher education. I’ve heard it referred to in lists of “alternatives to college.” I’ve read the pieces on “undermatching” that equate community college attendance with failure. And normally I content myself with simple rebuttals, because I see the admirable truth on the ground every single day. Most of the time, I’m content to put the information out there, and let it make its way on its own merits. Read more...
By Matt Reed. The Boy turned 13 this week. We officially have a teenager in the house. Nothing really brings home the speed with which time passes than an adolescent boy in a growth spurt. As of this week, he’s six feet tall, and wearing a size 13 shoe. (I wear a 12; the shoe salesman helpfully told us that if the 13 feels tight, he could wear a 14 comfortably.) He’s the kind of young-skinny that makes him invisible when he turns sideways, despite inhaling food at every opportunity. Sometimes, on a quiet night, you can hear him growing. Read more...
By . The Education Secretary has reportedly insisted students must study British works.
Classics of American literature, including Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, have been dropped from the English literature GCSE syllabus following demands reportedly made by Michael Gove.
The Education Secretary said students ought to focus on works by British writers such as Jane Austen and Shakespeare, The Sunday Times reported. More...
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