The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Link The best way to predict the future is to issue a press release. Link As I wrote in my first post for our academic information services newsletter, anyone truying to bring about innovation and change in education is in the prediction business—like it…
Category: Class
Creativity, Inspiration and the Conservation of Keystrokes
We have at least three members of our current adult education class who are experimenting with blogs as part of their learning logs. The care and feeding of a blog can teach many things. Some of those things are inspirational; others are more practical. As the center of your digital identity, your web site…
Question of the Week
The architects need to cut 3000 square feet out of the proposed plan for the Arts Center. Currently, there are 1800 square feet set aside for a music library and a visual resources library. In our discussions so far, we’ve been pretty confident that within the six year planning horizon the technology will allow all…
What Story Does Your Class Tell?
In preparing for a presentation on course planning for Blackboard last week, I came upon a great course design tip sheet at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard. The sheet begins with a couple of general questions and suggests that teachers not think specific content until after they have thought carefully…
Course Planning for Emerging Technology
A colleague of mine recently likened the course planning process to what goes on inside a sausage factory: Over a century ago, the German statesman Otto Von Bismarck supposedly said, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.” Same point can be made about the way I construct course…
Recommendation for Core Technology Library
Recently I had a colleague contact me asking for a bibliography of recent influential texts that he could include in a three credit introductory course in technology for language students. Mike said that he was looking primarily for items that approached technology from a theoretical or philosophical perspective. I went though my RefWorks bibliography of…
Open Notebook Science
Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?: Scientific American M. Mitchell Waldrop’s excellent introduction to “open notebook” science in Scientific American fits nicely with some of the work we’re doing to support the Charles Center’s initiative on expanding undergraduate research at the College. My class last semester helped plan a web site that will…
The Messages We Send
How to Read My Comments on Your Paper Drafts: Every once in a while I read about some educational practice that makes such perfect sense I can can’t help but wonder why everyone isn’t doing it. Steve Greenlaw periodically directs posts in his blog specifically to his students. In a recent post he addresses the…
Bar Association Web Redesign
IT Conversations: Edward Adams This is an interesting discussion of the process of redesigning the American Bar Association Journal. Previous versions of the site featured one story a day with no persistent links. The new versions features a number of updated features to move from a fairly traditional professional magazine to site that is clearly…
A Guide for the Stubborn Intelligence
Ron Gross’s book The Independent Scholars Handbook is one of the my favorite adult education works of all time. The book, which was first published in 1982 and then re-released in 1993, contains the stories of individuals from every background whose lives contained a serious commitment to research, investigation, theory building and other intellectual enterprises….
