≡ Category: Education, Web/Tech | ≅ 8 Comments
Professors are increasingly souring on students bringing their laptops to class. Some are banning them. (The Washington Post has more on that.) And some are banning them emphatically. Like the physics professor from the University of Oklahoma. (Watch the video above.) What’s the solution? Maybe this student has the right idea (said in jest).
≡ Category: Education | ≅ 2 Comments
The average American spends a good 100 minutes per day commuting to and from work. (More on that here.) That amounts to about 433 hours per year! Now imagine using that time to learn something new — to read a great book, to take a class from a top university, to learn a new language. To make [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ 1 Comment
Here’s one of the first videos to emerge from this weekend’s indie TED conference in New York City. More videos will eventually be posted on the TEDxTalks YouTube Channel, which we’re adding to our Smart YouTube collection. In case you’re not familiar with him, Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor, has been a driving force behind [...]
≡ Category: Education, TED Talks | ≅ 2 Comments
A quick heads up: On Saturday, an independent TED conference will get underway in New York City. It’s dubbed TEDxNYED, and a top notch lineup of speakers (including Lawrence Lessig, Michael Wesch, Gina Bianchini, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and others) will focus on a topic near and dear to our readers’ hearts: how new media and technology will shape the [...]
≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Education, e-books | ≅ 4 Comments
Last fall, Princeton launched a small experiment, replacing traditional textbooks with the Kindle DX, Amazon’s large e-book reader. Almost from the beginning, the 50 students participating in the pilot program expressed dissatisfaction with the devices. Yesterday, a university report offered some more definitive findings. On the upside, students using the Kindle DX ended up using far [...]
≡ Category: Education, e-books | ≅ 4 Comments
This morning, Macmillan announced a new kind of textbook — a remixable electronic textbook that will give professors, according the New York Times, the ability “to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.” Essentially, Macmillan provides the core [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick fyi: Starting this morning, Stanford Continuing Studies opened registration for its spring lineup of online writing courses. Offered in partnership with the Stanford Creative Writing Program (one of the most distinguished writing programs in the country), these online courses give beginning and advanced writers, no matter where they live, the chance to refine their craft [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ 7 Comments
This morning, a New York Times editorial is helping get the word out. Deep thinking is alive and well on the web:
There is a lot of talk about how the Internet is driving culture ever lower, but it also makes a wealth of serious thinking available. From the comfort of home, one can download free [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ 2 Comments
Great message. Give it a minute to get going. Performed by Taylor Mali at the Bowery Poetry Club on November 12, 2005. Thanks Thomas for sharing.
This clip is now added to our YouTube favorites.
≡ Category: Education | ≅ Leave a Comment
Another video brought to you by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, who previously brought you Information R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us. You may also want to see his talk, An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.
≡ Category: Education, Media, Television | ≅ Leave a Comment
News from the Wired Campus Blog:
PBS and NPR are now posting taped interviews and videos of lectures by academics, adding to the growing number of free lectures online.
Their site, called Forum Network, says it makes thousands of lectures available, including the Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s take on calculating happiness in a lecture called “How to [...]
≡ Category: Education, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick bit of breaking news. YouTube.EDU has released Version 2.0 today and has gone international. The site, launched six months ago, now features academic content from the UK, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Israel. As part of this global effort, the YouTube team has brought 45 new universities into the fold, including Cambridge University, [...]
≡ Category: Education, Harvard, Philosophy | ≅ Leave a Comment
That’s the question that The Ethicist asks in The New York Times. Below, I present the issue and part of the answer. Read through it all and tell us where you stand on the issue.
The Issue
The fiscal year for major university endowments ended June 30, and schools have been reporting their results: not good. In [...]
≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Education, e-books | ≅ Leave a Comment
Earlier this year, Amazon rolled out the Kindle DX. This new, supersized e-book reader had one basic goal: to give readers digital access to textbooks, newspapers and other larger format publications. This fall, the rubber has started to hit the road, and the Kindle DX has been getting tepid reviews, at least at Princeton University. [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ 3 Comments
Anyone looking for controversy in President Obama’s school speech will be disappointed. No “socialist indoctrination” here. Just a good ol’ red, white & blue pep talk to students. The talk gets started at 2:10
In case you’re wondering what ground school talks covered in 1988, here’s a look back.
≡ Category: Education, Online Courses | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick news break: Time.com has released today a new list, “The 50 Best Web Sites of 2009,” and right alongside some well known brands, you’ll find Academic Earth, a new venture that aggregates high quality university video. Essentially, Academic Earth pulls together videos from top-notch universities and lets users watch them with a very [...]
≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Education, e-books | ≅ 2 Comments
A quick heads up: Jeff Young has an informative piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education on what happened when one university delivered all textbooks to students electronically. It’s definitely worth a read. Meanwhile, on a related note, Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal’s tech guru, doesn’t like the new Kindle DX very much. Amazon [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ Leave a Comment
Today, Amanda Coolidge (British Columbia Institute of Technology) joins us and talks about what’s happening with Open Educational Resources (OER) in Africa. Down the line, she’ll be blogging about OER in other parts of the world as well. Take it away Amanda.
Over 500,000 Nigerian teachers need teacher training and you can bet this is going [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Education | ≅ 5 Comments
From The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Is it possible that higher education might be the next bubble to burst? Some early warnings suggest that it could be.
With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is [...]