Blogs

The New York blizzard of 2013 really made an impact. With a range of snow falls that increased from about 6 inches in Manhattan, to 21 inches in my backyard on Long Island, to 30 inches in the eastern part of Long Island, there were areas even two days after the last flake hit the ground that were still impassable.

Thanks to everyone who inquired, in the comments and in email, about the outcome of last week's audition, or wrote to express support. It meant a lot. It was fine. I apparently didn't get the job, since I haven't heard back, and that is fine, too.

More like Fat Saturday.

It suddenly seems as if suing librarians is the new business model for some publishers. There are a lot of reasons this seems unwise. For one, pissing off your customers is likely to cause your market to dry up. For another, it’s going to result in a lot of publicity, but not the kind you want. But most importantly, we grownups have better ways of dealing with criticism.

I am not one of those people who looks down on technology in general, or the internet in particular, because of what it has taken away from us, like enjoying nature, being with family and friends, and reading actual books. I still try to do these “natural” things (as opposed to the artificial cyber world) that are part of life, but I must admit that I love technology. I acknowledge that using technologies has now become an essential part of life as well.

From the “other duties as assigned” file: yesterday I had to go in for a medical procedure. In the course of making small talk with the tech, she mentioned that her daughter is looking at colleges, but they’re both worried about student loans. I mentioned where I work, and for the next half hour, the conversation was all about transfer, comparative tuition levels, student loans, and the difficulty for new grads who can’t find jobs but have huge loans to pay off. All of this during the procedure.

Research is a creative activity. In essence, to solve your research question, you will need to take a step outside of the boundaries of the current knowledge. If you are expected to develop a new theory as part of your research, you certainly need to get your creative juices flowing.

Karen Symms Gallagher, Dean of USC Rossier School of Education, caught my eye for two reasons. First, I read a couple of opinion pieces in which she argued that we need to look beyond MOOCs to the potential of providing extremely high quality and intimate for-credit degree programs that leverage new options in technology and new opportunities in non-profit / for-profit partnerships. These columns, including Higher Ed Leaders Must Lead Online and Rethinking Higher Ed Open Online Learning stand apart for their combination of a progressive call for innovation in online education and skepticism that the locus of this innovation is limited to the world of MOOCs.