Blogs

Reviewing the spectrum of challenges leads us to think about pedagogy itself. Rote test questions and answers increasingly are not how students learn, if they were ever useful for anything more than a benchmark of basic facts.

I recently found myself in a conversation with a fellow faculty member about the idea of “comparative advantage.” This is an economic idea that says that people, and countries, should do what they are best at doing. If a person is best at doing math, they should do that. And if a country is best at raising sheep, they should raise sheep. If everyone does what they are best at, the “Classical Economists” tell us, we can then trade with each other and everyone will be better off.

You've probably seen the YouTube video "Wealth Inequality in America". Certainly if you haven't, you know a student who has. It's gotten 3.5 million views just on YouTube, plus it's been replicated on a bunch of other sites. It's even been dubbed into Spanish. The video maker's point isn't just that wealth in this country is unequally distributed -- anybody with a pulse already knows that. And it's not that the inequality of the distribution is getting more extreme -- anybody who's been paying even a bit of attention over the past couple of decades knows that in her/his bones.

An experiment in sustainability by a Hampshire undergrad.

Kevin Carey’s latest, a long piece on financial aid as an enabler of fiscal irresponsibility in elite higher education, is well worth the read. But for everything in it, I’ve been stewing on a single paragraph for the last few days.

My team is working to introduce improved collaboration tools for our online learners. We have concluded that the native Wiki and file exchange features in our LMS are insufficient for the sort of rich collaboration that our student teams need. Uploading and downloading files is too cumbersome and error prone.

The other day, my kids were watching The Cat in the Hat Knows a lot about That, a television show on PBS loosely based on the adventures in the books written by Dr. Seuss. At the beginning of most episodes, the children in the program ask their moms if they can go on an adventure and then head off after receiving consent. This morning my son remarked that he does not understand why the show wastes time with the children asking for permission since their parents always say yes anyway. Then, my daughter remarked that the mother is so busy trying to get her work done that this is why she sends her off. I looked up from my laptop (where I, of course, was working while they watched this show) and remarked, well your mommy is not too busy, right? And they both just said, sometimes.

I engage in some ad hominem against Thomas Friedman because he deserves it.