Blogs

I don't get it. I don't understand the lure of the educational tablet. I say this, of course, as someone who relies heavily on her laptop every day and who just couldn't make an iPad "work" the same way. What are we missing out by pushing tablets onto students? (Or, conversely, what am I missing out by being so skeptical about them?)

I was fortunate to be included in a retirement party for Duke Political Science professor, David L. Paletz, one of the foremost scholars of Political Communication and a jury chair for the Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham, N.C. I’ve written about David before in this column -- an inspiring teacher who introduced me to feminism, media critique and a desire to be a filmmaker.

A couple of viral videos caught my eye and reminded me of my first semester as a teacher.

Sometimes, when I try to get my mind around what it will take to make Greenback (or, indeed, any college or university) an exemplar of sustainability, I gets overwhelmed. It's still necessary, because if we don't know what we're trying to achieve then we can't tell whether we're making progress or not. And simplistic, one-dimensional goals can be worse than no goal at all.

I became a zombie and rediscovered my own humanity.

Canada’s Waterloo University is shutting down after failing to make enrollment targets in Dubai at the same time that George Mason University is going to give it another go in Korea after a failed venture in the United Arab Emirates. What makes the desire for a foreign outpost so appealing?

While attending college, a traditionally aged student makes the remarkable transformation from an adolescent to a young adult, and such rapid growth requires courage. Therefore, in addition to encouraging a student to write, speak and think like an adult, colleges must attend to a student’s need for courage.

Two of the major trends in higher education are on a collision course with each other. But their respective partisans don’t seem to notice.