Blogs

If you pay attention to YouTube or the media, then you are aware of Kony 2012. If you’ve been on a college campus that contains any sense of activism in the last few years, then you have probably heard of “Invisible Children” or their “National Sleepout” event. Students at my university consistently sleep outside on the quad in order to commemorate the living conditions, abuses and relative danger of the lives of central African child soldiers. If a university wants to teach history, global politics and civic engagement, then what better way to do so but by including a student-driven non-profit’s advocacy events?

More on motivating students (and ourselves). (NOTE: A portion of this blog post was accidentally cut yesterday. Today the full post appears.)

Going up the management learning curve is one of my goals. Great management is like Justice Potter Stewart's description of pornography, we can't define exactly what it is but "we know it when we see it."

Do you travel a lot? Are you constantly juggling itineraries? Is the quest for an available power outlet at an airport part of your routine? Have you been in so many cities this year that you have lost count?

I came across an interesting article in The Economist the other day. According to this article, based on data from LinkedIn, “one of the fastest-growing job titles in America is ‘adjunct professor’ (an ill-paid, overworked species of academic).”

Some stories have deeper roots than others. This story is about a change to Federal financial aid policy that’s taking effect July 1. At that point, no new students can receive financial aid -- or from what I’ve been told, could even pay their own way if the college itself is financial aid eligible -- to attend college if they don’t already have a high school diploma or a GED. (Dual or concurrent enrollment programs are exempted.) That means that the “ability to benefit” test will no longer work; students who show up without either a diploma or a GED have to go get one.

The semester started off so well. As a newly minted Ph.D candidate, I couldn’t wait to start my dissertation research. I enthusiastically wrote an email and survey soliciting study participants, triumphantly clicked send, and sat back and waited for the volunteers to roll in.

We cannot predict what the next big thing in educational technology will be. We do not know what will come after the learning management system (LMS), iTunesU, MOOC's, MITx, or Khan Academy.