Filter & Sort
Celebrating 'The End of Money'
Currency is truly an anachronism. We continue to hold on to our paper money and our coins because - well because why?
What Does the "Twilight of the Elites" Mean to Elite Higher Ed?
My wife and I were both born in 1969. Here is a short list of debacles, missteps, and failures that we've witnessed in our time on the planet: stagflation, the energy crisis (gas lines), the tech bubble, the 2nd Iraq war, the housing bubble, and the great recession (and you can add to this list). Another way we could describe the past 40 or so years, if feeling negative, could be: rising inequality, stagnant real wages, rapid increases in health care and education costs, growth in structural unemployment/underemployment, and political polarization and ineffectiveness in the face of these challenges.
Higher Ed in 2025 and O'Neill's "Growth Map" BRIC Story
Does it even make sense to think about Brazil and India together, China and Russia? Jim O'Neill has been dining out (or traveling about) on his BRIC concept for years - and has even extended this framework to the "Next Eleven" (Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam).
An Open Letter to Professor Edmundson
I am writing this public letter to you in response to your NYTimes op-ed piece of 7/19 "The Trouble With Online Education." My motivations for writing are not our disagreements, which are substantial and detailed below, but rather what we (and I suspect many of the readers of this letter) share in common.
The New TEDBooks App: 3 Cheers, 1 Request, and 1 Critique
TED released a new TedBooks iOS app this week. The app is free, the books are $2.99 and are built on the Atavist platform. The text is accompanied by videos, images, links, and in some cases audio narration.
Parsing the NYTimes Coverage of the Growth of MOOCs
On 7/17 the NYTimes published an analysis piece by Richard Perez-Pena headlined "Top Universities Test the Online Appeal of Free".
"Tubes": A Book for EdTech Infrastructure Geeks
Andrew Blum takes the name of his great book on the physical Internet, the Internet infrastructure, from Senator Ted Stevens' famous quote.
Sleep-Away Camp and Higher Ed: 8 Thoughts
This past weekend we dropped our younger daughter off at sleep-away camp. As we were helping her carry her trunk and meeting her counselors and bunk mates I had the following thoughts: