Instructional Researcher, Evaluator, and Designer
I thought today’s Off the Mark comic was really funny in the perspective of virtual identities and communities–it poignantly raises the question, "how do we talk about the passing of a friend that we only knew by his online username?"
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Our little boy was born today at 12:52 p.m. All went well, and he and my wife are doing great. He was 21.5 inches long and 7 lbs, 3 oz. He’s also got a thick mop of curly hair!
And get this — I got to deliver him! I was "Dr." for a day." ;-). Our OBGYN said he would help me deliver the baby, which was a really neat experience.
I’ll try to post a picture when I get them developed. We had forgotten our digital camera, so we had to go "old school" and use a disposable!
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In an interesting twist, Harvard is mandating that its professors in Arts and Sciences post their published papers online, or at least allow online access. This will require faculty to publish only in journals that allow online access. I say this is a twist because it seems that usually faculty want to be able to share their published work, but the universities won’t support that. Usually the problem is that universities won’t recognize for tenure decisions journals that are primarily online journals.
Maybe the mighty power of Harvard will move publication and tenure towards a new direction?
Tags: tenure, publications, online, open education
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This website’s design is amazing, as an example of creative advertising. Tip of the hat to Clif for pointing it out. I can’t say whether this creativity works or not. On the one hand, it seems less usable, and I struggled to be able to click on any of the products while the song and dance were going on.
On the other hand, the song and dance–the first time–kept me glued, and the genius of it is that it showed off all of their product lines, giving "eye time" to everything on the page.
What do you think? Does this work, or is it unusable? Either way, it’s cool.
Tags: advertising, marketing, web design, usability, creativity
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For an evaluation project I am working on, I need to be able to pretest and posttest teachers’ digital literacy improvements from some professional development in this area. Can anyone recommend a resource, method, or person in this area?
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Recently I saw a list of the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen. One area that he mentions that this blog failed on was not having a link to the "classic hits" or posts that were the best in the history of the blog.
Well, I don’t know if any of my postings would quite qualify as "hits" or "classics" but I’ll at least call them my "favorites." If you would like to read some of these favorite posts, there is now a permanent link to them on the right sidebar. I consider these posts only unfinished drafts, so please keep in mind that these are not polished. It’s also possible that my ideas might have changed since the time I wrote them, or will in the future, as I continue to learn.
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This is a pretty cool website: A collection of "rules of thumb" for any topic under the sun, kind of like a wikihow or something. I like that a rule of thumb has to get 5 out of 10 "thumbs up" before becoming legit.
Great web 2.0-ish stuff!
Tags: web 2.0, rules of thumb, social networking
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This article makes me sick, accusing Microsoft of a $528 million tax break because they make products in the state of Washington but "sell" them in Nevada, where there is no corporate tax.
That’s just disgusting. The poor, small business owner can’t afford to pull off a trick like that or doesn’t know how, but the behemoths can and do (Microsoft, I’m sure, is not the only one). And thus the monopolies grow.
What kind of tax system could prevent these kinds of situations?
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I think I’m going crazy. I needed a book for my prospectus and could not find it anywhere on my shelf, so I asked two friends whom I typically loan books whether they had it. Nothing. I finally gave up.
Well, I just found them both–under a pile of papers on my desk! I feel like the old man who goes looking for glasses sitting on his head. This experience has taught me an important lesson: My desk is a disaster. Cleaning day must be approaching. I reflected to my cubicle mate that my desk is a disgrace, and he commented, "I think it just looks professor-like."
So that brings me to wonder: Would having a messy desk get me a job? Could I put this on my vita?
Well, that’s if I can FIND my vita somewhere on this desk? Now which pile did I put that in? 🙂
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My cousin-in-law (which doesn’t seem to be the right word! That sounds so unfamiliar when in reality I know well and am good friends with Tim) recently commented on my posting about the lack of creativity in modern schools. In my post, I reflect on the predictions of JP Guilford in 1950 when he predicted that computers would eliminate the need for knowledge experts and elevate creativity and problem solving as the necessary skills of the future.
Guilford was exactly right. Tim agrees and gives a great perspective from the medical education sector, where med students who can memorize information progress in the system faster than problem solving doctors. Tim wonders, and I agree, which would YOU prefer to have working for you? I would much rather have the problem solving doctor, who has enough knowledge to know where to find the information he needs, but can still think progressively about how to serve me.
Thanks, Tim for the great comments!
I don’t think I’ve linked yet to a great presentation on this topic by Sir Ken Robinson at the TED conference, where he presents a very funny and entertaining (and persuasive) talk on how schools are killing creativity. Thanks to Clif Mims for pointing me to that video.
Personally, I think the current recession may not be the least of our worries in our great nation if we don’t figure out quickly that our current model of education is not right for the 21st Century. We don’t need "knowledge experts" anymore because the info is readily available. We need "problem-solvers." Of course a person needs SOME knowledge to be able to be a problem solver, but still, the creativity/problem solving aspect is terribly overlooked right now in schools.
Since the system isn’t changing quickly enough, I wonder what I can do to at least prepare my own children and develop their creativity/problem solving skills? What can I do to prepare my children for 21st century jobs and lifestyles even though they attend 20th century schools?
Any ideas?
Tags: creativity, schools, educational change, ken robinson
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