Learning Innovation

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are getting lots of press. The 3/4/12 issue of the NYTimes declares that "Instruction for Masses Knocks Down Campus Walls". 160,000 learners participate in Stanford's AI course, which begets a whole new crop of MOOCs in everything from natural language processing to game theory.

Today I attended my first unconference, a one-day event put on by NERCOMP on the learning management system (LMS).

I think that I'm ready to part with my most cherished physical books. Only a couple of years ago this thought would have been unimaginable. Books are the center of our culture, the core of my belief system, and the basis of my personal philosophy. I am a person of the book (literally).

Should every idea come with a funding source? Every new project with new dollars? An accounting of the opportunity costs for doing this project and not that? A list of what we will not do if we do something else?

This blog is called "Technology and Learning" - but maybe the word "Books" should also appear in the title. I write about books because I live so much in my head, and the books that I read form the mental scaffolding of my life. Some people learn by doing, I learn by reading (and writing). And I want to hang out with other readers. I want to know what other people who live their lives at the intersection of education and technology are reading. I want to read the same books as you, and spend time talking about what we are reading together.

The techno thriller is fast becoming one of my preferred fiction genres. Zero Day is a terrific beach book (or whatever the winter February school vacation equivalent is, the time period in which I interfaced with the book).

Come Fall semester I predict that Going Solo will be on the syllabi of sociology courses across the land.

One of the problems with the whole Predictably Irrational oeuvre of behavioral economics / social psychology literature is that I've lost much of my confidence in my ability to hire well. Turns out, we systematically overestimate our own abilities - in everything from driving to teaching to blogging to (yes) interviewing. Like the children of Lake Wobegon, we are all above average.