Learning Innovation

Last week I had the privilege of spending time with some members of our student Hacker Club. The goal of this discussion, one of many that we are having with many members and groups in our community, is to identify the digital ideas and innovations that hold the most promise for our institution.

My ability to make strong arguments about how our academic libraries should navigate the new ecosystem of digital books (e-books & audiobooks) seems to be inversely related to the amount of time I spend engaging the library community on these issues.

Barbara Fister writes in "The Myth of the Bookless Library", "No matter how innovative the bookless library sounds, this isn't a situation we planned. If the academic library of the future is bookless, it won’t be because of vision. It will be because of the lack of it." I think I understand the perspective of my library colleagues.

I just don't think that hierarchy works in organizations that live at the intersection of education and technology.

I'm still curious if you are reading, or plan to read, Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. (And I'd love to find a way to test my hypothesis that more people in the IHE community are simultaneously reading this book than any previous book - a question I don't know how to solve short of hacking into Amazon's servers).

Raise your (virtual) hand (maybe through DISQUS comments) if you are reading (or have read) Isaacson's Steve Jobs.

I think I love running meetings because I love teaching. The skills to run a good meeting and run a good classroom are related. The experience of keeping a class full of students all together is great preparation for doing the same with colleagues in a meeting. Good teaching, even lecturing, is about conversation. So are good meetings.

Do you work in ed tech higher ed sales? My goal in this post is to start a discussion, with the result of the larger IHE community gaining a better understanding of the world of an ed tech sales professional. I'll describe what I think I know about the life of sales professional in education technology, and you tell us where I get it wrong or right.