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Get Off of My Cloud!

Little did Jagger and Richards know that their 1965 hit would become a meaningful metaphor for a twenty-first century conundrum involving the law, technology, user norms and the market.

A Look at the New iTunes U

Much of the attention over Apple's education announcements yesterday has focused on digital textbooks. But that was just one of two initiatives the company unveiled. The other was a revamped iTunes U. Here's a hands-on look at what's new in what Apple calls "the world's largest catalog of free educational content."

Math Geek Mom: Dreams, According to Disney (or at least, the Brothers Grimm)

The Calculus book I use sometimes uses intricate algebra to find very involved ways to present an answer in the simplest form. Although I encourage students to manipulate terms to see how they arrived at the given answers, I sometimes find myself telling my students that “the meaning of life is not to match the answer in the back of the book.” This, of course, avoids the question of exactly what the meaning of life is. I thought of this recently as I spent a lovely afternoon with a friend and her daughter watching a production

Apple Reinvents Textbooks

The Inference Engine anticipated much of what Apple announced in NYC on Thursday. Some interesting questions remain.

The preacher's wife

Katharine Hayhoe is an associate professor of geoscience at Texas Tech, a climate researcher who has suggested the northeastern USA prepare for hotter summers and shorter winters, and the deeply Christian wife of an evangelical preacher. She was invited by Newt Gingrich's co-author to contribute the opening chapter on climate change to an upcoming book on environmental entrepreneurship. Of course, that was before Newt decided to run for the presidency, felt the need to atone for his moment on the couch with Nancy Pelosi, determined that "conservatism" referred to conserving destructive momentum rather than conserving the earth, and spiked Hayhoe's chapter which explained why environmental entrepreneurs were any more valuable than the inventor of the next pet rock or chia head.

Branding Yourself: Not as Painful as You Think

I was sitting down to a meeting with one of my committee members. He was telling me about a phone call he had just received from a colleague asking if he knew anything about a “Katy Meyers” because she was doing some good work online that was worth checking out. Hearing things like that is not only a great confidence booster, but it means that I’m doing something right. My name is spreading in my field, and in a positive manner associated with my academic work. I’m not going to say I’m a genius at managing my identity, but if you Google my name without any qualifiers, I dominate the first page. Creating a recognizable brand is a way of managing your academic identity. You want your brand to be just as recognizable, even if its just in your discipline.

The Missing Link in Teaching

When I was a graduate student and was assigned to teach (and design) a course, the first thing I did was order the textbooks for that particular topic. It seemed to me then, that everything would fall into place once I had accomplished the major task of choosing a textbook and figuring out the readings. In contrast, now, when I am about to design a new course, the specific readings sometimes end up being one of the last things I choose.

Best Laid Plans

My three-year-old son hates school. The larger issues facing higher education can wait. The problems and challenges of education are happening to me, right now, and it’s all I can think about.