Blogs

PowerPoint (or Apple’s Keynote) is the most-popular presentation application in the universe. It’s also the only piece of software that is detrimental to the survival of unicorns.

Plagiarism is a penny ante thing, a measly squalor. It's like insider trading - a pervasive, petty, ploy that excites indignation and punishment, but, precisely because of its simmering ubiquity, fails to boil up to a real problem.

I didn’t want to write about the Penn State scandal. People smarter and more insightful than I have already written about it (and continue to) and I have to admit the topic makes me physically ill. I also have never wanted to write a post lamenting all the current events my students know nothing about or even know exist; it’s not particularly constructive, and would only serve the purpose to vent. And yet today, I find myself compelled to write about both those subjects.

What if college got cheaper as you went along?

Ten years ago, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper published a nifty book about how and why people use paper in their workplaces. The Myth of the Paperless Office reported ethnographic observations of people struggling to do things with computers that they were used to doing on paper; sometimes there were good reasons why paper was so persistent. The title reminded us that the “paperless office” we were promised decades ago is a joke - on us. We use more paper than ever and manage to have disorderly desktops both literally and digitally. That's a funny kind of progress.

Often when writing blog posts or papers, I end up dissecting not just a policy or educational issue but also the specific terms in which it is being described and discussed. I start to pick apart the terms and limits of the discussion alongside my engagement with the argument. Far from being a quirky habit, this kind of attention to language is a key element of much of the work I do.

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

Yesterday marked the deadline for the first round of submissions for the 2011 DML Competition. This year's topic: designing badges for lifelong learning. How will these badges, part of Mozilla's Open Badges Project, affect higher ed?