Blogs

I read somewhere that the mark of an educated mind is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time. If that’s true, then I’m feeling particularly educated of late.

Whatever you think of MOOCs or online learning programs (they are different things!), one great benefit of all the focus on both of these trends is a renewed focus on teaching. Suddenly, everyone is talking about learning. They are talking about learning at CES, in the press, and at provost and presidential meetings. As an edtech guy, someone who hangs out with learning designers and spends his days (and nights) as part of an online/blended learning program team, I am overjoyed with all the focus on teaching and learning.

A new year has begun and it's time to get back on the blogging horse. Per my usual habit of taking stock of the previous year's posts, here are the top ten most-commented posts from last year. The "radical" post garnered more comments than any post in the history of this blog...

It’s the first day of my new semester, and as always I am scrambling just a bit. Two syllabi done, one almost so. And I put my daughter on the plane this morning to return for her last semester of college. While college is cyclical for me, it’s linear for her, which is tough for me to grasp after all these years. Looking over her commencement weekend schedule during the break, she commented, “There’s always been more school. It’s weird to think there won’t be.”

Humankind is a pestilence, and other happy thoughts.

As of this post, we’re two weeks into January. By now you’ve come back to school and the serenity you felt while at home for the holidays may have vanished the minute you stepped back on campus. While it can be nice to get back to work, if you’re overly anxious or completely overwhelmed, you may be wishing that you weren’t so stressed, weren’t so anxious, that these feelings didn’t get in the way of your work, or that they would vanish completely.

I was at DHWI, wondering when and where I will be able to use these skills again. Turns out, MITH is doing something to help contingent faculty.

There’s a great scene in the film version of The Grapes of Wrath that I don’t remember in the book. A farmer is facing down a man on a bulldozer; the man on the bulldozer has been hired by the bank to repossess the farm, because the farmer has defaulted on a loan.