Blogs

At one of the lunches provided at last week's AASHE conference, I was involved in a conversation with an opposite number from another campus when -- from across a crowded room -- I had a flash of insight. Or I caught a flash of something and formed an insight. Probably 5 or 6 years after it should have occurred to me anyway.

I never thought it would happen.

I had the opportunity to attend a session last week, hosted by Pearson, on how higher ed faculty use social media. Much of the content was quite interesting.

One of the consolations of middle age is that it brings the power of invisibility. That brings with it a certain amount of unintentional eavesdropping.

What is your vote for the book that you think every student on your campus should read before the election?

Analysis and advice on questions and issues of individual ethics and institutional integrity, from Jane Robbins. Do you have a question or comment that you wish to make anonymously? Click here to send it to me.

The killer apps for education, argued Stanford University professor John Willinsky at last week’s Open Education Conference, will be built when we apply our lessons to our communities “so that the learning I do in school contributes to the public library and to the public knowledge of my community” — so that open education remains open.

Back in my feminist theory days -- yes, I had feminist theory days -- I remember learning that strict body/mind distinctions were suspect. In the halcyon days of postmodernism, we learned that clear fact/value distinctions were mystifications, that public/private splits were far more problematic than usually supposed, and that subject/object distinctions were almost entirely perspectival.