Blogs

Like the One Ring in Tolkien's fantasy novels, the iPad has fascinated me since it was first released in 2010. Now, I wouldn't say that I've been engaged in some sort of Gollum-esque quest for the "precious," but I have been tempted to purchase an iPad every single time I pass by an Apple store. My initial hesitation was brought forth by my experiences with Apple's iPod.

I am in California on an academic “vacation,” which means, as any college professor knows, that I am taking a few extra days to enjoy the area where I am attending a conference. Next week I will attend a workshop in San Diego sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) for “Sustainability Across the Curriculum.”

Microsoft jumping into the tablet market with the Surface is a good thing for education. Competition will push Apple to improve the iPad, push Google to prioritize the ChromePad (or whatever they will call it), and focus the mind of Jeff Bezos on his Amazon Kindle Fire.

I almost began an entry yesterday on the University of Virginia situation.

Right now, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development's Rio+20 meeting is in full swing, with the concentration of its collective mind that typically comes from knowing you're to be hanged in the morning. Meanwhile, the ACUPCC is celebrating it's fifth anniversary with pretty much the opposite set of emotions (at least in public).

At THATCamp CHNM this year, Mark Sample proposed a session on "Building a Better Blogging Assignment". Those present shared their experiences from assigning blogs in past courses and also exchanged models and ideas for assignments that best fit their course objectives. Some use blogs in seven week online courses, while others have incorporated blogs into the semester-long physical classroom or hybrid courses. While you can draw your own conclusions by examining the collaborative notes started by Trevor Owens, the guide below presents my own summary on how to design and implement a blog assignment for your own course.

I am getting a bit obsessed with the news coming from the University of Virginia. It is frightening, and it’s all too familiar a scenario. A group of political appointees decide to take the very real power they have and use it under the mistaken impression that they must know better than anyone else how to run a university because, well, they’ve been given that power.

My college needs a “what if?” committee, but I’m not sure how to make it happen. Most of the existing committees are task-based. Curriculum committee, for example, approves or disapproves suggested changes to courses or programs. That’s a necessary function, and it’s fine as far as it goes. But it’s necessarily reactive; it responds to proposals brought to it.