Sugata Mitra from India using a window in a wall tests with extensive rigor the idea of whether children can teach themselves with educational technology. This strikes at the heart of our standard thoughts on how education, pedagogy and learning…
Category: Scholarship of teaching and learning
Education and society and the scholarship of teaching and learning. This is inclusive of a series of articles that are being produced in an effort to drive discussion about meta-scholars and the meta-renaisance. Our goal will have achieved when both terms are being used often.
TED: Liz Coleman’s call to reinvent liberal arts education
This is an interesting if dry discussion on the current state of higher education and how liberal arts have devolved from generalized concepts to ultra specialization. At Purdue University Calumet a group of professors have tried to bring civic minded…
Review: The Paideia Proposal by Mortimer Adler
This book as part of the movement that doesn’t appear to have gotten off the ground is an influential to me short story of what education could become. The book is fairly old so we can see how little effect…
University systems at a crossroads: Furloughs and funding of futures and fantasies
As the nation comes to grips with what is likely another great depression. Regardless of categories or quantities it is THE worst recession since the great depression. As the nation attempts to consider the ramifications of double-digit unemployment (I know…
A possible information operations curriculum
I have been working on an information operations graduate/masters degree curriculum using the sections, topics, and strategies found in Information Operations (JP3-13) as a starting point for course titles, and course learning objectives. The expectation is that each course would…
The Socratic compass: Giving students directions not answers
I was recently told that there was no place in the world of the academy, in the University, for the Socratic philosophizing of grey haired intellectuals. There is no room in a curriculum filled and brimming with Bloom learning objectives,…
How do we get there from here?
I have been watching Star Trek since 3rd grade. I have always loved Gene Roddenberry’s view of the future as positive and hopeful. A few years ago, during an episode of Next Generation, it struck me how much knowledge all…
Higher Education: Recession proof, perhaps, fuel cost sensitive, definitely
There is an old saying, and to be honest I do not know the veracity of it, “Booze, gambling and cigarettes are recession proof. The businesses of sin always make a profit.” I do not have any idea where it…
Education paradigm: How you get there may not be where you are going
Introduction Higher education is often challenged by the competing interests of society and the individual student who wishes to attend. The reasons for attending a University are as varied as the student population. Of interest to students, parents, faculty, and…
The dark ages: Modern anti-intellectualism and failure of the thinking man
In the happenstance world of the modern University system and the massive shift to large scale educational institutions are we truly getting smarter? In the megalithic creations of superior seats of education where is the radical advancements promised by a…
The warrior scholar
I have this fantasy that the warrior scholar elite can happen in my life time. Yes I believe in the elite who are the best because in the realm of conflict failure to be elite carries the badge of vanquished.…
Are students customers or scholars in training?
Part of the problem with considering students as customers rather than students is a difference in perspective between administrative needs and needs of faculty and the discipline. Personally I consider those people in their seats to be students or scholars…
K-12 Education: A university professor takes the future personally
Though as a faculty we represent a diverse and expansive educational background sometimes we miss the point. Whether your educational philosophy is behaviorist or constructivist our mission is to educate the next generation. There is some value in the criticism…
What does the military want from the education system?
There are a lot of misconceptions about higher education, secondary education, and primary education. The K-12 system is where I’m going to restrict my comments for this discussion, and especially the public education system. That being said only a little…
“Technology is the next big thing…..”
With the increasing level of credentialism in the United States the number of people entering college will climb considerably. The use of Community Colleges and Universities as polishing schools for training versus education will increase the breadth of the educational…