Archive for April, 2009

“End The University As We Know It”

I so wanted to have something intelligent to say about this Op-Ed piece in the New York Times that points out with blunt eloquence just how over the highest levels of higher education are, but all I could manage were utterances like, “Damn…that’s fu**ed up.” One is hard-pressed to add any worthwhile bits to a [ READ MORE ]

The Master List Of Free Online College Courses

I’m addicted (addicted, I tell you!) to learning. I love school; I can’t get enough of it. My retirement plan (if buying a tropical island doesn’t work out due to melting glaciers and disappearing archipelagos) is to start right back up with my college education again. I don’t require more degrees; it’s not a matter [ READ MORE ]

Graduation Rates

That’s the cute and tiny version of this image, which shows graduation rates in America’s 50 largest cities in an awesome coast-to-coast viewing. The data for the image came from the EPE Research Center and their 2009 Report: Cities in Crisis. The numbers are dismal (only about half of high school students in those cities [ READ MORE ]

Neuroenhancing Drugs For The Modern-Day Super Student

I wouldn’t necessarily classify myself as a teetotaler, but I’m fairly certain everyone who knows me wouldn’t hesitate to slap that label across my sober forehead. It’s not that I have anything against the imbibing of drugs or alcohol, I just haven’t ever tended toward any sort of relationship with chemicals. And yet, even freakishly [ READ MORE ]

The Future Of Education

This week’s Teaching Carnival is hosted by AcademHack. The theme is The Future of Education and is worth a thorough perusal. The most intriguing string of thoughts were Jim Moulton’s post about technology in education and what he observed on a recent trip as to India’s attitudes toward education (they are not effing around), and [ READ MORE ]

Washington State University Announces New Online MBA Program

Washington State University is rounding out their already-successful business degree program with an Online MBA degree starting Fall 2009. It’ll start out as a part-time program for the first year, but by Fall 2010, it will be available as a part-time or a full-time degree program. The program is geared toward professionals already working, so [ READ MORE ]

If You’re Pondering A Teaching Career

While on the one hand we’ve got a major teacher retirement upheaval about to hit the American school system, during which we’ll be losing a third of the current teaching force, on the other hand we’ve got a sketchy economy that’s sending boatloads of career-types running for the safety (I use the term loosely) of [ READ MORE ]

Streamlining Harvard’s Science Libraries

Harvard’s science libraries are being mushed under one super-efficient “administrative umbrella,” Harvard College Library (HCL). By July the first four will have been assimilated: the Physics, Statistics, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Mathematics departmental libraries, with the remaining science libraries to follow suit later. The administrative-types have assured everyone that the plans are strictly for [ READ MORE ]

Music That Makes You Dumb

I love it when people find new and exciting ways to use their information-aggregating skills. Virgil Griffith is a busy guy, and he still found time to whip this up. You can read more about him and his brainiac antics in the New York Times Magazine, in Wired, and on this WSJ blog. His site [ READ MORE ]

Educational Psychology Can Save Recess (I Hope)

Sometimes I wonder why the decision-makers are so backward in their thinking, and then I wonder which one of us non-decision-makers was responsible for putting them in charge in the first place. Outdoor recess and unstructured, in-classroom play time have been decreasing so as to make time for the fully structured knowledge-absorption parts of the [ READ MORE ]