Every few years there’s a new consumer technology product that makes a wave in the public consciousness. Some of them make a huge difference to faculty and students; some of them don’t. How to tell the difference? I’ve never seen any tool that by its very existence changed the nature of teaching. It’s not true of slates and chalk, it’s […]
» Read moreI know there’s a lot of confusion surrounding these hot topics when I hear from a faculty member who asks me “I don’t understand what the hype is about – isn’t this just like posting readings in Blackboard?” None of these topics is just like posting readings in Blackboard, but none of these things is really the same as any […]
» Read moreIt’s no longer possible to ignore the potential of integrating social networking with your teaching. Students actually prefer to have academic systems separate from their Facebook accounts, so when something happens like Missouri forbidding its K-12 teachers from having any contact with their students via Facebook, I don’t panic too much. Yes, it sets the cause of modernizing teaching back […]
» Read moreIn a 21st century world where just about any data is available at your fingertips at any time, memorizing information is a skill that few people need any more. I’m not one of those faculty who bemoans the loss of memorization skills (though I can still remember many of the Latin conjugation forms I learned in high school, and would […]
» Read moreFor the last few Boot Camps I’ve made a passing mention of “digital citizenship” just to ask the question of whether or not we are addressing it sufficiently in higher education. The example I always use is to ask the question of whether or not our students are prepared to vote on questions having to do with electronic voting machines. […]
» Read moreAt the first Boot Camp in 2006, recipients received laptops (presaging the laptops we were able to offer to all full-time faculty members beginning in 2007). I don’t want to tell any stories out of school, because what happens in Boot Camp stays in Boot Camp, but it’s fair to say that mobile computing was new for those first few […]
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