Category: Uncategorized
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As much time and effort into the small number of things that give huge rewards
Since this is related so closely to yesterday’s post, we’ll go ahead and add it here. One of the problems here is a sort of digital FOMO. “If I don’t have that thing”—Facebook, Instagram, whatever—”what benefit might I be missing out on?” You’re pretty unplugged. How do you deal with that digital FOMO?There’s a rarefied…
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It’s hard, until it’s easy
I’ve been sprinting recently toward the completion of my dissertation, and there’s one thing that’s consistently true for me in writing. Writing is a practice with uneven returns. It’s a slog. It’s hard. You feel lost. You push, push, push. And then – in a moment – everything clicks, comes together, and that section is…
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When online education scales, you can hire James Cameron to produce Math 101
Marc Andreessen, creator of Netscape, talks about, among other things, online education: You could probably bring in the whole online-education movement. But for me, the question is, who does the best with online schooling? And it’s mostly autodidacts, people who are self-starters. They’ve found that people from low-income communities actually get the least out of it.…
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Failure arrives in a whimper
“Failure almost always arrives in a whimper. It is almost always the result of missed opportunities, a series of bad choices and the rust that comes from things gradually getting worse. Things don’t usually explode. They melt.” – Seth Godin
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Education hasn’t seen true disruption. Yet.
For the first 10 years of “fairly common internet usage,” newspapers were fine. There was email. There was AOL. There was instant messenger. There were even some news sites. But for news, the local newspaper still provided a better product than the others. Last weekend, my wife and I signed up for a six-week newspaper deal…
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Tangible experiences + technology = education’s sweet spot
Ben Thompson writes an insightful post on the cost of software moving toward free, and it ties in with online education. Ben says “over time the price of a product moves to its marginal cost, and if the marginal cost is zero, that means free is inevitable.” Online education will move toward free. That’s good…
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The successful …
The successful people we spoke with — in business, entertainment, sports and the arts — all had similar responses when faced with obstacles: they subjected themselves to fairly merciless self-examination that prompted reinvention of their goals and the methods by which they endeavored to achieve them. Secret Ingredient for Success, by Camille Sweeney (via Swissmiss)
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Friday Linkage: Gap years, self-care, and student debt
Just a few things that caught my eye over the past week… Don’t go to college next year: Take a gap year instead “Taking a gap year speeds our development by upsetting these patterns. Trying to occupy another person’s way of life in a different culture—living with a new family, speaking the language, integrating into a community, perhaps…
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If online education hasn’t already saved your university, it probably won’t
Online education is absolutely necessary. Excellent online education is even more important. For many students, it’s going to be a welcome alternative, especially when someone figures it out enough to create a holistic, quality, interactive learning experience. But universities need to realize that it won’t be the saving grace for every institution. Here’s why: In…
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Tough love on self-care
You can’t care for or lead others unless you care for and lead yourself. It’s counterintuitive but true. You think you’re being selfless when you push yourself beyond healthy limits (in time, relationships, rest, working out). But you’re setting yourself up for failure and letting everyone who relies on you down. In fact, sometimes we…
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Focusing on the difficult part of innovation
In creating a new project, the essential step is isolating the difficult part and focusing on that. The easy parts are important and they take work, but they tend to take care of themselves if the core engine is working. Wikipedia: find people to volunteer to become editors AirBnB: find people to put great houses…
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Assessment lessons from The Lean Startup
Assessment is a hot topics in student affairs, but in most places, there may be more talk than action. I think this comes from two problems with the process: Runners Don’t Take Photos and the Dusty Binder Syndrome. Runners Don’t Take Photos is simple. The woman running the race isn’t the one stopping to document the…
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Quote: Brené Brown on technology
“I curse technology then I get to “FaceTime” with my 3 year old niece, and I’m like, “This is the best thing EVER.” … I guess technology is like fire – you can keep yourself warm or you can burn down the barn. It’s all in how you use it (or how you let it…
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Dan Ariely on MOOCs and the future of higher education
Behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely, author of books like Predictably Irrational, speaker at TED, and professor at Duke, just kicked off a MOOC through Coursera with 144,000 participants. He talks about the experience in an insightful interview. This section on the future of higher education was particularly interesting: I don’t think that the future of the…
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Innovation in student affairs – where do you see it?
I’m looking for examples of innovation in higher education – particularly student affairs/student life – and I need your help. Innovation is a tricky word. Maybe it brings to mind images like Disney’s “house of the future,” sending a rocket to Mars, or Steve Jobs introducing a phone that will revolutionize the mobile phone and…
Jon Sampson 