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Category Archives: Information Technology and Information Literacy
How to Read Departmental Webpages (And How to Make Them Readable)
So today I turned my attention to a bit of institutional homework I was assigned, to find out how some of Swarthmore’s peer institutions approach neuroscience, whether it’s a department or a program, how many positions are dedicated to it, … Continue reading
UnConference or MutateConference?
This morning I was drawn to a post by Mitch Joel claiming that the “unconference movement” is dead. I hadn’t encountered Joel’s blog before, so I hope I’m not reading this piece out of the context of his usual commentary. … Continue reading
A Way To Think About Online Courses (By Apple, For Example)
So Apple’s big education-oriented product announcement has come and gone. I’m going to tread softly here about what it might lead to, because I’ve been wrong before on tech rollouts (both overestimating and underestimating impacts). In general, most of what … Continue reading
I Endorse These Messages
Remember when people used to use blogs mostly just for shout-outs to other bloggers? Ok, they’re often still for that purpose, but it seems to me that Twitter serves that function far more efficiently. Also, with my own bloggorhea, I’ve … Continue reading
Mechanical Turks and Mirror Stages
I like this essay by John Jones about search algorithms, which he compares to “mechanical Turk” automatons of the 18th Century. It’s a point that’s well-understood in some circles and completely not in others. Witness the degree to which users … Continue reading
Lead On
Princeton University restrains its faculty from giving away copyright on journal articles to academic publishers.
Some Small Ideas About Big Ideas
At first, I thought that Neal Gabler was singing my song in his ode (and eulogy) to the “Big Idea”. Part of his argument turns on a familiar theme at this blog, that overspecialization has its costs, and that one … Continue reading
The Evitable Future of the Digital
I don’t think anyone will be surprised that I agree to a large extent with Virginia Heffernan that education needs to prepare contemporary children for the world of work and citizenship as it is and will be rather than as … Continue reading
Seven Days in the World of Books on Fire
I said it on Twitter but I’ll say it here. The relief for a stupid book review in which someone says something that is not only evaluatively stupid but actually empirically wrong is to say so. It’s not a 65,000 … Continue reading
Technology, Note-Taking and Research Workflow
I was asking about this on Twitter and I’ll ask here, since it was hard to explain in 140 characters. Last summer, I asked for some advice on a couple of kinds of software and got some great suggestions. I’m … Continue reading