The Professor's Notes

Another interesting conversation over at Community College Dean’s blog.  He notes that here in Pennsylvania the Governor is considering having state funding for some higher ed follow the students rather than funding the state “affiliated” schools in large blocks. My brother (whom you may know is also a Dean–at a Pennsylvania university) and I have been going a few rounds on this one as well. Perhaps he and I should record one of our podcasts. That said, I wanted to address a few of the points made by Dean Dad.

First, a couple things need to be made clear. For instance, the most recognized PA “State School” (Penn State) is actually not a State School, receiving less than 4% of their funding from the state. Most other private schools are the same. In fact, the article points out that the schools Gov Corbett is considering funding through vouchers are the schools that are specifically NOT the state schools. He believes that the state schools should have institutional support.

Now, for the real “State schools” (those that are part of the Pennsylvania university system, such as Indiana U of P, Mansfield, Bloomsburg, Shippensburg, etc…) Their funding is about 30% from the state. There is already a significant distinction between these schools. That is why the governor is not willing to cut those loose. Read the rest of this entry »

Not trying to cause TOO much trouble here, but over at Dean Dad’s blog he was commenting (complaining?) on the many requirements for his time both professionally and personally.  One comment he makes is about his boy’s school testing “The Boy has his statewide standardized test this month — thanks, President Bush! — so the school is ramping everything up in preparation.”

I am not sure you can blame Bush or anyone in the last decade for the onslaught of standardized testing in elementary school. I remember when I was a wee lad in the late 60s and early 70s we had regular testing as well, that lasted a week or more.

These tests were known by the states from which they came, “The California Test.” “The Iowa Test.” And these tests were often used for placement  in the upcoming two years.

It seems that, with the “no child left behind” initiative the complaint really isn’t about the testing so much as holding the teachers and schools accountable for the outcomes. Perish the thought that, at the end of the day, the producers would be measured by the quality of the output!

So let’s break that particular discussion down this way:

1. Can we agree that for any job there should be a way to assess how effective an employee is at performing that job?

2. Should your promotions, or continued employment, be contingent on how well you perform your job?

3. Is the education of children important enough to make sure that those performing their task are doing it well?

If we answer yes to these (and why shouldn’t we?) the then next question, the one that really is the heart of the argument, is:

4. How can we measure the ability of the teachers (employee) to produce the desired outcome (an educated student)?

I would love to hear your thoughts on these… Please, leave your comments and “join the discussion”

We talk about the lawsuit brought by the US in the most recent Real Tech for Real People, Episode 110.  While we share our thoughts on the pluses and minuses of the lawsuit, I thought it would be good to share this article from LifeHacker as well.  In this article they discuss the impact the lawsuit could have on pricing.  They write in part:

In a nutshell, this means prices on ebooks went up because the agreement with Apple made it so other sellers, like Amazon, couldn’t lower the price on ebooks.

Three of the seven publishers have already settled with the Department of Justice, but Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan rejected the offer. Now that we know the reasons behind the lawsuit, let’s see if any of this news is actually will have an effect on pricing.

Read the full article here.

Back in 2007 I bought a Civic Hybrid.  At the time I “ran the numbers” and decided that the purchase made both economic and environmental sense.  I wrote about it on my blog, and explained why I believe the true environmentalists are conservatives.  At the time, I wrote:

I couldn’t bring myself to buy a Toyota Prius like our good friend Fleshy. I am not sure if it is because I don’t like the “cramped” look of the car, or simply that Fleshy, and so many liberals, wear that car as a (tight fitting) badge of good liberalism.

I was clearly aware that some people drive the Prius simply to show that “they care.”  Recently Freakonomics Radio (brought to you by the same guys that brought you the books Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics) discussed the concept of “Conspicuous Conservationism” — that is, people that try to enhance their status by showing that they are being “altruistic” — even if they aren’t really effective.  For instance, Read the rest of this entry »

How many of you remember the Falklands War? Not only do I remember it (hey–I was in college!) but I later had a thesis student at the US Air Force’s graduate school who had as his close friend a real Argentinian hero. His heroic act? He sunk the Atlantic Conveyor. (Read more about that, here.)

As this story from the BBC notes, the UK remembers Falklands invasion.

I sent this letter to the President of the School Board.  I wanted to share it with you all as well, and if you support CV THON and Drivers’ Education, please, take the time to write him as well.  His email is: jjordan@cvschools.org

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I wanted to take a minute of your time and let you know I am sorely disappointed that Drivers’ Education is being eliminated from the CV Curriculum and more importantly, that the teacher will be leaving the HS and no one else has stepped up to be the faculty advisor for CV THON.

Honestly, I have three points of interest here that happen tointer-weave. First, I believe the of all the courses at a HS that are beneficial, the most beneficial is the Drivers’ Ed course. I have seen places where that course is only taught outside the school, and honestly, all they do is teach driving. The benefit of the course taught in the HS is that there is more thought to the education portion of the program than just the training. By being in a setting with your peers, and having a sense of community that is brought through with this course, they learn more than simply how to pass a driving exam. Read the rest of this entry »

Who are the consumers of textbooks? And how do you define a consumer? We had this discussion recently on the podcast Real Tech for Real People episode 97. We were discussing the increasing use of tablets, and specifically iPads, in primary and secondary education. Of course, this led to a discussion of the use of tablets in higher education. The conversation was wide ranging in a couple key points emerged that I wish to write about here.

The primary and secondary schools systems are selecting a specific device and the books are content to go on that device. In this case, the system purchases the devices and the content and then delivers that to the student. So who is the consumer in this case? Setting aside for the moment the argument that the taxpayer is always the consumer, let’s focus on whether the consumer is the school district or the student. We can all agree that there are many stakeholders in this arrangement: the school board, parents, teachers, students, taxpayers, and I’m sure many others. But when I consider the consumer, I am considering their role in consumer plays in shaping the marketplace. In this case, while the students consumed the content, the school board by virtue of the purse string is the consumer. We can hope they are making wise decisions as they select the best combination of hardware, software, and support infrastructure.

Given this scenario the selection of a specific hardware platform makes sense. As a consumer the school district is selecting an all encompassing solution for all to use. This approach will undoubtedly balance the educational needs with the technological abilities, and of course the fiscal reality is the school board faces. The district will be able to leverage their scarce taxpayer dollars to get the best benefit possible. Are there limitations to this approach? Perhaps. There might be better solutions that only run on a different platform. But those are the tradeoffs one makes when one selects a technological platform on which to base decisions. We must satisfice.

Not consider the higher education model. As professors and students alike start to look towards digital textbooks as a valuable and viable alternative to the costly new-used-new book cycle we find a new challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

Must content and delivery be inextricably entwined?

For centuries our ability to gather content and disseminated wirh tide is not just to the content but to the media and the physical media that was used for delivery. If you wanted to read a book you would buy both the content and the delivery media simultaneously. The words in the paper on which they were printed or written were forever enmeshed. Even in recent decades with books on CD or tape you were still purchasing both the delivery media and the content as an inseparable unit.

We have an opportunity to day with the development of digital content and robust data exchange standards to forever separate the content from the media, or at least that will we use to receive the content. We’re at a crossroads. We can choose to follow the path of standards allowing users to decide on the delivery mechanism they prefer, or we can continue to develop content for delivery in specific devices and tools.

We’re currently entering a world where we have a wide variety of choices for the personal technology we use to access media. For instance, we have both been nearly ubiquitous iPad and now more and more android tablets on the market. We’re also seeing the early stages of windows eight tablets being previewed. If we take a device centric approach content will be developed and delivered as operating system specific applications. This will enable content creators to leverage the unique creative aspects of each of the operating systems and the devices. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the challenges I face is figuring out how to share my various [work interests/hobbies] in a way that shows the relationship between them.  Especially as an academic, trying to show how my various apparently dissimilar research efforts were related posed a specific challenge.  Enter the concept of Venn Diagrams!

While perusing Gina Trapani’s blog from Smarterware.org, I saw she too struggles with sharing her varied, yet often inter-related, interests.

She writes:

It’s a tough question to answer, especially when you’re not working on a single thing. Last weekend at Foo Camp I failed miserably at explaining myself and my slash careers and how they all intersect. But at that same conference, I had the pleasure of attending a session by David Eaves, who eloquently explained that his goal is to apply his experience and training in negotiation skills to open source community management. On his site, he published a map of his past, current, and future work, and how those activities all interrelated. Cool!

When I read this I had one of those “DUH!” moments. It’s a brilliantly simple idea.  I like the way it forces some things into reductionism (you have to determine a fixed set of spheres–how many do you REALLY have?).  In addition, this approach can even help one find relationships between work that seemed “intuitively” there, but were never explicitly stated, even to oneself.  And finally, the approach David and Gina have both taken is to show how they are seeking the “greater good” (or a “Better world”) through their work.

The Venn Diagram David Eaves created is below.  To see the one Gina put together about her interests and work, go visit the link (really–you should!)  To see mine…. well, that may take a while longer.

Feel free to share yours here, or just put a link to yours in the comments!

I have been a proponent of the “Presentation 2.0″ style as a generic term and concept since attending the PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 in 2007.  In that PodCamp we heard from Chris Brogan who reminded us that the power of the presentation slides was to emphasize what the speaker was saying, not to take your attention off the speaker.

We don’t like PowerPoint and we don’t like presentations.  But as much as we want to blame the tool we find we cannot leave this crutch behind.  Perhaps it is because we do not see it as a tool that assists in our delivering content but rather as a surrogate, a stand-in,  so that we aren’t the ones being observed, but rather it is our slides.  Too often we expect (or are required) to have our presentations “stand alone” or worse “speak for themselves” (I say worse, because when given this mission it rarely actually means including the voice of the presenter, but rather that the written words must contain all the thoughts.)  Yes, we cannot leave the world of wordy slides.

Chris Brogan at the time reminded us of the importance of “big pictures” (real images) that convey the emotion, or the sense of the topic discussed, but that we as the speaker should deliver the content.  He also shared that we should remember that presentations are about the audience and our connecting with the audience.  If we are to connect, we cannot have them getting lost in reading the words (the many, many, often forced to be tiny, words…) on the screen.

Here is another take on just that very thing:

So my question for you is this:  What sort of presentation do you prefer? Do you want all the information laid out before you in verbose slides, ensuring you have all the information at your fingertips for later, or are you instead a person who learns best by listening and asborbing?

Leave your comments, or tweet me @SCMProfessor