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Florence Dujardin

Looking to the future: M-learning with the iPad - 1 views

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    Might Apple's new iPad gain unprecedented traction in education, or is just another example of the over-hyping of new devices in a time of technological determinism (Postman, 2000)? This paper explores the potential affordances and limitations of the Apple iPad in the wider context of emergent mobile learning theory, and the social and economic drivers that fuel technology development. Against the background of effective teaching and learning, the functionality offered by the iPad, and its potential uses for learning, are discussed. A critical review of the way the iPad may support learning, that draws on learning theory, contemporary articles and e-learning literature, suggests that the device may offer an exciting platform for consuming and creating content in a collaborative, interactive way. However, of greater importance is that effective, evidence-driven, innovative practices, combined with a clear-sighted assessment of the advantages and limitations of any product, should take priority over the device itself.
sha towers

Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic | The Economist - 27 views

  • There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
  • A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009
  • America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships.
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  • PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days.
  • In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.
  • About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.
  • In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%.
  • in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.
  • The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%
  • PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees
  • the skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses.
  • In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting.
  • The more bright students stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors’ publication records.
  • Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience.
  • Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else.
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    article from the Economist "The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time
Elizabeth Resnick

Building Good Search Skills: What Students Need to Know| The Committed Sardine - 9 views

  • “What do students really need to know about online search to do it well?”
  • Search competency is a form of literacy, like learning a language or subject.
  • inquiry,
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  • literature review,
  • evidence-gathering,
  • build the evidence for new conclusions.
  • What students need to be competent at is identifying the kind of source they’re finding, decoding what types of evidence it can appropriately provide, and making an educated choice about whether it matches their task.
  • construct tighter or deeper searches
  • They have the technical skills to access Web pages, but also books, journal articles, and people as they move through their research process.
  • how to carry out excellent research online.
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    the hallmarks of a good online search education
Sandra Flowers

The (Coming) Social Media Revolution in the Academy - Daniels and Feagin - Fast Capital... - 6 views

  • Scholars now completing PhD’s have likely never known a world without the Internet and social media.
  • Ultimately, this technological transformation is going to have major implications on expert knowledge. The Internet increases voices and knowledge available to all. Elitism in the expert knowledge world is declining; the Internet democratizes knowledge building and use. Much more knowledge has become available, and the distinction between experts and ordinary folks, what Gramsci might have called “organic intellectuals,” is declining.
  • Academic bloggers frequently use blogs to keep up with the relevant literature in their field, thereby providing a kind of public note-taking and research-sharing exercise. Academic bloggers also use blogging as a rough draft for ideas they later develop fully for peer-reviewed papers or books.
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  • bloggers have embraced Internet technologies in ways that broaden the scope of their research work beyond college walls and in ways reaching beyond old disciplinary silos. This is partly about reaching audiences in disparate geographic locations
  • Academics, like others who use Twitter, have found short updates a useful way to find and maintain connections to others who share their research and other interests
  • For academics that may toil in relative isolation from others who share their immediate interests, the social connection of blogging and microblogging can also provide an opportunity to curate the ideal academic department.  While in another era, scholars may have identified strongly with their PhD-granting university, the college or university, or the academic department in which they are currently employed, the rise of social media allows for a new arrangement of colleagues.
  • Our colleagues in the humanities have embraced digital technologies much more readily than those of us in sociology or the social sciences more generally.  A casual survey of the blogosphere reveals that those in the humanities (and law schools) are much more likely to maintain academic blogs than social scientists.  In terms of scholarship, humanities scholars have been, for more than ten years, innovating ways to combine traditional scholarship with digital technologies.
  • scholars in English have established a searchable online database of the papers of Emily Dickinson and historians have developed a site that offers a 3D digital model showing the urban development of ancient Rome in A.D. 320.
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    Great article on coming changes in digital scholarship.
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