ALT Lab

"The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an effort to create the first large-scale online database of university course syllabi as a platform for the development of new research, teaching, and administrative tools. "

"It's not that my memory improved but, instead, that I started archiving these events and ideas with my phone, as photographs. Now, if I want to research the painter whose portraits I admired at the museum, I don't have to read through page after page of my chicken scratch trying to find her name. When I need the title of a novel someone recommended, I just scroll back to the day we were at the bookstore together. Looking through my photo stream, there is a caption about Thomas Jefferson smuggling seeds from Italy, which I want to research; a picture of a tree I want to identify, which I need to send to my father; the nutritional label from a seasoning that I want to re-create; and a man with a jungle of electrical cords in the coffee shop, whose picture I took because I wanted to write something about how our wireless lives are actually full of wires. Photography has changed not only the way that I make notes but also the way that I write. Like an endless series of prompts, the photographs are a record of half-formed ideas to which I hope to return."

"If your students worship grades, they won't complete assignments without knowing how many points it's worth. If they worship stickers and candy, they won't work without the promise of those prizes. If you say a prayer to the "real world" every time you sit down to plan your math lessons, you and your students will never have enough real world, never feel you have enough connection to jobs and solar panels and trains leaving Chicago and things made of stuff. If you instead say a prayer to the atomic sensation of being puzzled and the catharsis that comes from being unpuzzled, you will never get enough of being puzzled and unpuzzled."

Imagining learning as cartography.

"Kazemi is part of a small but vibrant group of programmers who, in addition to making clever Web toys, have dedicated themselves to shining a spotlight on the algorithms and data streams that are nowadays humming all around us, and using them to mount a sharp social critique of how people use the Internet-and how the Internet uses them back. By imitating humans in ways both poignant and disorienting, Kazemi's bots focus our attention on the power and the limits of automated technology, as well as reminding us of our own tendency to speak and act in ways that are essentially robotic. While they're more conceptual art than activism, the bots Kazemi is creating are acts of provocation-ones that ask whether, as computers get better at thinking like us and shaping our behavior, they can also be rewired to spring us free. "

Certainly an interesting debate unfolding in the comments. Sadly, I'm on the side of 40 years of history over 15. I'm not holding my breath for the pendulum to swing back at this point...

"Now, 369 images, several conference presentations, and more than 67,000 views later, there's evidence that crowdsourcing can work with even the most archaic of subjects. Twenty-eight individuals (from amateur enthusiasts to established scholars) contributed to the project by providing input via comments on the Flickr page. A number of other individuals assisted through emails or phone calls. Thus far, 94 of the 116 identifiable fragments have been identified, and nearly 57 percent of those were identified through crowdsourcing (by date, region, or the text itself). "

"Now, 369 images, several conference presentations, and more than 67,000 views later, there's evidence that crowdsourcing can work with even the most archaic of subjects. Twenty-eight individuals (from amateur enthusiasts to established scholars) contributed to the project by providing input via comments on the Flickr page. A number of other individuals assisted through emails or phone calls. Thus far, 94 of the 116 identifiable fragments have been identified, and nearly 57 percent of those were identified through crowdsourcing (by date, region, or the text itself). "

"I'm talking about @HistoryInPics, which, as I discovered, is run by two teenagers: Xavier Di Petta, 17, who lives in a small Australian town two hours north of Melbourne, and Kyle Cameron, 19, a student in Hawaii. "

Well, except enrollments *are* down slightly at VCU...

FWIW, I think Mike Caulfield is one of the brightest and most thoughtful people in higher ed. I like this post very much.

Yes, I just bookmarked my own blog post...

"When we say students are customers I hope you know that we mean we have a responsibility to them not because they pay us but because they trust us with something they come to us not even quite knowing how to define but knowing they need. And as all of you have been witness to over the time we have been here our endeavors here are most certainly not simply about revenue. Nor is success simply defined by whether a student got a good grade.  Everything, the emphasis on academic quality and outcomes, the funds dedicated to making sure you have the resources you need, your personal and professional development, contradicts the naysayers."

SNHU President Paul Leblanc's response to the Slate piece.