Classroom at ACS International (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When your classroom is a global one, filled with well-informed online learners, they don’t cut you much slack. Hundreds of people pore over every element of your course, making well-informed and sometime acerbic comments. Academics who run Massive Open Online Courses MOOCs are finding that they can’t afford any sloppy reasoning, one-sided arguments, or narrow perspectives when teaching to a massive global audience.As academic lead at FutureLearn, a company offering free online courses from UK universities, I’ve seen that this instant feedback can be eye-opening for course designers.On a university campus, students stick around even though the teaching may be dreadful, because they need the degree qualification. In MOOCs they leave as soon as they lose interest.
This month, Yung Chou, Mitch Tulloch and I have published a new book on Hybrid Cloud Management with System Center 2012 R2 App Controller, titled Microsoft System Center: Cloud Management with App Controller. As part of a series of specialized guides on System Center, this book focuses on using App Controller to manage virtual machines and services across private and public clouds.
English: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Microsoft Imagine Academy program prepares educators and students for industry-recognized certifications. Technology is everywhere. There is a need to provide appropriate business software and technologyskills necessary in everyday life, whether it is basic computer skills or advanced technical skills. Almost every job today requires some form of technology skills.
With less books, paper, and pencils and more laptops, smartphones, and tablets gracing our classrooms these days, it would be logical to say that the nature of note-taking in class has changed, too. Especially with digital tools such as Evernote, writing things down on paper seems less likely to be the #1 way of taking notes.
That said, does taking notes really help? Does the physical act of writing something down help you to remember it? What is the most effective way to take notes? How does all of this play into a more digitally based classroom? The handy infographic below takes a look at these questions and more – keep reading to find out some of the answers!
The Kindle is great for reading the occasional book, but you might not know that it’s also a fantastic tool for students. When used correctly, it can essentially operate as a portable tool to keep all your books, notes, and research in one place. Here’s how to turn a Kindle into your new best friend for school.
English: Noam Chomsky’s signature. Français : Signature autographe de Noam Chomsky. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
PhD students and professors sometimes betray a certain infatuation with the “big names” of academia. It goes beyond admiration into the realm of hero worship, and it’s a bit silly. We’re getting too old for it.
Especially by the time the dissertation has been written. Shouldn’t we expect a measured nonchalance toward the whole notion of big names and so-called great ideas? Shouldn’t routine exposure to “greatness” have a demystifying effect on PhD students and professors?
Noam Chomsky and Harold Bloom, for example, are tacked on to conversations or asked to be the editors of an impossible number of books, either because people worship them or because people know that people worship them. They function like commercial adverts instead of scholars.
It’s not to say that Chomsky and Bloom don’t have interesting ideas or important things to say – but a large number of academics have interesting and important things to say. Brilliant insights should be collected and epiphanies compiled, of course. But by the very nature of those accumulations I would anticipate less, not more, captivation over a scholar or handful of thinkers.
Deutsch: Logo University of the West of Scotland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At the request of Microsoft I wrote a small piece for University Business on the future of educational technology. You can read it by following the link.
UK HE is placing a higher priority on attracting international students than ever before. Indeed, my own institution, the University of the West of Scotland, has recently been rated as amongst the top 5% of universities worldwide. While this is an exciting development it also comes with its own challenges including tailoring teaching, research and the university’s procedures to ensure a fulfilling experience. Enabling all of this is the underpinning technical infrastructure.
You can’t live without innovation. It’s why you’re in business. But as you grow, innovation also becomes a threat. It threatens to disrupt your existing business model, products, and services. It threatens to upset your customers, who have become accustomed to a certain way of doing things. It threatens your partners and employees, who have developed expertise in the way things currently work. That’s the real reason innovation is so hard. While we espouse its values, we also build defenses against it.
I call these the innovation killers. The innovation killers are almost always neatly disguised as protectors of the organization. Few people use these behaviors to try to kill innovation outright. Their intentions are always good ones: to minimize risk, to deliver predictability and operational excellence, and to satisfy market, customer, and analysts’ expectations. The innovation killers are staffed with armies of well-intentioned corporate citizens, ready to defend their turf and keep innovation at bay, lest it disrupt the certainty of the status quo.
“The innovation killers are almost always neatly disguised as protectors of the organization.”
Guess what? If you’re looking for certainty, you’ve picked the wrong century. Get used to it, and get familiar with this list of seven innovation killers. These are the weeds that threaten to choke your garden; when you see them, pull them out by their roots.
