I’ve become cynical enough in this space that I thought nothing could surprise me. I was wrong. This is shocking: Of the nearly $1.5 trillion in loans that US students have ever taken out on record, about $900 billion of it hasn’t been repaid. Yes, there are, according to the best estimate available, around some… Continue reading

Jim Groom, Tim Owens, and I have started talking about how to make Ed Roulette a reality.  Please take 5 minutes of your time and check out the short wireframe walkthrough of how the application would work and let us know if you can help us build it, test it, popularize it. It’s a killer… Continue reading

I never really was a big Steve Jobs fan.  Back in I think 1999 I bought what i think was possibly hardware MP3 player ever manufactured, the Rio 300. It could fit less than an hour’s worth of music at 128 kbps.  Here’s the thing most people don’t remember about the Rio — at the time… Continue reading

For those following it, it’s the UCLA case. Story here. “The type of access that students and/or faculty may have, whether overseas or at a coffee shop, does not take the viewing of the DVD out of the educational context,” Marshall wrote in her decision. Because the only rights-holding plaintiff in the case, Ambrose Video Publishing,… Continue reading

Engagement is one of those words that’s become pretty mushy. Everyone uses it, few seem to know what it means. I tend to talk less about engagement and more about Engaged Time in the classroom, because that definition is clearer: it’s the amount of time that students spend attending to the learning task at hand.… Continue reading

I think #occupywallstreet is an interesting experiment that we may learn from — and it may even make a difference. But if it does, let’s remember this: But it was the appearance of the hundred-or-so odd members of the TWU 100, carrying placards and bullhorns, and clad in their blue and red shirts inscribed with… Continue reading

But something was wrong with the CAPTCHA system.  In any case, my comment on his recent post: I think we have also lost the idea that part of what education is supposed to do is impart to the next generation a common body of knowledge and skills that allows society to, quite frankly, function. And… Continue reading

Brilliant essay by Simon Reynolds. And worth thinking about more broadly than music: Cobain, arguably the last rebel-rocker-as-star, had owed his rise to the centralizing power of the old media; now in his death, he was entangled with the emerging new media disorder. The old media and entertainment channels (what I think of as the… Continue reading