Just wanted to mention that I’ll be in DC for the AAUP’s national meeting and conference on the State of Higher Education next week. Do drop me a line if you’re interested in a meetup at some point–and, if you’re on Twitter, follow #chrontweetup for a possible meetup of Chronicle writers and staff!
Here are five links to start off the weekend:
- Mark Sample has a must-read post (the comments are also excellent) on the emerging pedagogical possibilities of geolocative social media: The endeavor turns a consumer-based model of mobile computing into an authorship-based model. It is a uniquely collaborative activity, but also one that invites individual introspection. . . . It operates at the intersection between game and story, between reading and writing, between the real and the virtual.
- Re: Online Course Evaluations. As you surely know by now, the College has gone to a new online course evaluation system. Let me just say: I’m so sorry. Not only do you get the daily reminders cluttering up your inbox, but now you also have to take time outside of class during the busiest part of your semester to fill out your evaluations. Please don’t hold it against me—I swear it wasn’t my idea!
- Two in-house items of straight-up logrolling: First, in this widely-read Chronicle article about a “Scholar Rais[ing] Doubts About the Value of a Test of Student Learning,” the scholar is my good friend Braden Hosch. He’s a Miltonist-turned-assessment guru, and does very sophisticated work. Second, and behind the firewall, the professor in this Chronicle article about “A Post-and-Beam Mystery at William & Mary” (about a building that may be the “oldest extant school for black children in the US) is Terry L. Meyers. Meyers is a Swinburne scholar who generously helped my first wee publication find the light of day.
- Neven Mrgan has a lucid defense of “walled gardens” and closed systems: I’m assuming we’re supposed to compare this approach to the freer alternatives such as community gardens and city parks. Ignoring for a moment the fact that these gardens are also regulated by serious restrictions on what one can and can’t do, it still puzzles me that the “walled garden” is presented as an obviously undesirable structure.
- Finally, as the graduation season recedes, we can get some statistical purchase on the “most popular commencement addresses.”
Sometimes, it can be challenging to find the right video for this post. Other times, student and faculty from the University of Washington’s Information School go Gaga:
Lyrics by Sarah Wachter at Athena’s Banquet.
Have a great weekend!
Image by Flickr user bartlec. / Creative Commons licensed
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