I’ve just finished attending the 2019 International Virginia Woolf Conference, a marvelous event focused this year on questions of Woolf and social justice. Most (but not all) of the attendees were affiliated in some way with academia, and one of the questions that recurred through the conference was: How do […]
This past week, I attended the third Northeast OER (Open Educational Resources) Summit at UMass Amherst. (For a general report on that, see Matt Reed’s write-up for Inside Higher Ed, or, for a whole variety of views, check out the Twitter hashtag #NEOERSummit2019.) I presented a 25-minute talk titled “Gift […]
Here’s an assignment I recently developed and tested out on a group of students and faculty that asked them to do research without using any electronic devices. It worked quite well, and I plan to incorporate it into my classes in the future, though I will probably expand it a […]
This post began as a reflection on some ideas that Robin DeRosa offered in one part of her recent keynote address for the AMICAL Conference in Cairo. It may be helpful look at the transcript or video of the “Frankenstein’s Margins” section of the keynote to understand some of the […]
Another day, another report of an independent bookstore … doing pretty well. After some apocalyptic years, indie bookstores have been having something of a resurgence. This warms my heart, but it has also got me thinking about what, if any, lessons there are for higher education in the perhaps surprising, […]
The other day I explained to a student that the “cc” field in emails is a holdover from the days of typewriters, when a “carbon copy” was literally a copy made with carbon paper. Similarly, “dialing” a telephone number (and then “hanging up”) or “taping” a show. And of course […]
Years ago, Amazon included bookmarks with their orders, and one of the bookmarks offered a loose translation of Erasmas: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” I’ve more or less lived my life by similar principles. (I bought […]
from The Education of John Dewey: A Biography by Jay Martin: A child in Dewey’s school was instantly a member of a cooperative commonwealth. Learning and creating knowledge were merely two forms of knowing, what Dewey called “methods of life.” From occupations, students in Dewey’s school proceeded naturally to their correlatives in the […]
This Inside Higher Edarticle about a particularly punishing course syllabus is extreme, but many college professors have policies that are only slightly less extreme, though they may not think of them that way, may not think of them as particularly punishing, certainly don’t think of them as cruel. (I used to have […]
1. For a couple years now, I’ve made it a point to read John Warner’s blog at Inside Higher Ed at least every few weeks, and often much more frequently than that — indeed, these days, I pretty much click over there immediately whenever I learn of a new post. Warner’s writings […]
I’ve turned grades in for this term, so now am beginning to think about my first experience teaching Pass/No Pass courses. As I mentioned back in August (a lifetime ago!), all of the courses in the program I work in now are Pass/No Pass, a concept consistent with the program’s […]
I’ve always been attracted to the (highly romanticized) idea of monks hunkering down in out-of-the-way monasteries to save cultural artifacts from destruction by the vagaries of time, weather, war, and indifference. If it weren’t for all the religious stuff, I’d be happy to be one of those monks. I mourn […]
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