It's About Learning
Putting Learning First
A Disrupted Higher-Ed System
Jan 27th
Jeff Selingo makes that argument that control of the parchment (accreditation) and governmental funding of student aid as the only reasons our current Higher Education system is able to sustain it centuries old traditions of having:
professors at the front of a room or at a table with an average of 16 students in front of them.
Selengo points to several examples of disruption outside of academia StraighterLine, the Khan Academy, and Badges to certify skills as well examples inside academic like MITx and Udacity.
Is the perfect storm of change brewing for higher-ed? Time will tell but when you consider the following, something has to give: ubiquitous access to information through the internet, looming global financial crisis, evidence that the system isn’t producing the result we all expect, non-traditional organizations moving in rapidly and successfully at the bottom end of the market and perhaps most importantly a weakening in the reliance on and significance of the parchment.
Concordia Main Page Revisions & Department Concept Page
Jan 24th
Please consider the wording for the sections of the site in the examples below as placeholders. We will be conducting user group testing to determine the best wording for the site. What we are looking to affirm is the general layout and look of the site.
Rev 2a
Rev 2b
We are also looking for your comments on the Math Department Concept page:
Math Department Concept Page
iBooks Author – Finally a FREE Platform for Creating Books
Jan 23rd
Apple announced its FREE ebook publishing platform iBooks Author on January 19th and since the announcement there have been a flurry of posts in the blogoshere, on twitter and in all other forms of social media commenting on Apples move into ebook publishing. A few of the sites I follow include:
Engaget: Apple’s iBooks Author hands-on provide a general overview of the Author tool.
Macleans: 90,000 have downloaded iBooks Author since Thursday offers straight data on just how much interest there is in the authoring tool.
Chronicle of Higher Education: Apple’s New E-Textbook Platform Enters an Already Crowded Field is relatively negative perspective from the Technology writer Jeffery Young.
Mashable: This Is How Apple Changes Education, Forever provides a glowing review the authoring tool and the impact it will have on education.
Regardless of that the early reviews reveal, through this FREE platform, Apple gives us the ability to create interactive ebooks with rich media, 3D images and a wide range of interactive features. These books can be saved to PDF, epub or can be published to the iBook store so even if you don’t have an iPad or a Mac you can still share the books with just about anyone. There currently isn’t another FREE tool that offers all this. Yes the full features will only be available for viewing on the iPad but all this means is that the Android world will have another tool to copy–which is a good thing.
Over the years I have used Aldus Pagemaker, Macromedia Pagemaker and then Adobe Pagemaker, InDesign and many other programs looking for the ultimate tool to help me build a book and I have always ended up not only hundreds of dollars poorer but also countless hour poorer. Apples iBook Author is a wonderful first offering from Apple and I look forward to seeing that impact it will have on the book and textbook publishing industry.
Review the iBooks Author site…
Kodak Bankrupt: Surprised they lasted this long
Jan 20th
I truly hope that this is not a surprise for anyone. I sold my Nikon F4S, F4 and other professional camera film bodies and switched to digital photography and video back in the late 90′s. The digitization of our society is moving very rapidly and this is only one more example of an established industry leader being displaced by a disruptive innovation.
