RoCC Management Insights – Prof. Martin Eppler on Visualizing Knowledge for Management. Eppler’s video is part of the Visual Literacy: An E-Learning Tutorial on Visualization for Communication, Engineering and Business found at www-visual-literacy.org.
The switch to Gmail will save the city of Edmonton $6 million during the initial five-year contract, it gives city staff much more access and mobility, and employees will be able to use their own smartphones and laptops.
Chris Moore the Chief Information Officer suggests that switching to Google Docs is a good move for the city:
because it’s web-based, we can get access to it anywhere, at any time, with any device
The commercial contract with Google for the city Google Docs system means that the city’s data is private and:
there won’t be any greater chance of the American government using its powers under the Patriot Act to read emails from city staff than there is under the current system.
It is good to see the city of Edmonton moving into the 21st Century with is email and communication system.
Hot Type: An Open Letter to Academic Publishers About Open Access – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
Jennifer Howard closes here well written letter to publishers with asking:
You can lock up content, but you can’t close up a scholarly culture that’s more and more interested in openness. That culture won’t be satisfied with just being told that copyright is good and piracy is bad. Publishers, how will you adapt?
Howard also refers to the Academic Spring to relay the notion that the academy is ready for significant change when it comes to publishing. I sincerely hope so.
Innovations in Higher Education? Hah! – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
Ann Kirschner Dean of William E. Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York argues that College leaders need to move beyond talking about transformation to actually transforming Higher Education before it’s too late. After reading this article several times I have come to the conclusion any form of summary will not do it justice and suggest that this is an article everyone should read. Therefore, I am sharing the following quotes from the piece to provide a provocative motivation to read the full article:
…when observed from the 20,000-foot level, the basic building blocks of higher education—its priorities, governance, instructional design, and cost structure—have hardly budged.
Although e-learning has been around for nearly 20 years, technology in and out of the classroom is at the discretion of the professor, with rare institutional support or enthusiasm. Online learning has about as much credibility on some campuses as global warming at a Tea Party rally. About the only thing within academe that has moved rapidly is tuition.
…makes it crucially important to consider new approaches—like streamlining pathways to degrees, redesigning models of instruction, competency-based programs, better advising, shutting down or consolidating underperforming programs, and more comprehensive and efficient support services focused solely on getting students to graduation.
Widespread adoption of online courses is, however, just the most obvious next step. We should be agreeing on what standards of data collection make sense for advising our students and tracking their progress, and then moving rapidly at all levels of the university to adopt new technologies that demonstrate improved outcomes (e.g., mobile apps, tablet-based e-textbooks, and game-based learning).
Here again, an openness to change is an essential prerequisite to change. The next step is a consistent and broad-minded strategy that embraces technology and learning at all levels, beginning with faculty who teach with digital gusto, and who are themselves qualified to direct technology-rich projects that will characterize an exciting new generation of scholars and teachers.
Change only happens on the ground. Despite all the reasons to be gloomy, however, there is room for optimism. The American university, the place where new ideas are born and lives are transformed, will eventually focus that lens of innovation upon itself. It’s just a matter of time.
The above quotes have been taken out of context and on their own may seem much more provocative than necessary. This was my intent–to provoke the reader to read the full article…
