Historical Archives
Every year, one or two problems/requests by faculty/staff get under my skin. A post in the spring of this year articulates part of why some things get under my skin. It’s complicated. What it boils down to is that every year, really throughout the year, but it’s most unnerving during the beginning of school when…
I have a followup to my impeachment post of yesterday, but before I post that, I wanted to announce the first episode of The Chronicle’s Tech Therapy podcast. I still find the whole idea of tech therapy problematic. I just hate the idea of treating technology as something one needs therapy for. In a comment…
I’ve seen a lot of posts lately and have had some real-life encounters that relate to the idea of educators being afraid of change/technology/learning. I really don’t quite understand it. I get the arguments that people don’t have time or even don’t really want to do something new with their teaching (the curmudgeon argument), but…
New Kid and PZ have already taken this Chronicle article to task, but I can’t resist a few of my own comments. Why is it that we never see articles in the Chronicle about successful uses of technology in the classroom? Actually, there are a few, but they don’t get much attention. Do a search…
Didn’t realize there was a part 3, did you? Here’s part 1 and part 2. College. Heading into college, I maintained equal interest in science and humanities. In fact, I’d scored exactly evenly on the SATs, which I’ve always found funny. I fully expected to major in English, but I still signed up for Intro…
Part 1 is here. Here I was in Middle School, interested in math and science, loving some aspects of science, but pulled for who knows what reason to pursue writing instead. Middle school was a confusing time. There was puberty to contend with and then there were boys. My diary from those days is filled…
Last week, exactly a week ago in fact, a faculty member from the education department and I led a workshop on Blackboard. Only, we tried not to talk about Blackboard very much. What we tried to talk about was teaching. Actually, we tried to get the faculty in the room to talk about teaching. And,…
I’m not sure how I feel about this announcement by the Chronicle. I mean, really, is technology so overwhelming that people need therapy to deal with it? I need therapy sometimes to deal with people’s lack of knowledge about technology. I have a more thoughtful post about some things I’ve been thinking about along these…
One of the things that drives me crazy when people talk about teaching and technology, is that they focus too much on the technology, on the nuts and bolts of how a particular tool works, without thinking about pedagogical goals. I always start from the goals and then look around at the tools I have…
So, I’m back in my hotel room after spending the last two days at the University of Mary Washington’s Faculty Academy. It was crazy for me to come here. I worked all day as judge of elections on Tuesday, from 6:30 a.m to 9 p.m. I left as soon as the votes were counted and…
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