Seven Uses of the e-Mail Signature

http://gizmodo.com/what-your-email-signature-says-about-you-1465020068

I still remain worried about the horrible signatures I see where it’s a pained task to contact the sender other by e-mail.  Some stuff should just be a telephone call or snailmail shipment!

Stephen

http://techpageone.dell.com/technology/geeks-non-geeks-can-collaborate/#.Uo0MA1eukhw

“Authors Paul Glen and Maria McManus recently published an article about the on-going communication problems faced by geeks and non-geeks. Read it here: “Geeks and Non-Geeks: From Contraxioms to Collaboration in Higher Education.”

The article focuses on six ways geeks and non-geeks differ: work, future, knowing, language, lying, and wanting. These six points form the basis of two very different world views. Therefore, if you are a non-geek supervisor in charge of IT projects, you need to understand what geeks love to do.

In addition, Glen and McManus say there are three things that motivate geek culture. They are:

• Difficulty: Geeks love to tackle hard (but not impossible) problems.
• Learning: Geeks love to learn new things.
• Competition: Yes, geeks love to compete with worthy opponents for pride and bragging rights.

If you, as a non-geek, understand these three things, you will be less-annoyed by missed deadlines or industry jargon that is sometimes intimidating and indecipherable.”

Stephen

Infographic: Are MOOCs the Future of Online Education?

http://www.bestcollegesonline.org/moocs/

Source: BestCollegesOnline.org

What’s at stake?: $400 billion: amount of money spent annually in U.S. on universities
The $400 billion represents: more than the annual revenues of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter combined.
Every educational institution wants a piece of that pie. MOOCs could jeopardize that.

The World Wide U
10 million: estimated number of students who have taken at least one MOOC

When it all began:
The promise of online education:
• low costs
• extreme accessibility by anyone
• customized pacing
• flexibility in scheduling
• more digitally based interactive tools

1985: Dave Cormier “coins” the term MOOC, for Massive Open Online Courses.

1993: Jones International University becomes first online U. [in the world]
1999: JIU became first fully online university in the U.S. to be accredited.
But it’s not free: tuition is $12,720
2013 enrollment (full and part time, undergrad and graduate): about 4,500

2012: Coursera founded by two Stanford professors
5.7 million: most recent enrollment, Coursera
83: number of universities and colleges around the world forming partnership with Coursera
$65 million: amount of venture capital raised to fund Coursera

Udacity (2012)
56,000: number of students who signed up for courses in Udacity two weeks after 2011 launch
1.6 million students, to date

Edx:
20: number of schools partnered in Edx, an online non-profit provider started by Harvard and MIT founded in 2013

FutureLearn:
21: number of British universities partnered to start FutureLearn (2013)

Who are MOOC students?
.3 % primary school
2.8 % some secondary
9.7% completed high school
3.8% some additional training (apprentices)
43.4 undergraduate university
40.2 postgraduates

How global are MOOCs now (top 10 countries of origin):
U.S.: 28%
U.K. 11%
India: 4.6%
Brazil: 4.5%
Canada: 4%
Spain: 3.9%
Australia: 3.5%
Greece: 2.2 %
Russia: 1.9%
Germany: 1.8%

Top 10 MOOCs (free courses)
• Udemy: Courses taught by teachers at Northwestern and Dartmouth (among others)
• ITunesU – Apple’s free app “gives students access to all the materials for courses in a single place. Right in the app, they can play video or audio lectures. Read books and view presentations.”
• Stanford
• Most popular free course: Introduction to AI. 160,000 students from 190 countries..
• UC Berkeley –Check out: Berkeley Webcasts and Berkeley RSS Feeds.
• MIT Free Courses – Check out MIT’s RSS MOOC feed. Also MIT’s Open Courseware.
• Duke Free Courses – Duke offers courses on ITunesU.
• Harvard Free Courses –Get a free Harvard education. No application is required.
• UCLA Free Courses –
• Yale Free Courses –The school offers “free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University.”
• Carnegie Mellon Free Courses – Carnegie Mellon boasts “No instructors, no credits, no charge.”

Pros and Cons of MOOCs
Pro
• Free.
• Provide a solution to overcrowding.
• Force professors to improve lectures.
• Create a dynamic archive.
• Are designed to ensure that students keep up. MOOCS are real college courses, complete with tests and grades.
• Bring people together from all over the world.
• Allow teachers to make the most of classroom time in blended classes.
• Offer interesting business opportunities. MOOC companies launched in 2012: edX by Harvard and MIT; Coursea, a Stanford company; and Udacity, which focuses on science and tech.
Cons
• Low graduation rate: estimated at about 10%
• Easier for students to drop out
• Do not offer much support for struggling students?
• Interactivity, a challenge. [When you have…150,000 students]
• Grading papers is impossible.
• Overcrowding
• Miss the magic of human interaction (in small groups)
• Will shrink faculties, eventually eliminating them.

And now…. something new in 2013 (an alternative to MOOCs):
SPOCs: Small Private Online Courses
• New B-to-B concept: create an online course and license it to a university or an organization or corporation.
• Colorado State Global Campus, first to offer SPOCs as an experiment
• SPOCs have 17-25 students

MOOCsThumb

Sources:

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/top-ed-tech-trends-2012-moocs

http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf

http://www.cdlponline.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=whatis&pg=3

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21582001-army-new-online-courses-scaring-wits-out-traditional-universities-can-they

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/19/online-educations-depressing-statistics-and-what-t.aspx

http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29&curator=MediaREDEF

http://collegeprowler.com/jones-international-university/statistics/

http://www.bdpa-detroit.org/portal/index.php/comittees/high-school-computer-competition-hscc/29-education/57-moocs-top-10-sites-for-free-education-with-elite-universities.html

http://adulted.about.com/od/Adult-Education-in-the-U.S./a/The-Pros-And-Cons-Of-Moocs.htm

http://www.uk.idp.com/for_clients/aiec_2013_live/session_synopses_and_videos/moocs.aspx

http://moocnewsandreviews.com/what-do-we-know-about-mooc-students-so-far/

http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/spocs-may-provide-what-moocs-can%E2%80%99t

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-18/education-startup-coursera-raises-16-million-from-kleiner-nea.html

Stephen

Article recommendation from a friend:

Sentient code: An inside look at Stephen Wolfram’s utterly new, insanely ambitious computational paradigm

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/29/sentient-code-an-inside-look-at-stephen-wolframs-utterly-new-insanely-ambitious-computational-paradigm/

“This is an amazing development in what will be “search technology.” I remember when “semantic search” was first being developed. If this technology does even half of what it says, the changes we are going to see in the next 5 years will be remarkable. How we “search” for information not only gives us access to information, but also has an impact on how we create the information. This will up-level our creative expression and also our ability to connect with others even more deeply through technology. When used with the intent to create “human connection” technology is an extraordinary blessing.”

Stephen

“The Youngest Americans: A Statistical Portrait of Infants and Toddlers in the United States (PDF)

http://fulltextreports.com/2013/11/14/the-youngest-americans-a-statistical-portrait-of-infants-and-toddlers-in-the-united-states/

This report, commissioned by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, focuses on infants and toddlers, their parents, communities, and the resources that exist to support them. This generation is more diverse than any in recent history, yet it is characterized by multiple inequities.”

Stephen