The Constant Learner

2010-07-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

When I'm 64

Here's a little treat for all Beatles fans (that's pretty much everybody, right?) I found this picture for my brother, who turned 64 on Saturday.

2010-04-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

What I Want in my New Little Home

Start with what you want and we’ll move on to what you need. Those were the first instructions from my brother (B) the architect. I’ve been thinking about this for years, so it wasn’t hard to put together my list.

I want one large loft-style room, open to the (smallish) kitchen. This is where I will work at the computer, read, watch TV and movies, dine, do crafts, and entertain the very few guests I allow into my inner sanctum. Hmmm. Maybe I should call the place the Auntie Sanctum instead of the Auntie Flat (see yesterday’s post).

I want a bedroom, which could be just an alcove, not necessarily a separate room, and a walk-in closet.

And a bathroom with a separate shower and tub. “What about a guest bathroom?” B asked. “Nope,” I insisted. “One bathroom.” My thinking here is that I hate to clean bathrooms, so why have more than one? Also, see “very few guests” above.

I would like to have a fireplace and recycle the mantel from my current house.
The kitchen should have a small apartment-sized dishwasher. (It’s been 23 years since I had a dishwasher and I’m tired of seeing dirty dishes on what little counterspace I have.) I’d also like a pantry and an island to separate the kitchen from the rest of the room.

The last apartment I lived in is my model for the Auntie Flat. On the second floor of an historic commercial building, it was brand new inside and contained all of the above (minus the fireplace and kitchen island) in 600 square feet. B was surprised to hear my low space estimate, but the truth is that my house now is only 900 square feet and roughly a third of that is just storage for things I don’t use but can’t bear to part with. Obviously, I will need to do a LOT of decluttering, but that’s another post.

2010-02-09T05:47:00.000-08:00

New Learning Agenda

(Excerpts from A New Learning Agenda: "Putting People First." Palo Alto,
CA: Institute for Research on Learning, 1993.)

"Our research at IRL has led us to articulate Seven Principles of
learning-principles that present a serious challenge to the usual,
"comfortable" view of learning that dominates our institutions. These
principles call for change in schooling and workplace practice. They also
call for a change in the way we view and develop learning and learning
environments, and for change in the direction of policy and research.

1. LEARNING IS FUNDAMENTALLY SOCIAL. The choice between learning and social
fulfillment-a choice that dominates most schools and workplaces-should never
arise.

2. KNOWLEDGE IS INTEGRATED INTO THE LIFE OF COMMUNITIES. Knowledge,
activity and social relations are closely intertwined.

3. LEARNING IS AN ACT OF MEMBERSHIP. Learning is not just the activity of a
sole individual, but the primary vehicle for engagement with others.

4. KNOWING IS ENGAGEMENT IN PRACTICE. Only in the classroom is knowledge
presented in the abstract, and only in the classroom are people expected to
demonstrate knowledge through abstract performances.

5. ENGAGEMENT IS INSEPARABLE FROM EMPOWERMENT. Individuals perceive their
identities in terms of their ability to contribute-and in terms of their
contributions-to a community.

6. "FAILURE" TO LEARN IS THE NORMAL RESULT OF EXCLUSION FROM PARTICIPATION.
Learning requires access and opportunity.

7. WE ALREADY HAVE A SOCIETY OF LIFELONG LEARNERS. People are learning all
the time, but what they are learning is not necessarily in their best
interests or in the best interests of society."

2010-01-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

Learning Art Journaling Online
I'm sold on online courses. These are not college courses, which have their place, but not in my universe right now. I've been finding courses on all kinds of things offered by ordinary people with expertise in certain areas. My current passion is art journaling, through a class offered by Kelly Kilmer. You can see examples of her work at her blog.
She charged only $50 for six months worth of prompts, templates and community with other students. The members post photos of their efforts and we all comment on them. Everyone is very supportive--I haven't seen a snarky comment yet--and I'm making friends across the country and around the world.
The photo to the left is my latest collage. I'm still waiting for that sunshine.

2009-08-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

Innovation Corral

Recent resources for creativity/innovation

How to grow ideas. Tamsen at ’Round the Square compares the creative process to gardening. Hint: It takes more than planting seeds.

Extra little touches can make all the difference. Management guru Tom Peters on the importance of design and making your products/services stand out.

Five creativity killers and how to get your creative juices flowing again.

Jon Phillips at Freelance Folder describes bad habits that interfere with creativity and how to beat them.

Blog for Creativity: Ten Reasons Your Muse Will Love Blogging. Cynthia Morris at Journey JuJu lists ways to use blogging to spark your creativity.

Addicted to the search. Emily Yoffe at Slate magazine explains why it’s so easy to lose time online and get addicted to things like Twitter and texting.

2009-08-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

I'm rerunning this post in honor of the late, great Les Paul. For more information, Click Here.

Question Everything

Curiosity may be the primary ingredient for imagination innovation. It made Leonardo da Vinci the quintessential renaissance man. In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael J. Gelb lists curiosità: “An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning” as the first of his seven Da Vincian principles. A later book, Innovate Like Edison, advises readers to “seek knowledge relentlessly.”

Albert Einstein famously said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But he also warned, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Maybe dropping out of high school allowed Les Paul to pursue his curiosity and develop the electric guitar and the recording innovations of overdubbing and multitrack recording. In the documentary, Les Paul Chasing Sound, Paul recalls that when his brother flicked a light switch the light came on. When he flicked the switch he wanted to know why the light came on. He continued his search for a sound that no one had ever made before that led to his many inventions, took him to the top of the record charts in the 40s and 50s. Remember Mockingbird Hill and Vaya Con Dios with Mary Ford? Paul’s curiosity eventually took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DVD shows him being admired by musicians from Bing Crosby to Paul McCartney. An insatiable curiosity doesn’t retire at 65. At the age of 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

Gelb suggests several exercises to increase your curiosity, including make a list of 100 questions that are important to you. “Do the entire list in one sitting. Write quickly, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or repeating the same question in different words.” Then go about finding some answers.

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2009-08-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

Learning History through Fiction

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is my all-time favorite book. I first read it and saw the movie in the early 60s when they first came out. I watched the movie again a couple of years ago and was surprised and pleased at how well it stood up after almost 50 years. This year the book was selected for the One Book One Denver program. I found the CD version (narrated by Sissy Spacek—a perfect choice) at the library. It tells the story of a young girl, Scout Finch, in Maycomb, Alabama during the Depression who watches her lawyer father take on the other white people in town by defending a black man who could not possibly have committed the rape he is accused of. Maybe because it was told through the perspective of a girl about my own age, it taught me more about prejudice than stories of the civil rights movement on the TV news could.

Decades later, I encountered The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

and added it to my list of favorite books. I’ve read it two or three times, listened to the CD book, and watched the movie. Last month the pastor at my church preached on the movie about Lily, a teenager in the South in the 60s. Abused by her father and believing that, at four years old, she accidentally shot and killed her mother, she runs away with the black housekeeper, who was beaten and then arrested when she tried to register to vote. Searching for her mother’s history, they find a household of black women who raise bees and sell honey.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a current bestseller also set in the early 60s in the South with the Civil Rights movement swirling in the background. I downloaded the audio version from my local library.

A young white woman, nicknamed Skeeter, from the privileged class returns to Jackson, Mississippi, after graduating college. She wants to be a writer and lands a job at the local newspaper writing a column on housekeeping, a subject she knows absolutely nothing about because she grew up with a maid. She takes her questions about housekeeping to the black woman who works as a maid and nanny for her friend, beginning an uneasy alliance between the two women.

Another of Skeeter’s friends, a leader among the young white women in town, begins a campaign to install toilets for the black maids in unheated garages and sheds, so they do not have to use guest bathrooms, which white people are expected to use too. As Skeeter learns more and more about the life of the maids, she decides to write a book from their point of view.

I spent six hours one Saturday listening to the final disks to find out what happened. I sure never did that with a history textbook.

2009-08-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

What I did for Free

Free, Chris Anderson’s tome about an economy based on giving information away for free has generated quite a bit of buzz, mostly from people in the information business who don’t want it to be true. While you can pay the full $26.99 price for the hard cover edition, I chose to download the audio version for, well, free. The book is also available to read free online.

One of the most fascinating parts is a lists of 50 business models built on free. And one of the best arguments for the book’s premise is the failing newspaper industry. Why pay for one newspaper, when you can get all the news you want on the internet?

Since reading (listening to) the book, I’ve been paying attention to things that come my way without cost.

Drinks (for seniors) with my weekly meal at Chick fil-A.
Ebook, The Buccaneer Scholar by James Marcus Bach – a limited time free download.
Books, movies, PDF and audio downloads from Denver Public Library.
Websites, blogs, and podcasts.
Instructional ebooks.
Classified ads from Craigslist.
Concerts in the park.
Promotional tote bag from Target that doubles as a checkerboard.
Coupon for a free meal with purchase from various restaurants.
Complete TV shows online.
Cell phone with purchase of time.
Gifts—a fused glass peace sign pendant from my sister-in-law.
One-year subscription to my favorite newsletter, Winning Ways as a thank you for being a long-time subscriber.

I think Anderson is on to something.

2009-07-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

Is college still a good investment?

That’s the question Warren Buffett was asked in a recent interview on ABC News. His answer (and I’m paraphrasing here) “it’s always a good idea to invest in yourself because nobody can take that away from you. But college isn’t right for everybody.”

A college education that has always been a given for those who want to climb the corporate ladder. These tough economic times present several problems in pursuing a degree in the traditional way.

Colleges, without even a nod to the economic realities, continue to raise tuition and other costs out of the range of most people.
People have less money and less inclination to go into debt even when loan money is available.
While education costs more, the return on the investment is shrinking. Students graduating with $80-100,000 in debt are no longer guaranteed a decent job to help them pay off that debt.
The world of knowledge grows and changes faster and faster every day and colleges have a difficult time keeping up. In the cutting edge fields, such as social marketing, college lag woefully behind the real world.
The traditional education system occupies a shrinking portion of the total learning market. Many more options are available, including an explosion of online opportunities.

In case you were wondering, Warren Buffett holds a master’s degree in economics from Columbia University.

2009-07-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Be a Cartoonist Even if You Can’t Draw

Now you can create your own comic strip even if you can’t draw. At Make Beliefs Comix, you can select a character, determine his or her emotion and fill in the talk or thought balloon. And you can do it in seven languages—English, Spanish, French, Italian, German Portuguese and Latin. Latin? Yup, Latin.

Used as a teaching aid with autistic children or just to make reading and writing fun, the site was named one of the most innovative sites by Google’s Literacy Project, UNESCO, and the International Reading Association. Started by Bill Zimmerman after his retirement in 2006 at age 65, the site allows students a way to “tap into their creativity and tell their own graphic stories.” It is supported by contributions.

2009-06-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

The Textbook Racket and the Anti-Textbook Movement

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to dump textbooks and the $350 million annual expense in favor of online resources.

“Today,” he explains in his blog, “our kids get their information from the Internet, downloaded onto their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their cell phones. A world of up-to-date information fits easily into their pockets and onto their computer screens. So why are California's public school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?”

Good question, but first, a quick disclaimer. Nobody loves books more than I do. My house is stuffed to the rafters with them, I visit my local library three-four times a week, and I read ten books a month. My problem is with textbooks.

Simply speaking, I think the textbook industry is a racket. The books are outrageously expensive and “updated” so frequently that used books are rarely an option. Even with regular revisions, they are frequently out-of-date by the time they are in print, and they are always static. I am also appalled by the giant backpacks students must lug around.

In an earlier post, I suggested that textbooks on Amazon’s Kindle made a lot of sense, if only for the portability.

Author and blogger Seth Godin called using textbooks “academic malpractice” and says he got more response to this post than any other post ever.

The governator concluded with the warning that “As the music and newspaper industries will attest, those who adapt quickly to changing consumer and business demands will thrive in our increasingly digital society and worldwide economy.”

The monopolistic textbook industry may have just priced itself out of existence. Maybe it’s time we start a movement.

2009-06-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

Tuition free colleges in USA

With all the talk about the high (and rising) cost of college, I was surprised to learn that a few colleges right here in the USA offer free tuition for a real, accredited education. Ranging from small liberal arts schools to highly specialized programs in engineering and music, these schools can be very competitive. They include the U.S. military academies, which trade a prestigious education for a subsequent stint in the military.

Other tuition-free colleges, such as Cooper Union in NYC, subsidizes students through large endowments. And some, like the College of the Ozarks, require students to participate in work-study programs to pay for their education.

For a complete list of these schools and their admissions requirements, see this slide show at Business Week.

2009-06-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

Looking for free tuition? Go to Sweden.

One way to save money on a college degree is to attend college in Sweden. Why Sweden? The government is so eager to attract foreign students and create a multicultural student body that they fully subsidize tuition fees. That’s right—tuition is free.

Classes are held in English, including more than 600 master’s degree programs, and many are offered online. Sweden is known for academic excellence and innovation. Click here for more information.

2009-04-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

Learning through the Recession.

Innovation technique: Keep learning.

Going back to school has often been cited as a remedy to unemployment, but the April 12 issue of Parade, touts it as a way to Recession Proof Your Career. “Keep your skills current. Take classes or join trade organizations in an effort to show that your skills are up-to-date. Inquire if there is some additional training your boss would like you to take. If you don't have cash to pay for additional training, consider unpaid internships or do volunteer work for a nonprofit to gain valuable skills and potential job contacts for future employment possibilities.”

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Innovation technique: Look for ideas outside your field that can be tweaked and adapted.

Maybe you have noticed restaurants offering smaller, lower cost meals to lure back customers reluctant to spend entertainment dollars. Is that an idea that can be adapted to higher education? Turns out it is. Southern New Hampshire University is offering no-frills education at an off-campus location for $10,000 a year, $15,000 less than tuition at the main campus.

CBS News reports that “there's none of the trappings of college life that the students at the full-fare campus enjoy - a playing field, a fitness center, the dorms, or the dining hall. Here there's no ivy or quad, no football, no frats.” For the bargain fee of $35 a year, these students can use all those amenities at the main campus. So far, no one has taken them up on it. They consider those things to be distractions. When it comes to education, one size definitely does not fit all.

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2009-04-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

Academic Inflation

“There was a time when good academic qualification so guaranteed a job, but not any more. One reason in academic inflation. In the next 30 years, more people worldwide will be gaining academic qualifications than since the beginning of history. But as more people get them, their currency value is falling sharply.” So sayeth the brilliant Ken Robinson in his book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative.

Three converging trends contribute to academic inflation:

§ Jobs that used to require a bachelor’s degree now require a master’s or even a doctorate—not because the nature of the job has changed, but because employers have a bigger population of college graduates to choose from.

§ Steeply rising costs of college programs put graduates so deeply in debt that entry-level jobs can no longer pay the bills.

§ Colleges don’t teach the skills business needs: communication, teamwork, and creative thinking.

What’s the answer? I think we will begin to see more and more people bypassing the traditional college degree and seeking practical, up-to-date knowledge and skills on their own, using the Internet. As degrees become less relevant, we will see people being evaluated based on what they know and what they can do. That’s been happening for years in cutting-edge fields. Look at job postings now for social marketers and they rarely require a degree because there simply are not such degrees available.

Robinson points out that earning a degree may be just as necessary now (or more so), but it is no longer a guarantee of anything. It’s just a starting point. It isn’t job training so much as training in how to learn. As John Naisbitt pointed out thirty years ago, “Things are changing too fast for people to specialize their education. . . .Tasks are going to change, careers are going to change. If you know how to learn, you can continue to grow. If you don’t you’re going to be handicapped.”

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2009-04-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Colleges Whistle Same Tired Tune

Colorado’s college students, faculty and administrators are up in arms today because the state legislature, trying to cope with a budget shortfall, has proposed cutting $300 million in funding to higher education. The colleges, as usual, have responded by talking about huge tuition hikes of up to 32% over last year’s rates.
Here’s what I don’t understand. These colleges and universities supposedly house some of the best, most creative minds in the country. Why can’t they come up with a better idea to fund higher education? They have entire colleges of business plus centers for entrepreneurship and innovation. They have more intellectual property than you can shake a stick at, and yet they dish up the same old recipe of money from the state combined with tuition from the students. That’s the way it’s always been done, by God, and that’s the method they want to stick with.
My only hope is that, faced with an impossible situation, maybe they will finally figure out a new and (dare I say) better way to do things. Just a thought.

2009-03-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

One thing leads to another

First Rule of Independent Scholarship

All education should be customized for the learner, according to Clayton Christensen and Michael B. Horn, the authors of Disrupting Class. One way to do that is to start with a topic you are passionately interested in and see where that leads. For me, that would be books and bookbinding. I love reading and writing, so of course, I would want to study literature and English, which could lead to linguistics and possibly other languages.

Studying the history of books would lead to ancillary knowledge of what else was happening in history. Science and agriculture contributed the materials needed to make books. Math enters the picture in figuring out the number of pages needed, the cost of publishing and determining the price. Marketing and other business topics naturally grow from the business of books.

Back to languages, which would take me to the study of anthropology, sociology, geography, religion, and art. Of course, any topic these days requires some knowledge of computers.

You get the idea. I’m convinced that this would work with any topic. As usual, “When it comes to innovations in teaching and learning, higher education seems like the last to know and the slowest to respond,” according to Randy Bass and Bret Eynon, who collaborated on a recent issue of Academic Commons devoted to new media and the technology of teaching and learning.

I see the frustration in my students who come to school to learn about accounting, say, only to discover that they have to spend two years taking general education classes before they can even look at an accounting class. How much more sense would it make for them to begin with an immersion into the field of accounting and see where that leads them. Ethics, for example, is a big issue in accounting, and that is closely related to cultural studies.

Okay, enough on this. Let me know what you think.

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2009-03-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Is More Money the Answer for Higher Education?

Is the answer to the crisis in higher education more money or less cost? Colleges and universities, which have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, clearly believe what they need is more money. With continuing cuts in public funding and diminishing endowments the cost of higher education has been rising at 2-3 times the inflation rate. Students routinely graduate with debts nearing $100,000 only to discover that their degrees only qualify them for entry level jobs.

The initial proposal from the new administration calls for more grants and loans for students to pay for the rapidly rising costs of a college education. Students, on the other hand, are searching for more cost effective ways of earning a degree. Enrollment at some community colleges has grown as much as 10-15% in the past year.

Savvy educators will seize the opportunity to find innovative ways to deliver education, including credit for prior learning, testing programs and ACE evaluated training. Programs like the competency-based learning at Western Governors University and open courseware at the University of the People.

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2009-03-03T13:10:00.000-08:00

The University vs. The Universe

The university has always been a poor substitute for the universe as a learning resource.

The world’s first universities were established in the 5th century CE in various places including Constantinople, Egypt, India, China, and Persia. The University of Pennsylvania, the first university in the U.S., was founded hundreds of years later in 1740 by none other than Benjamin Franklin. They performed adequately, if not always admirably, through the industrial age. These days they aren’t doing such a good job.

As John Naisbitt pointed out twenty plus years ago in his groundbreaking research on Megatrends, “Things are changing too fast for people to specialize their education.” Therefore, the most important skill to master is learning how to learn. “Tasks are going to change, careers are going to change. If you know how to learn, you can continue to grow. If you don’t you’re going to be handicapped.”

Now that the Internet brings the universe into our homes, if we know how to learn, we no longer need huge bureaucracies to standardize learning for us. Three sites allow all of us to listen to lectures covering just about any topic we’d like to learn.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public for free.

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

This non-profit is “working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.” It vows to give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.

Launched less than two years ago, Apple's iTunes university offers college lectures on everything from Proust to particle physics to students and the public. Some universities make their lectures available to all, while others restrict access to enrolled students. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.

Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who led the study.

As the iTunes website, explains, learning no longer happens only at a desk. Students now expect constant access to information, no matter where they are, which is exactly why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students.

The next time you have an immediate need to learn something, check out these sites and learn from the best.

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2009-02-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

Disrupting Higher Education

Disruptive innovation, as described by Harvard professor and author Clayton Christensen in his 2003 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, are new products and services that attract a previously unserved market because they are cheaper, simpler, smaller, and more convenient to use. Frequently, such innovations will not appeal to traditional customers because they are perceived as having inferior quality.

In last year’s Disrupting Class, Christensen, along with Michael B. Horn, applied the concept to education, suggesting that online education was the innovation that will provide the disruption to revitalize education.

While online education as it exists today, is certainly more convenient with the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people all over the world without regard to geographic location. However, colleges and universities typically charge a higher tuition rate for online courses, because of the required investment in technology. So, while online education is theoretically available to most people, the cost can be prohibitive.

Along comes the University of the People, (UoP) which promises to open the gates of higher education to anyone in the world interested in attending college because it is tuition free.

That’s right. Students pay no tuition. At its website, the university promises to revolutionize higher education by providing universal access to college studies-even in the poorest parts of the world. How is that possible? The university, which will start in April, uses the large and growing reserve of open courseware provided by an impressive variety of colleges all over the world. Students learn on their own and in online study communities led by qualified scholars. They will pay nominal application fee ($15-$50) and examination fees ($10-$100), which will be adjusted on a sliding scale based on the student’s country of origin. Initially, UoP will offer bachelor’s degrees in Business Administration and Computer Science, with more to come. Ironically, this innovation depends on traditional higher education for its curriculum, but has the possibility to destroy traditional higher education. It could happen quicker than you think.

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2009-02-20T17:00:00.000-08:00

Use CLEPS To Save Time And Expense Of A Degree

Almost anyone who has to pay for a college degree these days is interested in finding ways to save time and money. CLEP stands for Colleg-Level Examination Program. It’s a series of 34 nationally standardized tests accepted for credit at more than 90% of US colleges and universities. Administered by the College Board (the SAT people) and offered at 1400 test centers around the country. Simply pick a test, find a study guide to help you prepare, and schedule the test at your local test center.

Cost varies, but should be less that $100 for a test, some of which will earn you as many as six college credits. A few things to remember:

1. You cannot earn credit for a topic that you have already taken a class for.

2. The national standard for passing the tests is around 51 percentile. Although some colleges require higher scores, this means that you must get just over half of the questions correct.

3. Credit will show on your transcript as credit only, with no grade, so it will not affect your GPA.

4. Always check first with your school counselor to make sure that the test you want to take will count toward your degree.

Although most colleges accept at least a few CLEPs, almost all of them limit the number of hours you can earn this way, for no good reason that I can see. Also, most college counselors will not encourage you to take CLEPs in lieu of classes, so you will need to be assertive and persistent.

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Sunday, February 15, 2009

2009-02-15T08:21:00.000-08:00

Question Everything

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2009-02-10T14:33:00.000-08:00

Priced out of the Education Market?

Are colleges pricing themselves out of reach of their market? With shrinking government support and dwindling endowments, colleges and universities have had to increase already exorbitant tuition rates, making them out of the question for millions of potential students.

Since a degree remains a requirement for many desirable jobs, students are coping by flocking to lower cost community colleges. Listen to an interesting discussion of the economic effects on higher education on NPR.

Higher educational institutions are being told that they must become more entrepreneurial (see related post From Stepchild to Cinderella on 2/6/09) below. The problem is that they don’t know how. The only options proposed on most campuses are to (1) raise tuition or (2) cut expenses.

Are traditional colleges headed the way of the music industry? Time will tell. Right now, however, significant opportunities exist for any schools who can offer accredited degrees for a lower cost. Community colleges are one option. Another is for students to take advantage of alternatives such as CLEP or DANTES tests, ACE-evaluated credits for military and corporate training and credit for prior learning.

For those who are completely fed up with the education system, innumerable opportunities for learning exist on the internet. I’ll cover each of these options in future posts.

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2009-02-06T12:50:00.000-08:00

From Stepchild to Cinderella

Continuing Education has long been viewed as the stepchild of higher education. College and University continuing education departments typically handle a huge variety of programs that includes anything outside the realm of traditional academic programs, such as:

Non-credit courses, workshops and seminars
Corporate training
Professional development
Evening and weekend classes
Off-campus classes
Certificate programs
Distance learning
Adult degree-completion programs

Even as these programs became wildly profitable, they remained an almost unacknowledged revenue stream to shore up the finances of the programs considered more “central” to the institution’s mission. Ironically, that allowed them to become the creative, entrepreneurial department within some pretty hidebound schools.

In these times of rising tuition costs, cutbacks in government support, and decreasing confidence in a degree as a job guarantee, many public colleges are turning for help to their continuing education departments. “We have to address the fact that universities have to get very serious about generating revenue,” said Bernadette Tiernan, director of continuing and professional education at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. “We’re more reactive to market forces.” Being open to shifting market trends is a whole new idea to colleges which have long refused to accept that they are in the business of education.

One advantage is that “Continuing education is a “12-month operation,” Tiernan said, “without the down cycles in traditional academia.”

Rutgers University now has 50,000 students enrolled in noncredit programming statewide, said Ray Caprio, vice president for continuous education and outreach. That equals the total number of students enrolled at the University’s three campuses. “The overall strategy is that we all must become more entrepreneurial,” he said.

It should be interesting to see how they accomplish that trick. Maybe the stepchild will turn into Cinderella. I’m looking for innovative programs to feature here, so let me know about any you know of.

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2009-02-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

The Return of the Liberal Arts Degree

I’m not a big fan of Fox News. Calling yourself fair and balanced doesn’t make it so. I know this because I’m a good critical thinker, and my critical thinking skills come largely from my liberal arts background. In the 30 years since I earned my degree in sociology from the University of Colorado at Denver, the liberal arts have fallen more and more out of fashion, surpassed by the ubiquitous business major.

So I was more than a little surprised, when channel surfing during the Super Bowl, to find erstwhile Republican presidential candidate turned Fox talk show host Mike Huckabee holding forth on the advantages of a liberal arts degree. A college with an undecided major asked his advice on choosing a major. Go with liberal arts, he said, not to be confused with liberal politics. The more general degree offers exposure to different fields and arms the student with the capacity for adaptability and ability to retrain.

Steven Rothberg, founder and president of CollegeRecruiter.com, agrees. When interviewed by Fortune magazine, he explained, "Most employers look for candidates who are bright, well-rounded, and have some practical experience under their belts." A liberal-arts degree, plus good communications and computer skills, signal to recruiters that you'll be adaptable to a wide range of jobs.

Strong communications skills are the single most important attribute a candidate can have – as well as the one most lacking among job applicants, according to a poll of hiring managers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

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2009-01-31T09:16:00.000-08:00

Call to Reform Schools to Teach Innovation

Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio called for radical transformation of the school system in his State of the State address last week. "It is absolutely clear to me that simply tinkering with centuries-old education practices will not prepare Ohio's children for success in college, in the workplace or in life,"

He also said he wants state education standards to be reworked to reflect modern skills such as innovation, creativity, problem-solving and media literacy. “And you know, good ideas shouldn't be something we stumble on accidentally.” That's why his plan creates a Center for Creativity and Innovation within the Ohio Department of Education. The Center will monitor research and results from across the country and across the world to keep Ohio schools and Ohio educators informed of new advances.

Among other things, his plan calls for mandatory kindergarten, lengthening the school year by 20 days and a four-year residency program for teachers.

I just finished reading chapter two of Dr. Ken Robinson’s book, The Element, in which he presents a compelling argument that the one thing our schools do best is stifle creativity and innovation. You can hear a very entertaining twenty-minute speech on his ideas at TED.

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2009-01-29T16:31:00.001-08:00

From Phone to Study Machine

Sometimes it seems as if today’s students put more energy into figuring out how to cheat than any other school topic. They use their phones to text the answers to one another or to take pictures of the test for friends in later classes. They record the answers on an iPod so the teacher will think they are innocently listening to music during a test. They post instructional videos on YouTube to teach others how to cheat. They download pre-written papers from the internet. As soon as schools figure out how to stop them from using one method, they invent another. Ironically, if they would spend that much time studying, they wouldn’t need to cheat.

Finally, publishers are taking a cue from students and marketing study guides to use on iPhones and iPods. Kaplan SAT Flashcubes is the perfect on-the-go study guide to help students prepare for the Verbal section of the SAT exam. Kaplan's Medical Terms for Nurses is designed to help nursing students learn important terms needed in both the workplace and for licensure exams.

Kaplan has more apps in the works, and other publishers are offering similar study guides to the potentially massive market of high school and college students. The guides are available at the iTunes store.

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2009-01-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

Five Ways to Squeeze as Much Learning as Possible from your Job

One of the benefits people look for from their jobs is the opportunity to learn and grow. Here are five ways to take advantage of the resources available:

Tuition Reimbursement. This is a huge benefit because education is something you don’t lose when the job ends. Even if you already have the degree(s) you want, find individual courses or certificate programs that will help in your career. Technology and innovation are moving so quickly now that there is always something new to learn. Online classes make sure that anything you want to learn is available wherever you are.

Corporate training. Take advantage of all the corporate training available. Make sure to document everything and add it to your resume or portfolio.

Informal on-the-job training. Most learning occurs casually, outside the classroom. Make it a point to learn whatever you can about the industry/company/department through discussions with your colleagues. Cross training can also be valuable and give you more flexibility for your next job.

Professional organizations. Join and participate in at least one professional organization related to your job, especially if the company pays for your membership. This gives you additional learning or certification opportunities and the chance to get to know people in your field from other companies—always a plus when job hunting.

Magazines, books, software. Use every resource available to enhance your skills. Even if you don’t have to know Visio (or whatever) in your current job, learn how to use it. The more you know, the more valuable you are to your employer and the more you have going for you in the job hunt.

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2009-01-23T15:10:00.000-08:00

Preparing for a Second Career

During his 36-year career in the Denver television news business, Ernie Bjorkman saw the business change and grow through several technological shifts. Last year, with the merger of his station with another local news outlet, he saw his job disappear. Bjorkman advises other baby boomers, “Don’t be comfortable after 45.” Companies in all industries seem more eager than ever to trade in older employees for younger, cheaper workers.

Now 57, Bjorkman had planned ahead because he knew that the job wouldn’t last forever. He had always loved animals, but wasn’t interested in signing up for eight years of veterinary school. Instead, he enrolled in a two-year vet tech program at the Community College of Denver. By the time he was laid off of his news anchor job, he was finishing the training for his second career.

His annual salary will drop from $250,000 to about $30,000. "We'll start living the simple life again,” he says. He and his wife Susan will sell both their Denver condo and mountain home and plan to buy a small ranch in the San Luis Valley where he will open an emergency animal clinic.

Bjorkman feels blessed that he had the opportunity to meet the pope and presidents and ride in Air Force One. But he’s looking forward to the future. “You’ve got to have a plan.” You can watch his story as it was reported last week on ABC News 20/20.

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2009-01-21T09:46:00.000-08:00

The Learning Business

Jonathan Fields was “the kid with the lemonade stand in 6th-grade, the landscaping business in high-school and the mobile-DJ business in college.”

He went on to be a securities and hedge-fund lawyer before ditching the law to open a yoga studio. That led him to learn about copywriting to promote the business. Did he go back to school to study writing? Nope. He went online and searched for information on copywriting. He found the websites and blogs of several top copywriters, red everything he could find and took notes. He found samples of their work and analyzed it.

Next, he bought and read all the books that his virtual mentors mentioned. Finally, he felt the need for more concentrated and personal information and attended a three-day seminar. “I am not someone who likes to surrender to the notion that I need help,” He explained in his book, Career Renegade. “I’ve always pretty much mastered whatever I needed to master on my own. This experience, though, opened my eyes both to the importance of finding a mentor, seeking out live attention, and copping to the fact that I don’t know everything.”

This leads me to two of my favorite quotes about learning:

I’m not sure who said “All learning is self-taught,” but I agree with the sentiment. On the other hand, I also agree with Harvey Mackay that "If everything a (person) learns over a thirty-year career is self-taught, you can bet some of it is dead wrong." Maybe the best learning comes from maintaining the tension between those two points of view.

That said, I have just finished reading Career Renegade, the best, most information-packed book on work that I’ve read in many years. I plan to use it as a workbook to grow my own renegade career.

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2009-01-19T07:30:00.000-08:00

A Bachelor’s Degree: America’s Most Overrated Product?

Is college really worth it? That’s the question the John Stossel ABC News 20/20 asked in a provocative story last Friday. With the cost of college rising faster than inflation, Stossel wonders if a bachelor’s degree is the big lie.

The piece featured several students whose degrees saddled them with student loan debts of up to $125,000 and who ended up in entry-level jobs they could have gotten right out of high school. They understandably think "College was a rip-off.”

"You're led down this path of needing to go to college," he continued. "The college diploma is the new high school diploma."

Personal finance guru Suze Orman, who holds a BA in social work from the University of Illinois, says college is not for everyone. Those who are not the best students may be better off earning marketable skills at a community college or technical school.

Dr. Marty Nemko, an education consultant and career counselor, explains that the students who do well in college are already more likely to be successful than those who don't.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that college is not for everybody, but I am very glad I have a degree. On the other hand, it took me 12 years to earn my degree, partly because I refused to go into debt for it. Most of my students at the University of Phoenix are pursuing their degrees because they know or believe that they cannot go further in their careers without a degree. The lucky ones work for companies that pay their tuition.

While I know that a degree is the ticket required to enter certain professions, I also know that it is not a guarantee of success. And plenty of people who didn’t go to college do just fine. Maybe my most radical opinion is that a bachelor’s degree has intrinsic value and was never meant to provide job training.

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2009-01-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

Kaplan University A Different School Of Thought

“I stand in front of you today to apologize.” The speaker, a college professor continues, “The system has failed you. I have failed you. I have failed to help you share your talent with the world when the world needs talent more than ever. Yet it’s being wasted every day by an educational system steeped in tradition and old ideas.”

This is one of six provocative television ads currently being run by Kaplan University, a subsidiary of the Washington Post Corporation. If I were looking for a degree program, this ad would make me look.

According to the website, Kaplan is using technology to rewrite the rules of education, creating innovative programs “to analyze how you learn best, so we can teach you better.” This is done by a free learning assessment which prospective students complete at the same time they request program information.

Kaplan is hardly alone in offering online degree programs. One would be hard-pressed these days to find a college or university that doesn’t offer at least a few programs online. Anyone who thinks online learning is the wave of the future has clearly not been paying attention for the past 10-15 years.

Is Kaplan really a different kind of university, as the ad claims? Hard to tell, but they are definitely saying all the right things.

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2009-01-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

Persistence Pays

Bruce Johnson, the inventor of BreatheRight nasal strips describes in a commercial how he tried everything he could think of to open up his nasal passages and allow him to get a good night’s sleep. Among other materials, he tried padded paperclips and straws fitted inside his nostrils. Finally it dawned on him that he needed something to apply to the outside of his nose and BreatheRight strips were born.

Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy (it never is). First, he had to create a prototype and then make the rounds trying to sell it. Even after it finally sold to CNS, it took two more years to hit the shelves. The company sent samples to NFL trainers, and when it started showing up on football players, it really took off.

Johnson’s story illustrates several principles of innovation. First, Johnson is an engineer, and he spent time and effort trying to solve a problem he shared with millions of others. When his first ideas didn’t work, he didn’t give up; he persisted, trying different things until he finally found the solution. Being laughed out of a number of companies didn’t stop him either.

These are qualities I don’t see enough in my students. Too many of them expect to hit a home run their first time at bat. If they don’t earn an A on the first assignment, they get mad or give up. They blame me or the textbook or the university or anybody they can come up with—except themselves.

The students I like the most are the ones who utilize my feedback to focus their studies and try harder the next time. They accept responsibility for their own learning and seem determined to wring every bit of learning possible out of their education. God bless ‘em.

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2009-01-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

Sidetracked and Cursed

So far, my theme of energy has eluded me. I've been sick with the galloping crud ever since I posted that. Sidetracked but not defeated. I'll just have to start again when this illness finally gallops on out of here.
What I learned from being sick: I always expect to get well right away and stay well. I'm pretty sure that's the way it used to work when I was younger.

Not now, though. Now, it eases up a little and then sometimes comes roaring back and can continue on this seesaw for days, trying my patience and my faith in ultimate health.

Learning is a little like that. It rarely comes all at once, choosing instead to plant seeds here and there until, almost unnoticed, it stakes its claim on my brain. One minute I don't know something and the next minute, it seems so clear and obvious that I can't believe I didn't always know it.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath call this the Curse of Knowledge. Once you know something, you can't remember what it's like not to know it.

Maybe my problem is the Curse of Health. Once I'm well again, I can't remember what it's like to be sick and I can't fathom why I didn't get more done instead of just lying around feeling rotten. Right now, I cannot wait to get back to the Curse of Health. Maybe this posting will remind me not to kick myself for getting nothing done for a week and I will simply start again.

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2009-01-05T09:01:00.001-08:00

Energize This

My theme this year is energy. All the problems I dealt with in the past few years have left me increasingly lethargic, sleeping too much and interested in too little. This year I want to reverse that momentum, and I’ve been researching how to do that without developing an addiction to caffeine-saturated energy drinks.

The holy trinity of increasing energy is diet, sleep, and exercise. I’m starting with exercise. Today, I will join my local recreation center (again) to lift weights and get back on track with walking at least 10 miles a week. I’ll keep a record of my progress on a calendar.

Beyond this triumvirate, I need to nurture more interest in my work and my life. This will come from getting off autopilot and exploring new ways to accomplish daily chores and new ways to turn problems into opportunities.

On the less philosophical side, I need to learn how to use my cell phone to surf the internet. Sometimes the small changes have the most impact.

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2009-01-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

Academic Freedom/Not

The headline in The Denver Post this morning read, “Colleges: Free us or fund us.” For a minute I thought the local college presidents were asking to become private, entrepreneurial entities, an idea that excited me quite a bit. Basically, I think that government agencies, by definition, don’t work. And I indulged briefly in a humorous fantasy about the sluggish, bureaucracy-laden colleges trying to become fast-moving, customer-oriented private industries.

Then I read the rest of the article. It seems that the college and university presidents are miffed about being told by the state how much they can raise tuition rates even when the state refuses to fund them at what they consider adequate levels. One university president said, "I understand money that comes with strings, but strings without money I don't get." They don’t want freedom (and the responsibility that comes with it) after all.

Oh, well. After the economic fiascos in the private sector last year, I’m not sure we can trust the private sector any more than the public. What does that leave? For the record, my current favorite colleges include one public institution: Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, and one private, non-profit, online school: Western Governors University.

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2009-01-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Most Creative Minds of Education

Two of the 12 most creative minds of 2008 named by Fast Company magazine come from the field of education. Both are mavericks who come from outside the mainstream.

Before Michelle Rhee was appointed superintendent of the Washington, D. C. public schools in 2007, she “had never led a school, let alone a school system with 10,000 employees and a budget of nearly $1 billion.” After teaching for three years in Baltimore, Rhee founded the New Teacher Project, a non-profit organization which works with school districts to recruit and train new teachers.

Last month, Rhode Island School of Design selected John Maeda as its next president. The former associate research director of MIT's famed Media Lab, was by all accounts a stunning choice. A technologist, who is also an artist, designer, and author could only have been hired because the search committee “decided to be open” to somebody outside the norm.

According to the magazine, “Hiring a maverick is always risky…. but perhaps only an outsider -- and someone who may be just a little bit crazy -- could set in motion the fundamental change needed to transform a creaking bureaucracy.”

Rhee is on her way to doing that. She has closed schools, cut administrative staff and fired teachers. Now, she is pushing a revolutionary contract that may simultaneously kill the entrenched seniority hiring system and make Washington's teachers the highest paid in America.

Maeda is expected to use his corporate contacts and technical sensibilities to forge a new commercial focus without losing the school’s well-known avant-garde eccentricity.

If these two are successful, maybe more educational institutions will follow their lead and seek ideas and leadership from outside academia. As Tom Peters noted, "Most good (neat, innovative, wild, woolly) ‘stuff,’ large and small, happens in the boondocks, far, far from corporate headquarters, corporate politics, and corporate toadying."

Not that there is any of that in education.

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2008-12-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

Some Assembly Required

Here’s a simple way to determine whether you are primarily a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner. When you buy or receive something labeled with the three scariest words in the English language, some assembly required, how do you react?

Do you look at the diagrams, read the instructions, or just dive right in and try to figure it out yourself?

If you look at the diagrams, you are a visual learner.

If you read the instructions, you are an auditory learner.

If you dive in and figure it out for yourself, you are a kinesthetic learner. You’ve heard the expression, when all else fails, read the instructions, right? Strong kinesthetic learners won’t read the instructions even when all else fails. If they have to, they might have someone else read the instructions and then tell them what to do.

Of course, the smartest people are the ones who find someone else to put the thing together for them.

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2008-12-18T17:06:00.000-08:00

Looking Back

Alyson Stanfield, the Art Biz Coach recently shared this list of year-end questions to evaluate progress over the last twelve months. With a few adjustments, I think it will work for just about anybody, artist or not. I plan to use it as a guideline for planning 2009.

How did you promote your art?
What did you do to enhance your online presence?
What technological skills did you learn or improve?
How many people did you add to your mailing list?
Who were the top ten cool or influential people you met?
Whom did you mentor or help out?
Did you create a new business card, portfolio, or other marketing piece?
What medium or skill did you attempt or master?
What did you try that was completely new?
What did you try that was uncomfortable, but helped you grow?
What worthy cause did you support in some way?
What new art events, galleries, and museums did you visit?
What resources did you discover?
How did you improve your studio habits?
What books did you read to help your career? What videos or films were useful?
What seminars/workshops/lectures did you attend or teach?
How did you enhance your office or studio environment?
What organizations were you involved with?
What grants/honors/awards did you receive?
What articles were written about your work?
What exhibits, grants, contest, etc. did you submit your art to?
Where did you save a wad of money?
What was the single best thing that happened to your art career in 2008?

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2008-12-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

No Snow Day

It’s brutally cold in Denver: Minus 19° overnight and a high today of only about 20°. All I want to do is burrow in somewhere cozy and wait for warmer weather. One of the disadvantages of working or studying at home is that you don’t get any snow days. We didn’t get much snow out of this storm, so nobody’s getting a snow day today, and I thank my lucky stars that I didn’t have to join the rush hour madness this morning.

When I face new students at the University of Phoenix, one of the first things they always ask me about is weather cancellations. They react with surprise when I tell them that we just don’t do them. Denver’s national reputation for cold and snow aside, our weather really isn’t bad. The bigger issue, though, is that dealing with the impossibly full schedules of adult college students is extremely difficult. We can’t just cancel classes and forget about them; we have to make them up within the same week, a Herculean task.

Staying cheerful in freezing temperatures can be an adventure. Yesterday ten people showed up at my church to go caroling even though it was only 5°. We had a good time and maybe even brought a few people a little Christmas cheer.

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2008-12-12T14:37:00.001-08:00

What About Granny Einstein?

My little great nephew, Griffin Wilson, (is he a cute kid or what?) celebrated his first birthday this week. At a loss at what to send as a birthday gift for a one-year-old, I asked several people for suggestions. The idea I liked the best was a Baby Einstein DVD.

Although I hesitate to advocate using the TV as a babysitter, my friend Maureen assured me that the DVDs are great when you need to take a shower. I talked to my niece (Griffin’s mom) later and she told me that he loves his Baby Einstein videos. “He doesn’t normally pay any attention to the TV,” she said, “but when his Baby Einstein video comes on, he is immediately drawn to it.” His interest is so intense, in fact, that she wonders if there’s some kind of subliminal messages included, although she didn’t know what a subliminal message for a baby might be. Griffin is currently learning sign language from his signing video.

It led me to wonder where are the Granny Einstein products? If these are such good learning tools, why are they only made for tiny tots?

Maybe Video Professor is at the other end of the spectrum, although they focus exclusively on computer skills and there are plenty of other topics I’d like to learn. YouTube is filling in the gap. Want to learn about investing, time management or losing weight, chances are good that somebody out there has posted a video on that topic on YouTube. Here’s one of my favorites about the perils of PowerPoint.

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2008-12-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

Gift of Time

Your gift this year is the secret to time management. It's elegant in its simplicity and so obvious that you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. Interested? The secret to time management is this: Do less.

I know; you don't want to hear it. You want to know how you can continue doing everything you're currently doing and still have plenty of time left over to do MORE. Americans have succumbed to a cult of terminal busy-ness. This is the only country in the world with a national monument called Rushmore.

Part of this greed for time stems from our belief that time is money. It isn't. If time were money, you could put it in a savings account and use it whenever you chose. You could take out a time loan, then pay it back with interest. We would all carry time credit cards and live on borrowed time. Killing time, like destroying money, would be a federal offense.

Time has become our most precious commodity. If time were money, people would stand on street corners begging for spare time. You could buy extra time when you need it. For example, I could have bought an extra 24 hours to write this column -- and I could pay it back some day when I have the flu and time is really dragging.

If time were money, privileged people would have more than the rest of us. Instead, we all have the same 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can't earn more, no matter how hard you work. In fact, the harder and longer you work, the less discretionary time you have available. Remember, work expands to fit the time available.

No matter how lucky you are, you can't win more time. There is no time lottery. You can't put a nickel's worth of time into a slot machine and win back 500 minutes. If you spend your time doing something that doesn't turn out the way you wanted, you can't return the activity and get your time back.

On the other hand, we do experience time inflation. As we get older, an hour simply doesn't go as far as it used to. Scientists say that soon we may reasonably expect to live 150 years. Unfortunately, those are 21^st century years and they'll only go as far as about 75 years in the 20^th century.

Time isn't money. Your time is your life, so don't squander it on nonessentials. The only way to have an abundance of time is to use it only for things that really matter. That's my wish for each of you this year--that you will get less done and enjoy it more.

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2008-12-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

Money to Learn and Learning to Earn

The latest economic forecast for Colorado is in and—big surprise—it shows that we face a recession in 2009, just like the rest of the country. Three sectors will hold their own or even grow: government, health care, and education.

Education always thrives in hard times. As people lose their jobs to layoffs and plant closures, they turn to schools to reboot their careers. Most of my students tell me that they decided to enroll in college at a time when their lives are already full for three reasons:

To qualify for a better job.
To enhance their employability in case of a layoff.
To change careers.

Ironically, in an economic crisis, going to school usually means diving deeper into debt. At least one older student thinks she has found an answer to this problem. Since student loans only become due when the student’s education ends, she vows to continue going to school, earning one degree after another until she dies.

We all need to keep learning throughout our lives, so maybe she has a point. I’m looking forward to seeing what innovative methods the Obama administration comes up with to finance education.

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2008-12-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

To Teach is to Learn

I can’t quit teaching because I learn so much from my students. This week I learned about gauged ears. The first time I saw someone (outside of National Geographic) with these large stretched earlobe piercings, I was horrified. Why on earth would somebody want to do that to themselves? Of course, I have the same reaction to all kinds of body piercings and tattoos.

I’ve been noticing more and more of these odd mutilations (my word), so I asked one of my younger students what they were called. Gauging is the colloquial term and refers to the incrementally sized tapers used to gradually stretch the skin, sometimes (as in my waitress) forming holes as big as several inches across.

My student wants to grow his fairly large because the larger the holes, the wiser the person. I can’t really follow that logic, but according to Wikipedia, stretched piercings were popular thousands of years ago in Asia and Africa. “The re-emergence of body piercing in the developed world has been accompanied in an interest in stretched piercings. Much of this activity was initially associated with the modern primitive movement, but like piercing in general, it has become a more mainstream activity, common amongst young people and members of many subcultures as an identifier and due to its aesthetic appeal to the masses.”

The fact that it doesn’t appeal to the masses of my generation is probably the point.

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2008-12-03T19:05:00.000-08:00

Sleep on it

When I tell my students that sleep is very important to their brain functioning, they nod in boredom and roll their eyes. While they can accept that some of them are natural morning people and some are nightowls, they typically believe that sleep is a waste of time. Most already sleep fewer than six hours a night.
A few months ago, I discovered Brain Rules by brain researcher, John J. Medina. This fascinating book describes 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school. Rule #7 is Sleep well. Think well. The book comes with an entertaining and accessible DVD.
Apparently, people are more likely to listen to a scientist than a teacher when it comes to the need for sleep. The week after I showed the video, a student reported that he had tried taking a 30-minute nap before studying and found, much to his surprise, that he was able to finish his work quickly and easily and retain more of what he read.
Faced with his testimony, some of his more skeptical classmates thought they might just try it themselves.
Today came news that a national panel of medical experts is recommending mandatory sleep breaks and more structured shift changes for medical students to reduce the risk of fatigue-related errors. It’s nice when doctors finally accept that they are not super-human after all.

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2008-12-01T08:59:00.001-08:00

Audio Textbooks: Listen and Learn

I didn’t really discover audio books until a couple of years ago. I never considered myself an auditory learner. Then I accidentally ordered a copy of Janet Evanovich’s book, Twelve Sharp, on CD from the library. I listened to it and I was hooked. Now, I always listen to a book on CD when I’m in the car, and I’ve been known to sit in the car long after I’m parked to hear the end of a chapter.

Since I teach learning styles, I am aware that many of my students prefer to learn by hearing. Now, I also realize that audio books are a real time saver for adult students. Adults who attend college are already juggling many responsibilities. They have families, jobs, church, and other activities, and they have to fit studying into already full lives.

Audio books could be a real time saver. Students could “read” their assignments as they do the laundry, mow the lawn, cook dinner, or drive. They could also save money, and textbook publishers could more quickly, easily and inexpensively update CD books. Unfortunately, few textbooks are available on CD. Some students have approached their school’s ADA office for access to audio versions of books for blind students.

Now the University of Phoenix is trying out audio books as an option for students in a few classes. Although these books feature the mechanical voice that reads everything on the page (“illustration here”) instead of the professional actors who record most popular CD books, the students love it and are clamoring for more. Let's hope the textbook publishers are listening.

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2008-11-29T13:59:00.000-08:00

The Perfect Use for a Kindle

Textbooks.

At the University of Phoenix, we use electronic textbooks almost exclusively, many of them delivered in PDF format. Although they save the students quite a bit of money, most of them would prefer to buy an actual book. They’re portable, easy to read, and familiar.

I admit that I usually find a used copy of the textbook online and buy it, so I won’t have to rely solely on the electronic version. Because I teach the same class many times, it’s worth it to me.

According to my students, all the other colleges they have attended still use books, so UOP is apparently ahead of the curve in the use of ebooks. As we were discussing the relative merits of paper versus digital formats, it occurred to me that the Kindle could solve most of the issues. It’s small, lightweight, and portable like a book. It creates a library of books for students to access at will and is available wherever they go, without computer and internet access. The small page-sized screen and adjustable font size is easier on the eyes than a computer monitor.

Of course, the lower cost of Kindle books would be a major attraction in these days of skyrocketing education costs.

If Jeff Bezos isn’t pursuing this market, he needs to get crackin’. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Engadget also touts the potential of Kindle as a textbook substitute. A few top universities—Yale, Oxford, Berkeley and Princeton—are beginning to offer textbooks on Kindle.

Rumors abound that a student version of the reader with a larger screen is due out after the first of the year.

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2008-11-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

Subjects I Wish I’d Taken in College

I’ve told the story before about how I found my best friend, Chris, from high school after 36 years. Since we’ve been back in touch, we are frequently amazed at how much we still have in common. We are both readers, writers, and teachers. We both like cats.

When she and her husband, Peter, were in town this fall, she asked me an intriguing question. Was there anything I wished I’d studied in college instead of what I had? “Not instead of,” I replied, “but in addition to. I want to learn everything.” She grinned and looked meaningfully at Peter, as if to say, “See? That’s why we’re friends.”

Here’s a partial list of subjects I wish I’d taken in college:

§ Economics

§ Calculus

§ Physics

§ Marketing

§ Public Speaking

§ Graphic Design

§ Geography

§ Comparative Religion

Of course, the question seems to assume that it is all over, that we will just have to finish our lives without knowing much about these topics. Not true. I may still go back to school and take that economics course, or I may get some books and study it on my own. It’s never too late for learning.

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2008-11-24T07:42:00.001-08:00

Favorite Things

When Oprah announced that the Amazon Kindle was her new favorite thing and offered a $50 discount, I was tempted to get one. After all, my Indian name is Nose in a Book. I read an average of ten books a month and keep a book diary. I’m also internet savvy and long ago ran out of room to store books in my house. In short, I’m exactly the sort of person Kindle was designed for.

And yet, I resisted.

A few months earlier, my friend Kathy showed me the Kindle she had gotten for her birthday. Just a few weeks after that, Chris, my best friend from high school, was in town and whipped her new Kindle out of her bag. They both loved their new toys. Some of their favorite features were the built-in dictionary that allows you to look up any unfamiliar words immediately, the adjustable text size, and the ability to download new books, magazines and newsletters through the Kindle’s wireless connection. Amazon automatically backs up each book online in case you need to download it again. No more lost books.

All these features appealed to me, too, but still, I haven’t bought one.

My problem is that I’m hooked on the library. Years ago, when I ran out of bookshelf space to house my lifelong addiction to books, I discovered that I could get just about any book I wanted from the library. I look it up and order it online and, a few days later, pick it up at my local branch library. Now, I can even download ebooks and audio ebooks directly to my computer without making a trip to the library. I love the internet.

Also, at $9.95 or less, Kindle books cost much less than traditional books, but that is still quite a bit more than free. So, here’s the deal: when the library starts offering books in Kindle format, I’ll buy one. Until then, I’ll probably keep resisting.

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