The “What If” Thought

I’ve been talking about writing papers recently. If you’ve been reading along thinking “yeah, that’s a good idea to get started this early,” but you haven’t yet done it — then get to it! Time is only disappearing (despite the new sci-fi possibilities of the CERN neutrinos — at least for sci-fi authors). So get started today. “… how do I do that?” That’s a good question. Today I’m going to talk about the “what if” thought. You’ve probably had one (and you’re lucky if you did). You’re sitting in class having a discussion and you get a crazy thought. … Continue reading

The Book of Quotes

If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll be very aware that I’ve been poking and prodding at you to do something about all of those papers you’ll no doubt have to write this quarter/semester in pursuit of your degree. All of the outside things are easy: talk to a professor, do research, something else, turn in your finished paper. What is that “something else” that gets you from research to a finished paper? Well, as many hilarious (and accurate) internet graphs/comics will tell you, the process of writing is anything but linear for most of us. You don’t just “pick … Continue reading

The Tools for the Job

Recently my sister (and my sister-in-law) headed off for college. Since I’m a bit of a technology enthusiast they both sort of inquired about what to take to college concerning computers and software. I volunteered to call both of their schools to chat with their IT people and some current students in order to determine what (if anything) they might “require” in the way of software (and, subsequently, hardware). I was delighted to find that each of them (at their respective schools and in their respective majors) could happily use free/libre operating systems and software for their studies. While not … Continue reading

A (very) Brief Ethics of File Formats

I’m a bit of a free software activist. Okay, that was a bit of an understatement. I’m sort of a big free software activist. Big as in “I care a lot,” not in that I’m well known (I’m not). I’m not talking about price either (though that is a factor), I’m talking about freedom. Make a quick web-search for free/libre software to see what I’m talking about. At any rate, I have a very strong belief that this should be the software of education (and governments) for a variety of reasons. Others have said it better than me but I’m … Continue reading

Starting Now

Writing any paper is a difficult task. There so many thing to take into account before even selecting a topic — let alone writing an introduction — but far too often students bide their time by squandering it until the process of waiting becomes a frantic rush to the end. You’ve done it before, and unless you do something about it right now (and I mean right now) the end of your current semester is going to look very similar to the end of your previous semesters: stressful. Sure, you’ll find a way to stay awake that extra day through … Continue reading

The Hold-up

Sometimes I’m a big fan of hold-ups. Not the kind that involves banks, money, robbers, firearms, the police, witnesses, etc., but the kind that involves something stopping a project temporarily. I remember being a student and thinking that an extension on that paper I hadn’t started because the teacher had taken ill was an amazing gift from God. How fortunate to have even more “last minutes” to work with than I did before I heard the news. I didn’t wish sickness on my teachers, of course, but I did enjoy the temporary stall and the extra time. This was something … Continue reading

College Part 3

My youngest sister recently left for college. She’ll be headed a couple hundred miles away to learn new things with new people in a new place. None of this is particularly rare. It seems more and more people are going to college these days, despite the economic downturn, in part because so many jobs now “require” some amount of college to even apply. The big hope is that spending the money on additional education beyond college will pay off in the long run monetarily (beyond simply the benefit of gaining more knowledge). I’m a big believer that college is worth … Continue reading

Online Videos and Learning?

In my last post I sort of mused about the problem of criminalizing technologies in schools (and viewing them, rightfully, as an opportunity to disengage as well as engage). The problem I have with some of the standard views I’ve seen in schools is that they decide that because something could be used for ill (a kid could, potentially, use a laptop in class to look at a social networking site or something) that they need to block the possibility entirely. Grade schools and high schools are not alone in this unfortunate action. My graduate work at a state university … Continue reading

Evaluation

If you’ve followed this education blog for the past couple of years you would have accompanied on my journey through my qualifying exams. It was an extremely long and stressful process and one that I felt was very much behind the times and counterproductive (to be honest). One of my pet topics throughout my time posting here has been evaluative methods in the digital age. I’m certainly not a scientist by any means, and I haven’t conducted trials or quantified results into bar graphs, but I have been a teacher and a student during a time of great change (as … Continue reading

Ideas From Outside

One of the things you should really take into account the next time you’re having issues with a project or paper you’re working on is how directly related the information you’re seeking is to the topic at hand. Oftentimes we, as students, try to very clearly focus on the topic at hand. Sometimes we go too far in our one-minded, single-focus attempt to “write” a paper. There is a useful analogy (and, for another “A” word, it’s analogue): the library. I’m fairly young, but one of the complaints I hear from many people much older than I about student writing … Continue reading