MOOCs. Screen-side chat. Discussion forums.
These new vocabulary words are starting to roll off my tongue almost as fluently as “gag me with a spoon”, mixer, diag and Rocky Horror Picture Show did when I attended a brick and mortar school several decades back. Somehow though, the focus on studying isn’t coming quite as quickly.
Graduate degree in hand, several careers and several kids along, I have returned to college—well at least to college classes—in the new world of MOOC: Massive Open Online Courses. Returning to class in this new medium I am finding it hard to decipher between what’s different due to the medium (being on-line) and what’s just different about higher education in general from the 1980s.
For one, I am stumped by the term ‘virtual’ that so many people seem to apply to MOOCs. There is very little virtual about the classes I am taking. Real professors using actual videos teach real content to me and other physical classmates. Many of the discussion threads are high caliber, adding new insight and perspectives from around the world along plenty of humor and support when the coursework gets hard. We may not all be sharing the same dining experience or trudging through the same snow drifts or city traffic to school, but we definitely are learning from one another and our professor in a shared experience.
My online courses have come with unexpected perks. I immediately found the benefit of being able to speed up lectures— watching a professor speak at 2x the standard rate was so much more energetic that when I start watching again at a normal rate I feel like the prof was talking through Jell-O. Additionally, there’s no drop/add deadline. Thinking the course work wouldn’t really be all that time-consuming (Ha, was I ever wrong about that!) I signed up for far more courses than I could possibly manage without becoming a full time student again. No problem—I easily and painlessly unenrolled from several. And while the professors don’t have office hours and they kindly request that students refrain from sending them emails, one course I’m taking offers weekly screen-side chats. This week students from Mexico, Canada, China, Peru and the United States all posed questions directly to the profs who, within the constraints of band-width, more or less answered all queries thoroughly.
I have a feeling that the biggest downside will be the limitless menu of class options. So far I’ve started four courses with four very disparate goals. I doubt I’ll be able to complete all four and still maintain a reasonable life balance. I look forward to seeing how my experiment works out. How are your on-line courses working for you or how well you are working in them? And if you haven’t tried one yet, there are many options. I’m taking my courses all from Coursera as I find it easier to get to know and work within a common interface. Scroll through the options today. The courses are a lot like potato chips—bet you can’t select just one.
Wits and Wagers: It's who you know, not what you know
Wits and Wagers is more than a great group game—it’s a metaphor for succeeding in life. The essence? It’s not what you know, it’s knowing who knows what.
For success:
First, if you revel in playing games and haven’t yet discovered Wits and Wagers then check it out now on Amazon. Wits and Wagers is a quickly learned, quickly played game for all ages that rewards those who are aware of the knowledge base of their fellow players far more than rewarding those who actually possess their own wealth of trivia.
In short, everyone provides a (numerical) answer for a given question—anything from a date an event occurred to the distance a field goal was kicked. Once all the answers are in, they are arranged from the lowest to the highest value and each player can bet on any answer. The players who bet on the closest answer without going over win the round.
There is no reward for being person who wrote down the closest answer (aside from patting yourself on the back and feeling foolish if you didn't bet on your own answer), only for betting on the answer that is closest. Typically, the most successful players are the ones who know the most about what their competitors know. For instance, does the question involve knowing about Canadian provinces? Well, if you’re aware that one of your players lived in Canada, then odds are her answer may be the best bet. Or if the question is on the number of companies in the Dow Jones, then who follows the ups and downs of the stock market daily? How many black keys on a standard piano? Any chance there’s a bona fide musician in the group? You get the idea.
Even if you’re not a game player, if you can be successful at Wits and Wagers you may well be successful in life. In 2013 there are new medical discoveries, environmental impacts, economical theories, political shifts, athletic achievements, parenting pronouncements, artistic feats daily—need I go on? The sheer quantity of knowledge, not to mention the exponentially greater quantity of data, available in the world today cannot be adequately described numerically.
So what’s the shortcut to possessing that knowledge? Knowing where to find it. Many may say— “hey, that’s the value of Google.” Well while Google certainly strives to return results that have been vetted by the fact they are the results most frequently referred to, it's not always straightforward. The searcher not only needs to know the best words to use in a query, but needs to have awareness of, you guessed it, who knows what. And if you know who knows what, you can more quickly pinpoint your query. You could even actually ask a knowledgeable person directly. I know, that eliminates the safety net of the anonymity of the internet, but you are likely to receive much more personalized responses.
The simple principle of Who Knows What can be applied every day. Have a new medical condition? Why not call the friend you know who was diagnosed with the same condition four years ago. Debating what to wear to on a date? Any chance you have a fashionista friend or a local business you trust with clothing advice? Where should you send your children to camp? How can you develop a communications strategy? Where to start on financial aid forms? How to set a budget, prepare for an interview, make a presentation? Know who knows. Reach out. Share what you know.
For success:
- Know who knows what
- Reach out to those who know
- Share what you know
First, if you revel in playing games and haven’t yet discovered Wits and Wagers then check it out now on Amazon. Wits and Wagers is a quickly learned, quickly played game for all ages that rewards those who are aware of the knowledge base of their fellow players far more than rewarding those who actually possess their own wealth of trivia.
In short, everyone provides a (numerical) answer for a given question—anything from a date an event occurred to the distance a field goal was kicked. Once all the answers are in, they are arranged from the lowest to the highest value and each player can bet on any answer. The players who bet on the closest answer without going over win the round.
There is no reward for being person who wrote down the closest answer (aside from patting yourself on the back and feeling foolish if you didn't bet on your own answer), only for betting on the answer that is closest. Typically, the most successful players are the ones who know the most about what their competitors know. For instance, does the question involve knowing about Canadian provinces? Well, if you’re aware that one of your players lived in Canada, then odds are her answer may be the best bet. Or if the question is on the number of companies in the Dow Jones, then who follows the ups and downs of the stock market daily? How many black keys on a standard piano? Any chance there’s a bona fide musician in the group? You get the idea.
Even if you’re not a game player, if you can be successful at Wits and Wagers you may well be successful in life. In 2013 there are new medical discoveries, environmental impacts, economical theories, political shifts, athletic achievements, parenting pronouncements, artistic feats daily—need I go on? The sheer quantity of knowledge, not to mention the exponentially greater quantity of data, available in the world today cannot be adequately described numerically.
So what’s the shortcut to possessing that knowledge? Knowing where to find it. Many may say— “hey, that’s the value of Google.” Well while Google certainly strives to return results that have been vetted by the fact they are the results most frequently referred to, it's not always straightforward. The searcher not only needs to know the best words to use in a query, but needs to have awareness of, you guessed it, who knows what. And if you know who knows what, you can more quickly pinpoint your query. You could even actually ask a knowledgeable person directly. I know, that eliminates the safety net of the anonymity of the internet, but you are likely to receive much more personalized responses.
The simple principle of Who Knows What can be applied every day. Have a new medical condition? Why not call the friend you know who was diagnosed with the same condition four years ago. Debating what to wear to on a date? Any chance you have a fashionista friend or a local business you trust with clothing advice? Where should you send your children to camp? How can you develop a communications strategy? Where to start on financial aid forms? How to set a budget, prepare for an interview, make a presentation? Know who knows. Reach out. Share what you know.
On-line Local News Demand Will Grow
I’m a news devotee—I admit it. I keep the news on the radio while I’m working at home and
get push notifications on my iPhone from both AP Mobile and the New York Times
to keep up with what is going on around the globe. I regularly watch NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, yet I
never watch local news on television.
However, over the past year, I have found myself fascinated
by, and at times relying upon, local on-line news. I often read Patch before
I look at the world headlines.
What do I find so compelling? While watching a weather
reporter leaning against the wind in a blizzard in the plain states can be
entertaining, finding out when my power will be restored after a local blizzard
is invaluable. Knowing how housing
sales are improving nationwide helps me gauge the national economy, but seeing
local house sales is far more relevant.
Hearing that Spiderman is drawing huge audiences despite its dramatic glitches
getting off the ground so to speak, is interesting. Yet knowing when an author will appear at the local
bookstore is pertinent to my personal entertainment schedule.
I don’t know if AOL will be successful with their business
model for Patch, but I do know that there is an important need to be filled in
providing local, relevant news to individuals on-line. Being able to post our
own community announcements is a valuable and low-cost service if there is a
critical mass of readers. Hard to
say if critical mass has yet been reached—it depends on your community. Six million unique Patch readers is not
an insignificant number, but it’s not the right number to consider when the
value is all local. How many
readers can Patch or any other local news source garner in an individual
community?
Regardless of who finds a compelling business model, I hope
a local news offering continues. I
can use the global news to help me decide which leaders to vote for, improve my
understanding of how unrest in the Mideast will affect the economy and influence how I can help make the world
a better place. But I will be even
more influenced by the local news to let me know when I can talk with my local
leaders, point me in the direction of the lowest gas prices in town and give me
an outlet to recruit volunteers and supporters for my local causes.
State of Wonder Book Group Discussion
By Ann Patchett
I enjoy leading book groups. When I lead, I write up a discussion guide to use. Feel free to ask your own questions or discuss your own observations or reactions in the comments section.
I have moved this discussion guide to my new blog, Group Reads which is a collection of discussion guides. You can find a guide for this book at Group Reads: State of Wonder.
Stop by and see what other guides might interest you!
I have moved this discussion guide to my new blog, Group Reads which is a collection of discussion guides. You can find a guide for this book at Group Reads: State of Wonder.
Stop by and see what other guides might interest you!
Newspaper Nostalgia
The Sunday New York
Times was not a ride and toss delivery route when I was a kid. My dad drove me around in our station
wagon and I got out at each house and carried the paper up each walkway, opened
each screen door and carefully nestled the paper against each front door as I
quietly closed the screen. The transition to adult paper deliverers aside, a
child’s paper route is left to nostalgia as we pull out our iPads to read the
morning news.
My husband is reading
the New York Times. I don’t hear
the crinkle of paper as he flips the page though—he has been reading the Times
on his iPad for over a year now.
It’s like having a newspaper press next to our bed without all of the
cacophony of machinery. And we get the late, late edition—the ones only New
Yorkers used to be able to get by stepping out in the cool night air and
walking around the corner to their newsstand.
When I read a story
on the iPad the headline stays consistent from the start to the end of the
article—no need to flip to an interior page and hunt for the altered headline
the editor deemed necessary to create.
Color photos are far more numerous than in the print edition and unless
the printed paper has come direct from Hogwarts, it doesn’t have any of the
videos I find in my iPad version.
I have never wanted to post a comment on an article, but having the
opportunity is cool.
Yet I miss using the well-taught
lessons on how to properly share a newspaper that I learned at a very young age
from my dad. We had a pecking
order on who could read which section when. My dad got first choice of
sections, mom second, older siblings next and eventually the comics in our
local paper worked their way into my hands. Equally importantly, I learned how
to refold my section and place it neatly upon the pile of sections from the
Sunday paper stacked by my dad’s living room chair.
I miss the heft of
the Sunday New York Times and the nesting of its sections. I miss watching my dad flip through
each paper to ensure all sections were present. I wonder what new newspaper
etiquette will be passed on to the next generation as they read the morning
news on lazy Sunday mornings.
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain: Group Discussion Guide
By David Eagleman
I enjoy leading book groups. When I lead, I write up a discussion guide to use. Feel free to ask your own questions or discuss your own observations or reactions in the comments section.
I have moved this discussion guide to my new blog, Group Reads, which is a collection of discussion guides. You can find a guide for this book at Group Reads: Incognito The Secret Lives of the Brain
Stop by and see what other guides might interest you!
I enjoy leading book groups. When I lead, I write up a discussion guide to use. Feel free to ask your own questions or discuss your own observations or reactions in the comments section.
I have moved this discussion guide to my new blog, Group Reads, which is a collection of discussion guides. You can find a guide for this book at Group Reads: Incognito The Secret Lives of the Brain
Stop by and see what other guides might interest you!
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Book Group Discussion Guide
By
Aimee Bender
I enjoy leading book groups. When I lead, I write up a discussion guide to use. Feel free to ask your own questions or discuss your own observations or reactions in the comments section.
I have moved this discussion guide to my new blog, Group Reads which is a collection of discussion guides. You can find a guide for this book at The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.
Stop by and see what other guides might interest you!
I enjoy leading book groups. When I lead, I write up a discussion guide to use. Feel free to ask your own questions or discuss your own observations or reactions in the comments section.
I have moved this discussion guide to my new blog, Group Reads which is a collection of discussion guides. You can find a guide for this book at The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.
Stop by and see what other guides might interest you!
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