Edlightenment » education debate

Some quick thoughts on SOPA/PIPA

Mister V — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:49:47 +0000

As both a technology guy and a (former) social studies teacher, watching the SOPA/PIPA debate and struggle is fascinates me. These are bad bills. And they deserve to die – for obvious reasons.

Yet it’s the way in which Wikipedia, Google and the like are fighting this bill that intrigues me. I once [...]

what should be

Mister V — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:17:46 +0000

My conversations with colleagues and parents sometimes get into what computer skills schools should teach students. The conversations are almost always contain this bit of dialogue.

“We need to have Microsoft Office on student computers?”

“Why?”

“Because they’ll need it when they get into the real world.”

Setting aside the fact that we have no [...]

You’ve Lost the Argument

Mister V — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:03:06 +0000

Seth Godin features a post on how to loose an argument. Personal favorites:

Forget the pitfalls of Godwin’s law. Any time you mention Hitler or even Communist China or Bill O’Reilly, you’ve lost. Bring up the slippery slope. Actually, the slope isn’t that slippery. People don’t end up marrying dogs, becoming cannibals or [...]

The Obsessive Permission Culture

Mister V — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:24:37 +0000

I found this embedded on Karl Fischs’ wonderful blog “The Fischbowl” and it pertains to side conversations we’re having in our district.

What’s interesting is that our conversations have focused more on the question of “who owns the content”? That is, who owns, who can copyright, content developed by teachers and used with [...]

Brick and Mortar is just Too Expensive

Mister V — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:14:23 +0000

Zephyr Teachout argues that private colleges will drastically shrink in the next 10 years because of the proliferation and ease of online education. He predicts they will follow a similar trajectory of the newspaper business. It is a fascinating read (as are the comments).

As I write this a radio advertisment appears in my [...]

What should colleges teach?

Mister V — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:14:52 +0000

Stanly Fish writes and interesting post on What Should Colleges Teach (short answer, “writing courses that teach writing…not everything else”).

In a follow up post, he mentions this quote from his comments section:

“Young people who can’t write can’t think.”

Where I to be teaching students, I would love to present this quote and [...]