Snow covered Riverside pitch
I just finished reading “This is How You Lose Her”. Sometimes my body feels like Yunior’s.Though recently things have been going better. After a few years struggling with nagging injuries and not being able to play, in the passed few months I’ve finally been getting a few good games in! This isn’t me, but it’s a shot of one of my favorite places to join some pickup. Also, De Gea was ridiculous in the Champions league the other day.
In addition, the interpersonal aspects of sharing a space with other learners is valuable. Dr. Dinosaur posted a comment on Shirky’s Awl piece that faculty can’t really get to know students from online interactions. Students might be hard pressed to form real relationships with each other online too. I know many of the best conversations I had about academic topics during college occurred in the dining hall after class. Being part of a community where everyone is trying to learn from each other is a unique experience. If this experience is worth the hefty price tag may be debatable but there must be alternatives to increased tuition. MOOCS can’t be the only answer.
Perhaps the conversation regarding MOOCS and typical 4 year colleges must be framed in terms of learning. The question then being what is learning? And how do these two types of educational structures foster learning? Finally, what are the goals for someone who enrolls in a MOOC and someone who enrolls in a 4 year college? I suppose these questions could have been posed at the beginning of my MOOC posts. However, as so often happens I didn’t even think in these terms when I started writing on MOOCS. Only after having read and written and read my own writing again did I come to these questions, which, may frame my future inquiry on the question of MOOCS.
(One addendum, I think this piece from the Times reflects many of the concerns I’ve voiced about student-faculty interactions and MOOCS)
and for anyone who is interested, check out the conversation on our course blog and the second half of reading for our upcoming class on MOOCS!
I particularly liked the Bustillos piece:
from nytimes:
go and see my MOOCS part I
As noted above I spent the day reading about MOOCS and walking the dog in the snow. Both projects seem somehow circular. After reading the following:
(this is just half the ‘assigned readings’ for this week, praps I’ll read the rest tomorrow).
After reading Shirky’s piece I was compelled by his argument that MOOCS might at least be equivalent if not superior to the typical large lecture hall format. But I have since returned to near my original position that MOOCS can’t provide the interpersonal connections and experiences that make learning dynamic and exciting to me.
For example, last semester I graded nearly 100 undergrad papers. Although I did my best to explain each comment, many students still needed to meet with me and discuss specific structural and conceptual comments. Perhaps this can be done online, but somehow track changes came up short. It was only when a student and I sat across from each other and reviewed each comment that I noted a look of understanding that was often reflected by improvements in their next paper.
In addition, there are interpersonal aspects of sharing a space with other learners that I’ll address in the next post.
On another note after nearly three hour long walks in the blizzard with Boomers she too has come full circle and is almost due again.
High point?
Confronting Riverside’s Abominable Snowman:
repost from a comment on the Thoughtful Blogger:
The most memorable elements of this piece were the images of the father listening to his classical music on Sundays and the excerpt from Lydia Davis’s ‘How Shall I mourn them’. James Woods is an excellent writer. What is interesting to me is how the excerpt, not Woods writing, is what has got me thinking and returning to this piece. I couldn’t remember who Woods was quoting, I had the poem stuck in my head, and it kept returning.
Each morning as a I take out my cold stick of butter and attempt to spread it over brittle toast, I think shall I leave the butter out all day to soften, like… But I can’t remember like who? So I have to login to the New Yorker and find the piece and now I see, it’s C.
But now that I know it seems not so important. What lingers is the following question:
I wonder about excerpts that overpower one’s own writing, should we use them?
This post is confused like my tenses.
On my short commutes around the city I like to tuck a magazine in my back pocket. Just read “Which Way Did the Taliban Go?”. Reminiscent of gritty war writing like Herr’s ‘Dispatches’. I like the way Mogelson describes the Afghan soldiers, he tells their stories, gives them voice and they seem like real and complicated people. I wonder if Mogelson will be able to build this into a successful book? That would be exciting.
Often, for example at Teachers College, students pay for tuition and then are required to spend a certain number of hours at internships or sometimes called externships where they are not paid. So the students end up literally paying to work. Schools should not require students to pay full price for credits earned in internships especially when these credits do not count towards graduation as sometimes occurs according to Carey.
