Category — academic life

Transdisciplinary Studies
Transdisciplinary Studies

Transdisciplinary Studies is an internationally oriented book series created to generate new theories and practices to extricate transdisciplinary research from the confining discourses of traditional disciplinarities. Within transdisciplinary domains, this series will publish empirically grounded, theoretically sound work seeking to identify and solve global problems that conventional disciplinary perspectives cannot capture. Transdisciplinary Studies seeks to accentuate those aspects of scholarly research which cut across todays learned disciplines in an effort to define new axiologies and forms of praxis. This series intends to promote a new appreciation for transdisciplinary research to audiences that are seeking ways of understanding complex, global problems that many now realize disciplinary perspectives cannot fully address. Scholars, policy makers, educators and researchers working to address issues in technology studies, public finance, discourse studies, professional ethics, political analysis, learning, ecological systems, modern medicine, and other fields clearly are ready to begin investing in transdisciplinary models of research. It is for those many different audiences in these diverse fields that we hope to reach, not merely with topical research, but also through considering new epistemic and ontological foundations for of transdisciplinary research.

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source:
A courageous young notebook computer committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich’s 227-page master’s thesis, sources close to the Brandeis University English graduate student reported Monday.

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another example of how heros are found everywhere.

crooked timber / crooked timbers project: i’m confused:
via CRTNET, i learned about the crooked timbers project, “a group of communication educators, researchers and practitioners committed to fostering a ’social constructionist’ understanding of communication as the primary process for creating and sustaining better social worlds.”

great. i’m all for projects! and i’m all for scholars and practitioners coming together to share knowledge! and i’m
<p>——-<p>
over on his blog i responded with Isaiah Berlin… people will reject that. Berlin is of course citing “Out of the Crooked Timber of Humanity, no straight thing can ever be made”….. which is from Kant

Kant also gives us some other nice insights here and there….

like:

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

and

To be is to do.

and

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

MIT Media Lab Guru Says No Computers in Schools:

Michael Schrage of the MIT Media Lab wrote a piece for The Financial Times saying that there should be no computers in schools. He argues that billions could be saved by keeping useless technologies out of schools. As an educational technologist, I felt that I needed to address his critique.

 
I think his main argument is with educational software companies, but he fails to differentiate between them and between teachers using technology in the classroom. His article cites nothing other than his own opinions, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.

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No to computers in schools… but…. having the underfunded developing world pay for laptops from their national budget to the tune of ten’s of millions of dollars… that’s a great idea… Isn’t it? I’m not sure computers should be ubiquitous in education at all. I think that students need to experience diverse informational experiences, not just computer based, not just book based, but also oral traditons, etc.

theory of sara: The APSA, false elitism and the flight from reality:

To wrap all of this up, I am quite frustrated with the fact that the APSA continues to go down this path of denying the importance of real politics in favor of propping up false elitism and irrelevance. This of course assumes that my work is relevant, which I would naturally challenge that it is, but more importantly, what I wish the organizers of APSA would get through their heads is that the American Political Science Association is supposed to bring together each year a conference on politics, not fantasy or phantom menaces.

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I don’t think that it is supposed to bring together a conference on politics, but a conference that represents political science. Those are two distinct positions.

The Washington Monthly:

BARBARISM IN TEXAS….This story is almost too horrible for words. The details are a little thin, but here’s the outline.

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there are jobs at the information school at ut austin. jobs that i would apply for… but i could not live with texas state politics. i won’t be a part of there sort of insanity.

Chronicle – Leaving Academe:

On my first day in the English dept, an aged colleague, grizzled and smelling slightly of gin, sidled over and said – ‘Some people hold that reading great books makes one a better and more moral person. Well, I’ve read a great many books and look at me….

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classic.

Inside Higher Ed :: A Reason to Move:
Our primary reason for leaving Virginia was to gain the rights that come from legal recognition of our relationship and future family. It is clear that we would not obtain those rights in the near future in Virginia. States that choose to discriminate against their same-sex couples will continue to lose valued citizens to states that provide the same rights to all individuals, couples and families.

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supporting your family is one of the most important things a university and state can do… however, it is increasingly difficult to do the right thing by friends and colleagues when the state is not just conservative, but tending toward enforcing inequality. i think this professor made the right decision.

Inside Higher Ed :: Views:
Best end with some boilerplate. Any institution that accepts Derwood will definitely have gained another student.

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hehehe

revising tenure
Giving young professors up to 10 years — instead of 6 — to earn tenure

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this isn’t what is needed. what is needed is a restructuring of the escalation of tenure requirements. one thing that a 10 year rule will do is make people take 10 years 1/4 of their career to find out if they are good enough to keep it. that… creates a new underclass from the untenured. untenured people also don’t have tenure, so they can be fired more easily.