It was a wild break. Almost everyone I know is still rubbing their holiday guts and mumbling about getting back in shape. Your body isn’t the only part of you that slowed down a little over winter break, though. Your brain needs a kick start to get back into the school swing of things. Check out these back-to-school tips for on-campus and online students alike.

Tips for Getting Back into the Higher Education Swing of Things

1. Make Yourself Known. If you walk into class on day one and make for the back, you’re asking for a chance to screw around. The first thing that’s wrong with your seating choice is that your professor doesn’t know you’re a go-getter. I’m not suggesting that you sit front row, center, but give the second row a shot. There’s nothing quite like eye contact to suggest that you’re paying full attention. Online students can give the appearance of being completely focused by posting a big hello on the class discussion board. Starting off with a great first impression gives you a leg up in the professor’s mind, whether or not you actually earn it.
2. Participate. If you never raise your hand, contribute, or post, you’re just another face in the class–and professor’s might forget about you. If you aren’t noticed, why are you showing up at all? I once saw a professor call out a student who’d only missed a few classes during a final exam. Interrupting the rest of us taking the test, the professor asked, loudly, “And where have you been?” It was embarrassing and easily avoidable. Show up. Participate. If the professor has an idea of who you are, you’re far more likely to get an extension on a paper or an extra credit opportunity down the line–and you can avoid being embarrassed in front of your classmates.
3. Fake It ‘Til You Make It. This tip is more to augment all of the other tips, preceding and following. Ever tried smiling when you’re in a bad mood? You’d be surprised how this kind of talking of the talk can turn your mood around. Likewise, you might not be thrilled to be back in class, but if you make it seem like you are, you’ll be walking the walk before you know it.
4. Save Your Procrastination for Later. Develop a name for yourself as someone who always gets work in on time–at least starting off. If you’re taking more than one class, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll have some homework/studying conflicts down the line. Take advantage of the early weeks in a class to stay on top of things. When things are too chaotic further down the line, you’re more likely to get a little leeway on due dates. Don’t pull any stunts around finals, though. Generally, I used to start off strong through ’til the midterm, ease off and relax for a bit, and then hit the books hard for finals–frankly, an A is an A even if it isn’t a 100-percent.
5. Put Your Lame Excuses Out to Pasture. Stop killing off your grandma! Every year, when midterms and finals roll around, students’ older relatives start dropping like flies–at least, that’s what they tell their professors, who aren’t stupid, by the way. The next time life gets too hectic to study or finish that paper, tell your professor just that: things are hectic. People don’t like being lied to and, in general, want to be nice. Also, professors were once students, and they know that things get crazy. If you’re preemptive about asking for an extension, the professor knows you (at least a little), and you don’t pile on the BS, you’re likely to get the same leeway (if not more) as someone who kills a octogenarian twice a year–and your professor will still respect you.
6. Goof Off Productively. You aren’t going to be working 24/7, but you can be getting your brain in shape for those academic pursuits. It’s as easy as switching from video games to chess or from sit-coms to documentaries. You just need to get those synapses firing.
7. Make a List. Things slip my mind all the time, which is way you’ll always find a to-do list or two on my desk. Not only does this help me keep track of everything that needs to get done, it also helps me prioritize. There’s almost always something easy, even fun, on the list, and I try to save those until I can’t take the grueling tasks anymore. Break projects down into their component parts when you make your list, too. This way, you can cross things off more quickly (a great feeling), and you won’t be overwhelmed by a huge project, just ten little ones.
8. Buddy Up. Whether you’re starting an online class or wandering around a campus, it’s a good idea to acquaint yourself with someone in the class. You’ll have a chatting buddy, for one. You’ll also have a partner when group projects rear their ugly heads (and someone you know is less likely to stick you with all the work). You’ll also have a study partner, a place to get notes when you miss class, and someone to help keep you motivated (note: go for someone who looks smart and ambitious, if only a little).
9. Drop the Dead Weight. If you’ve got a class that you don’t need to be taking and your schedule looks daunting, drop it–now. You need to get your money back for the class and hock those books ASAP. Of course, take the time to weigh the merits of the class. If it’s interesting and it doesn’t look too hard, stay on for the ride. If you don’t like going after only three sessions, run for your life (or your GPA and cash reserves).
10. Get Out. I always had a problem studying at home. There were too many distractions, roomies doing things, and places to fall asleep. Between 24-hour coffee shops, the library on campus, and the occasional bar, I had plenty of places I could go and actually get work done. The trick was getting myself out the door. Find a good spot or three where you actually study, and make yourself get off the couch and out the door. Make sure that at least one place is completely free–you aren’t made of money.

These ten tips just scratch the surface of what it takes to keep yourself motivated in school, but follow them, and you’ve got a great start.

The human brain is mind-blowing. The fact that I’m even able to say something like that is evidence of just how advanced that gray matter really is. Think about that, about thinking, and you’re showing off your capacity for metacognition, something uniquely human. The brain has plenty of other features that keep us from dying, tipping over, and over heating, among other things. Perhaps the most useful feature of the human brain, though, is our capacity for learning.

When we’re born into this world, we’ve got a brain, but it doesn’t know how to do much. Think of a brand new computer with a bunch of peripherals plugged into it. Our arms, legs, eyes, ears, nerves, and taste buds are sending our undeveloped young brains all sorts of interesting information. Gradually, we figure all of it out. There’s no pre-installed software; our brains learn how to use the data, work the limbs, and–this one’s really neat–communicate with other humans by making sounds. Most of us don’t remember this period of our lives; we were very young at the time. What happens in those first few, critical years affects the rest of our lives. The amount of new pathways that the brain is forming when we’re young is positively staggering. Until recently, it was thought the brain stops this neurogenesis around age 20. New studies suggest that we keep making new pathways well into old age, which is good news for those of us who like to learn new things.

When it comes to actually sitting down and doing it, learning isn’t always fun. There are a few things that you can do to change that, though, and I don’t just mean by making dirty mnemonic devices.

The Three Coolest Ways to Learn New Things

#1–Go to sleep. Bringing into question all of those all-nighters I pulled in college, a new study shows that our brains are still learning when we’re at rest. It’s relatively well known that naps are awesome. Less well known is the fact that if you take a nap after learning a new task, you’ll remember it better than your caffeinated classmates. The new study from the lab of New York University cognitive neuroscientist Lila Davachi shows that we also remember things better with a moment’s rest. From the Time Magazine article on the study:

The 16 participants who served as Davachi’s guinea pigs in the study were each scanned, while at rest, before the experiment began. Then, each volunteer was asked to lie flat on the bed of an fMRI [functional magnetic resonance imaging] machine, outside the magnet, while shown a series of paired images. First they looked at pairs of faces and objects, and were instructed to imagine the person pictured interacting with the object (such as a beach ball). Then they got a few minutes’ rest, before being rolled into the magnet for another scan. The experiment was repeated with pairs of new faces and scenes. Afterward, the participants took a pop quiz to measure their recognition of the faces, objects and scenes they had previously seen.

Keep this little tidbit in mind the next time your boss catches you goofing off–you’re actually resting to improve your memory consolidation abilities.

#2–Rock out with your Bach out. Classical music is good for lots of things. Having even an elementary knowledge of your likes and dislikes in the genre makes you more appealing to prospective dates, for example. Listening to classical music has also been linked to increased IQs, lower blood pressure, and greater retention of material learned.

A new report suggests that learning an instrument in elementary school can actually give a child’s confidence a shot in the arm and help with learning in other areas. As a reformed band geek and someone who likes to see extracurricular activities getting funding, I’m excited by this news. For those of us not in elementary school, other studies have shown that learning an instrument later in life helps with memory and brain function.

If you’re planning on heading back to school, start by learning how to play guitar. Not only will it help you out on the learning front, but you’ll be the coolest nontrad student around.

#3–Play on the computer. As I’ve noted in a few other blogs recently, educational videogames are gaining popularity. There are actually full-on schools using videogames to augment the learning process. Instead of rote memorization, students are immersed in worlds that trick them into learning. Imagine being a spy sent to gather information on the Spartans–in a game, of course–and report back; doesn’t that sound more fun than reading a book or sitting through a lecture?

Gaming isn’t the only fun way to learn on a computer, but it certainly helps. Language programs have started incorporating crossword puzzles, among other language-learning games, and situational, interactive conservation tools to make learning a new language on the computer more fun–and it’s working. These tools help keep learning a new language novel, fighting the boredom that shuts most people down.

Apple unveiled its newest toy today: the iPad. I won’t lie. I watched the video, and I want one already. Along with the undoubted millions of others coveting the device, I have to wait until April for the 3G version to come out. Fortunately, I happen to have a birthday in that month, which might just be my excuse for buying myself one. The wi-fi version will be released in March, and it will most likely be the $499 model. Cool new features like the new kind of silicon chip, the A4, that Apple developed for the iPad aside, this device is just the kind of sci-fi gizmo that threatens to turn things upside-down. In the same way that the iPod changed the way we listen to music and the iPhone changed the way we… well, it changed the face and function of cell phones, anyway–the iPad is threatening to change the way we interact with media of all sorts, from straightforward surfing the Net to streaming videos and reading books. Anyone concerned with educational technology should be checking out this new device.

Apple’s iPad: An Education Revolution in the Works?

Already, Abilene Christian University’s newspaper, The Optimist, has a deal to publish on the iPad. Other newspapers will no doubt follow suit in short order. This new tablet could bring about the kind of print media renaissance that the industry needs. The traditional format of newspapers doesn’t work well on regular computer screens. It just doesn’t look right. Put it on a tablet, though, and suddenly you’ve got the hottest way to check out the news without getting ink on your fingers.

This, of course, makes a nice segue into books–and the iPad has got those in spades. Debuting with the device: the Apple eBook, sorry, iBook store. Like a Kindle with more functionality than you can shake an iPhone at, the iPad could be the most noteworthy new harbinger of the death of textbooks we’ve seen. Rather than shelling out hundreds of dollars for textbooks, tomorrow’s college students will be shelling out hundreds for a new iPad and probably a whole lot less for the textbook itself.

Barnes & Noble is already trying to corner the textbook market for tablets with its new Nook, but frankly, now that the iPad is here, the more simplistic ereaders are probably on their way out–I wouldn’t be surprised if netbooks also take a dive. Imagine having a full-color textbook with integrated videos in lieu of pictures. Imagine having that textbook update itself automatically when someone finds a typo–or a theory is proven wrong. The iPad is slated to change the way we interact with texts in general, putting textbook publishers in the evolve-or-die-out hot seat. Now if only it would release the scent of old books when you pick it up.

An Answer to the iPad Detractors

Already, the snide remarks (“iPad? Does it have wings?”) and criticisms of the device have started. To everyone out there taking this device as a clunkier version of the iPhone, I suggest that you take a different approach to the device. The iPad should be thought of as a computer, not just a new toy to compliment your laptop. You wouldn’t want to hold one up to your ear to make a call, but then again, you wouldn’t want to cuddle up with your iPhone to strain your eyes reading a book, watching a movie (although I know more than a few people for which this is a habit), or typing up a paper.

Personally, I’m already a big fan of pads–that’s the regular paper kind. The idea that I could, in a few short months, be carrying a pad that can check my email while running a video in a window and letting me take notes on a meeting is thrilling. I hate to think that it all comes down to size, but despite all their functionality, smart phones are just too small to facilitate multitasking and easy reading.

The iPad has the potential to replace more than just textbooks. Were an educational institution to take full advantage of the device, students wouldn’t even need to bring pencils or paper to class. Teachers could give and recieve assignments and tests electronically. Already, the functionality of the iPhone and iPod Touch is being put to work in classrooms in the form of live polls and electronic hand-raising. Imagine what the iPad could add to this.

You spent months agonizing over the decision. Should you stay or should you go? Well, after sleepless nights, countless conversations with friends, and some soul searching, you’ve finally nailed it down. Whether you’re going back to university for a graduate degree or seeking an entirely different career path, the decision to move on is a tough one. Perhaps tougher still is the realization that things aren’t going to change immediately. Don’t do anything rash! Check out these tips for staying motivated in the interim.

Prospective Grad Students and Career Changers: Fear Not, Change Is on the Way!

1. Make a List. Chances are you’ve got a few loose ends to tie up, applications to get in the mail, and financial obligations to consider. Take some time, and make a list. Be realistic; be honest. Going back to school, even for a short time, can be quite a financial bear. If you need to start saving now–or, more importantly, stop spending so much–figure out a reasonable amount that you can squirrel away. If you need to take the GRE, start studying. If you need letters of recommendation, start shooting off emails. The decision may have been difficult, but going through with it can be excruciating if you aren’t prepared.
2. Make Peace. Wherever you’re moving from, it’s fair to assume that you aren’t happy there–or you wouldn’t be dreaming of a better, different tomorrow. Sorry to bring this up, but you’re going to be there for a while longer yet. If you keep hating it, you’re only going to drive yourself insane, sop make peace with your current situation. Accept that you’re going to have to live with it for a while longer, but keep in mind, too, that it’s temporary. You’re on your way; don’t mess that up by melting down.
3. Begin the Countdown. If you know when the change is coming, start a countdown! First, putting the date on the calendar will be nothing short of encouraging (while you’re there, write down some of those deadlines, too). Once you start crossing days off that calendar, it’ll be easier to keep truckin’. Every single day that goes by, you’re closer to your goal. Tacking up little reminders is a good idea, too. You’d be surprised how much better your day is when you start it off by thinking about how close you’re getting to the big change.
4. Get to Work. You’ve got your list; you’ve got your deadlines. Start crossing off your to-dos. Rewrite that resume; prep that CV–whatever needs to get done, start doing it. Nothing makes the time go by like working towards a dream.

Career Change: Getting the Education You Need

Perhaps you’re still struggling with the decision to hightail it out your current situation. By taking an online course or two in the subject, you can gauge your interest in whatever subject or career you’re thinking about going into. These classes cater to the working individual. Flexible schedules and a work-at-you-own-pace attitude come along with many of these programs. A little time taking a class now could save you a future stuck in a different rut–or you might decide you love it and be that much closer to finishing up your career training.

A new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that if your children aren’t asleep, they’re online. Even though I’m not a parent, this comes as no surprise–I’ve taught middle and high schoolers. Trying to keep them on task when a computer is in front of them is difficult, like getting a puppy to sit still (I do have a dog, but she’s almost never online–often asleep, though seldom online).

When it was time for standardized testing, I had to gather up the cell phones of my eighth-grade class. Not only did most of them have cell phones, most of them had cell phones nicer, newer, and trendier than mine. Monstrous devices with cameras and QWERTY keyboards–and me without even volume control (an issue that doesn’t quite bother me enough to get a new phone…still). We, my fellow teachers and I, caught them texting during other tests, both innocuously and begging for answers from peers.

In short, this generation of tech-savvy students takes their media consumption and social networking very seriously, like you and I take, say, eating. Keep in mind that an eighteen year old student was born in 1992, which was one year before AOL 2.0 for the Macintosh came out. At the time, those of us who were up on things were logging on with a blazing-fast 14.4 dial-up modem. Someone born on the day I first stayed up all night downloading music and eating Otter Pops because a friend had gotten a broadband connection would be the age of an eighth-grader.

It’s this age group, the digital natives, that’s in question. How do we relate to these kids? Even more importantly, how do we educate them?

Born Online: The Next Generation of Students

How do we, the adults who remember floppy disks that were actually floppy, bring our tried-and-true teaching methods to the technological fore? What we all think is super cool and new, is mundane to this generation.

I stumbled upon an interesting question while I was flipping through the blogosphere the other day: “If faculty NEVER or RARELY have transformative experiences using technology, can we expect their students to?” The extremely valid point this brings up is that many teachers aren’t integrating technology into their lives like their students have–or if they have, it’s all been a sort of leisure activity, not something life-altering but something free-time-altering. With this attitude, naivete, whatever you want to call it, it seems like folly to let contemporary technology near the learning process. This, of course, isn’t true. Recent studies have shown that people learn better with a combination of face-to-face and online learning (that’s better than one or the other alone–and online learning alone beat out the traditional classroom alone).

The new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation (aforementioned) took a close look at this new generation of students. The New York Times article on the subject revealed the following:

While most of the young people in the study got good grades, 47 percent of the heaviest media users — those who consumed at least 16 hours a day — had mostly C’s or lower, compared with 23 percent of those who typically consumed media three hours a day or less. The heaviest media users were also more likely than the lightest users to report that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school.

Now, let’s all remember that correlation is not causation. Whether the heaviest users are so because they’re fleeing certain unnamed and unpleasant realities in their lives or this heavy using is driving the boredom and sadness isn’t a question that was addressed–nor would I expect your average teen to be able to accurately relay that information.

The fact that we’ve all got to face is that, try as we might, we see things differently than these up-and-comers. They are living in a world that, though full of what many of us would consider gadgets bordering on science fiction, is just as mundane to them as things were for us when we were their age. We can only ever pretend to see the world as they do. That doesn’t mean that we can’t relate, just that we’re going to have to relate like every other group of older people has related to the younger generations since time immemorial: with great gusto and limited success.

When you think of a college professor, a really stereotypical professor, what image comes to mind? Chances are, your mental image has a beard, a tweed jacket with leather elbows, and a leftist leaning. While this isn’t wrong, per se, it’s probably a bit out dated.

Let’s take a look at another career that suffers from a different sort of typecasting: nursing. You’ve probably already got an image of a women dressed in white with a red cross on her hat. The six percent of nurses who are men suffer from this hefty gender stereotyping. Now, it’s obvious in this case that being a nurse doesn’t influence one’s gender–why should we assume that being a professor influences someone’s political orientation? More women decide to become nurses because it is traditionally more of woman’s career path. This is not to say that tradition is correct, just that it exists.

According to the study done by Neil Gross at the University of British Columbia, nine percent of professors consider themselves to be conservatives–and that doesn’t include those who feel that they’re slightly conservative, a group that falls under “moderate” in the study. Much like it isn’t a question of why so many nurses are women but why so many women become nurses, we have to ask: why do so many liberals become professors?

Dissecting the Liberal Leanings of Academia

The matter is, of course, more complex than people with a leftist leaning being told that they should be professors. According to the New York Times‘ article on the study:

The characteristics that define one’s political orientation are also at the fore of certain jobs, the sociologists reported. Nearly half of the political lopsidedness in academia can be traced to four characteristics that liberals in general, and professors in particular, share: advanced degrees; a nonconservative religious theology (which includes liberal Protestants and Jews, and the nonreligious); an expressed tolerance for controversial ideas; and a disparity between education and income.

I can definitely see the correlation between becoming a professor and being tolerant to controversial ideas. I’ve heard more than a few professors talk about the difficulty of grading papers fairly when faced with everything from bigotry to all-out anti-intellectualism. This isn’t the most interesting of the findings, though. That honor belongs to “a disparity between education and income” and exactly what that implies.

The phrase “return on investment” (ROI) comes to mind. It seems that, at least monetarily, up-and-coming professors are more willing to accept the low ROI of their chosen career path. We can assume, then, that there’s some less-than-quantitative reason that brings professors to the business of education. Years ago, when I first expressed my intent to become a professor, I was told by an acquaintance that it was because I was egocentric. Her belief was that professors simply like to hear themselves talk and force students to believe in the same things that they do. I, being at the time a card-carrying socialist and very concerned about altruistic behavior, took offense to this.

Today, I’m not quite as altruistic, and I’m definitely not a socialist. Whenever I feel myself thinking more along those lines of making a difference in society, though, the dreams of professorship come flooding back. I’d be willing to bet that it’s just this sort of thinking, this sense of sociological imagination, that brings more liberals to the field. It’s not that we’re drawn in by the idea of a bastion for lefties and pinkos, but rather that the idea of making a difference in someone else’s life, not in a company’s profit margin, is what brings more liberals to higher education. Although, it would be nice to have a few hundred students hanging on my every word because they’ll fail if they don’t.

At long last, women have surpassed men as the primary breadwinners of many households across America. It’s not an even split yet, which is a touch disheartening, but we’re making progress. Back in 1970, an unmarried man was financially better off than his knot-tying counterpart. No longer! The Pew Research Center has released numbers that show things have changed since the disco decade. Three groups have shown a roughly 60 percent jump in income: married men, married women, and unmarried women. Unmarried men, on the other hand, only saw 16 percent growth in household income.

Bridgin’ the Salary Gap: Number of Educated Women Growing

Perhaps even more noteworthy than the income jump, women with more education than their male spouses are also on the rise. In 1970, 28 percent of men had a higher-level education than their wives, with 20 percent of women beating out their husbands in the schooling category. Today, those numbers have flipped. 28 percent of women in 2007 reported having higher levels of educational attainment than their hubbies, with only 19 percent of husbands claiming the same over their wives.

Growing up, my mother always made more than my dad, something that continues to this day. This puts my parents into the 22 percent of U.S. households in which the woman brings home the majority of the bacon. In 1970, only 4 percent of households held this distinction–showing just how far we’ve come.

Tying the Knot: Sound Financial Advice for Men

I, on the other hand, am sitting in the lonely financial zone by the sea with all of the other unmarried men. Apparently, we’re in a mancession. Men have been losing jobs faster than women in our latest economic debacle, with men accounting for 80 percent of the job loss. Times are tough all around, I know–this isn’t a self-pity post. The mancession issue does, though, bring up the interesting point that it seems to financially behoove men to tie the knot. As the Pew Research Center phrases it:

From an economic perspective, these trends have contributed to a gender role reversal in the gains from marriage. In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage enhanced the economic status of women more than that of men. In recent decades, however, the economic gains associated with marriage have been greater for men than for women.

And a little later on…

For unmarried adults at each level of education … men’s household incomes fared worse than those of women. Unmarried women in 2007 had higher household incomes than their 1970 counterparts at each level of education. But unmarried men without any post-secondary education lost ground because their real earnings decreased and they did not have a wife’s wages to buffer that decline.

Working Women–Scientists, Even–Still Doing Twice the Housework?

Another study that’s come out recently highlights the interesting issue of why, exactly, women still choose to associate with men. The Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender and Research at Stanford University has found that female scientists do about twice as much housework than men. The study, Housework Is an Academic Issue by director Londa Schiebinger, found that female scientists do 54 percent of their core housework, like cooking, cleaning, and laundry. The results confused me at first–if women are doing 54 percent, wouldn’t that mean that men are doing 47? Things I didn’t consider: children and paid help. From the Stanford University article: “Schiebinger’s study shows that despite their lower salaries, female assistant professors outsource as much housework as male full professors.” I’ve got to ask, guys, what’s with doing only 28 percent of the housework?

Isn’t academia supposed to be this bastion of equality? Apparently, that belief is just a result of my gender-biased, rose-colored glasses.

We’ve all heard about it: print newspapers seem to be on their way out. Personally, I still get a lot of my news from the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, but I do so almost entirely online. (I say “almost” because I do pick up the tangible versions when I’m having breakfast over at my parents’.) Two years ago, when print newspapers started their big decline, The New York Times started looking into online education. At that point, they were just providing resources for non-credit courses at various college across the country. This spring, though, things are going to change.

Bring Me My Paper…and My New Online Certificate

In the spring of 2010, The New York Times Company will begin putting its stamp on online certificates in cooperation with four online colleges. Ball State is offering a certificate of emerging media journalism. Rosemont college is offering a certificate in entrepreneurship. Thomas Edison State College is co-sponsoring programs in both paralegal studies and nurse paralegal studies. Finally, the City University of New York will be offering a certificate in immigration law.

These certificate programs have quite a price and time range. That entrepreneurship certificate from Rosemont will cost students $1,950 a course–for six courses. The immigration law certificate program from CUNY comes in at four courses at $930 a piece. The two programs from Thomas Edison State College are both 45-week and $3,920. The Ball State program doesn’t have a price tag that I could find, but one of the courses, video storytelling, is actually starting on this coming Monday, at $235 if you want credit for it and $199 if you’re into education for education’s sake. In each of these situations, The New York Times Company will be sharing revenue from the programs with the colleges.

More Than Just a Stamp of Approval on Your Certificate

Why are these colleges partnering up with The New York Times when they already have plenty of established courses and degree programs? First, the stamp of approval is a nice touch that should draw some additional students. Second, and more importantly, The Times is providing professors and students with all the educational resources incorporated in its New York Times Knowledge Network. In the network students will find news archives going back to 1851; tools to match articles, graphs; and other content with lectures and notes for the class, and fully developed content modules for certain sections of the classes. The colleges themselves will still be taking care of the whole teaching thing–probably for the best, I’ve met some pretty interesting reporters.

Universities across America are making the news for all sorts of reasons. From green news to surprising finds in lavatories, things are hoppin’ on campus lately. Looks like we’re starting off 2010 with a bang!

Big News on Campus: 5 Universities Making Headlines

1. Blown Away at Southwestern. Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX has recently agreed to get all of its electricity from wind power. This isn’t just a publicity stunt, either. The university has signed up for a full 18 years of wind farming for electricity. Jake B. Schrum, president of Southwestern, hopes that this move “will be an inspiration to other universities to advance sustainability.” With 151 wind turbines generating between 0.7 and 2.3 megawatts a piece, this is quite a commitment to going green, something that college students go crazy for.
2. Art in the Toilet. David O’Connell, president of Catholic University in DC, found what could be a genuine Rembrandt. Where was this gem hiding? In the bathroom, of course. A far cry from flipping through magazines while on the John, this particular bathroom contained a single-piece art museum. The piece, which has yet to be officially verified as a Rembrandt, is signed twice by the great master. The question on everyone’s mind: how did it end up in the bathroom? Aspiring art students have a new standard to reach–be so good that when somebody finds your work hidden in a bathroom hundreds of years later, the media goes crazy.
3. The Look on Your Face. Terrorism is making its mark on our society; there’s no doubt about that. As anyone who’s been to an airport in the last couple of years can attest, these homeland security measures are getting a bit tiresome. Are we giving up our civil liberties? Muslims at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Services answer a resounding “yes”. The alma mater of a recent terror plot suspect, Tarek Mehanna, has banned all clothing that obscures the face, which is a big slap in the burqa for those doing so for religious reasons. The school’s spokesman, Michael Ratty, says that this new ban is unrelated to the terrorist incident, stating that they want to be able to identify anyone who steps foot on campus, but the timing is raising doubts. What’s next? A big, bushy beard ban?
4. Unionizing Online. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. is teaming up with the National Labor College and the Princeton Review to create a new online school for union members. The plan is a big one, hoping to provide affordable and accessible education and career retraining to the 11.5 million federation members and their families. This online college plans to begin offering classes this coming fall at the price of $100 to $150 per credit. They’re currently working on a survey to find out what kind of online degree programs would interest potential students.
5. Leading the Blind. In a recent deal they cut with the Justice Department, Arizona State University is ceasing its use of Kindles on campus. Why? Because, while these cool gadgets can read books aloud, Kindles lack a speech-enabled menu, which makes finding the read-aloud function nearly impossible for blind students. Until this functionality is enabled, ASU won’t be using the device after the spring semester. The issue is definitely moot. Accessibility is a huge issue; education shouldn’t be denied to anyone. On the other hand, regular books won’t read themselves to you at all, no matter how you push and prod them. It sounds like a pretty minor update to the device; I’m sure everything will work out–or a new gadget will jump in and steal the contract–either way.

For only being two weeks into 2010, there’s an awful lot going on in higher education. I have a feeling that we’re in for quite a year.

The future is upon us. My old shop class has been turned into a robotics lab. Things are changing, making some of us feel old, others of us feel out of touch, and still others left wondering, “Why didn’t they have that when I was in school?” Here’s a short list of…

5 Things I Wish Had Been Around When I Was in School

1. Video Game School. I’m not talking about the video game design degrees that have also cropped in the past few years. No, there are plenty of awesome new majors out there, but what prompted me to write about things I wish had been around when I was in school, was actually an institution of learning, where students are taught using video games. This is the second time that learning through video games has come up recently, and I couldn’t help myself. According to the article in Popular Science, “The school’s model draws on 30 years of research showing that people learn best when they’re in a social context that puts new knowledge to use. Kids learn more by, say, pretending to be Spartan spies gathering intel on Athens than by memorizing facts about ancient Greece.” It sounds great, but what happens when these kids start putting together a CV? Are they going to refer to the time that they leveled-up before their classmates?
2. Sci-fi Majors. Don’t get me wrong here. I loved my major. I met some of my best friends while in the program, and I don’t regret my choice at all. But… no one ever suggested nanotechnology or human computer interaction as a degree program when I signed up. New programs are popping up all over the country. Online colleges are typically a bit less set in their ways when it comes to starting up new programs, largely thanks to the lower overhead they enjoy without campuses. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a social media degree.
3. Social Networking Sites. Speaking of social media, feeling old, and being jealous… Social networking sites have given students just the double-edged sword they needed to be more productive than ever before and to waste more time than ever before. From study groups to lively academic discussions, there are a myriad educational uses for contemporary social media sites. Unfortunately, most high schoolers would rather take a quiz to find out what Twilight character they are. I’m not saying that I would have used these sites to their full potential when I was in high school–just that I had a degree before I had a Facebook page, so I didn’t have the chance to study with friends, share notes, or put off both of those things to level-up in Mafia Wars.
4. Wiki-what? When I was in school, we had to ask questions of our elderly relatives suffering from dementia to get wildly inaccurate information. No longer! User-generated encyclopedias to the rescue. Thanks to sites like Wikipedia, students the world over have an amazing, free resource for knowledge that easily lends itself to cut-and-paste plagiarism. Of course, any Web surfing student worth his or her salt knows that copying from Wikipedia is a surefire way to get caught–red-handed and in error. One thing that Wikipedia does exceptionally well, in this bloggers opinion anyway, is give a good idea of where you might actually find the information you’re seeking. Whether that’s through the citations or through the buzzwords you learn while sifting through an article, you’re sure to learn something. Quoth The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy: “…though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it was always reality that’s got it wrong.”
5. Smart Phones. Like little Hitchhikers’ Guides themselves, smart phones are hitting campuses across the country. Before we start down “There’s an App for That” road, a little trip down memory lane. In my early college years, I had myself a TI-86 graphing calculator. I filled that puppy’s 256 KB of memory to the brim with things I never would have dreamed of referring to as “apps”. I had triangle solvers, side-scrolling adventure games, and blood alcohol calculators. While, at the time, I did indeed also possess a cellular phone, only did three things well: make phone calls, send/receive text messages, and allow my parents to call me at inopportune moments. I still haven’t taken the smart phone plunge, and it’s not looking like I will anytime soon (it took me until last year to finally switch from my faithful portable CD player to an iPod). But enough about me, these devices are changing the way people do all sorts of stuff, from looking things up on Wikipedia while flying down the highway in the fast lane to having fake lightsaber duels–well, those and learning. Today’s students can electronically raise their hands in a lecture using an iPhone app; they can submit questions to the professor instantaneously; they can participate in polls. How we ever did those things using our bodies is something that I’ll never understand.

In all seriousness, though, the technology that we’ve got available today to help students learn–and professors teach–is absolutely incredible. By integrating these cutting-edge technologies into our schools, we’re allowing our students to stand on the shoulders of giants to reach higher than ever before.