"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
I just finished reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book (2024) Nexus (and Audrey Watters would definitely like the cover!). Harari challenged both optimistic and pessimistic views of AI’s impact on society, arguing that treating information technology as either purely beneficial or destructive misses the unprecedented nature of our current moment. Through historical analysis from Stone Age… Read more Are We Still the United States?
Retirement has brought with it the luxury of time devoted to reading. While I enjoy both science fiction and mysteries, I also read history and non-fiction books as well. I am currently reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yural Noah Harari (2014). Although it has been out a decade, I still find it… Read more Impactful Books
I just saw an insightful tweet from Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI): The events of the past week, culminating in the horrific insurrection of the pro-Trump mob on the U.S. Capital, have been in my thoughts as I prepared to once again teach my Creighton doctoral course on Technology and Leadership. To click this class off,… Read more Optimism and Pessimism in a Bipolar World
Yesterday, Goldie Blumenstyk of the Chronicle of Higher Education shared a link in her weekly newsletter to The Future of Work in America, a report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). The future of work has been a topic of interest to me for the past decade, particularly in reference to the doctoral courses in… Read more Opportunities in The Future of Work
In my post last Saturday on eLearning Myths a Decade Later, Sue Waters in Australia asked a good question: While I first taught online at the University of Nebraska in 1995 (pre-LMS’s), I have been teaching continuously online since 2001. So I thought I would look back 18 years and 8 years, and compare my… Read more Changes in Two Decades of Online Teaching
Last year, I was asked to develop a new course for a new Certificate in Catholic School Leadership. My course is the middle course in a three-course program, and the pilot group started my course this week. Given that the course focuses on technology, communication, and school improvement, I decided to have my students blog… Read more New Class New Perspectives
Last week, I posted about Centers For Teaching (CFT’s) as Centers for Excellence, inspired by my current reading of Tom Peters’ new book The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work that Wows and Jobs that Last. As I noted, I have been reading Peters since his original 1982 bestseller that he co-wrote with… Read more CFT’s and Lifelong Learning
Someone who always gets me thinking is danah boyd. Her post “Toward Accountability: Data, Fairness, Algorithms, Consequences” is the latest to prod my brain! Her post raises the issue of how data collection and data manipulation are not neutral activities…that the decision to collect or not collect and the thought process behind the analysis of… Read more Value Added versus Liability Sponge
Over the weekend, I continued reading Tom Friedman’s new book, Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. I have to admit that the second section on accelerations – technologies, globalizations, and ecologies – scared the crap out of me! In a methodical manner, Friedman laid out his… Read more Got My Attention
Audrey Watters this week posted a talk she gave at Coventry University earlier this year entitled “The Top Ed-Tech Trends (Aren’t ‘Tech’).” Good talk by someone I like to follow in my feeds…primarily because she is the contrary voice I sometimes need to hear. Now I am trying to balance the optimism of Friedman (and… Read more Balancing Optimism with Pragmatism