Phoenix rising

by | Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Mark Ambinder at the Politics blog at the Atlantic

President Obama plans to name Howard A. Schmidt, a veteran cyber security warrior with experience at senior levels of government and industry, to fill a long-anticipated cyber coordinator position at the National Security Council, administration officials and outside consultants confirmed.

As far as one can see Mr. Schmidt is well qualified for this position, having served both in industry and in the government in the past. However, one fact about his background caught my attention and prompted this note. In describing his qualifications Ambinder wrote

Schmidt has credentials unique to the job: he received his masters in organizational management from the University of Phoenix, a (fully accredited and esteem) mostly online university.

Apart from the typo on esteem, what struck me was this positive mention of the University of Phoenix, something I often do not see or hear. Over where I live and breathe, the good old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar university, the University of Phoenix is not regarded as having much esteem. I have argued here and elsewhere that this will soon change. That most of us at the “traditional” university have underestimated just how powerful the forces of change are. Online learning (and for profit universities) are here to stay and maybe even take over universities as we know them.

Reading about Mr. Schmidt’s credentials just reminded me just how quickly this change is happening.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

TPACK Newsletter, #6 Jan-Feb, 2010

TPACK Newsletter, Issue #6, January/February 2010 Welcome to the sixth edition of the TPACK Newsletter, with 642 subscribers (representing a 13% increase during the past 2.5 months), now appearing twice each fall and spring semester. If you are not sure what TPACK is,...

Neuroscience & Creativity: New article

Neuroscience & Creativity: New article

The next article in our series Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century for the journal TechTrends was just published.This article features an interview with Dr. Arne Dietrich, professor of neuroscience at the American University...

Quest 2 Learn conference in Bangalore & more

Quest 2 Learn conference in Bangalore & more

I just got back from a lovely few days in Bangalore. I was there to participate in the Quest 2 Learn Annual Summit organized by the Quest Alliance. Convened at the  National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), on the campus of the Indian Institute of...

APA & Torture

I had written previously (here and here) about the American Psychological Association's long connection with torture and other coercive information gathering techniques. I am still bothered by it. Today's NYTimes has a op-ed by Stanley Fish (titled Psychology and...

Symmetry: new ambigram

I love the idea of self-reference, words or sentences that refer to themselves in some manner or another. For instance consider the sentence, This is a sentence. This is an example of a relatively benign self-referential sentence. Other examples may not be less...

Avoid cliche’s like the plague

Just came across this great comment in an article titled Let us now praise the cliche This Article "Let us now praise...the cliche" made me mad as a wet hen. The Article-Writer thinks cliches are the best thing since sliced bread. Well, I hate to take the wind out of...

New media, new genres

There is an interesting article in today's NYTimes titled Content and its discontents by Virginia Heffernan. In this article she makes the argument the new digital, online media require new ways of representing information, new ways of thinking about how ideas are...

What do they know? Video projects on understanding

In my summer classes I have the participants complete a video assignment on understanding. This year as always my students worked in groups over a week-and-a-half to select their topics, develop interview protocols, video tape people as they answered their questions,...

Aesthetics & STEM education: A new framework

Aesthetics & STEM education: A new framework

I have always been intrigued by the nature and role of the aesthetic experience in learning. A few members of the Deep-Play research group have been exploring this issue for a while (for instance we have written on, why science teachers should care about beauty in...

1 Comment

  1. Andy

    I agree Punya… what a degree “is” is quickly changing, must change. The higher ed bureaucracy hasn’t shown, in my opinion, the ability to adapt quickly enough in this rapidly changing environment/economy (if it had, Phoenix would have died out by now) — which is sad because the Academy used to be a prominent agent of change, I think.

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *