Posts related to: Personal

Hello Taiwan

May 14, 2008 | , , , ,

Arrived at Taipei airport and got through immigration and customs quite quickly. I was received at the airport by Waiway Lin, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Curriculum and Instruction at the National Taipei University of Education. It appears that she...

Goodbye Malaysia, welcome Taiwan

May 13, 2008 | , , ,

So my stay in Malaysia comes to an end. I haven’t had either had time or internet access to be able to update the blog the last few days. So briefly here goes… The day after the presentation (the 13th) I had a meeting with Professors Ramayah, Rozinah, and Bala at USM...

Kuala Lumpur & Penang

May 11, 2008 | , , , ,

I love Malaysia. I love its greenery, its up and down hilly landscape, the colors and designs of the houses, and yes the food. Malaysians are food crazy. There are food stalls everywhere and the range and variety of food available is just amazing. My first night here...

Arriving in Malaysia

May 9, 2008 | , ,

I am currently in Kuala Lumpur, arrived here last night, after spending a night at Delhi. I stayed with my old high-school buddy (Hartosh) and his wife, Paminder. We spent a nice evening chatting and catching up – since a lot had happened since we had last met, not...

Multi-national TPACK tour

May 7, 2008 | , , , , ,

I leave tomorrow (actually today, given that it is past midnight as I write this) on a multi-national TPACK tour. I touch 4 countries in around 2 weeks!! I am taking a non-stop flight from Newark NJ to New Delhi, for the first time ever. It is a 15 hour flight and I...

ZIPskinny

May 4, 2008 | , , ,

Just found out about this website www.zipskinny.com, a great example of how the web makes information easily available. This website allows you to enter your US zip code, and see US Census data and comparisons with neighboring ZIP codes (or other ZIP codes, upto to 20...

Rethinking Google Ranking

May 2, 2008 | ,

Matt Koehler suggested that my reasoning in a previous post (Google ranking, a self-defeating approach) criticizing his attempt at raising his Google ranking was mistaken. According to him, providing links to other Koehlers in the world actually helps raise his...

France Sings for USA

May 1, 2008 | , , , , , ,

In a previous post I talked about Pangea Day and the Imagine anthem series, where people from one country sing the national anthem of another. Here's another one, France sings for the USA. Enjoy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T60NaNPiMg[/youtube]

MSU’s Ed Psych ranked #1

Apr 30, 2008 | , ,

Academic Analytics (academicanalytics.com) is a subscriber service that ranks specific PhD programs nationwide on a broad number of domains based on faculty productivity. The index takes account, for an academic year, of faculty program level productivity measures...

Google ranking, a self defeating approach

Apr 29, 2008 | , ,

Matt Koehler has an interesting post (Keeping track of the Koehlers) about his attempts to rise in Google's rankings for searches on his last name. In the last few months he seems to have had some success judging that he has moved from page 25 to somewhere in the 3-4...

@ Purdue

Apr 24, 2008 | , , , , , ,

Sending this note from Purdue University where I am visiting the School of Engineering Education. Had a great dinner last night with Karl Smith (whom I am catching up with after a couple of years) and Johannes Strobel. Karl picked me up this morning and drove me over...

Laptops in the classroom

Apr 17, 2008 | , , , ,

Ira Socol has a great post on his blog (SpEdChange) titled Humiliation and the modern professor, in which he speaks to the issue of students bringing laptops to the classroom. Some professors have banned laptops from their classes (I personally know a couple who would...

Cost of living

Apr 15, 2008 | , ,

Being alive costs taxpayers trillions of dollars a year First time research reveals staggering annual taxpayer cost for being alive East Lansing, MI, April 15: In first-ever research, a new report quantifies a minimum 3 trillion annual taxpayer cost from citizens...

Spring break 2008

Apr 12, 2008 | , , ,

Our first family vacation in over three years! New Jersey to visit relatives, Delaware to visit friends, and New York city for the big city excitement! Hectic but great fun. I took over 500 photographs, got back home and deleted around 200 of them - the remaining are...

Googling me…

Apr 10, 2008 | , ,

I wish I had a Googleganger (also known as a Google twin), but with a name like mine, I doubt that is going to happen anytime soon.

Dances for Cause, photographs

Apr 1, 2008 | , , ,

This past Saturday the Okemos High School auditorium hosted Dances for Cause, a fund-raiser for Habitat for Humanity. My daughter, Shreya, performed a dance with her dance group (the same dance they had performed for Milap 2008). Also on the program were dances from...

You have a life?

Mar 20, 2008 | , , ,

Story in the NYTimes (forwarded to me by Leigh) titled: Professor as an open book, about how "professors of all ranks and disciplines are revealing such information on public, national platforms: blogs, Web pages, social networking sites, even campus television." Of...

Cosmetic changes

Mar 19, 2008 | , ,

I have made some cosmetic changes to the way the blog looks. The sidebars are now light blue, to differentiate them from the middle (content heavy) column. Once I did this I realized that I did not need that boxy border around the middle column, and pouf, it was gone....

Arthur C. Clarke, RIP

Mar 19, 2008 | , ,

Arthur C. Clarke, popularizer of science and science fiction writer died today. He was 90. Clarke was one of my favorite authors growing up though I haven't read him in a while. I still remember the thrill I felt when I read the last sentence of "Rendezvous with Rama"...

Undo this

Mar 18, 2008 | , ,

Wouldn't it be great if life came with an undo key-stroke-combination? Just a thought I threw out today during a meeting which led to a discussion of how this could be a great movie idea. Seems intriguing...

Academic novels

Mar 17, 2008 | , ,

I have been reading Moo by Jane Smiley, off and on for a while now. It is a satire of academia set in a fictional Mid-western university called Moo U. It has been suggested that Moo U is a stand in for Iowa State, an university I know well since Smita went to school...

The loneliness of a long distance migrant

Mar 17, 2008 | ,

“On bad days, I do feel lonely in a way that I can’t explain,” so says Dilip Ratha, a World Bank economist who studies the economics of migration. The article, a profile of Ratha's life and work, is worth a read, but what really stood out for me was the above quote,...