Topic: Technology

The Air We Breathe

February 6, 2015
Filed under Ethics, History, Humanities, Religious Studies, Spirituality, Technology, Theology

The Environment and Shared Human Responsibility (Communal Guilt Part 6 of 7)

The polar caps are melting. Extreme weather events occur with greater frequency. Air quality has reached abysmal levels in major urban areas worldwide. Global consumption vastly outstrips the replenishment of natural resources. Many individuals respond to these realities with denial, cynicism, and a sense of futility. Rather than defining terms and demonstrating premises, this post will take these facts as givens; those seeking to contest them had best look elsewhere.

As urgently as any current crisis and with great clarity, the state of the environment demonstrates both the at times collective nature of guilt and the shared nature of human responsibility. In fact, to a greater extent than other issues explored thus far in this series, the environment illustrates with particular clarity a general principle governing guilt and responsibility: distribution is uneven. While guilt and responsibility may transcend individuals, some individuals are implicated more directly and fully than others.

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Queuing Up Your Thoughts

October 21, 2014
Filed under Technology, Writing

Hootsuite for Academic Bloggers

If you blog and you are an academic, like I do, you probably go through periods of feast and famine in terms of your time for producing your online writing. If only there were a way for you to store up a wealth of writing and automate its dispersal online!

That is the precise thing that Hootsuite is designed to do. The social media manager allows you to schedule tweets, facebook posts, and just about anything else you might need. When you link your Hootsuite account to your Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media accounts, Hootsuite can coordinate and schedule all of your posts on those accounts.

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Steve Jobs Made the World a Worse Place

September 26, 2014
Filed under Advice for Undergraduates, Humanities, Spirituality, Technology, The Liberal Arts

Simone Weil’s Blasphemy Against Popular Culture

When Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, there were numerous public outpourings of grief. Makeshift shrines dotted the globe. There is no doubt that his less-is-more technological aesthetic improved the technological and aesthetic experience of many people. When his engineers presented plans for a mouse with three buttons, he insisted that they pare them down to one. When other operating systems required users to memorize arcane codes to accomplish the most rudimentary tasks, he led a team to create a simple and visually engaging interface that has remained the industry standard. After his company seemed to be yesterday’s news and the mobile phone industry seemed immune to substantial innovation, he masterminded an entire genre of devices as powerful and versatile as they are compact. In short, Steve Jobs led his company to develop hardware that was beautiful and easy to use.

This is a bad thing. Here is why. We already live in an era defined by a shortage of time and an excess of distraction. Those of us affluent enough to own an iSomething – and yes, relative to the standards of the rest of the world, this is a mark of affluence – face an even greater degree of temptation. When you feel happy, it may be more tempting to share that information rather than embrace the fullness of that moment and that feeling, as the recent story of the distracted driver and ensuing car wreck illustrate.

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Socratic vs. Confucian Pedagogy

October 27, 2013
Filed under Teaching, Technology

Teaching like the Sages in the Classroom and Online

A friend of mine teaching English in China once shared the insight, no doubt unoriginal, that Socrates serves as the paradigmatic educator in the West, whereas Confucius serves that role in the East. Having long studied and taught Socrates, I have finally studied and taught Confucius. I spent all of my upbringing and most of my young adulthood in the classroom as a student. I have spent the better part of my professional life in the classroom as an educator. I am ready to weigh the relative strengths and weaknesses of both models, as well as the counterfeits of each.

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Network with Grace

July 25, 2013
Filed under Higher Education, Technology

LinkedIn Strategies for Academics

For business professionals, there is one premier place online to post one’s resume and to  look for jobs: LinkedIn. Indeed, those are the primary purposes of the professional social networking site. With our lengthy CVs and specialized job listings elsewhere, we academics have no need for such services. Nonetheless, both junior and established scholars have compelling reasons to use LinkedIn.

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Free Agents, Saints, and Citizens

February 5, 2013
Filed under Higher Education, Humanities, Technology, The Liberal Arts

Why Conservatives Should Embrace the Liberal Arts

Whether or not I am a conservative is irrelevant. In economic, religious, and political terms, there is a conservative argument to be made for the liberal arts and I am going to make it.

Just as fiscal, small-government conservatives hope, the liberal arts accommodate the variability of the free market. Just as religious conservatives of various stripes desire, the liberal arts empower individuals to care for their neighbors. And just as political conservatives profess, the liberal arts have the potential to produce the ruggedly independent citizens our nation needs.

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Reading the Writing on the Electronic Wall

January 14, 2013
Filed under Higher Education, Teaching, Technology

Traditional American Higher Education Must Transform or Perish… But There is Hope

Some are sounding the death knells of traditional undergraduate education in the U.S.  Nathan Harden of The American Interest writes: “If a faster, cheaper way of sharing information emerges, history shows us that it will quickly supplant what came before. People will not continue to pay tens of thousands of dollars for what technology allows them to get for free.” Harden further asserts that Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) will soon render traditional education “obsolete.” If they can provide education cheaper and more convenient, how couldn’t they?

Make no mistake. MOOCs represent an incredible opportunity. Higher education has become unsustainably expensive for the average middle class student. MOOCs will hopefully expand access to education and drive down costs. As Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust points out, they are a grand experiment, with opportunities for professors to rethink how they approach education, including education in the classroom (see Maria Bartiromo’s interview with her on CNBC).

But Harden and likeminded harbingers of the end-of-education-as-we-know-it  risk conflating education with information. Ironically, in his above-cited article, Harden himself presents  the crux of the matter without integrating it into his argument: “Just as information is not the same as knowledge, and auto-access is not necessarily auto-didactics, so taking a bunch of random courses does not a coherent university education make.”

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Morpheus vs. the Borg

December 21, 2012
Filed under Higher Education, Teaching, Technology

Helping our Students Unplug so They Can Upgrade their Minds and Renew their Humanity

The average American high school or college student is adept at using technology.  However, many seem unable to refrain from using technology. As educators, it is our duty to provide our students with a basic set of skills: critical thinking; clear communication, both in print and in speech; and careful reading and processing of information, discerning its validity. In the process, we should cultivate their character, that they may develop greater wisdom, moral integrity, patience, empathy, and compassion in a world with a shortage of these virtues.

While technology does provide some compelling avenues for us to train students’ core intellectual skills, it does virtually nothing to enhance character development. We must encourage our students to unplug, so that they can upgrade their minds and renew their humanity. We should not discard technology; it provides useful tools. But we must teach our students that it is not the only tool and not always the best.

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In Praise of Office Hours

November 8, 2012
Filed under Teaching, Technology, Writing

There is no substitute for individual meetings with students. This semester I teach three sections of an all-freshmen introductory philosophy/theology course. My students wrote passable papers last year, when I taught the course under similar circumstances , but I realized that most of them consistently made the same mistakes: lack of cohesion; a tendency to summarize the texts rather than use them to illustrate points in their own arguments (something which I am especially keen to point out, knowing that I, too, struggle with this in my own writing); and, generally, lack of a clear and well-structured plan.

This semester, I retained the same the final paper assignment. My standards of grading have not lessened. I have the same high expectations for the finished product; but I have taken preventative measures for helping the students meet them. I told them the common pitfalls, both in print and as a class; I required them to produce an outline and draft of their thesis statement a week in advance of the paper’s deadline; and I required each of them to meet with me in person to discuss his or her outline.

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Work as Play

June 16, 2011
Filed under Research, Teaching, Technology

Piaget was right. We learn best when we are having fun. This was true when we were children and it remains true for us as adults. There is no reason why we as college educators cannot blur the line between work and play in a number of areas.

1. In research. I resolve to daydream of what my next projects might be and to pursue what intrigues and interests me the most. This will no doubt involve  stepping outside of my comfort zone and into uncharted territory, perhaps resulting in more hours of work, but with a liberating freshness.

2. In the assignments we create. I believe in the importance of tests and papers; but I know that not all tests and paper assignments are created equal. I have no secret formula for making them fun and I do not suggest that fun equals easy; but I know I must try. I will seek to integrate simulations, mock-trials, dramatic and visually engaging presentations, and online discussions into students’ coursework, for these have the potential to jar them from  complacency and draw them into the epic journey of self-discovery that the study of religion and history should be.

3. In the example we set for our students. I know that if I am bored, they are bored; but if I am enthralled with our process of learning together and with the subject matter, I have hope that some of them, at least, may catch what I’ve got. If only I knew more surefire ways of being infectious with enthusiasm, besides simply having it. Perhaps the best way is for me to find ways to play within the work I am already doing.