Tag: education revolution

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 2/25

A few articles on technology, energy, and publishing that are worth a read and a brief comment.

Publishing

2/10 – Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View – You Want Advice? Don’t Ask Journalists – Journalism as a career path is going through savage turmoil. Want to write in-depth about an industry or topic? She suggests going to work in that industry and find some writing do to there. Then you can go back to journalism if a great opportunity surfaces or your new industry collapses.

Education

2/11 – Chronicle of Higher Education – Meet the New, Self-Appointed MOOC Accreditors:  Google and Instagram –

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More good stuff on the open frontiers – 12/12

There are wonderful things going on in the tech world. Also some not so great things in education and publishing. Here’s a few articles on the good and not-so-good stuff.

Technology

12/8 – Economist – Free the drones / Drones have immense commercial potential—so long as regulators don’t try to tether them to the ground

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Two humongous explosions in open frontiers I’m watching – space and education

Two massive explosions to discuss in the frontiers I’m watching. One in private space exploration and the other in academia at UNC-Chapel Hill…

Both explosions make me sad. Unfortunately, one of them was intentional.

Space

Progress is never in a straight march forward –

10/28 – Space.com – Private Orbital Sciences Rocket Explodes During Launch, NASA Cargo Lost – An Antares rocket, Cyngus spacecraft, and NASA’s cargo were lost due to an explosion 6 seconds after launch. Previous resupply lifts to the ISS by Orbital Science have been successful. Fire officials let the fires burn themselves out to reduce danger to cleanup crews of dealing with unburned propellant.

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More good stuff on the open frontiers – 10/25

A few of the articles on the open frontiers of energy, education, and technology that caught my interest.

Technology

10/6 – The Freeman – Who’s Afraid of the Workers’ Revolution – Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 10/25”

More good stuff on the downside of the open frontiers – 7/30

The wide open frontiers of publishing, technology, energy and space do have a down side. Not everything is rosy. Here’s a few of the articles on the unpleasant side of this amazing world we live in.

The closed energy frontier and a great quote on the role of faith in environmental issues

7/8 – The Feed – Germany Bows to Green Folly, Backs Off Fracking (link broken) – Germany closed down its nuclear reactions and increased coal-burning to offset. It relies on Russia for most of its natural gas. To those two dangerous issues, a proposal on the table will ban fracking for 7 years, locking in their hostage status with Russia as they increase their carbon output.

7/8 – Wall Street Journal – Germany’s Fracking Retreat – Continue reading “More good stuff on the downside of the open frontiers – 7/30”

For-profit college, Corinthian, pushed into closing by feds

I’ve been trying to sort out the situation with Corinthian Colleges. Under pressure from the Department of Education, the business agreed to sell off all its schools and close its doors. Here’s some articles and a few thoughts as I process.

7/4 – New York Times – College Group Run for Profit Looks to Close Or Sell Schools – Corinthian Colleges, which owns 100 different schools, will be winding down over the next six months.

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More good stuff on the open frontiers – 6/25

I read the news and see wide open frontiers in the worlds of publishing, technology, space, and energy. In terms of opportunities and growth, this reminds me of the wild west and homesteading days in the late 1800s.

Here’s a few of the articles that stretched my understanding of this amazing world we live in.

Perpetual Malthusian foolishness

4/25 – Wall Street Journal – The World’s Resources Aren’t Running Out – Ecologists worry that the world’s resources come in fixed amounts that will run out, but we have broken through such limits again and again – There are constant shouts of fright that we will run out of some resource in a decade or two. Maybe the day after tomorrow. Such predictions are as foolish as they are wrong. Matt Ridley points out that innovation, human creativity in other words, blasts through those limits over and over and over again.

Here is part of the blindness: Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 6/25”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 6/6

Just like the wild west and homesteading days in the late 1800s, the frontiers of publishing, technology and space are wide open. Here’s a few of the articles that stretched my understanding of this amazing world we live in.

Publishing

6/5 – Daily Beast – Amazon is NOT the Vladimir Putin of the Publishing World – Until now, I’ve not tried to sort out the spat between Amazon and Hachette. Who is Hachette, I hear you ask? They are one of the big publishing house. They are not an issue in my life because they would never, ever talk to a little bitty author with sub-microscopic level of sales like me.

The visible part of the dispute is Amazon posting a higher price on Hachette books, allegedly removing the ‘you can order weeks in advance’ button, shipping slower than arrive-first-thing-tomorrow-morning, and suggesting someone else on the ‘net may have a better price.

Article above explains Hachette wants you and me to pay more and Amazon wants you and me to pay less. What Amazon is doing as a negotiating strategy is offering books at the terms, availability, and prices Hachette wants.

The horrible, cruel, cut-throatedness of Amazon is amusingly described: Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 6/6”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 5/28

A few articles on technology, education, energy, and publishing that are worth a read. The frontier is wide open in those areas. Just a brief comment from me.

Innovation, inside the box

7/1/13 – Wharton – How LEGO Stopped Thinking Outside the Box and Innovated Inside the Brick – LEGO started losing money when their innovations needed a completely new set of parts for every innovation. They regained their 20%+ growth curve and 40% profit increase when they innovated new toys using existing pieces. Their outside-the-box innovation almost sank them. Staying inside the box returned them to growth and profits. Hat tip: Emproprise-BI: Structured innovation, via LEGO.

Lesson from my grad school classes: stay inside your competencies. LEGO makes bricks, not video games, TV shows, or bendable action figures. They thrive when they do what they do best.

Education

4/30 – Wall Street Journal – With Free Web Courses, Wharton Seeks Edge in Traditional Programs – Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 5/28”

More good stuff on the open frontiers in energy & education – 4-29

It’s a wide open frontier in energy & education: why shale unlikely to boom elsewhere, U.S. getting greener because of shale, & one stat to show why higher education is in economic distress.

Energy

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Revolution in higher ed is slow to arrive; still desperately needed

The Economist has a suggestion on how to reverse the current situation where some college degrees aren’t worth the time and effort: Making college cost less.

A few points from the lead article:

Thirty years ago there one college bureaucrat for two academic staff. Now the ratio is one support staff to one academic.

The tech revolution is working its way into academia, but the progress is very slow.

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More good stuff on the open frontiers – 3-20-14

A few articles on technology, energy, and publishing that are worth a read and a brief comment. Reusable first stages of rockets, several updates on Yutu (Chinese lunar rover), commercial drones, lightly armed drones, and another shale field with big potential.

Education

3/4 – The Feed – Home-Schooling for Higher Ed – Mentioned this idea before. How ‘bout hiring a college professor to privately tutor you for your first year of college. Read the article and think about it a few minutes. Intriguing idea, huh?

Space

3/13 – Technology Review – SpaceX Set to Launch the World’s First Reusable Booster – Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 3-20-14”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 3-3-14

More good stuff on the open frontiers: energy, space, education, publishing. Good info but only time to summarize in a paragraph:  

Education

2-9 – Grumpy Economist – Mooconomics – Superb article assessing current state of MOOCs from a professor who actually taught one. Most of the technology looks like it is still very much version 1.0. Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 3-3-14”

The education bubble and a few ideas to address it

Glenn Reynolds has an essay based on his new book.  See today’s Wall Street Journal – Degrees of Value: Making College Pay Off.  It’s the feature article in the Review section.

The full length book is at Amazon: The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. I’ll be waiting for the Kindle edition, available next week.

Merely one tidbit from the article to illustrate the problem and one idea for transforming eduction to reduce the cost and retain the experience.

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More good stuff on the open frontiers – 12-30-13

The change taking place around us is thrilling and confusing. The best way I have to put this in some sort of order for myself is to compare with the open frontier of the US west after our Civil War – The education, energy, space, and publishing worlds are each a new frontier and those frontiers are wide open.

A few articles to give some form to that open frontier:

Cyborg telemarketing

Three articles on the increasing use of computers making the pitch on cold call telemarketing:

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