The link is here. Should be of particular interest for our social complexity folks here at Krasnow. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan…
Category: Facebook
More on ditching Blackboard and powerpoint in teaching…
At least one of my colleagues here at Krasnow teaches using Facebook. I’m guessing he uses some combination of Facebook “pages” and “groups” and I’m hoping he set up another professional identity/login separate from his personal one.
Another colleague, she teaches in the Boston area, mentioned dropping the canned powerpoint slides that come with adopting a textbook these days.
Still other colleagues use Apple’s Wiki Server on in-house machines.
The key to all of these ideas is that the learners and teachers are able to leverage the collaborative power of the Net without falling prey to having the learning process (think learning management systems) absorb all the energy that should go into the class subject matter….this is especially true with regards to neuroscience, since the subject matter can be quite technical.
So here’s a bleg for Advanced Study readers: how would you use what’s free on the Cloud to teach undergraduates science?
Ken Auletta’s New Yorker piece on Sheryl Sandberg
At once both insightful into Silicon Valley culture and the human dynamo named Sheryl Sandberg. It’s here.
Long-form journalism at its very best.
My question: why doesn’t she insist on being a Facebook Board member?
Social Network Research gets Complicated
The link from today’s Chronicle on-line is here. The problem in a nutshell is making use of social network data (like Facebook) in a way that truly anonymizes the data. In the case of data that appears to come from Harvard University, that proved impossible.
Clearly, at Krasnow, we are interested in this kind of data. What can we do to use it in a responsible manner?
Academics use of social networking tools
The Chronicle has an interesting piece here–Apparently a study conducted by the Ciber group at University College, London. The humanities and social sciences appear to be in the vanguard. Peer review is questioned and the article raises the implicit question of what journals have to offer.
As a journal editor, I’d say quite a lot. There is enormous value-added in quality control (peer review). The curation of articles with their data provides an organized way to evaluate scientific theories as they come into “fashion”.
That said, the new tools of the Net, are no doubt facilitating the informal, collaborative process of science. And I’d add to that science training.
A professor can reach out to a student over Facebook about an assignment in a way that’s fairly difficult to ignore.
Discoverers and Discoveries 