technology
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This next installment begins with my personal intellectual curiosity about big data, offers resources for using the Contingent Faculty Index, and concludes with a practical how-to about extracting data from pdf tables into csv format (for use in Excel, SPSS, Google Fusion Tables, etc.) How to Get a Humanist-Sociologist Excited about Big Data Wendy Hsu,…
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On February 7th, I attended a panel on the future of K-12 education and the role of the liberal arts, particularly of Occidental, in creating that future. Since I’m teaching a course about the crisis in higher education from the perspective of threats to the liberal arts approach to knowledge, I wanted to share the…
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Check out this Google Doc where adjuncts across the US are compiling data on what they make, whether they have contracts, and whether they have benefits and retirement. Super creative use of digital media to gather important data cheaply and quickly. Kudos and thanks to Copy-Paste for building our knowledge of the labor conditions adjuncts…
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I recently took a new job as a consultant for social sciences in the department of Scholarship Technology at Occidental College. Part of the job involves helping faculty and students to incorporate new information technologies to advance their teaching, learning, and research and other part is to help students find the information they need by…
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The Guardian just ran an article on a study designed to understand the barriers that academics face in contributing their knowledge to Wikipedia. According to the article, academics are more inclined to use the crowd-sourced encyclopedia as a starting point of inquiry, but, like their students, they remain consumers rather than producers of the knowledge…
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When I was young, I used to make home recordings of pop songs by layering track after track on a karaoke machine. By the time I got the drums, bass, rhythm guitar, lead and piano, and vocals there was eerie bleed through on the cheap Memorex tapes I was using. It would take me an…
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Dean Meredith Wu on the significance of place and learning in the digital age: “Perhaps because I live with my family on the Lawn, this sense of place is always with me. But even if I lived elsewhere, I think the importance of place—our place—cannot be overemphasized. It is often said that with the digital…
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Today at my university, the Scholar’s Lab held a talk on Open Access with Madelyn Wessel, Associate General Counsel and Dr. Brian Pusser, Curry School of Education. The talk was in celebration of Open Access Week (Oct 18-24), and served as a follow up conversation to the open access resolution passed by our Faculty Senate.…
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There have been several articles relating the latest cognitive and neurological investigations into how multitasking affects the brain, from the NYT article to PBS’ Frontline special Digital Nation. As studies (as yet largely speculative) are translated into lay terms, we are told that multitasking is the message of interactive media – that the logic of…
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Today’s Congressional hearing on for-profit educational institutions is raising questions of finance, accountability, and technology. The most unethical for-profits, who Sen. Franken has dubbed “bad actors,” show us the worst-case scenario of our times. The bad actors have capitalized on trends of joblessness, educational expansion, on-line learning, and easy access to student loans. A lack…
jacob alden sargent 