London 2012 is already seeing fierce competition for meme supremacy. Memes, especially in the form of captioned images – or image macros – are an increasingly mainstream form by which people comment on current issues. US domination You will likely not find Olympic memes in the IOC’s strictly controlled official social media forums. But Facebook […] … learn more→

In their book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, American architect William McDonough and German chemist Michael Braungart conclude that waste and pollution are to be avoided entirely. “Pollution,” says McDonough, “is a symbol of design failure.” The challenge is to re-evaluate the materials we consume and the way we manufacture products […] … learn more→

New online learning models are bursting from startups and top universities, bridging the educational divide. We are in the midst of a revolution that will bring high-quality education to hundreds of millions of people who have never had access to this level of learning before. These tools will reach those in developing cities and countries […] … learn more→

Although it is often said that the academy moves slowly, very slowly, I never really thought about myself as a \”slow mover\” with regard to pedagogy in the classroom. But when the idea of using social media (e.g., Facebook) as part of my face-to-face classes was suggested to me about two years ago, I found […] … learn more→

Myth #1 – We Understand Blackboard: I\’m 100% certain that half of the things that I think and write about Blackboard are wrong, I\’m just not sure which half. Blackboard is a hard company to \”get\” because education is such a diverse business, technology moves so quickly, and Blackboard contains so many people, products and […] … learn more→

A few years ago one of my daughters, who had not yet fully claimed her feminist card, told me that if I were a good parent, I would be there everyday after school to greet them with a snack and homework help instead of being at work. Outwardly I laughed at her ridiculous mid-century ideas […] … learn more→

When I started blogging I\’d intended it to be a small collection of narratives exploring Massive Open Online Courses from the inside. I was engaged in the almost year-long #change11 MOOC, and I wanted to explore how the experience intersected with – and departed from – my teaching and learning within university walls. I thought […] … learn more→

As striking as it is, the illusion of depth now routinely offered by 3-D movies is a paltry facsimile of a true three-dimensional visual experience. In the real world, as you move around an object, your perspective on it changes. But in a movie theater showing a 3-D movie, everyone in the audience has the […] … learn more→

In the broad brush strokes used by the international media to depict the Middle East, a lot of the detail gets lost. And like a giant mosaic, an effect of this is that we tend to see only the same big patterns and be unaware of the individual pieces making up the design. One of […] … learn more→

New polls frequently announce that a significant proportion of the population is concerned about an issue or willing to sacrifice for a cause, from environmental sustainability to Third World debt. These polls create the sense that there is a public mandate for action on these issues – one that businesses and governments need to follow. […] … learn more→