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New York Times contributor: End the university as we know it
Mark Taylor, the chairman of Columbia’s religion department, has published a New York Times opinion piece that’s sure to cause a splash. “End the University as We Know It” argues that the university’s current incarnation is obsolete and irrelevant. Taylor advocates getting rid of the “division of labor” model of academic departments, in favor of…
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The World Digital Library shows off artifacts from around the world
UNESCO’s World Digital Library launches today. It’s a site where you can view artifacts from every UNESCO member country, or, in the words of the WDL, it “makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.” Right now, there’s a bit of…
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Zoom in and out of presentations with Prezi
Prezi is a presentation maker (still in beta) that avoids the standard linear slideshow model. Instead, you can zoom in and out of one big presentation, hopping between ideas however you want. Here’s an example of Prezi in action. I like the ability to escape the rigid structure of the PowerPoint presentation, and this seems…
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Make a quick timeline with Google News Timeline
Here’s a kind of fun new visualization tool from GoogleLabs. Google News Timeline lets you search for a topic (after you pick a category) and then arrays significant events on a timeline. I don’t really understand how the Wikipedia category works, and I wouldn’t trust the timeline to have every relevant piece of information, but,…
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Can Blackboard patent online learning?
A lot of schools use a “learning management system” called Blackboard to make course materials and registration functions available online. If you’ve ever used Blackboard, though, you know that it’s like a magic portal back to 1999. Blackboard’s design is truly hideous (frames everywhere!), the options for customizing course sites are dismal, and the interface…
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The deal with the Google Book Search settlement
Google Book Search has been in the news lately for a settlement it made with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over Google’s plan to scan books. You may have heard that people are pretty worked up about the settlement. It matters for academics because the settlement will in large part dictate…