Education & Scholarship

Decades ago, PhDs were given our sparsely, faculty were seen as isolated figures in their white towers of academia and journals were published on paper. Some of those things have changed. PhDs are still given our sparingly, but it is something that is more attainable to many (or at least to some) and faculty are still diong their research. However, the research being done by faculty is not purely being published injournals being printed on paper. There are definite changes happening! Many of the researchers are involved in varying types of research that don't fit into the traditional view of research as defined decades ago. Definitions from decades ago should not be kept purely for the sake of keeping a rigid structure in place that can be understood. Honestly, for a new generation of up and coming scholars, it can't.  APA updates different aspects of their formatting to move away from the age of typewriters... sometimes. They aren't perfect, but with APA 7, there iis no ne

We go through life often looking at Google to lead us in the way we should go. Which is the best blender on the market? What is it that I can do for this ailment? Which program is the best for me? Well, there is an issue with this mindset. The internet can give you facts, but cannot give you the answers you are seeking. These answers can only be found in using the information collected with yoru knowledge of your values.  The article I read this week was "I Won't Let You Pay Me for My Open Source" by David Heinemeier Hansson and it spoke particularly of the viewpoints of RAILS vs.  Microsoft pointed out that thee were similarities in their background, but that they are diametrically opposed on a variety of topics because of their choices and their expectations of others. The author of this article has put forth software into the world as open-sourced and hopes that people will contribute their work to the public as well. Sharing the work does not mean that they need to b

  As I am preparing to graduate iwth my master’s degree, I wonder what I am going to do with the next few years of my life. I loved the research aspect of being in school, and yet, I will no longer have access to the resources that I did when I was affiliated with a large university. How then am I to continue learning and growing more in my chosen research area? Apparently, I’m not necessarily supposed to be able to do that.This feels like another method of gatekeeping, ensuring that those who are not affiliated with large universities and have access to all of the latest journals in their fields cannot be the ones who are doing the research that needs to be done. After all, if I as a designer or educational technologist can’t afford to pay $40 per article for the dozens of articles that I would want to be able to look at in order to do a literature review, how can I continue to contribute? You also cannot really contribute unless you are aware of what's happening in the field arou

 The fragmented educator 2.0: Social n THis week I read over a portion of a professor’s tenure packet and another article by Kimmons and Veletsianos (2014) entitled, “The fragmented educator 2.0: Social networking sites, acceptable identity fragments, and the identity constellation.” Looking at the tenure packet was interesting because of the small amount of the document that was dedicated to a primary focus of his research agenda. This professor works primarily on open educational resources, and yet, it is not something that fits within the metrics that are an important part of the current academic schema. And yet, if you were to compare the impact of this professor to the impact of scholars who are active on Twitter and their blogs, it is important to realize where the bigger impact can be made. I don’t mean to be condescending to my professors. I’ve had so many amazing professors throughout my academic career, but there's a difference between the impact of those who are writing