Weekly Reader

Do You Need a Social Media Detox?
"We all know that social media can be a great tool for teachers, both in the classroom and for professional development purposes. Here at Edudemic, we encourage you to do things like use Twitter to build your PLN, connect with other educators on Facebook, pin great ideas on Pinterest, and more. But just as we often criticize our students for being unable to disconnect from their devices and actually look up at the world every now and again, we often suffer from the same affliction. So how do you know if you’re just ‘into it’ or if you’re overdoing it?" -- Jeff Dunn, Edudemic, 8/25/14

How Streaming Media Could Threaten the Mission of Libraries
"Digital music has made it easier to buy and share recordings. But try telling that to librarians.In March 2011, the University of Washington’s library tried to get a copy of a new recording of the Los Angeles Philharmonic playing a piece by Gustavo Dudamel, a popular composer, that the library could lend to students. But the recording was available only as a digital download, and Amazon and iTunes forbid renting out digital files." - Steve Kolowich, Wired Campus, 8/22/14

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: Raising, Communicating, and Enforcing Expectations in Online Courses
"As an instructor new to the online environment, I carefully reviewed the syllabus and the requirements for the course discussions and assignments and incorporated the following ideas from Myers-Wylie, Mangieri & Hardy: a “what you need to know” document that includes policies about late work, formatting, source citations, grading and feedback, and the dangers of plagiarism; a separate “assignments at a glance” calendar that details due dates and submission instructions; a “frequently asked questions” thread in the discussion forum; detailed scoring rubrics for each assignment, and example assignments" --Marie A. Revak, PhD, Faculty Focus, 8/22/14

Twitter Demystified: How To RT, MT, #FF And Fave Like A Pro
"Twitter has a problem: New users just don't know how to use it. To help newbies sign up and start tweeting, the company has made a number of recent changes. Redesigned profiles, a giant World Cup marketing push, and rejiggering the Home timeline are just part of Twitter's many attempts to make it friendlier for first-time users." -- Selena Larson, Read Write, 8/21/14

Why I'm Asking You Not to Use Laptops
"At a teaching workshop last week, a new faculty member asked me how I felt about students using laptops in the classroom. I replied, “I ask students not to use laptops in my classroom—unless a student tells me they need or strongly prefer a laptop to take notes (for any reason), in which case we make that work.” She looked relieved to have this endorsement of a learning zone with fewer electronic distractions." -- Anne Curzon, Lingua Franca, 8/25/14

Be more awesome!

Back to school lessons from Soul Pancake and the Kid President.

Weekly Reader

What the "death of the library" Means to the Future of Books
"Forbes contributor Tim Worstall wants us to close public libraries and buy everyone an Amazon Kindle with an unlimited subscription. "Why wouldn't we simply junk the physical libraries and purchase an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription for the entire country?" he asks. Worstall points to substantial savings on public funds, arguing that people would have access to a much larger collection of books through a Kindle Unlimited subscription than they could get through any public library and that the government would spend far less on a bulk subscription for all residents than it ever would on funding libraries." -- S.E. Smith, The Daily Dot, 8/18/14

How Teaching Online Made Me a Better Face-to-Face Instructor
"I have been teaching online courses for more than eight years now. I was one of the first at my previous institution to transition a face-to-face (F2F) course to a 100% online course and now, in addition to my F2F courses, I also teach for two fully online institutions. However, I still find many of my F2F colleagues reluctant to make that transition." --Tiffany M. Reiss, PhD, Faculty Focus, 8/15/14

That’s Not #Funny: Higher Ed’s Least Clever Twitter Accounts
"Earlier this month, a puckish Twitter user going by the handle @ProfJeffJarvis managed to provoke two actual professors into fits of outrage.Rurick Bradbury, the technology entrepreneur who runs the account, has been sending up the jargon of contemporary “thinkfluencers” since 2012, amassing 11,000 followers. He named the account after Jeff Jarvis, a writer and professor at the City University of New York’s journalism school, although the object of Mr. Bradbury’s satire is not necessarily Mr. Jarvis but a wider culture of new-media seers." -- Steve Kolowich, Wired Campus, 8/20/14

On Politeness as a Strategy
"Despite its fondness for elaborate rituals, higher education really isn’t all that polite. Every campus has its faculty or staff member(s) who are notoriously fractious and hard to work with, and, more generally, higher education doesn’t really select for “playing well with others.” (Indeed, if you Google “academic decorum,” a result on the first page includes musings on whether creativity and collegiality are truly compatible.) Higher education’s traditional employment practices can mean that people have the opportunity to nurse grudges over extended periods of time." -- Jason B. Jones , ProfHacker, 8/18/14

Weekly Reader

5 Things You Can do to Prepare for The New Semester
"A couple of weeks ago, Natalie wrote a post about wrapping up the summer. I know, I know. Say it isn’t so! Well, today I’d like move from summer to fall by point you to a handful of posts I wrote in the early ProfHacker days about getting ready for a new term. Not everyone is going to find all of this advice helpful, obviously, but we hope that there are at least a few things in these posts that can be of use to you." -- George Williams, ProfHacker, 8/13/14

Know the Vital Players in Your Career: You
"In more than 20 years of working in academe, I have seen innumerable people sabotage their own careers through terrible mistakes. A bad outcome is sometimes due to chance or forces beyond your control, but the single most important factor determining whether you achieve your career goals, including tenure and promotion, is you." -- David D. Perlmutter, Chronicle | Advice, 8/11/14

Google Rolls Out Free LMS Apps for Education
"Google's free learning management system, Google Classroom, is now in full release and is being made available today to all Apps for Education customers.The service had been in limited preview since May. During that time, according to Google Apps for Education Product Manager Zach Yeskel, more than 100,000 educators applied to be a part of the preview, and "tens of thousands" of those educations — from K-12 schools, colleges and universities — actually participated." -- David Nagel, Campus Technology, 8/12/14