Author Archives: Robin Abedon

Promoting Science, and Google, to Students

Google is better than ever, offering a new educational opportunity by getting into the science fair business.

(by Claire Cain Miller – NY Times)

Google is synonymous with “search engine,” and now, for students, it wants to be synonymous with “science.”

The company is getting into the science fair business with its first Google Science Fair, a global competition for teenagers that spans sciences as diverse as computer engineering, space exploration and medical technology.

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Twitter, Twitter, Burning Bright

This article from the New York Times make me reluctantly acknowledge that Twitter may be earning its place in the world of written communications. Imagine if Twitter could produce poetry in a genre akin to Haiku. And imagine if Twitter could be used to teach students to write a great sentence. That would be a great leap forward, as students undertake writing the good essay.

(by Randy Kennedy)

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Giving Literature a Virtual Life

A constant question in today’s world is: is there a practical value in a liberal arts education? At haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore, there is a merger of digital education and the humanities that allows the question to be answered with a resounding, “Yes.”

(by Patricia Cohen – New York Times)

BRYN MAWR, Pa. — Prof. Katherine Rowe’s blue-haired avatar was flying across a grassy landscape to a virtual three-dimensional re-creation of the Globe Theater, where some students from her introductory Shakespeare class at Bryn Mawr College had already gathered online. Their assignment was to create characters on the Web site Theatron3 and use them to block scenes from the gory revenge tragedy “Titus Andronicus,” to see how setting can heighten the drama.

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Teaching to the Text Message

This article from the New York Times make me reluctantly acknowledge that Twitter may be earning its place in the world of written communications. Imagine if Twitter could produce poetry in a genre akin to Haiku. And imagine if Twitter could be used to teach students to write a great sentence. That would be a great leap forward, as students undertake writing the good essay.

(by Andy Selsberg)

I’ve been teaching college freshmen to write the five-paragraph essay and its bully of a cousin, the research paper, for years. But these forms invite font-size manipulation, plagiarism and clichés. We need to set our sights not lower, but shorter.

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Public Universities Seek More Autonomy as Financing From States Shrinks

(by Tamar Lewin — New York Times)

With states providing a dwindling share of money for higher education, many states and public universities are rethinking their ties.

The public universities say that with less money from state coffers, they cannot afford the complicated web of state regulations governing areas like procurement and building, and that they need more flexibility to compete with private institutions.

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More College Graduates Take Public Service Jobs

(by Catherine Rampell — New York Times)

If Alison Sadock had finished college before the financial crisis, she probably would have done something corporate. Maybe a job in retail, or finance, or brand management at a big company — the kind of work her oldest sister, who graduated in the economically effervescent year of 2005, does at PepsiCo.

“You know, a normal job,” Ms. Sadock says.

But she graduated in a deep recession in the spring of 2009 when jobs were scarce. Instead of the merchandising career she had imagined, she landed in public service, working on behalf of America’s sickest children.

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