EduGeek Journal

So today Apple announced some new apps that will basically make it easier and cheaper (assuming you secure a loan to buy an iPad in the first place) to create, publish, and purchase eTextbooks. Or iTextbooks? I confess I haven’t tried the tools or watched the keynote yet – just read a few reports on [...]

Everything from email to libraries to blogs to universities will be declared dead. Again. For the 10th year in a row. People will continue to call for educational reform. Ignoring, of course, the fact that education is constantly reforming and changing and that there are people out there exploring new ideas and concepts. “Experts” will [...]

One of the FAQs I deal with in presentations on the future of education usually goes like this: “how can we do this and not get in trouble with FERPA?” I know that somehow the question is looking in the wrong direction, but I don’t always know exactly how to point that out. Jim Groom [...]

The New York Times has an interesting article on some of the new non-traditional routes to earn a college degree. Most of the ideas presented in the article are not new to readers of this blog.  But one statement stuck out to me: “Taking a course online, by yourself, is not the same as being [...]

News is starting to spread about the new Google+ Project.  While most people are comparing it to Facebook, I also look at it and see how it is taking on everything from Foursquare to you name the latest niche social network flavor site. It seems like they are going after it all: social networking, location [...]

Chegg.com definitely has a rocky history with the EduGeeks.  At least they got a Chief Executive after those questionable acts – so maybe that will turn the companies reputation around? Or maybe not.  Read this article on new features that Chegg.com has added.  Let me draw your attention to one of the last lines – [...]

All of this “un” stuff is getting a little out of hand.  Unlearning, unschooling, unteaching, unstudents, and now uncollege.  I guess we can blame Yoda for all of this.  When he first said that we have to unlearn what we have learned, no one felt like correcting him.  Technically, there is a word for unlearn [...]

Warning: This is an emotional response to yesterday’s announcement by Yahoo! that they are shutting down the insanely popular, absolutely essential, epitome of web 2.0 known as delicious.

Seems like Blackboard’s legal battle to enforce one of its patents is finally over.  Patent No. 6,988,138 basically made the claim that Blackboard invented the idea that a single course-management software user could have multiple roles in multiple classes. The patent was initially granted but soon overturned.  Blackboard vowed to fight. But so did the [...]

If you were to believe Bing, using the Internet is making us a bunch of babbling idiots that spew random words out of our mouths.  And you wonder why they aren’t making headway against Google? Last I checked, accusing your target audience of being dimwits wasn’t the best way to win them over as customers. [...]