Posts of the Week for July 12, 2011+

Ok so I’ve missed a few weeks, here’s where I play catch up.

• Colleges in Crisis: Disruptive change comes to American higher education: Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn write about disruption and higher education in the U.S. I think many of their points are relevant for my alma mater, UC Berkeley, but are much less so to where I work now, MIT. I would like to think some of the things we’re working on at MIT might lead to disruptive change, where we can show the value of disaggregation of teaching and the physical campus for an institution that will probably survive and thrive along the three axes of the “concurrent value propositions: knowledge creation (research), knowledge proliferation and learning (teaching), and preparation for life and careers.”
  

  Although some traditional universities have used online learning as a sustaining innovation—in effect disrupting their individual classes—almost none have used it to change their business model in any significant way. Whenever we have seen a disruptive innovation reinvent a sector, change has resulted from the joint action of a new technology and an accompanying new business model.
  …
  Our studies reveal that incumbents sometimes survive and thrive amid disruption—in every case, because they are able to create independent divisions, unfettered by their existing operations, which can use the disruption inside a new business model that reinvents what they do.

  (StartupDigest EdTech July 8, 2011)

• A Teacher-Built Technology Tool: Audrey Watters highlights LessonCast where teachers can share video teaching vignettes.

  (Via MindShift, July 5, 2011)

• What strong beliefs on culture for entrepreneurialism did Peter / Max / David have at PayPal?: Interesting set of observations by current/former PayPal’ers on the culture at PayPal. The ones I find interesting: radical transparency on metrics, vigorous debate, extreme bias to action, willingness to try, data driven decision making (do something and see what the data says, don’t just theorize).

  (StartupDigest, July 8, 2011)

• What happens when students create their own collaboration tools?: Three student developed tools to make up for problems in the tools their universities provided… Acceledge, Piazza and CourseKit.

  (Via GigaOM Collaboration, June 30, 2011)

• Paper.js — The Swiss Army Knife of Vector Graphics Scripting: David Ray and I had been discussing whether we could build math applets, originally authored in Java or Flash, that would work via HTML5. A javascript library like this would make some of that much easier.

  (StartupDigest Hacker, July 1, 2011)

• How to Actually Make Text Look Interesting: Minimalist Web Design: Interesting post on text design.

  (StartupDigest Hacker, July 1, 2011)

• Who owns Learner Progress Data?: Kristen Winkler asks poses a good question to ask as we move implementing more learner analytics.

  (StartupDigest EdTech, June 24, 2011)

• Useful Resources, Tools and Services for Web Designers: Title says it all. Wirify and Bones: A WordPress Development Theme are an interesting links.

  (StartupDigest Design, June 24, 2011)

• Meet the Stealthy Start-Up That Aims to Sharpen Focus of Entire Camera Industry: Choose your focus, after taking the photo! Sounds really cool.

  (StartupDigest Hacker, June 24, 2011)

• How to Become a Great Finisher: Heidi Halvorson suggests we think different about projects–focus on finishing tasks versus what we’ve accomplished already.
  

  [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][If] we focus on how far we have left to go (to-go thinking), motivation is not only sustained, it’s heightened. Fundamentally, this has to do with the way our brains are wired. To-go thinking helps us tune in to the presence of a discrepancy between where we are now and where we want to be. When the human brain detects a discrepancy, it reacts by throwing resources at it: attention, effort, deeper processing of information, and willpower.

  (StartupDigest Hacker, June 24, 2011)

• An Event Apart: What every web designer should know: Luke Wroblewski summarizes the keynote at An Event Apart, Atlanta 2011.

  (StartupDigest Design, June 17, 2011)

• How to Create a Captivating Presentation: As an extension from previous Posts of the Week, Mark McGuinness provides some guidelines. (I really need to start spending more time preparting presentations.)

  (StartupDigest Design, June 17, 2011)

• “Thank you. That was a lot of fun.”: Jeremy Mims relates a conversation and suggests a provocative take on why we should do what we do.
  

  And the next time someone asks me why I do what I do, I’ve got my answer.
  “It’s a lot of fun.”

  (StartupDigest, June 17, 2011)

[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]