Twitter In Education

Higher education colleges and universities use Twitter in different ways. Some are very engaged, some are not. Some see it as a great resource and others as a great bane. Twitter is great and an intriguing tool because it allows you to engage your followers in a way that you cannot do via email or a blog. Whether you update via text message or use a client for your phone, being able to update the world with what you’re doing anywhere in the world anytime is pretty crazy. It is real time, always changing and very participatory.

Higher education institutions can use it as a very valuable resource, such as the recruitment department can use it to monitor accounts and answer questions and re-post headlines. Institutions can help its audience – be it prospective students or alumnus to get connected.  They can ask them to come to an event or share with them a YouTube video or blog post they’d be interested in. They can ask for their help and feedback, and help them feel part of the loop and still part of the campus, even if they graduated 30 years ago. 

Presley University uses it Twitter account to market to students. It uses the Twitter’s text messaging powers to accomplish this. It helps the University to get new students to use Twitter without ever knowing they are using Twitter.  This was adapted from Brad Ward idea which is:

 

Once you have a Twitter account, and you’re feeding it content using a service like TwitterFeed or by posting at Twitter.com, you advertise to students that if they text follow youraccountname to a certain number they will get updates on their phone. That’s it. Not once have you mentioned you are using Twitter to send updates.

 

Presley University started doing this last fall for people to get athletics updates on their phones and a decent number of people signed up. Now, when a new story is posted by our athletics staff, followers of that account get a text message with a headline or the score of a contest. The people getting the SMS messages don’t need to know what Twitter is or how it works, they just get the updates as regular texts. Don’t forget – after all that setup – you still have a regular Twitter feed you can promote and people can follow. It’s a win-win.

 

Presley University plans to initiate this for incoming students also as part of its orientation program. For this they have set up a Twitter account for our orientation team and have also trained them in how to post updates from the web as well as from their phones as they are out and about during the program.

 

Now that the Presley University and any other university has set up the team and the account, it’s time to start telling the students about it.

 

 

Traditional Essay Writing Vs Blogging

Presley University teachers ask their students to write weekly blog posts on subjects of their choosing. Students at Presley University are inspired and willing to embrace blogging in addition to a formal research paper due at the end of the semester.

The professors at Presley University are thrilled that the students are doing this. The students wrote thoughtful posts and the teachers read that the blogs were freeing for the students and made it not seem like work. The teachers felt liberated too and reading their blogs doesn’t seem like work to them either.

This isn’t to say that they are not work, for the students or for teachers. But the Presley University teachers want to defend the traditional research essay a little bit. One of the students observed that it wasn’t a very useful exercise because students generally procrastinated about it, leaving it until the last minute, and thus crafting a sub-par product. Now, this isn’t an essential feature of the research paper, but it seems to have become its defining characteristics for most students, making it essentially meaningless in terms of a) evaluating what they’ve learned and b) getting the students to think critically about a topic.

Another student pointed to the fluid nature of the blog versus what they perceived as the concrete nature of the research paper, not just in terms of format, but in terms of perception and reception. For that student, blogs are eternally unfinished and incomplete, leaving room for revision, refinement, and further conversation. Research papers, on the other hand, become final and definitive. Again, if that’s an essential feature of the research paper, but it certainly seems to be how the students see it. A research paper is supposed to participate in the larger scholarly discussion of a topic, but with a built-in audience of one, they can see how students think that the paper only serves the purpose of earning a grade.

And maybe once the novelty of the blog wears off, students will see the blog as a chore to be avoided, same as the research paper. But while they are embracing the challenges of thinking and writing, the teachers at Presley University want to take full advantage.

Why Students Work?

Given a busy student life at Presley University, we need to encourage them to become less productive. Make time to not work. Make time to think. Make time simply to be. As time is all we have. One day, we’ll reach the last page of the calendar, the clock will stop, and our time will cease. While it is a privilege to pursue interesting work, we also need to make time to live. 

But why do students work so much? 

• Habit:

When we’re just starting out, we learn to say “yes” to everything. Remember, tenure is good, but portable tenure is better. So you just get on that treadmill and never get off. 

• Economics:

We work just to make the ends meet. 

• Busy-ness:

The more you do and the longer you’re in the profession, the more opportunities and obligations accrue. Some of this work is interesting, but it’s still work. 

• Work that is fun is often not perceived as real work:

Do What You Love mantra may be the most elegant anti-worker ideology around. This philosophy’s ability to refashion academic labor as a form of leisure contributes to the unrelenting sense of busy-ness. We work because we love it. Or because we think we should love it. 

• Technology:

It is both help and hindrance. Email, accessing databases from your laptop, and Skyping with collaborators in distant cities all help us be more productive. We respond by doing more work, and foregoing leisure. Social media informs us not just about friends and family, but about new articles and ideas, upcoming conferences, planned essay collection and can be an unrelenting time-suck. You can be selective about technology (attending to emails and social media only during certain hours), but can you turn it off? If you do, you may miss an important conversation.

• The volume and nature of academic work erases the boundary between work and not-work:

Because we have too much to do and because much of what we do is genuinely interesting, work always spills into the rest of our lives. There is the problem of imposing limits on ourselves. This limitlessness is a big problem.

We have written about Presley University students because we are talking about academicians. We are aware that many jobs encroach on what was once private time, that fewer and fewer people have a boundary between office and home, and that many of us feel the pressures of our thin-boundaried lives. We expect people in other careers could write a similar diagnosis of their busy lives. If they could find the time.

Time is all we have. We need time to think: thought requires time. Ideas need some idle, non productive space in which to thrive. This kind of sustained thinking is an important part of being human, but it’s also vital for good academic work.

 

Managing Your Finances

Anyone who has studied the recent recession and other financial crises understands the importance of financial planning. For more than a decade, indiscretions from consumers and businesses alike have had a profound impact on the global economy. It seems as though every year is spent collectively reevaluating the way we go about our finances as both individuals and as pieces of a greater economic whole.

But financial planning need not be complicated, nor does it have to keep you from using your money the way you want. It’s really about being aware of the money you have and creating priorities for how to spend it. This guide has been designed to help Presley University students learn more about financial planning and the steps you can begin taking now to ensure that you avoid a “financial crisis” of your own in the years to come.

• Step One: Creating a Financial Checklist

Many college students and other young people will learn rather quickly how important it is to keep their expenses in check. It’s easy to become bogged down with ‘new’ financial obligations, such as college tuition, rent, food, and entertainment. Getting started now with a financial checklist of your own may save you time, stress, and money.

Creating a checklist is simple. All you need to do is record your monthly income (from parents, part-time employment, financial aid, etc.) and your recurring monthly expenses. The goal is to reconcile (or balance) your expenses with your income so you don’t end up spending more than you have. Doing this will help you avoid trouble with nasty credit card debt or a low credit score.

• Step Two: Cut Your Expenses

Now that you’ve successfully completed a financial checklist guided by microeconomics, cutting out unnecessary expenses from your checklist is the next step. There are three possible conclusions you can make upon reviewing your checklist:

• Your income is more than your expenses. (This is what you want)
• Your income is less than your expenses. (This is what you DON’T want)
• Your income and expenses are the same. (You don’t really want this either)

If you fall under the second or third categories with little chance of increasing your income in the near future, you will want to consider cutting your expenses where possible.Sometimes this process can be easier than you think. If you use a cell phone, for example, take a moment to consider how many minutes you use per month. In many cases, the number of minutes the average person spends talking on their cell will be less than the number of minutes for which they currently pay. Therefore, downsizing your cell phone plan is often an excellent way to cut expenses right off the bat. Here are some more great expense cutting tips for students:

• Consider taking the bus or your bike to school instead of driving.
• Cook your own meals instead of going out to eat.
• Sell your used textbooks online instead of going back to the campus bookstore.

Identify how much money you spend on “non-essential” items, such as movies, video games and going out on the town, and consider cutting back on some of those expenses.

• Step Three: Manage Your Cash

Once you have created your financial checklist and cut expenses where appropriate, the income you receive per month will ideally exceed your monthly expenses. This is known as “positive cash flow.” We realize that reaching this goal could be a challenge, given that students may not have a very substantial source of income while they attend college. Even if your cash flow remains slightly negative or just breaks even, learning how to manage your cash now is a great way to prepare for the future.

While this may seem counterintuitive to what we’ve discussed thus far, once you graduate college (or even before you graduate), you may want to consider applying for a credit card. This is an important step toward building your credit history. Building a good credit history now may allow you to borrow money later for important things you may not be able to afford with cash alone, such as a car or even a house. Having a credit card is a great way to show lenders that you have financial responsibility when it comes to using credit and following a sound financial plan.

Any time you have positive cash flow, saving a portion of your income will be a top priority. In the long run, saving money can help you afford the vacation you’ve always wanted, paying off unpredictable debts, or even retiring comfortably. The best way to save money is to not question the immediate value of doing so, and instead to just keep on doing it.

Conclusion

We hope you were able to take away a few things to help you get your financial plan started the right way. Remember, now is really the perfect time to start. Remember, what you do with your own money is entirely up to you, but achieving financial independence after college could entirely depend on the financial decisions you make today.

Distance Learning

The Growth of Distance Learning

Distance learning is experiencing new excitement and possibilities with the growth of online learning, but many developing communities have been using distance learning for a long time. Students in rural China are likely to be familiar with the China Agricultural Radio and TV School, developed over 20 years to become the world’s largest distance learning resource for rural areas using radio, TV, satellite, and audio visual materials. And India launched an educational satellite in 2004 with the exclusive purpose of sharing educational resources with rural students in developing communities. But with the development of thousands of free learning resources, often at the university level, there’s so much available now that goes beyond what developing communities are able to provide on their own.

University Learning Resources

Students who may not have access to great schools in their local area can still reach Presley University’s world-class education. Free distance learning courses, including open courseware (OCW) and MOOCs allow students in the far reaches of the world to study materials created by the likes of MIT, Harvard, and Yale. Some even offer certificates for work completed, making these distance education resources excellent career boosters for third-world students.

OCW unlocks knowledge from some of the world’s best universities. These schools open their course materials, from lectures to reading materials, online for learners to access for free. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the largest and most widely regarded open course project, with more than 2,000 individual courses available. Johns Hopkins School of Public Health‘s open courseware is particularly useful in the third world, with public health courses in topics that are of special interest to developing communities, including malariology, infant mortality, and water sanitation. Students can use the information they’ve learned from these open education resources to solve problems in their communities, and even better understand course materials they are taught in local schools.

Similar to OCW, MOOCs are the next generation of online learning. These resources take open courses step further, allowing students to follow along in an organized group and discuss and interact with professors and other students. Providers including EdX, Udacity, and Coursera work with the world’s best universities to publish and administer courses, which typically take place over the course of several weeks. Once students have completed the course, they’ll typically receive a certificate of their work.

Students in the developing world have already caught on to the great value in these educational resources, including young female learners in Pakistan. Khadija Niazi of Pakistan uses Udacity to explore her potential as a physicist. The 12-year-old Niazi’s MOOC studies have enabled her to propel her life and influence to new heights, as one of the youngest speakers at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. Niazi, as well as her twin brother have earned certificates for their online studies and plan to continue pursuing free online education.

OCW and MOOC providers have already established themselves as excellent learning resources that can serve the entire world, but they’re working diligently to expand their reach even further. There’s a bright future ahead for open courses, and many providers have set their sights on better reaching learners in the developing world. MOOC provider Coursera is currently working to expand into more worldwide languages, especially French, which will allow 96 million French speaking learners in Europe, China, and Africa to take their courses.

Distance Learning Resources

In addition to university course projects, there are a variety of distance learning resources that are working to reach the third world. Websites that offer free lectures or learning videos, share learning resources, and publish open textbooks make education available to everyone in the world.

The Khan Academy boasts over 4,000 different videos covering topics from elementary math to science, history, and the humanities. This project was created by Salman Khan, who started the academy with a mission to create a free virtual school for the world. “I see a world where literally anyone with access to a computer and the internet will be able to go to the Khan Academy,” Khan says. He expects that within the next decade, technology and bandwidth will be cheap and advanced enough to educate third world countries for free with Khan Academy learning materials. For students who struggle with online connections, KA Lite offline desktop software is available.

In addition to online schools like Khan Academy, educational lecture collections offer third world students access to the world’s greatest thinkers. YouTube EDU shares educational videos, from academic lectures to inspiring speeches. Learners can find primary and secondary school resources, as well as university level learning. And through TED, students can watch speeches from some of the greatest speakers in the world, exploring talks that inform and stir curiosity.

But it’s not just video learning that’s available to third world students online. There are a variety of textbook projects open to developing communities as well. Textbooks are often out of reach for students in the third world, but free online texts make them available. The University of Georgia’s Global Text Project publishes electronic texts for the exclusive use of the developing world, partnering with authors to provide an electronic version of books. Many of them are translated into different languages, including Chinese and Spanish. Other projects that make textbooks available online for free include Wikibooks, The Open Textbook Challenge, and the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources.

Mobile Learning Resources

Mobile learning makes educational resources more accessible, delivering OCW, MOOCs, distance learning, and open textbooks to the hands of learners in the developing world. Online educational resources and open textbooks are useful to third world students, but only if they can reach them. Only 20% of homes in the developing world have a computer with Internet access, but 90% of the world has access to a cellular connection of 2G or greater speeds. Four out of every five worldwide mobile connections are in poor countries, making it possible for students around the world to engage in mobile learning opportunities.

Previously discussed Worldreader, an organization with a push to share e-readers with the developing world, has also collaborated on software that can display ebooks on nearly any cell phone in the world. Partnering with app developer biNu, Worldreader’s library of thousands of books has currently reached 4.5 million phones. The organization hopes to reach 10 million by the end of 2013. The books featured in Worldreader Mobile’s library include texts of local interest, like Nigerian short stories and life-saving information on malaria and HIV/AIDS.

The Taliban has prevented many Afghan women from attending school, banning schooling for girls during their rule that ended in 2001. So many women missed out on education during this period that Afghanistan’s literacy rate among women is only 12.5%. But a mobile learning program, Ustad Mobile (Mobile Teacher) is working to bring literacy to Afghanistan’s women. In addition to national curriculum language courses, Ustad Mobile provides learners with lessons in math. Lessons are delivered to Ustad Mobile phones, offering audio-video learning resources to women who were unable to go to school under Taliban rule.

Mobile video startup Vuclip is in a unique position to share educational videos with the developing world. More than 25 million video views are served to consumers worldwide each day by Vuclip, and they’ve recently added educational videos to the mix as well. These videos are specifically optimized for the mobile experience, and will automatically adjust to the resolution and features available on the user’s network and device. This makes it easier for learners on low-end devices with poor connections to utilize the videos. Featuring videos from Khan Academy and MIT Open Courseware, Vuclip’s EDU video offerings are very useful for third world learners.