Weekend Reading: First Summer Show Edition

This morning I was on a virtual panel at the Guardian‘s Higher Learning Network about “Breaching the Digital Divide: How could Higher Education Better Use the Internet.” The format’s a little tricky, as the ostensibly real-time discussion in fact takes place in the page’s comment section, but there are lots of smart observations about the problems and opportunities for teaching and researching differently in a networked environment. Some of the topics broached are familiar ProfHacker topics, and others are fairly specifically British--but the whole thing makes for interesting reading. Check it out!

On to this week’s links!

• Andrea Lunsford offers some tips on building a syllabus: My syllabi usually end up being about five pages long, with the resources and honor code material adding a couple of pages.
• Umair Haque asks, “Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Anything?”: In short, I see an outcomes gap: a yawning chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between what our economy produces and what you might call a meaningfully well-lived life, what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia.
• I am not an astronomer, but I love this guide to Practical Python for Astronomers, put together by folks from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: The emphasis is on using Python to solve real-world problems that astronomers are likely to encounter in research. (Via the good folks at AstroBetter.)
• What happens when book publishers start to look like Netflix? What became apparent to me was that although Netflix ostensibly was in the business of renting videos, its real business was in monetizing users’ attention. Netflix can put all that food on the table because it knows that no one person can eat all of it.
• What if your (digital) life had no folders? Computer “objects” are not subject to the same physical laws as IRL objects. Files and apps can be in more than one place, and even better, they can be found by going down more than one path. With each passing day, we’re building a universe on top of a computer-enabled reality in which information no longer has a physical address.

This weekend’s video is the open keynote to the Educational Technology Users Group on the value of openness:

This week’s bonus video solicits your help for a truly important cause: A cache of excellent Titus Andronicus live footage will be deleted unless their new video gets to 100K views by June 7. Won’t you do your part and watch 5 minutes of outstanding rock?

Have a great weekend!

Photo by Flickr user LadyDragonflyCC / Creative Commons licensed