Mobile Media is Under Used!

If you are like me there is no shortage of mobile media in your life! Smartphones, PDA’s, semi-smartphones there is an overabundance of hand-held technology today. But what we are not seeing are the education and professional communities picking up these, anyplace and anywhere enabling tools as a means to advancing personal/professional/directed information exchange. And, [...]

Pat on the back! We all need one.

Last night on DubaiEye I got the ultimate pat on the back from a former student. Why is it we don’t spend the minute or 2 telling those people that have had an impact on our careers how their actions or in-actions have shaped our choices? Souad Al Serkal was a student of mine many [...]

What Matters to you?

What do students care about anyway? What does anyone really care about? Christian Long took the “what matters” question to a group of grade 10 students, 80 plus and made something that is WOW! The TEDxClassroomProject is full of ideas on how to take ideas to a community and make them matter. I love the [...]

Business vs Education

I have to be honest there are days I look at the person beside me in the flash car with the seemingly unlimited spending power and wonder why I stick around as a university professor. Sure there are the vacations and the very nice working hours, but is that enough? Then about this time of [...]

Anatomy of My Best Class Ever!

Today I had my best teaching experience ever! The class in question is COM311 a Zayed Media Lab practicum at Zayed University. The class is worth 1 credit and asks students to bring together their cumulative experience to produce a project that is well outside their comfort zone. This time around my students are engaging in [...]

The new world of work

THE 2009 DALTON CAMP LECTURE IN JOURNALISM Listen One of the toughest parts of working in education is knowing that you are teaching a group of students of which some will go into careers that at this exact moment do not exist. So, the question has to be, am I giving them the skills they [...]

Listen to Kids MORE!

Last night on Nightline I spoke to 6 kids, aged 10-12, about everything from who their idols are to how to solve the financial issues confronting us today. Listen to the conversation it was refreshing! What did I learn from the conversation? 1. that things often are as simple as they seem 2. perception is [...]

The whatif of Gadgets and Education!

The latest installment of GADGET LAB from Wired Magazine has really got me thinking. The issue is how the iPhone might reboot ENGAGEMENT in education, and in this case we are talking about University education. The goal was simple! The initiative’s goal was to explore how the always-connected iPhone might revolutionize the classroom experience with [...]