5 posts tagged “education”

Over at Marketing Education 2.0, the answer is a resounding, "NO!"  Ron Elizando says, " I think it’s of utter importance for new marketers to have the abilities and strategic tools to be able to manage new media." My reply there goes back to the genesis of Marketing Canapes -- a newsletter designed to bring marketing educators and students up to speed on new media. Once I had the newsletter developed and promoted, ALL the initial educators were blog readers and/or writers.  None of those who were unaware of blogs and other newer social media bothered subscribing. Since I migrated Marketing Canapes to the web, I have not bothered tracking who is looking and who is not. 

If you wish to comment on this post and are not a member of VOX, please email me and I will post your comments. Marketing Canapes email

I always knew there was some rationale for being a professional student and studies at RAND seem to agree.

"The answers, he and others say, have been a surprise. The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.

Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education 'keeps coming up.'"

(VIA)

Okay, a little far out, but I can relate to student's protesting the institutional muck most serve - as a matter of fact, I worked in the cafeteria while working on my bachelor's degree, so not only ate it, but prepared it. Can you see an Ivy League battle for a really great student breaking down to: "if you pick us, we'll make sure your personal favorites are prepared each day in the cafeteria?"  This CNN article is several years late in talking about this practice. I never did followup on some recipes I put together for the head of the cafeterias at San Diego State University when they were looking at doing something very similar about four years ago or so. Where I got my doctorate, the cafeteria had to cook a variety of menus daily to reflect the tastes of the large (proportionately) foreign student population. 

This project which should get underway with computer distribution in mid-2007 has its pros and cons. The concept was to get computers into the hands of children in developing countries to better educate them as a better educated population is supposedly good for the economy (let's not go to the old joke about PhDs in India pumping gas, okay?).  The New York Times writes about both sides of the issue, one says detractors are focusing on the tool rather than the outcomes; the other that because something works here is not necessarily proof that it will work there. Here's a summary of the quotes:

Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent computer researcher: “It’s as if people spent all of their attention focusing on Columbus’s boat and not on where he was going,” he said in an interview here. “You have to remember that what this is about is education.”

Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who is an adviser to the project, has argued that if young people are given computers and allowed to explore, they will “learn how to learn.” That, Mr. Papert argues, is a more valuable skill than traditional teaching strategies that focus on memorization and testing.

“We believe you have to leverage the kids themselves,” Ms. (Mary Lou)  Jepsen (project engineer) said. “They’re learning machines.”

Larry Cuban, Stanford University, said in an interview. “However, if part of their rationale is that it will revolutionize education in various countries, I don’t think it will happen, and they are naïve and innocent about the reality of formal schooling.”

Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and a leading philanthropist for the third world, has questioned whether the concept is “just taking what we do in the rich world” and assuming that that is something good for the developing world, too.

Okay, what do you think?

Toddand posts a free class listing - many from Ivy league schools, that he proposes would be  great major in communications and technology. He also references Technophilia that has a good-sized list of free courses available online. Were I to make a suggestion, it would be to include more on old-school media - not everything is on the web although a thrust toward new media is warranted.