Go Bears! UC Berkeley considering online degree option
Christopher Edley, dean of the University of California at Berkeley, has proposed a fully-online undergraduate degree program. The idea has been met with some skepticism within and outside of Berkeley. Personally, I think it’s a fantastic idea for schools to improve educational opportunities to students in all kinds of circumstances who, for all kinds of reasons, can’t complete a traditional on-campus program.
As someone who struggled to go to college as a working adult, I would have loved to have had an online option. Sometimes I worked nights and dragged myself, half-asleep and desperately clutching the biggest cup of coffee I could get my hands on, from the graveyard shift to the morning class. Sometimes I worked days and dashed from work to school to work to school to work. Once, I nearly failed an oral exam because the professor ran out of time to question everyone and I couldn’t stay after class or come early for the next one.
My college experience was not unique, of course. There are many more like me. And we’re the lucky ones—we may miss out on dorm life and study groups, but we still get to learn. Those in less-fortunate circumstances are precluded from attending college altogether. At least I was able to find a job with hours that allowed me to go to class. At least I had a loving and supportive husband who didn’t mind my absenteeism and frequent crankiness. At least I lived and worked in close proximity to my school. At least I had no children to support, aging parents to look after, or disabilities to overcome. Online degrees create opportunities for students who aren’t as lucky as I was. My own alma mater—small, urban, and under-resourced—probably won’t be able to offer an online degree. But a school like Berkeley, with its size and resources, can make a real difference in a lot of lives.
Some argue that the online version of an undergraduate degree is watered down; you miss out on the social experiences and lively after-class discussions that make college the horizon-broadening adventure it’s meant to be. In some cases that may be true, but some of us miss that stuff anyway and still get a great education. Not only that, but it’s hard to imagine that any degree offered by Berkeley could be subpar. I hope they follow through with this idea and open the doors of education to many more students.
What do you think of fully-online degree programs?
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5 Tips to help you manage your time on the social web
I was recently interviewed by Gwen Bell for the Unconventional Guide to the Social Web and one of the questions Gwen asked me was how I manage to get all the many things done that I have on my plate!
My answer….you have to develop great time management skills and stay disciplined about them…and you have to manage technology instead of it managing you.
One of the biggest problems of the social web is the ease with which one can lose track of time. We are having so much fun connecting with friends & colleagues on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks that we end up not getting any work done during the work hours and end up working ALL THE TIME.
Another problem is multi-tasking and interruptions. Research shows that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task when interrupted on an unrelated topic.
Here are some tips on managing your time on the social web:
- Schedule Everything and stick to the schedule
I use the Entourage calendar to schedule EVERYTHING…meetings, responding to email, social network presence, day-to day tasks. But it’s not enough to schedule things..you have to stick to the schedule!
- Schedule your most important tasks when you feel like you are most productive
The most productive time is different for each person…some people are sharpest in the morning, some are later in the day. Figure out what your magic time slot is and schedule your most important task during that time. Sprinkle your social interactions & email management throughout the day but make sure it’s not during your most productive time. - Use a timer
Using a timer will allow you to set an alarm to notify you when your current scheduled task/activity is supposed to end. Let’s say you are alotting 20 minutes for social media interaction at 1pm…before you begin the task at 1pm, set your alarm to let you know when the 20 minutes has passed.The application that I use to achieve this is Apimac Timer (mac). You can also use Xnote StopWatch if you are on Windows (there are many more you can choose from).
- Close down the applications that you are not using
Human nature is to respond to stimuli…so if you hear a notice that you have a new email or a new response from a friend, you have to go see what it is. That is why if it’s not time to check and respond to email, I close down the email application…if it’s not time to interact on Twitter, I close down the Twitter application…the point is…only have the application that you are currently working in open. - Set and manage expectations
Managing everyone’s expectations is the key to time management. I think a lot of the time, the immediacy to respond is in our own head. Training your clients, colleagues, friends, and online connections that you are not available 24×7 will allow you to respond on your own time. And because we are all going through this information and task overload…they will more than undertand!
Did I miss anything? Share your time management tips in the comments!
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Learning French Via the World Wide Web
I just completed taking French classes in New York City, which set me back a few hundred dollars. I was happy to pay, because it motivated me to resume my plans to become bilingual. I have my text books from college, my recent French class, and copious notes that I continue to pour over. Still, I know that when my class finished, I had to keep up my studies. There is no teacher to tell me to finish homework and study all the verb tenses. I know that I will be relying on the World Wide Web, in addition to other traditional resources, when it comes to my continuing studies in French.
The infinite resources to be found on the Internet seem limitless, but I think I know which sites I can rely on for my language studies. In addition to a few online language lessons, I have found the complete French language series entitled French in Action, which came out in the late 1980s and was developed by a Yale University professor. As a child, I remember watching re-runs of the series, which was completely in French and was centered on a young French woman, her family, and friends in Paris on PBS. The language immersion technique is very effective, and I am very happy to have found it online so I can watch and absorb the lessons at my own pace.
The best sites to help me with “on the spot” language learning are the online dictionaries. I usually alternate between WordReference.com and Yahoo! Babel Fish. Not sure what the future tense of the verb savoir (which in English means “to know”) is? I usually find myself on verbe2verbe.com or Conjugationfr.com to make sure I spelled my conjugated verbs properly. I prefer the former site because it gives the most accurate definition of the verb in English. I have also found that if I spell the word wrong and there are no direct matches given, a list of other, similarly spelled verbs appears in the left-hand column. For someone who needs as much as I can get, I am very grateful for these useful additions.
If I can help it, I will not let the dust settle on my French language lessons again. With the help of my own personal resources, the library, conversations with French-speaking friends, and the World Wide Web, I may one day be able to call myself bilingual.
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Become more productive with DropBox
As a woman on the go, I always look for tools that will help me stay more productive. DropBox is my recent discovery. Dropbox is a multi-platform software (Windows, Mac, and Linux) that syncs your files online and across your computers. The best thing about it is that it’s has a super simple interface and is very easy to use because everything happens so seamlessly.
Once you install Dropbox on a computer, all you have to do is drop the files you would like to sync & share into the Dropbox folder and they are automatically updated and uploaded on all of your shared computers .
Here are some ways DropBox makes me more productive:
- Seamlessly synchronize my files - If I’m editing a file on one computer, as soon as I save it, Dropbox will sync this same file to all of the other computers instantly and automatically…this gives me the freedom to work on any computer and always have the files I need.
- Collaborate on group projects - Our virtual team can have access to key files regardless of which computer we are on. We also no longer have to send documents via email attachments to each other and the built in version control will keep a history of all of the modifications to the file so we can see how thes document evolves and undo changes if we make a mistake.
By default, we keep the last 30 days of undo history for all your files. We also have an unlimited undo option called “Pack-rat”.
- Instant Access to all the files from anywhere - Using the Dropbox website interface to get access to my files from any computer or mobile device.
- Automatically backup your files - Every time me or my team put a file in to the Dropbox folder it is automatically backed up to DropBox secure servers and we can be restore at any time.
Watch a demo of DropBox and I look forward to hearing your experiences with it! Are you already using DropBox? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
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Passing on E-Book Readers
I appreciate and even enjoy technology as much as the next person, but there are some aspects that I will never be a fan of: an e-book reader is a perfect example of this. I am unapologetically old-fashioned when it comes to books, because I love turning pages, even though I know many would argue about the destruction of trees to make them. While I understand the convenience of having a Kindle or Sony Reader that contains content from numerous books is highly attractive to many, I will never see it as a replacement for traditional paperbacks and hardcover books. I am not saying I wouldn’t accept it as a gift, but I definitely wouldn’t go out of my way to buy one.
Recent news of a high school student suing Amazon for removing the electronic version of George Orwell’s 1984 hasn’t helped to improve my opinion of electronic readers and digital reading as a whole. Although I believe the plaintiff should have had a hard copy version of his notes, I can understand how disconcerting it must have been to turn on one’s e-book reader and find that the content (which was paid for in good faith) was deleted without warning. It is a lesson for anyone who has, or is considering the purchase of this type of electronic device. I don’t know if this case will make it to court or not, but it makes me glad that I have not become a digital reading devotee.
The bottom line is that many of us are already reading and viewing way too much on our computers, laptops, and mobile phones. I think we need to step away from our screens to rest our eyes and just take a break from technology from time to time. After all, the human race survived without e-books for centuries. I will stick to libraries and book stores of all sorts, thank you!
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