Smile. We’re on a Georgia Tech Syllabus!
Decatur Metro | January 18, 2011A cursory glance at my site statistics for the day revealed a new referrer that I’d never seen before: gatech.edu.
I clicked over and low and behold, DM is on the syllabus for Georgia Tech’s CS 4472/6470: Design of Online Communities class. And not only are we on the syllabus, but DM, and especially its comments, round out the intro class along with an interview with Robert Putnam of “Bowling Alone” fame, the popular Meetup.com and an article titled Virtual Communites are Communites: Web Surfers Don’t Ride Alone, which I’ll now have to read.
How I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of that classroom this evening to hear a classroom of students dissect our little online community and what it may or may not exemplifiy.
Dare I say, this is just as cool as winning a Creative Loafing or Atlanta Magazine “Best of Atlanta” award!
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Congratulations. I read DM every day and for me, it’s one of the few useful blogs out there. Your postings are newsworthy, you don’t pretend that you are replacing the traditional news media and the comments are usually helpful, often funny and rarely annoying. Keep up the good work!
My thoughts too! Congratulations, DM.
It’s MUCH cooler than winning awards from either of those publications! CL hasn’t been good in 15 years (it used to rock!) and Atlanta Magazine isn’t exactly groundbreaking… that’s awesome and much, much more prestigious!
That’s great! I feel cooler already.
That is really a huge compliment! I’m sure you could fire the professor an email and get a better sense of they’re talking about
Kudos!
That class sounds awesome. Congrats! That would be a great class to audit.
+1 on the auditing idea…
Gotta like that!
Tech is just a bunch of nerds! JK
That’s pretty cool. I don’t comment much but I think you do a great job with the blog…I see a lot of interesting stuff here.
Congratulations, and thank you again for pulling our community together in general, for all the snow coverage, and esp for the open thread on the road conditions.
I’m new to this site, and I love it! It doesn’t seem to devolve into meanness and ignorance as most others do. People seems to be honest, but respectful of each other, which is refreshing. So, congratulations!
I couldn’t have said this better.
Generally, true, but see the Dollar General thread (wonder if that one will get dissected in class?).
Oh, they could spend a whole semester discussing that one…
Usage/spelling nit: “lo and behold,” not “low.” See http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lo-and-behold.html
On topic, very cool news.
I think it’s appropriate that this news corresponds with the release of the new book, Academically Adrift.
“How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education? The answer for many undergraduates, we have concluded, is not much,” write the authors, Richard Arum, professor of sociology and education at New York University, and Josipa Roksa, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. For many undergraduates, they write, “drifting through college without a clear sense of purpose is readily apparent.”
I’m not sure what the “clear sense of purpose” here is referring to. Is it career, moral or social direction? Perhaps you could give us the next sentence, because I’m not seeing how its appropriate.
Mostly I was just trying to be obnoxious and rain on your parade (though in reality I think it’s really cool that this forum has become such a valuable source of info and feedback in the community)!
Notwithstanding my nefarious intent, it is an interesting study that basically says most college students don’t learn a whole lot, and that instead of treating “going to college” as the goal, we should be promoting “learning”, which as Will Hunting pointed out, can be done for a few bucks in late fees at the public library.
Article here: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/academically-adrift/
I was once told that college is not the place to learn skills and knowledge. It is the place to learn how to THINK.
I think there’s an element of truth in that. I did learn a bit of useful stuff in college, but the real lessons I learned were how to gather information, analyze it and make decisions.
Oh, and how to shotgun a beer in under four seconds.
Bo, why were you trying to be obnoxious?
Not sure if this was a positive or negative take on the course from Bo.
In my view many undergrad students do not belong in an undergrad program, but in vocational training that targets a specific job or field. That would explain them being “adrift”. Liberal arts programs were not designed to be job training programs. It’s the classic square peg meeting round hole.
Only if college’s only purpose is to get student’s a job. But I do agree with you that many students today are really only looking for vocational studies.
Still, I’d argue that a liberal arts background can be as valuable to the right student. One just has to be able to tolerate its open-endedness and turn that into an occupation and contribution to society on the back-end.
Thanks all! I might follow up with the prof and see if I can get any other info on the class discussion.
How cool is that!? I want to hear more!