This sounds like a great idea for keeping some balance in your grad school life. Anyone at UWindsor doing this? Anyone want to set up grad school game night?
A colleague and friend of mine once told me that UNO is the best game for graduate students because it’s just numbers and colors. It doesn’t require ample amounts of structured thought. I think I agree with her. One reason I always favored UNO is because it reminded me of my childhood, it’s easy to figure out, and it’s a social game. The game requires interaction with other people, and I think that’s what makes it such a gem: numbers, colors, and interaction. How much simpler can you get?
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I think graduate students should have game nights because it’s important to switch off your brain a bit and relax. I love my studies, and I love being an academic, but I also love UNO.
What do you think? Would this be a viable alternative to an undergraduate degree in your field — or a graduate degree perhaps? What about ongoing education once you’re in the work force?
The Mozilla Foundation and Peer-to-Peer University P2PU, among others, are working to take the idea of merit-earned badges and build a framework around which they can be used as alternative but accepted forms of certification.The main premise behind this idea, the argument goes, is that the institutions and organizations traditionally responsible for accreditation no longer match the realities of what learning looks like today. For example, holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science is not necessarily an indication that you’re skilled in JavaScript, that you are an experienced project manager, that you’ve contributed to an open source project, or that you work well with virtual teams.
via Mozilla’s Open Badges Project: A New Way to Recognize Learning | MindShift.
In Yesterday’s New York Times. Something to think about.
Ms. Davidson herself was appalled not long ago when her students at Duke, who produced witty and incisive blogs for their peers, turned in disgraceful, unpublishable term papers. But instead of simply carping about students with colleagues in the great faculty-lounge tradition, Ms. Davidson questioned the whole form of the research paper. “What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: “What if ‘research paper’ is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?”
What if, indeed. After studying the matter, Ms. Davidson concluded, “Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers.”
In response to this and other research and classroom discoveries, Ms. Davidson has proposed various ways to overhaul schoolwork, grading and testing. Her recommendations center on one of the most astounding revelations of the digital age: Even academically reticent students publish work prolifically, subject it to critique and improve it on the Internet. This goes for everything from political commentary to still photography to satirical videos — all the stuff that parents and teachers habitually read as “distraction.”
A classroom suited to today’s students should deemphasize solitary piecework. It should facilitate the kind of collaboration that helps individuals compensate for their blindnesses…
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