Tori and I attended Sydney University Live! (marketing-speak for “an open day”) today, and were bemused to hear how some lecturers fondly referred to their use of technology, citing in particular a product known as “Blackboard”. It seems everything old is new again — or, to cite Richard Glover, “They’ve reinvented the wheel — and now (gasp) it’s got corners.”
Later: Oh, and to preempt any criticism of Richard’s article, I’d suggest listening to ThePodcastNetwork’s interview with him some time after it was published. To me at least, Richard seems well reasoned and fair, whilst TPN’s Cameron Reilly is clearly pursuing an agenda and aims to attack Richard on the basis of his vocation as a professional radio host.
We use blackboard at UTS. It isn’t all that good. The forum system is painful.
Yeah… I didn’t look at UTS (its open day was also today), we were just doing the Arts circuit at Sydney. By the end of it all, we were both probably ready to scream if we heard “research-led teaching” one more time! Thankfully, gratuitous reference to their amazing use of Powerpoint (!!) in lectures and their embrace of electronic curriculum material through WebCT and Blackboard dropped off towards the end of the day. And not a moment too soon!
Aside from that, though, it was fairly PR-speak free. I got a refreshingly honest answer from the Media and Communications programme director (there’s some title, but I forget it) — she said that for a more technical focus, UNSW’s programme was probably far better. And she said it just like that. Brilliant!
One other niggly thing about it all: absolutely everyone spelt “programme” as “program”, which bugged me somewhat! Okay, I’m not going to rant. :P
Get with the program.
stictly speaking a normal circle (such as the “traditional” wheel) has an infinite number of corners… so to re-invent a wheel which now has corners sounds rather interesting… seeing it already existed exactly as is :P