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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This post was introduced to me by Robin DeRosa "asking a prospective student not, 'What do you want to major in?' but rather, 'What would you like to be able to make?'" I pauded to think for a bit, because I see myself more as an explorer than a creator, but I could see myself 'making discoveries'. We could expand even more if we used the far more flexible French verb faire instead of 'to make'. But I digress. Matthew Cheney's post is a reflection Nathan Heller's The End of the English Major. He astutely notes that "most reporters for influential media outlets like The New Yorker went to those famous and wealthy schools, and most such reporters seem incapable of understanding that their experience does not translate to that of the majority of college students or faculty." Indeed, I don't know why we listen to them. Anyhow, the article eventually gets to a point: "the best argument I can think of to encourage interdisciplinarity, disaggregation, and making is that doing so might be a good strategy to bring innovation back as a key value for both research and teaching universities." Related: Make Magazine, Constructionism.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 10:51 p.m.

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