Education Affordability

The best educational system in the world is so, among other reasons, because the President, the first citizen and his wife, would not have been so if it was not for the grants and loans that give everybody a chance.

The speech at University of Michigan is about the importance of an affordable educational system.

Presentation Skills

Lectures are the most popular (used) means for presenting contents to students. The video is very good because its content is about the main subject education should have: attitudes.

Multiple ways of presentation (as UDL suggests) is the best way to improve communication in the classroom. Hope lectures improve a bit after this eyes opener video.

Stop SOPA

21st Century's Ph.D

Photo credit: katerha/Creative Commons

Academy can't remain unaltered if the world has changed, because Academy is in the world. Those of us that have spent nine years or more writing a doctoral dissertation of hundreds of pages and extremely deep subjects -and still are keen on learning- know it.

It is not that long dissertations were useful in the past. It is that their usefulness remained unnoticed then. New ways of researching have to be accepted. Traditional literary effectiveness has to be a requirement for Ph.D dissertations: if it does not impact the soul of the reader it should not be considered a valuable piece.

The link takes to an excellent discussion at Inside Higher Education on the subject. Follow it

Apoyemos a la Universidad Central de Venezuela

No hay ninguna idea, por buena que sea, que justifique acabar con la universidad, porque en la universidad es donde más se respetan las ideas.

Investigación en Arquitectura Venezolana

La investigación arquitectónica de calidad se abre camino en Venezuela. El vínculo lleva al sitio de la Trienal de Investigación de la Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, mi Alma Máter.

En documentos en PDF se puede acceder a las ponencias que tienen un nivel contrastable, aunque mejorable. La iniciativa tiene que continuar y recabar todos los apoyos posibles. El laboratorio que representa la ciudad de Caracas y el país entero ameritan el esfuerzo.

Universal Design for Learning

UDL is design applied to meet true diversity in education as learning skills in each individual are as different as their fingerprints.

There are three main principles for this pedagogical strategy:

• Present the students the subjects in multiple ways
• Allow them to express themselves in multiple ways
• Create multiple ways of engagement

In all cases, the students are at the centre of the experience. CAST is a nonprofits organization that has been working for more that 25 years now and it's doing its job very, very well. They have many free interactive tools for students and teachers. An example to be followed.

Student Engagement

Information on student engagement. It is done by the NSSE Institute for Effective Educational Practice of USA. At the end of the brochure there are some web sites very useful. You can tailor your own report with the Report Builder to hit the subject you want to measure.

There is also a Spanish version of the Guide to Choosing a College: Questions to ask on your college visits. It is very useful to learn criteria on choosing your educational institution, in spite the Spanish there is even worse than the English in this blog, I am afraid.

¿Occupy Harvard?

Economic students walked out a class at Harvard in solidarity with the Occupy Movement. It is normal that the students, who are going to live gloomy lives thanks to it, feel uneasy with the promotion of principles that have cause current global crisis. But that is not that clear.

The faculty chosen as a target was professor N. Gregory Mankiw, a New Keynesian economist that advised George Bush and has written some of the most important text books on the subject. University politics are always unpredictable. Not so long ago, Harvard Crimson celebrated the return of former president Larry Summers, previously fired for sexism, and one of the main responsible for laissez-faire fever. Now, a Keynesian gets the punch. In a previous post (The responsibility of Number One) I compared the reaction of the London School of Economics and Harvard in front of ethically controversial cases. It's in Spanish here.

In spite all the trouble this event may cause, it is encouraging that Harvard students think that "Harvard students will not do that anymore. We will use our education for good, and not for personal gain at the expense of millions." Here is the link to the news by the Universtity of Phoenix and here by Harvard Crimson.

Dibujo del bueno

Federico Correa, catedrático emérito de la Escuela de arquitectura de Barcelona, y uno de los mejores dibujantes de la profesión, expone sus últimas obras. Sus dibujos son un prodigio de talento y gusto exquisito. Imperdible.

Say no to ACTA

If you appreciate internet freedom, say no to ACTA.

Continuing Education Center

Learning, advertising, business all together, mixed up with excellent results.

The McGraw-Hill site, Architectural Record, (yes, that magazine we all learned from at the university with the help of the long time no see "Goedex Sytem") has the Continuing Education Center that have tutorials on materials, building procedures and even architectural critique (with drawings!!!). All the "courses" are supported by Adobe slide presentation and are extremely informative.

It is a wonderful alternative to those visits of the firms representatives to the schools of design and architecture. Ah, and you can get a certificate after each course (if you take the test, of course). Check the videos too.

Joan Busquet Erasmus Prize

Joan Busquet is a sort of undercover heroe. He is the prototype of the discrete architect (the opposite of the star architect). His works intend to convert our cities into liveable places that respect history and traditions and are uptodated at the same time.

The brief of the Erasmus Prize describes it very well. The link is the news in the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Social Media at University

As I said in the post before, reality is way ahead institutions at the moment. The outburst of social media is obliging universities to regulate its use in campus. Interestingly enough, the first reactions from students have been complaining about censorship.

The case of Sam Houston State University (SHSU) is eloquent. Certainly the “Occupy Wall Street” mood is behind the naïve street actions done by SHSU students reported in this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Freedom of Speech is mixed up with utter freedom of one side in the story, no doubt about it.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to read the manual of Social Media Policy and Procedures of SHSU draft (click here) because we all will be involved very soon in problems of that sort.

Reinventing Higher Education

¿Is education going to be reinvented by institutions or by people? Facts, like Kahn Academy, show that the acceleration of current life is leaving behind even the best educational institutions. The article in this link gives an idea of the real dimension of the problem. Anyway, IE University is making a great effort that benefits all.

Learning Revolution at Harvard

The only way to go ahead changes is improving learning.

Harvard, again, has taken the lead: transversal knowledge among the whole university, ICT, Mobile Learning, etc. It is not just a matter of having funds: those 40 million dollars could have been spent in so many fashionable items far away from pedagogy.

Mobile Learning

Relating knowledge to everyday life is the clue for a long lasting education. Mobile technology give us that opportunity. Let's try it.

The Thinking of Thom Mayne

Interesting lecture by architect Thom Mayne, at IAAC, Barcelona, yesterday. He talked about the “type of thinking” behind his works.

Through the lecture, he developed his point underlying certain “Non-Cartesian way of thinking” and also “thinking through things and not through words”. He illustrated his approach to thinking by celebrating things that are “always unique, never systematic”. In the case of the entrance to his extraordinary new building in China, the Giant Group Campus, the architect from Connecticut described it as “100% conceptual, completely useless, pure rhetorical”. Even, at a certain point, the 2005 Pritzker Prize resumed his whole life as a devotion to “not doing classical architecture”.

Ultimately, it sounded that Mayne, more than showing his way of thinking, showed the way he intensifies his beautiful forms by hiding the simple and extremely conventional way of thinking that lays behind his works. This slight contradiction, that does not devaluate a bit the immense quality of his work, is interesting for me, as I am working at the moment "How we think" by John Dewey in order to improve how we teach architecture. This contradiction just mentioned is assumed by Mayne himself: He emphasised that the “chassis” of his Cooper Union building in New York, was “incredibly simple”, and that this fact was completely hidden to the user through the concentration of the “encounters of different things” in its extremely sophisticated hall.

In the end, it seems that it is not “not putting the dot in the middle of the line” what warranties that Maine puts it in the proper place. It’s clear that it is his sculptural gift, which undoubtedly he has, what allows him to behave the way he does, not a especial way of thinking. But, wait a second… ¿Is not classical to hide simple structures under decoration?

The Architecture Film Festival of Rotterdam

To connect architecture and cinema is always a feast. At Rotterdam, it's already taking place, maybe, the best of this mixture the AFFR.

From 6 to 9 October the LantarenVenster cinema in Rotterdam on Wilhelminapier is the epicentre of the 6th Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR). For four whole days film and architecture devotees can indulge themselves with a programme packed with shorts and feature films, documentaries about glamour architects, debates, talk shows and excursions.

Wrong Things with Education

"There are only two wrong things with the education system:

1) What we teach

2) How we teach it"

Roger Schank