this is the time of year that I get to meet a whole new batch of project students. Its interesting, but also reminds me that these folk may be new to academic conventions.
I place a big emphasis on developing writing, because so often folk are let down by their written communication of good work.
Today I chanced on a very excellent web site which provides concrete examples of good referencing style
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pxc/refs/index.html
well worth a good look
Monday, 24 June 2013
Friday, 17 May 2013
Its been a while - visualisation stuff
Not sure why life has got the better of me, but hey ho!
occasional readers (for there can be none other given the paucity of posts) will understand I have an interest and passion for visualisations
The Importance of Visual Literacy
today, in an effort to express myself I found an update on the visual literacies website and also stumbled on this blog while trying to work out the right way to represent some tricky information
http://wilgengebroed.nl/visual-literacy-should-be-equally-important-as-textual-literacy-in-our-educational-systems/
on top of that The good folk at http://www.visual-literacy.org/ have got some tutorials online. I shall certainly be pointing all my project and phd students and the one on Business visualisations. The general principles outlined there are, I think, just right for an undergraduate student project and for first year post grad work too.
occasional readers (for there can be none other given the paucity of posts) will understand I have an interest and passion for visualisations
The Importance of Visual Literacy
today, in an effort to express myself I found an update on the visual literacies website and also stumbled on this blog while trying to work out the right way to represent some tricky information
http://wilgengebroed.nl/visual-literacy-should-be-equally-important-as-textual-literacy-in-our-educational-systems/
on top of that The good folk at http://www.visual-literacy.org/ have got some tutorials online. I shall certainly be pointing all my project and phd students and the one on Business visualisations. The general principles outlined there are, I think, just right for an undergraduate student project and for first year post grad work too.
Thursday, 15 November 2012
just-in-time vs just-in-case - useful stuff from Tomorrow's Professor
Managing your email is always an issue. Information overload is a peril to academics. that said, keeping up to date is important too.
A few mailing lists make it into my in tray - their use comes in part from careful and occasional (though regular) posts.
Tomorrow's Professor fits the bill, and to illustrate what you get I have included a full copy of a post which arrived in my inbox just today.
Topics vary, but the structure and format of the mails are well thought out. A lesson to all would be spam generators.
The emphasis in the workshop is on "just-in-time" information as opposed to the "just-in-case" material that comprises most new faculty orientations. Besides tips on starting and building a research program and designing and delivering courses, sessions are devoted to dealing with common headaches in the life of a faculty member, including difficulty getting proposals and papers written and accepted; setbacks in research projects such as equipment breakdowns, unproductive research assistants, and loss of funding in mid-project; a wide variety of classroom management and academic advising problems; and cheating.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Desktop faculty development 100 times per year."
Over 44,000 subscribers at over 850 institutions in more than 100 countries
TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER
http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
Archives of all past postings can be found at:
http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
Sponsored by
Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning
http://ctl.stanford.edu<http://ctl.stanford.edu/>
Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at:
http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/
Folks:
The posting below looks describes a very effective four-day orientation workshop for new faculty in the College of Engineering and the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at North Carolina State University. It is by Rebecca Brent, Education Designs, Inc., and Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University. Check out Felder's website at:http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Rich.html
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu<mailto:reis@stanford.edu>
UP NEXT: Grammar and Syntax Make Their MOOC Debut in Course Taught by Stanford Scientist
Tomorrow's Academic Careers
--------------------------------------------------- 1,207 words ---------------------------------------------------
Just-In-Time vs. Just-In-Case: Effective Orientation for New Faculty Members
The standard way to prepare people for a faculty career is not to. At most universities, new faculty members go to a campus-wide orientation workshop to be welcomed by the Provost and hear about their insurance and retirement options and the locations and functions of various campus administrative units, and graduate students learn how to work on a research project someone else has defined, but that's about it for academic career preparation. Little or nothing is generally said to either future or current professors about the three questions all new faculty members at research universities have uppermost on their minds: (1) How do I start and build an effective research program? (2) How do I teach? (3) How can I manage to do everything I need to do to get tenure and promotion and still have a life?
This is an absurd state of affairs. Being a tenure-track faculty member at a research university requires doing many things graduate school does not routinely teach, such as how to identify and approach funding sources and write successful proposals to them, compete with famous and well-funded faculty colleagues for good graduate students, design courses and deliver them effectively, write assignments and exams that are both rigorous and fair, deal with classroom management and advising problems and cheating, and learn a campus culture and integrate smoothly into it. Figuring out all those things on one's own is not trivial, and while there is something to be said for trial-and-error learning, it's not efficient. Robert Boice [1] studied the career trajectories of new faculty members and found that roughly 95% of them take between four and five years to get their research productivity and teaching effectiveness to levels that meet institutional standards. A 4–5 year learning curve is long and costly for universities, which invest as much as a million dollars in each new faculty hire, and the costs continue to mount for those faculty members who never manage to become effective at either research or teaching.
Boice also observed, however, that 5% of new faculty members meet or exceed their institutions' expectations for both research and teaching within their first 1–2 years. These quick starters do several things differently from their colleagues, including scheduling regular time for working on scholarly writing and sticking with the schedule, limiting lesson preparation time to less than two hours per hour of lecture (especially after the initial course offering), and networking with colleagues several hours a week, which helps the new faculty members transition into their institutional culture and cultivates advocates for them among those who will eventually vote on their promotion and tenure.[1] The problem is that new faculty members are seldom made aware of those strategies and other things they should be doing to get their research and teaching careers off to a good start. In the absence of appropriate orientation and mentoring, most make the same mistakes 95% of their colleagues make in their first few years, and the 4–5 year learning curve, tremendous stress and anxiety, and sometimes failure to earn tenure are the consequences.
As part of its comprehensive faculty development program,[2] shortly before the start of the Fall 2000 semester the N.C. State University College of Engineering (COE) gave a four-day orientation workshop to its new faculty members, covering essentially all of the topics mentioned in the second paragraph of this column. Since 2001 the workshop has been given jointly to new faculty in the COE and the NCSU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (PAMS), and it has now reached 257 faculty members (171 from COE, 86 from PAMS). Most participants were concerned about spending four days at a workshop shortly before the start of their first semester, but they were assured by their department heads and faculty colleagues that it would be worth their time. Those who participated clearly felt that it was: end-of-workshop rating forms have been completed by 238 attendees, who gave the program 209 "excellent," 29 "good," and no "average," "fair," or "poor" ratings.
Open responses in the post-workshop evaluations include many positive comments about the following workshop features:
• Practicality. The emphasis in the workshop is on "just-in-time" information as opposed to the "just-in-case" material that comprises most new faculty orientations. Besides tips on starting and building a research program and designing and delivering courses, sessions are devoted to dealing with common headaches in the life of a faculty member, including difficulty getting proposals and papers written and accepted; setbacks in research projects such as equipment breakdowns, unproductive research assistants, and loss of funding in mid-project; a wide variety of classroom management and academic advising problems; and cheating.
• Interactivity. While there is some lecturing in the workshop, a substantial portion of the four days is occupied with activities. The participants critique research descriptions, proposals, learning objectives, and examinations; work in bi-disciplinary pairs to outline a research project that involves the areas of expertise of both team members,[3] and find resolutions to hypothetical research, teaching, and advising crises. By the end of the first day the participants have clearly formed a learning community that continues to strengthen as the workshop progresses.
• Relevance to the participants' disciplines. Illustrative research and teaching scenarios and a mock NSF panel review are all STEM-related. In fact, a comprehensive workshop like this could not be given to a campus-wide audience, since many of the things faculty members need to know (especially where research is concerned) differ significantly between STEM and non-STEM disciplines.[4]
• Relevance to the local campus culture. The participants learn about what they really need to do to succeed at N.C. State, with the message coming from engineering and science deans and department heads, research support staff, and some of the best STEM researchers and teachers on campus. Most participants leave the workshop with a strong sense that their administrators and senior colleagues are firmly committed to their success. They know where to go when they need help, and they feel comfortable asking for it.
To gauge the impact of the workshop, 32 attendees and nine non-attendees were surveyed three years after they joined the faculty. Attendees outperformed nonattendees in both research productivity and teaching evaluations. When asked to rate their orientation to their new profession, the attendees gave it an average rating of 4.6/5 and the non-attendees rated it 3.4/5. The workshop also plays an important role in faculty recruitment efforts in the two colleges. Candidates have said that its existence was a major factor in their decision to come to N.C. State, since none of the other universities they were considering offered anything comparable.
When we visit other campuses to give teaching seminars we generally mention the workshop to our hosts, observing that its benefits to both new faculty members and their institutions are significant and the total cost of food and facilitators' fees is in the noise level of most institutional budgets. The overhead from a single substantial grant that would not have otherwise been awarded would more than cover the cost, and based on the feedback we have received, there have been many such grants. We don't understand why every research university is not doing something similar for its new faculty members. Does yours? If not, why not?
References
1. R. Boice, Advice for New Faculty Members, Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000.
2. R. Brent, R.M. Felder, and S.A. Rajala, "Preparing New Faculty Members to be Successful: A No-Brainer and Yet a Radical Concept," Proceedings, 2006 ASEE Annual Meeting, June 2006. <http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/ASEE06(NewFaculty).pdf>.
3. D.F. Ollis, R.M. Felder, and R. Brent, "Introducing New Engineering Faculty to Multidisciplinary Research Collaboration," Proceedings, 2002 ASEE Annual Meeting, Montreal, ASEE, June 2002. <http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/Bidisciplinary.pdf>.
4. R.M. Felder, R. Brent, and M.J. Prince, "Engineering Instructional Development: Programs, Best Practices, and Recommendations," J. Engr. Education, 100(1), 89–122 (2011).
<http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/Instruct_Dev(JEEv100).pdf>.
* * * * * * *
NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==
tomorrows-professor mailing list
tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu<mailto:tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu>
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
A few mailing lists make it into my in tray - their use comes in part from careful and occasional (though regular) posts.
Tomorrow's Professor fits the bill, and to illustrate what you get I have included a full copy of a post which arrived in my inbox just today.
Topics vary, but the structure and format of the mails are well thought out. A lesson to all would be spam generators.
The emphasis in the workshop is on "just-in-time" information as opposed to the "just-in-case" material that comprises most new faculty orientations. Besides tips on starting and building a research program and designing and delivering courses, sessions are devoted to dealing with common headaches in the life of a faculty member, including difficulty getting proposals and papers written and accepted; setbacks in research projects such as equipment breakdowns, unproductive research assistants, and loss of funding in mid-project; a wide variety of classroom management and academic advising problems; and cheating.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Desktop faculty development 100 times per year."
Over 44,000 subscribers at over 850 institutions in more than 100 countries
TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER
http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
Archives of all past postings can be found at:
http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
Sponsored by
Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning
http://ctl.stanford.edu<http://ctl.stanford.edu/>
Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at:
http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/
Folks:
The posting below looks describes a very effective four-day orientation workshop for new faculty in the College of Engineering and the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at North Carolina State University. It is by Rebecca Brent, Education Designs, Inc., and Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University. Check out Felder's website at:http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Rich.html
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu<mailto:reis@stanford.edu>
UP NEXT: Grammar and Syntax Make Their MOOC Debut in Course Taught by Stanford Scientist
Tomorrow's Academic Careers
--------------------------------------------------- 1,207 words ---------------------------------------------------
Just-In-Time vs. Just-In-Case: Effective Orientation for New Faculty Members
The standard way to prepare people for a faculty career is not to. At most universities, new faculty members go to a campus-wide orientation workshop to be welcomed by the Provost and hear about their insurance and retirement options and the locations and functions of various campus administrative units, and graduate students learn how to work on a research project someone else has defined, but that's about it for academic career preparation. Little or nothing is generally said to either future or current professors about the three questions all new faculty members at research universities have uppermost on their minds: (1) How do I start and build an effective research program? (2) How do I teach? (3) How can I manage to do everything I need to do to get tenure and promotion and still have a life?
This is an absurd state of affairs. Being a tenure-track faculty member at a research university requires doing many things graduate school does not routinely teach, such as how to identify and approach funding sources and write successful proposals to them, compete with famous and well-funded faculty colleagues for good graduate students, design courses and deliver them effectively, write assignments and exams that are both rigorous and fair, deal with classroom management and advising problems and cheating, and learn a campus culture and integrate smoothly into it. Figuring out all those things on one's own is not trivial, and while there is something to be said for trial-and-error learning, it's not efficient. Robert Boice [1] studied the career trajectories of new faculty members and found that roughly 95% of them take between four and five years to get their research productivity and teaching effectiveness to levels that meet institutional standards. A 4–5 year learning curve is long and costly for universities, which invest as much as a million dollars in each new faculty hire, and the costs continue to mount for those faculty members who never manage to become effective at either research or teaching.
Boice also observed, however, that 5% of new faculty members meet or exceed their institutions' expectations for both research and teaching within their first 1–2 years. These quick starters do several things differently from their colleagues, including scheduling regular time for working on scholarly writing and sticking with the schedule, limiting lesson preparation time to less than two hours per hour of lecture (especially after the initial course offering), and networking with colleagues several hours a week, which helps the new faculty members transition into their institutional culture and cultivates advocates for them among those who will eventually vote on their promotion and tenure.[1] The problem is that new faculty members are seldom made aware of those strategies and other things they should be doing to get their research and teaching careers off to a good start. In the absence of appropriate orientation and mentoring, most make the same mistakes 95% of their colleagues make in their first few years, and the 4–5 year learning curve, tremendous stress and anxiety, and sometimes failure to earn tenure are the consequences.
As part of its comprehensive faculty development program,[2] shortly before the start of the Fall 2000 semester the N.C. State University College of Engineering (COE) gave a four-day orientation workshop to its new faculty members, covering essentially all of the topics mentioned in the second paragraph of this column. Since 2001 the workshop has been given jointly to new faculty in the COE and the NCSU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (PAMS), and it has now reached 257 faculty members (171 from COE, 86 from PAMS). Most participants were concerned about spending four days at a workshop shortly before the start of their first semester, but they were assured by their department heads and faculty colleagues that it would be worth their time. Those who participated clearly felt that it was: end-of-workshop rating forms have been completed by 238 attendees, who gave the program 209 "excellent," 29 "good," and no "average," "fair," or "poor" ratings.
Open responses in the post-workshop evaluations include many positive comments about the following workshop features:
• Practicality. The emphasis in the workshop is on "just-in-time" information as opposed to the "just-in-case" material that comprises most new faculty orientations. Besides tips on starting and building a research program and designing and delivering courses, sessions are devoted to dealing with common headaches in the life of a faculty member, including difficulty getting proposals and papers written and accepted; setbacks in research projects such as equipment breakdowns, unproductive research assistants, and loss of funding in mid-project; a wide variety of classroom management and academic advising problems; and cheating.
• Interactivity. While there is some lecturing in the workshop, a substantial portion of the four days is occupied with activities. The participants critique research descriptions, proposals, learning objectives, and examinations; work in bi-disciplinary pairs to outline a research project that involves the areas of expertise of both team members,[3] and find resolutions to hypothetical research, teaching, and advising crises. By the end of the first day the participants have clearly formed a learning community that continues to strengthen as the workshop progresses.
• Relevance to the participants' disciplines. Illustrative research and teaching scenarios and a mock NSF panel review are all STEM-related. In fact, a comprehensive workshop like this could not be given to a campus-wide audience, since many of the things faculty members need to know (especially where research is concerned) differ significantly between STEM and non-STEM disciplines.[4]
• Relevance to the local campus culture. The participants learn about what they really need to do to succeed at N.C. State, with the message coming from engineering and science deans and department heads, research support staff, and some of the best STEM researchers and teachers on campus. Most participants leave the workshop with a strong sense that their administrators and senior colleagues are firmly committed to their success. They know where to go when they need help, and they feel comfortable asking for it.
To gauge the impact of the workshop, 32 attendees and nine non-attendees were surveyed three years after they joined the faculty. Attendees outperformed nonattendees in both research productivity and teaching evaluations. When asked to rate their orientation to their new profession, the attendees gave it an average rating of 4.6/5 and the non-attendees rated it 3.4/5. The workshop also plays an important role in faculty recruitment efforts in the two colleges. Candidates have said that its existence was a major factor in their decision to come to N.C. State, since none of the other universities they were considering offered anything comparable.
When we visit other campuses to give teaching seminars we generally mention the workshop to our hosts, observing that its benefits to both new faculty members and their institutions are significant and the total cost of food and facilitators' fees is in the noise level of most institutional budgets. The overhead from a single substantial grant that would not have otherwise been awarded would more than cover the cost, and based on the feedback we have received, there have been many such grants. We don't understand why every research university is not doing something similar for its new faculty members. Does yours? If not, why not?
References
1. R. Boice, Advice for New Faculty Members, Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000.
2. R. Brent, R.M. Felder, and S.A. Rajala, "Preparing New Faculty Members to be Successful: A No-Brainer and Yet a Radical Concept," Proceedings, 2006 ASEE Annual Meeting, June 2006. <http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/ASEE06(NewFaculty).pdf>.
3. D.F. Ollis, R.M. Felder, and R. Brent, "Introducing New Engineering Faculty to Multidisciplinary Research Collaboration," Proceedings, 2002 ASEE Annual Meeting, Montreal, ASEE, June 2002. <http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/Bidisciplinary.pdf>.
4. R.M. Felder, R. Brent, and M.J. Prince, "Engineering Instructional Development: Programs, Best Practices, and Recommendations," J. Engr. Education, 100(1), 89–122 (2011).
<http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/Instruct_Dev(JEEv100).pdf>.
* * * * * * *
NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to:
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==
tomorrows-professor mailing list
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https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor
Friday, 28 September 2012
Tools and Tips: getting to grips with writing
A slightly more academic aspect of the sorting out your working life theme is my efforts to make a dent in the academic writing task.
I have always found writing an abstract a great way to kickstart the writing effort, but over the past few weeks I have been working on a rather more systematic approach.
The effort was triggered by good intentions; but the arrival of an email from the Tomorrow's Professor list titled " Want to Publish More? Then Train Like an Athlete". really caught my eye, and, I have to say, my imagination….
Perfectionism is a deadly enemy of good performance. It’s like being judged every time you write a sentence or paragraph. It’s far better to go ahead, make mistakes and learn from them. Rather than expecting great output from a burst of frenzied inspiration, the idea behind Boice’s brief regular sessions is to work with moderate daily expectations, knowing this will lead in time to better results.
to be continued...
More workplace tools: expenses and business cards
These are the sort of apps which are really useful when you are travelling….
This week I am continuing my new (academic) year's resolution, and getting systematic over using tools.
Latest hot app to join the ranks of workplace organisation is ExpenseMagic which does what is says. You take photos of your receipts (or upload them or mail them in) and once a month you get a spreadsheet with a summary of all your expenditure. You have to supply a small amount of metadata, but its a great way of systematising the records of what you spend, whether you are going to claim it back, or want to look at it for analysis. You can pay for the service on a PAYG, monthly of quarterly fee, and for me, the peace of mind and delegated work is much appreciated!
As well as spending money and collecting receipts, travelling to conferences and workshops tends to lead to an accumulation of business cards.
I already try to use evernote and take pics of people and places where possible; and I have a LinkedIn app to turn my business contacts into my online network. Now I also have a business card reader app (called BCReader!)which very nicely scans the card and lets me save the collected info into a contact in my address book.
Neat.
Friday, 21 September 2012
Tools and Tricks for a life online - the slow death of Twitter
I'm working hard at the moment juggling a whole load of different (but inter-related) papers which I am writing along with revising this semester's teaching and working on a radically different incarnation of some teaching which I have done in the past. When I have that many things on the go, I find Evernote invaluable, and Twitter is just part of the fabric.
When I wrote about workplace tools in a previous post, I neglected to mention twitter - probably because its use is just an intrinsic part of how I work. I use twitter to find stuff, to keep in touch with my (various and not necessarily inter-related communities of practice (web science; technology enhanced learning; personal and educational development; workplace and remote friends and colleagues; running and cycling (think serious juggling plus work life balance here). I have Twitter tools on my various devices, and have been using Twitter with IFTTT to help me build up an archive of useful stuff which I have spotted by saving it in Evernote.
Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover that twitter has decided to self harm to a disastrous extent - of which I learnt courtesy of the IFTTT twitter feed, and the ensuing storm of twitter discussion.
When I wrote about workplace tools in a previous post, I neglected to mention twitter - probably because its use is just an intrinsic part of how I work. I use twitter to find stuff, to keep in touch with my (various and not necessarily inter-related communities of practice (web science; technology enhanced learning; personal and educational development; workplace and remote friends and colleagues; running and cycling (think serious juggling plus work life balance here). I have Twitter tools on my various devices, and have been using Twitter with IFTTT to help me build up an archive of useful stuff which I have spotted by saving it in Evernote.
Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover that twitter has decided to self harm to a disastrous extent - of which I learnt courtesy of the IFTTT twitter feed, and the ensuing storm of twitter discussion.
Upcoming changes to Twitter Triggers
We recently sent an email to everyone with a Recipe that uses a Twitter Trigger outlining some upcoming changes to the Twitter Channel. Here’s the full email:
In recent weeks, Twitter has announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter’s data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email,Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine.
At IFTTT, first and foremost, we want to empower anyone to create connections between literally anything. We’ve still got a long way to go, and to get there we need to make sure that the types of connections that IFTTT enables are aligned with how the original creators want their tools and services to be used.
We at IFTTT are big Twitter fans and, like yourself, we’ve gotten a lot of value out of the Recipes that use Twitter Triggers. We’re sad to see them go, but remain excited to build features that work within Twitter’s new policy. Thank you for your support and for understanding these upcoming changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@ifttt.com.
Linden Tibbets
IFTTT CEO
*These Twitter policy changes specifically disallow uploading Twitter Content to a “cloud based service” (Section 4A https://dev.twitter.com/terms/api-terms) and include stricter enforcement of the Developer Display Requirements (https://dev.twitter.com/terms/display-requirements)
This enlightened action of self mutilation comes hot on the heels of twitter announcing that it was ending its tweet syndication partnership with LinkedIn! However a few folk have pointed out that the writing has been on the wall for some time when API guidelines were revised in the spring (see AllThingsD and TechCrunch )
What it means for me, is back to the drawing board and work out another way of hanging on and archiving useful information.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Women in Technology
Over the summer two female interns who are also undergrads studying in Electronics and Computer Science have been working on reviving ECS.Women as an action and support group for all female undergraduates and post graduates in our area.
The basic idea is to establish a full programme of activities ready to roll at the beginning of the academic year and to use the internships as a means of creating some momentum to sustain the group's activities and thus secure its future.
A fundamentatal problem when women are in a minority, is that relying on voluntary activities is inherently risky, because you are seeking a big contribution from a relatively small pool of individuals - a call which can be particularly challenging when those individuals are trying very hard at the same time to work on getting a good phd or a high quality degree.
I will be pointing at outputs from the internship in future posts, but meantime I wanted to use this post as a pointer to a couple of links
Interesting Blog Post from Tim Chevallier a member of the Haskell community titled "How to exclude women from your technical community: a tutorial".
The blog includes links to Geek Feminism's WIKI - resources for Allies and Good sexism comebacks - many of the links in Geek Feminism are understandably US centric, but none the less many others are relevant and helpful to those coming from a European perspective.
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