- to discuss one of the madness in higher education, which is about the course syllabus, especially because I am trying hard to get them done (yeah, right!)
- to convince some of you readers about how we put Twitter to wonderful use, and we don't merely tweet about what we ate
 |
| Sliced boiled beet in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, finely chopped garlic, and fresh ground pepper topped with shredded cheese |
Anyway, back to the objectives. As always, Rebecca Schuman had a wonderful column at Slate. It is all about the "Syllabus bloat" at American colleges and universities. Excerpting from there will not do any justice. Read it in full.
I tweeted about it
Why are college #syllabi longer than the end-user license agreement?
tl;dr @pankisseskafka ;)
JK!
Awesome http://t.co/9kxVByXbpj via @slate
— sriram khe (@congoboy) August 27, 2014
Within minutes, there was a response from Schuman; I guess some of us academics never go to sleep! ;)
@congoboy @Slate Hahahaha! I'm stealing that.
— Rebecca Schuman (@pankisseskafka) August 27, 2014
And then quite a few other responses. More than that, the retweets:
A simple addition means that my tweet about Schuman's article was retweeted to 10,561 Twitter users thus far. Of course, some might be in more than one of these loops. Let us assume that it was 9,000 separate individuals whom the retweets pinged. From there, it would have been retweeted more. Just like that, with the click of a mouse button Rebecca Schuman's article gets distributed!
I cannot even begin to imagine the logistical hassles of sharing ideas and news in the old days, even twenty years ago! For people like me who love to live in the world of ideas, there has never been a better time in history than now.
It is such an awesomely different world that the youth are beginning to explore. Which is why the Mindset folks at Beloit College include in their latest compilation of "reminder to faculty to be wary of dated references"
"Press pound" on the phone is now translated as "hit hashtag."Should I add that to the course syllabi and tweet about it?
Wait, I already did--about the Mindset ;)
#Beloit College Mindset List for the class of 2018:
"They have probably never used Netscape as their web browser"
http://t.co/IyUkQyZVqF
— sriram khe (@congoboy) August 26, 2014
PS: A note to the reader who thinks he is funny--don't even dream of "tl;dr" as your comment ;)
4 comments:
I don't even know what "tl;dr" is.
You couldn't have argued better about the inanity and uselessness of Twitter.
Obviously you haven't ever read an end user license agreement. No college syllabus can ever be longer than that; so all the 9000 separate individuals are fed gibberish.
Second the article simply said "as unreadable" and not "longer".
I rest my case :)
To your comment I say, "tl; dr" ;)
(Too Long; Didn't Read)
You have no idea what you are missing out on by not using Twitter ...
Agree with Ramesh. No clue what tl;dr is until explained. I thought only twits tweeted??? And Congoboy?
I would venture to say fewer than 1% of the 9000 retweeters read the article; they liked your joke and were retweeting that, not the article.
The Beloit Mindset list is always enjoyable though oddly aging, at least to this reader.
Oh, Twitter is awesome.
During the Israel-Gaza war, for instance, the real-time news coverage--and raw, unedited news at that--was phenomenal via Twitter.
It is a tool and like any tool it depends on the user on how useful and productive a tool can be.
I depend on Twitter a lot--I mean, a lot--for news as well as links to insightful commentaries. And for updates from the Onion too ;)
Post a Comment