The New York Times has christened 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC.” No, “MOOC” has nothing to do with the presidential election or with Hurricane Sandy. “MOOC” means “Massive Open Online Course.” It is the name for a new mode of online education. MOOCs are exploding in popularity. According to Laura Pappano, writing for the Times: The paint is barely dry [in the new edX offices], yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,... Read more
Is digital technology the savior of education? Or is it the destroyer of education? Or is it both . . . and neither? For quite a while now, we’ve been told that one of the big secrets for improving education is the Internet. If we want all students to learn, then we need to get them connected. Put the Internet in schools. Make sure all children have computers at home. Oops. That’s a bit outdated. We should make sure they... Read more
The pervasiveness of social media forces us to ask new questions about how we live together in healthy, just ways. Sometimes the social media questions have to do with global questions of free speech and oppression. Sometimes, however, they have to do with how we live rightly as friends, families, colleagues, and neighbors. A recent article in the “Fashion and Style” section of the New York Times responds to the question of whether it is appropriate or not to post... Read more
A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that the Broadway Bomb – a skating race down the middle of Broadway in New York City, in the middle of traffic – is illegal. Did that stop the skaters? Of course not. First of all, they’re skaters. Skaters and especially skateboarders routinely break all sorts of laws in order to fulfill their need for speed. Second of all, they’re New Yorkers. New Yorkers tend not to take “No” for an answer,... Read more
Psalm 11:1-7 For the righteous LORD loves justice. The virtuous will see his face. Psalm 11:7 In yesterday’s reflection on Psalm 10, we saw that God “bring[s] justice to the orphans and the oppressed” (10:18). This picture of the Lord is consistent with what we find throughout the Scriptures. Psalm 11 further explains God’s relationship to justice. Verse 7 reads, “For the righteous LORD loves justice.” Our translation obscures an intentional play on words in the original Hebrew. It might... Read more
When you think of New York City, you no doubt think of a giant, crowded, intoxicating, bustling metropolis filled with buildings, taxis, street vendors, and people, millions of people. But one of the things I love about New York City is the fact that, with a little time, effort, and money, you can get far away from the crowds. A couple of weeks ago, I spent a day in New York with my son, who is a student at NYU.... Read more
After a recent trip to “the always delicious Taco Bell,” I thought I’d check their nutritional information (chart from Taco Bell website on 10/17/2012). I was pleased to discover that my favorite items (off the “Fresco” menu) are actually relatively healthy. Taco Bell, always delicious . . . and healthy. Woo-hoo! BUT, I was horrified to learn one of Taco Bell’s deep, dark secrets. Here is a portion of the Taco Bell nutrition page. I have not altered it in... Read more
Yesterday, I considered the interweaving of digital life and embodied life in response to an article that explained how political spats on Facebook impact relationships, including the face-to-face kind. Today, I want to look at another curious case of such interweaving of the digital and the embodied. In “Seeking Privacy in a Networked Age,” New York Times columnist Nick Bilton chronicles the loss of privacy owing to the combination of social media and mobile technology. A pulled pork taco hovered... Read more
Once upon a time, it was possible to speak of digital life as something distinct from real life. But that time is no longer, for most of us, at least. Digital life has utterly permeated physical life for multiple millions of people who, because of digital social media and mobile technology, are never disconnected from the Internet or from each other. It becomes increasingly difficult to say that online experience is any less real than embodied experience (even though the... Read more
Remember MySpace? It was all the rage just a few years ago. In 2006 it became the most visited website in the U.S. You just had to have a MySpace, especially if you were under 25. But then something happened. Facebook happened. It skyrocketed to the top of the social media ladder, while MySpace plummeted, now down to 186th place in the online world. So has Facebook secured its place on the top of the ladder? Not necessarily, says journalist... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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