We hope everyone's settling into their classes alright, and midterms aren't too hellish. Here are some of our most popular and talked-about posts from the first full month of school.
Watch, Read, Make is our weekly column of cool things to make your weekend awesome.
Watch: So, fun fact, I have the worst head cold I have ever had right now*, and I cannot stop humming songs from the They Might Be Giants kids' album because I am maybe a little zonked out on CVS-brand knockoff Dayquil. I present "I Am a Paleontologist," which is my favorite, because I can substitute "anthropologist" in to the last part and it's great. Substitute in your major and annoy your roommates!
Read: Some of the people on staff** make fun of Laura and me for how much we love our Kindles. But without my Kindle, I would not be able to kill time during my illness with this Mark Bittman Kindle single with so very little inconvenience. (I mean, I could also read it on my laptop, but that's hard when you're lying prone.) For $2.99, you get a lovely manifesto about the importance of cooking and--more important for college audiences--an excellent breakdown of what you should have in your kitchen that is cheap and long-lasting. There are also awesome recipes at the end of the book that will allow you to avoid grocery shopping for weeks at a time while still making you look like you know how to be an adult. Mark Bittman has your back.
Make: When I'm sick, I pretty much just want soft sugary things, which results in me subsisting off of peanut butter smoothies for dinner. Since that's pretty much an awful idea, I present to you instead what I will be making for dinner tonight in order to regain strength/stave off scurvy: pear pancakes. Fancy enough that you won't quite feel like you're doing breakfast for dinner, and full of delicious, nearly-seasonal fruit! Nom.
* Not true, but it sucks pretty bad.
** Shep.
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Scott Young’s thirst for knowledge is truly remarkable. Not only is he attempting to complete a 4 year MIT Computer Science degree in only 12 months, he won’t be receiving credit for any of his work. Scott is famous for his ebooks and online courses that teach advanced and alternative learning skills; helping students to learn faster with greater understanding of the material. Although he’s a recent graduate, he’s decided to put his teachings to the test, returning to the virtual classroom through his MIT Challenge.
I encourage you to follow along with Scott in his journey, what he’s attempting is incredible. It’s a shame he won’t be receiving any credit for his work, or is it? This is a perfect example of a student taking learning beyond classroom, a student who is taking their education into their own hands. Although Scott won’t have a piece of paper that says he’s an MIT grad, there’s no question that if he succeeds he’ll be as proficient as one. This relates to Kelly’s sentiments outlined in his essay “Fixing Computer Science College Education” Students should be encouraged to learn outside of the classroom, whether it be through personal projects, attending events such as conferences and hackathons or through ambitious challenges like Scott Young’s MIT Challenge. Even though you won’t be rewarded in credit, the experience gained will be invaluable.
What are you doing beyond the classroom?
Students discuss education's biggest shortcomings at NBC News Education NationNeed a laptop? We've teamed up with Intel to bring you the HackCollege Laptop Chooser. If you share the Laptop Chooser, you'll be entered to win a Intel Core i5-powered Samsung Series 9 Notebook!
If you need something to read this Friday morning, check out MindShift's recap of the final panel of this week's Education Nation conference in New York.
The panel featured several students, and Nnamdi Asomugha from the NFL for some reason, discussing things they want their instructors to know. Some of the suggestions seem a little whiny (You need to love a student before you can teach a student), and not all were college-specific, but several in there will probably strike a chord with HackCollege readers. Some of my favorites are below, but you should click through to see the whole list.
1. I have to critically think in college, but your tests don’t teach me that.
14. We appreciate when you connect with us in our worlds such as the teacher who provided us with extra help using Xbox and Skype. Author's note: if you've ever experienced a teacher helping you over Xbox Live, please let us know how that works in the comments, because I'm at a loss.
18. You need to use tools in the classroom that we use in the real world like Facebook, email, and other tools we use to connect and communicate.
What would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments.
If your budget's big, just serve them booze. It always helps. Image courtesy of Flickr user Paul Holmes. Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
One of the challenges of publicizing an event, club, or cause as a college student is that you likely have a limited (or nonexistent) budget and a lot of other people competing for the time and attention of the student body. Because of this, the free and easy nature of social media can be an asset if you're trying to get the word out. However, it can be tricky--here's how to do it without annoying people or being drowned out by everyone else.
Create a position as social media chair: First step's first--you have to have someone to coordinate your club's social media presence, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, where most students are active. A lot of organizations think that marketing will just sort of happen, but with that mindset it's likely that no one will remember to keep your accounts active. If you have an executive board position with certain responsibilities (tweeting so many times a week, organizing friend lists on Facebook, creating Facebook events, etc.), you're more likely to see results. Find a student who's already active on the networks you're interested in and use them.
Connect with national organizations: This is something that Greek organizations tend to do well--other clubs should emulate it. If you're a smaller chapter of a national organization (like Amnesty International or something similar), follow your national organization and interact with them on Facebook and Twitter. If you tell them you have an event coming up, they're likely to republish your information because it makes them look good--it shows they have active chapters. It also gives you free press.
Follow students on campus: Don't follow everyone you can get your hands on, but if you know of students who are interested in your cause, follow them from your accounts. This will make them aware of your presence, and the ones who really want to keep up with you will follow back and stay abreast of your information.
Get visible: You want people to know that your organization is active online. On all of your paper advertisements (which you should still be posting), include a QR code which will link students to the Facebook event page. Also include your Facebook URL, your Twitter handle, and your website (if you have one). You want to give students as many ways as possible to access your information.
Unify your members: Tweets and Facebook updates from an organizational account are going to get tiring pretty quickly, because no one wants to read about a faceless organization. So, really strongly encourage your club members to unite in an effort to advertise any events you want to get the word out on. Give them a picture that they can use as their Facebook profile picture for a week. Ask them to post reminders and links to the Facebook event. If you're polite, your members are likely to do what you ask, and their friends are much more likely to pay attention to your event.
Staying visible and being easily accessible are the most important parts of publicizing, no matter what tool you're using. With social media, these goals are a little easier to reach.
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With the ubiquity of social media today, more than ever, we deal with the search costs of finding people on not just Facebook, but also Twitter/LinkedIn/insert social media site here. That’s why I’m devoting this week’s Better Browsing to minimize those costs and make connecting with people as easy as possible. Rapportive, a Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Mailplane extension, puts all that social media information right in one place. Best of all, it’s free!
Replacing the ads you usually see to the right of your Gmail messages, Rapportive - 1) connects you with contacts on social networks, 2) allows you to easily map events and add them to your calendar, and 3) allows you to easily record notes associated with that contact. It’s super easy to install and use. There is literally no setup or options required. Just install the extension, go to Gmail, and off you go. Based on the sender’s email address, Rapportive automatically aggregates his/her information to form a rich contact profile that features easy access to social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more). Now when you receive emails from whomever, immediately add them to your social network. This is incredibly useful for students trying to establish a large network to find a job. I love extensions that make life easier, and Rapportive does exactly that. Its only real limitation is that it doesn't work outside of Gmail on your browser unless you use Mailplane (a Mail application for Mac OS X). But if you use Gmail and social networking in any capacity whatsoever, get Rapportive.
What do you think of Rapportive? Have you found any other extensions like it? Let us know in the comments!
Friday, September 30, 2011