Author Archive
Events like the bombings in Boston affect you in ways that is very hard to predict or even understand. It is so close to where we live and work. Even people like me who visit that part of Boston infrequently know the area well enough. So, it is understandable that these tend to leave lasting impressions on us. As we get to hear more information about the three who died and over 170 or so who were injured, we feel shaken.
During tragedies like these, the recent advances in technologies have played tremendous roles – both positive and negative. As reported in Huffington Post and Chicago Tribune, apparently the circuit board used to trigger the bomb has been located. Of course, as we all know, during these times, it pays to be skeptical about such news until official word comes out, but if past knowledge about such bombings elsewhere is the world are any indication, there are electronic circuits involved and possibly a triggering device such as a cell phone. This is obviously how devious minds use technology to cause destruction.
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The admissions cycle is over here at Wellesley and everywhere. I always felt that releasing admissions results on April 1 was a cruel joke. Of course, Wellesley does it a bit earlier. This year we partnered with Admissions to implement a paperless admissions process and I, as a member of the Board of Admissions, read applications. This gave me a much better understanding of the process. Admissions staff were terrific partners, willing to work with us to tweak the systems as needed, and most importantly, they are believers and the best advocates one could have hoped for. We have one of the most impressive and more diverse group of students who have been admitted. Congratulations to our colleagues in Admissions.
When we began discussions about paperless admissions approximately a year ago, we faced the same exact questions all CIOs face. Should we build something or buy something, like Slate? Of course, there is no clear answer this loaded question and it depends on so many factors. I would say I am clearly an outlier in the way I think about the answer to these questions.
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Jelly Bean
Looks like we are in for more snow today and possibly a messy ride back home in the evening. NCAA basketball was keeping me busy last few days, though my favorite UConn Huskies are not playing this year. So, my engagement with the games are not as intense as it has been in the past. My bracket does not look that great, but Ohio State game was a scare because I have them winning it all… (Not that I am an expert in this stuff) Then, of course, Monday rolls along and I feel like I wasted a lot of time doing nothing. In fact, I completed a homework assignment for the MOOC I am enrolled in, did a fair amount of errands and installed a motion detector LCD light outside the garage door without being electrocuted! And spent most of Saturday driving to Hanover, NH and back. It was not all that bad. However, now I am having second thoughts about it. It actually moves based on the object’s position and is based on heat sensitivity. There are some complaints about it being insensitive during hotter months. On the other hand, I may not have to turn it on during the hotter months…
In talking to a colleague last week, I was reminded of the good old days (like a year and a half ago) when I used to have a Google Nexus phone until it was stolen from my lap in a roadside cafe in Athens. This was very disturbing to me on a lot of fronts. Being robbed (even if it is a phone – it was a nice parting gift from friends at Pace) is not a pleasant experience, but then, the threat of data loss is even more scary. Anyways, the colleague was telling me the virtues of having a Nexus, which I knew from my earlier experiences. Basically, you get all the most recent versions of the Droid operating system first released on Nexus. He was showing off Google Now and I asked how I get it. Based on his suggestion, I tried the Play Store, but it was not to be found. He asked me what version of OS I had and I was positive I had the most up to date. It turns out I had the most up to date as decided by AT&T, which is not by any stretch the most recent one. He was polite, but I can see him laughing. I had Gingerbread and he had the Jelly Bean. I felt old and terrible. I wanted the Jelly Bean at all cost! (more…)
It is snowing again, so what’s new? I was at a conference organized by MIT and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” last weekend. I was able to go only for part of it. On Sunday evening I attended a dinner & listened to Drew Faust, president of Harvard, Rafael Reif, president of MIT and Gene Sperling, Director, National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy talk about the broader issues surrounding the online education as a disruption. I was actually going to blog about that, but I found that Tom Friedman, who attended the conference did a great job in this piece yesterday in NY Times, so I won’t repeat it.
I was sitting next to Daphne Koller from Stanford, and the co-founder of Coursera. We had very interesting conversation. I also thanked Eric Grimson for his wonderful Introduction to Computer Science & Programming class in edX. The place was packed with many of the well known names from MIT & Harvard and over 60 other institutions. I had a chance to connect with some of the liberal arts college folks that were there and with a friend who works at MIT after a long time. He and I overlapped in College in India, and connected back in the mid-80’s here. He is such a busy guy, it is so hard to find a time to meet with him. So it was good to catch up.
I also visited Bates on Monday to participate in a panel where I was asked to talk about WellesleyX. It was a beautiful drive, but I wonder whether all of the drive was worth it. I could have done the same job remotely. Oh well, we can’t turn the clock back. Wait… May be. I am waiting for that discussion in my Quantum Mechanics class – Tunneling and time reversal and all that jazz.
A few weeks ago I gave a talk to Wellesley faculty and staff on “Milking Google for What it is Worth” which was well attended and I received several emails from the attendees about how they discovered so many capabilities of Google Docs that they were not aware of. I just wanted to recount some of what I talked at that meeting here.
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Looks like another mini-blizzard is on its way this weekend. At least in CT it may be more rain than snow. In the edX course Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing, we are entering the second week and we are learning about “entanglement“. I am really fascinated by this stuff. The first assignment that was due last Monday required some inner product calculations for projecting vectors. And I had to resort to pen and paper! My wife could not believe what I was doing and wanted to take a picture of me! I am really enjoying this class. It is pretty hard math and but I am going to stick with it to the end. We shall see.
Talking about entanglement, one of the books that I read a while ago is one of my favorites – The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn by Louisa Gilder. It is so well written, with just enough scientific concepts, but more of a story about the debate about quantum mechanics and gives you a glimpse into the lives of some of the great scientists. I read it a second time recently.
When we announced extended hours for the library, there were several concerned community members who wrote to us to ask what we are doing about the safety of our Library Collections. It was really heartening to hear from so many people with genuine concerns. We have thought about this a lot and have tried to convey many of the measures we have taken, but I thought it is worth discussing some of them here. I want to caution that LTS staff are preparing a detailed plan and will communicate a response to these questions in short order. These are simply my ramblings on the subject.
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I had a very interesting couple of weeks. On Friday, Feb 1, I had to present to the Board of Trustees a brief outline of the technology planning. The hard part of this is that you have a short time to communicate effectively what you are planning to do. With help from a few colleagues who helped massage my presentation, I got that done. Then I gave a talk on “Milking Google for All it is Worth” to faculty and staff on the following Monday. It was well attended and I will write about it in my next blog post. The most satisfying thing about the talk was a couple of followup emails from the attendees on how they already applied some of what they learned. This was followed by Academic Council on Wed. where I had to answer a question regarding what we are doing about the Library Collections Safety (which I will write about also), but the council voted to support the Open Access Legislation – a HUGE step for us as a College.
Then of course, the Blizzard struck. It was not bad at all because we did not lose power. Then, who cares? Really… We have a person who promptly clears our driveway and our roads were cleaned reasonably well. I watched a total of 5 Tamil movies while it was snowing. Life was good.
I heard a speaker during my recent visit to Google mention the Procrustes bed (which I explain below) and I thought “This is perfect for what I have been talking about” – how the technologists always produce technologies that they want us to fit in!
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Last week, on Monday, I attended an NSF panel to discuss a survey that is administered by NSF regarding High Performance Computing Clusters as a part of a larger survey. The discussion was around the utility of the current survey and the results of the survey and what can be done to improve the use of the data. It was interesting to hear that with the exception of one attendee, most of us are either non-users of the data or casual users of the data. There was one person who is a heavy user because she is involved in writing a research paper on this subject with an Economist. In my opinion, NSF should partner with EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS). EDUCAUSE administers a detailed annual survey that is filled out by a large group of its members and it has also developed a fairly complex tool to consume the data by slicing and dicing the data. Why replicate the effort and especially when there is an overlap in questions. Besides, we all are being surveyed to death!
Since I talk about a “duality” issue below, I thought I would share a picture of a sculpture from our trip that I talked about in my last post. If you look carefully, you should see an elephant facing left and a bull facing right. Sculptures of this kind are all over the place in that area and seems to have been a favorite pastime or challenge for the sculptors during the 6th – 11th centuries!
On thursday, I went to Google in NY City to talk to Google Sites developers (along with representatives from two other educational institutions) about how we use Google Sites and the issues we face and of course, our own opinions on how they can improve the product. Given that this team had been listening to a wide variety of users for almost a week, they seemed genuinely interested and attentive to what we had to say. I am thankful to get the opportunity and I hope what I had to say was useful.
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Another year begins and all of our resolutions are probably in high gear. This year I have taken a couple of very reasonable and achievable resolutions (which shall remain a secret). I will report a scorecard in Dec 2013! My wife and I had a great time in India, visiting relatives and friends and making a trip to a couple of really great historical sites in Tamil Nadu & Karnataka.
The leftmost picture above is the Brihadeeswarar Temple (aka The Big Temple!) in a town called Tanjore (where I spent a considerable amount of time while going to College). This temple was built in the 11th century by a great Chola King called Raja Raja Chola and it is just a marvelous temple with so many sculptures in and around, that have been remarkably preserved – primarily because of granite construction and that the deep south was immune from invaders of other religions. This is a UNESCO World Heritage site called the Great Living Chola Temples.
We also visited the ruins of Vijayanagar empire (14th-16th century) in a place called Hampi in Karnataka. Though Hampi was a critical place in the empire’s history, the ruins there are primarily from the early 16th century. These were excavated beginning in the 70’s and declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in the mid-80’s. Near Hampi are three other historical sites, called Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal. Badami has four cave temples that have been extremely well preserved (because they are inside caves) and the sculptures there are breathtaking. They are from the 5th-7th centuries. Aihole and Pattadakal also have temples and sculptures that are from the same period. I have attached a few pictures above from these places.
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By now, this is old news. Last week, you all must have seen an announcement that Wellesley has joined edX
and that we plan to offer four courses through edX in what President Bottomly called a Grand Experiment. This decision came after an almost a yearlong internal conversations on what should be Wellesley’s strategy around the MOOCs and generally online education. I am so glad that we are entering into this partnership and that it is clearly an experiment. There are far too many questions than answers and as true academics, when we seek answers, we engage in experiments. There is simply no other way to find out than getting our hands and feet wet.
In general the extended Wellesley community seems excited about this decision. The student reporter who interviewed me on this topic was very excited and talked about how the newspaper, in an earlier editorial had supported Wellesley getting into this realm. She was also excited about the course she was enrolled in and her hands on experience. But, everyone also has a lot of interesting and important questions.
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After enjoying a fabulous Thanksgiving week, I fell sick. This is the usual flu like symptoms and cold and cough that I can’t seem to prevent twice a year. Except, this time it hit me hard. I rarely choose to stay home when I feel sick from cold and cough. After a long time, I had to do it. Now I am feeling much better, though I have a few more days of recovery left. On Monday, 11/26 and Tue, 11/27, some of us gathered in Bryn Mawr College for the Seven College Gathering. This used to be the seven sisters, which is now down to really six, of which one is a sibling (Vassar). This year, in addition to the usual groups that gather – the Presidents, Provosts and Deans of Students – they also invited the CIOs because of the importance and the future of Libraries and Technologies in small Liberal Arts Colleges.
It was a very nice gathering and the group of CIOs discussed various matters ranging from online learning to the Libraries as space, but most importantly, we agreed to collaborate on a couple of projects. One around digitization of materials in the archives for a Women in Education project and another around how best to support Digital Humanities in our campuses. The details of these will emerge later and I will be happy to share when we know more.
In case you have not heard, a UN sponsored conference begins in Dubai this week – World Conference on International Communication (WCIT) – organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The official language used here would lead one to think about this is yet another conference to talk about “international communication”, tariffs, taxes and the likes. It turns out that this is a conference where some select countries (the usual suspects like Russia and China) are pushing for international agreements on regulating internet traffic. As we all know, this has become the dominant vehicle for international communication. We all should pay attention to this and express our opinion on why any regulation is such a bad idea. You can do that at a Google Sponsored site – Take Action.
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