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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I just completed two years at Wellesley. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by.
There are certain things that you always remember no matter what. One of them is my first Thanksgiving. I had arrived in NY during early September in 1978 to do my graduate work at Hunter College. I knew the exact area where I wanted to do my work, so I had written to Prof David Beveridge there and he had accepted me into his group. So, right from the get go, I was part of his group. He invited the group to his house in Westport. It was barely two months after I arrived here. Deeply homesick and highly suspicious of the so-called vegetarian choices, I joined others for a ride to CT. Prof Beveridge and his wife had cooked up a storm and had plenty of vegetarian choices. We had a good time walking outside the house. Coming from a small basement apartment in Queens, the backyard looked so beautiful and vast! We had a great time, lots of stories and good food. The Turkey (picture on the left is from Wikipedia) looked foreign to me at that time and I took a seat far away from it. I may have nibbled on some of the food, but what I remember is living that evening on delicious apples!
I always say how thankful I am to Prof Beveridge. He is the reason why I came to this country and he has been a true mentor all along. He is the reason why we moved to Wesleyan, which, we consider to be the best move we made. We are still connected to them and meet up for dinners.
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EDUCAUSE is one conference that I have attended for the last several years. I was not happy that this year’s conference was was scheduled to start on Election Day. I went to our home in CT on Tuesday night and watched the results with my wife, who was pretty nervous, while I was not. As I tweeted that night, In NATE SILVER we trust. It was amazing how close his predictions were to the real results. After listening to the concession speech by Mitt Romney, I went to bed around 1:30 PM. I listened to the fantastic acceptance speech by President Obama only later. The reason I had to go to bed was that I needed to leave home by 3:30 AM to catch my flight to Denver, so I can get there on time to attend a good chunk of the conference. I arrived in Denver to 70 degree weather, while leaving the east coast where it was cold and snowy. The electoral college weighted map of the USA (a cartogram where the scaling is based on different criteria, in this case the electoral college votes) from Mark Newman is on your left. For those of us who are election stats junkies, these kinds of representations are real fun.
I enjoyed the conference very well. Connecting with other colleagues and some vendors was very useful, but the presentations were below par, with the exception of the general sessions. While talking to the colleagues, I felt very good about the various things we are doing at Wellesley.
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Can’t wait for next Tuesday. I want all the election commercials to be over. They are mostly lies and misinterpretations and sometimes outright silly, childish and stupid. Whereas the election season helps the the mass media and several local economies in the battleground states, the scale of it (about a billion dollars for presidential election alone) is repulsive. I don’t see this improving. In other words, I don’t see this election bubble bursting any point soon. I will be watching the results on Tuesday night and catching a 5:30 AM flight to Denver to attend the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. Depending on how close the election is, I may or may not get any sleep Tuesday night. I wonder if any economist has bothered to calculate the productivity loss during the presidential election year.
On the other hand, we know that a ballpark estimate for the cost of Hurricane, SuperStorm or FrankenStorm Sandy (The picture on the left is from: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2012/h2012_Sandy.html) is $20-$60 Billion. It was amazing to watch it unfold on TV. Here is a case where the science is really making a difference – well, up to a point. Knowing about it ahead of time, modeling its path etc. have come a long way and predictions about Sandy were extremely good. This of course helped with the evacuations, cancellations of NY City Subway etc. etc. However, there was nothing anyone could do to reduce or stop the devastation that Sandy caused. The sheer power of nature unfolded right before our eyes and ears and even the politicians took a pause. In NJ, at least for a short moment, it appeared that the NJ Governor, a Republican, and the President came together. Of course, the skeptics see some hidden agenda here.
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Final presidential debate is over and done with and the San Francisco Giants quietly came from behind to beat the Cardinals and the World Series is all set. Whether it is the debates or the Yankees losing to the Tigers, there is a lot of spinning going on. In case of politics, the spin rooms are there for this purpose. In sports, it is always the bad calls or the injuries; I guess you can throw money at acquiring all the talented players but you can’t buy their well being and health. I am sure we will all be watching the different polls and other sources such as Intrade during the next few days while also checking the World Series. When I was growing up, the election seasons in Sri Lanka and India were so much fun. There were so many outdoor events where the politicians came and gave fiery speeches, with a lot of warm up acts including music and dance. Finally, when the time came to announce the results, we were up all night listening to the short wave radio, sipping on coffee or chai (which was a predictor of which side you were on!), screaming hard when our parties won a seat and waking up all the neighbors. It was a lot of fun.
I continue to watch Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight (I should say that I loved it much better the way it was before NY Times took over), Real Clear Politics and Intrade. I check these along with Facebook and Twitter before I even check my emails in the morning. Email is for the older people 🙂 I get so much out of my social media connections. As I have said before, those who I follow have already filtered the news for me so that when I get up, the virtual newspaper is waiting for me from all over the world. It is this concept that is also helping drive the online courses. So, I decided to go back to school to check ’em out.
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It was such a gorgeous day on thursday, Oct 11, 2012 & I took a short walk around Lake Waban. It was so refreshing. I counted the time towards Wellesley’s Walktober. Unfortunately we found out that only three of us signed up for our team and a team means 4 to 10 people. So, I can count the walking towards my personal commitment only and not towards a team competition. Since I don’t need this as a personal nudge (I am pretty diligent about my exercise anyways), I am not going to keep the Walktober data up to date.
Enjoyed watching the vice presidential debate last night and may end up watching the Orioles vs Yankees this evening. It was amazing to see Twitter and Facebook filled with instant feedback from so many people during the debate. Whereas it is great to see how these technologies are helping such instant feedback, most data are rather predictable. What is great is how you instantly see how many others independently are posting similar feelings towards what is said or done.
As I was walking around the lake yesterday, I was beginning to think about all the different things that are going on in LTS. Despite the fact that we wanted this year to be a year of stability because we had gone through significant changes during the past year, I am simply amazed at all the things that are going on. I will stick to my practice of not naming individuals in the descriptions below 🙂
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We have been traveling a fair amount during the past couple of weeks – once to Chicago to visit my son and then to Charlotte and Greensboro, NC where my wife is participating in a conference. I have been meeting up with a good friend in Charlotte and playing golf. I drove two hours each way twice to play. Yup, it is crazy. Yesterday, after getting up at 5 AM and driving down for a 7:30 AM tee time, I almost began doubting weather.com. As you can see in the picture on the left, at 7:30 AM, this is how the golf course looked and we could hear a distant thunder or two and see lightening. However, as predicted, the storm passed quickly and we ended up playing in 50 deg weather on a soggy course.
After my friend introduced me to his other friends and they ask me what I do, the discussion predictably turned to why Higher Ed costs so much. A few of them, like us, have one or more children in College and it is hard on everyone who has to pay what we all have to pay. Since I know a thing or two about the financials of the institutions I have worked in, I tried to explain how, as a non-profit organization, the Higher Ed institutions have worked extremely hard to reduce the budgets and it is very hard to look for where to cut more. Of course, they don’t buy it. I also pointed to the fact that we all have choices when it comes to where we want to send our children to school based on costs, but we all value education so much that this is one area where we are probably not going to make hard choices or take chances.
This topic of increasing cost of higher education is a hot topic and technology is predicted to be a savior! There are all sorts of futuristic arguments on how technology can help reduce the costs and increase productivity, but specifics are lacking. Frankly, if technology could actually help curb the cost of Higher Ed, with the advances we have seen in the recent past, why has this not happened?
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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!
