It was a very busy weekend for us that started last Friday (04/13) evening. That was Tamil New Year . Since we follow a lunar calendar, the exact dates when this happens fluctuates. We have actually stopped celebrating many of these holidays that were the source of real excitement when we were growing up. This time around, an association we belong to in CT had arranged for an evening of celebration. We attended the function and had a great time. We watched a “drama” by a famous group from India. A silly comedy that required a lot of local knowledge about Tamil Nadu where we all belong to. Thanks to the Web and internet, we keep up enough to be able to relate to all the jokes. Saturday was a beautiful day and I golfed with friends from Wesleyan and Sunday we drove all the way to Hanover, NH to visit our son, have a meal, catch up and return!

In between all of this, I was following the happenings on in the world and most notably, a piece in NY Times titled “Where your Money Goes?” where Jane Wellman, who was part of the Delta Project concerned with the cost of Higher Education, was discussing ways to curb the cost of Higher Ed. I was also following the tweets from many that I follow who were at the NITLE Summit. Particularly interesting were the tweets regarding the Digital Humanities. In my humble opinion, in both of these cases, the topic is of utmost importance, but key players are missing. We can have a lot of brainstorming and generate creative solutions and ideas whether it is about reducing the cost of higher education through the use of technologies or Digital Humanities projects, but without the faculty and students participating in these discussions, these are unlikely to go too far. This is why the discussions on Digital Media and Quantitative Analysis Initiative that were part of the Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age Symposium were great – participants were faculty and in one case a student. (more…)