Comments on: Is TED the New Harvard? Reactions from Around the Web http://diyubook.com/2010/08/is-ted-the-new-harvard-reactions-from-around-the-web/ Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the coming transformation of higher education Thu, 18 Jul 2013 18:44:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: MICHAEL SENOFF http://diyubook.com/2010/08/is-ted-the-new-harvard-reactions-from-around-the-web/comment-page-1/#comment-3483 MICHAEL SENOFF Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:19:50 +0000 http://diyubook.com/?p=298#comment-3483 If TED's the new Harvard, than Michael Senoff's hardtofindseminars.com is the new free Wharton online school of business. His business interviews are twice as long as TEDs. They are tightly edited and presented in an grilling interview style like no other. They also offer free mp3 downloads and printable word for word PDF transcripts. Oh, did I mention, it's free? If TED’s the new Harvard, than Michael Senoff’s hardtofindseminars.com is the new free Wharton online school of business. His business interviews are twice as long as TEDs. They are tightly edited and presented in an grilling interview style like no other. They also offer free mp3 downloads and printable word for word PDF transcripts. Oh, did I mention, it’s free?

]]> By: Patrick McEvoy-Halston http://diyubook.com/2010/08/is-ted-the-new-harvard-reactions-from-around-the-web/comment-page-1/#comment-1666 Patrick McEvoy-Halston Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:10:24 +0000 http://diyubook.com/?p=298#comment-1666 People seem irritated that your response wasn't properly subdued (i.e., too breathless). Your real "problem" -- as is true with other good people like Alfie Kohn -- is that you truly understand that EDUCATION, LEARNING is the point, with how we get "there" a truly open possibility. The way you think is that if someone is educated, and you find out that this person got that way sans university but simply Goodwill Hunting-like through a library card, then you're one to give the library full credence: "it" doesn't first acknowledge the university (as) clear master before listing its strengths, but, through evidence, has proven it can stand fully equal to all. This isn't what's going on in other people's minds, and to them it's merely convenient that TED's lectures are gratefully near-dismissably only 18 minutes long. What they're thinking is that becoming educated is primarily about being educated, being acted upon, by someone else -- being broken in. They dismiss TED for its apparent lack of interactivity, but what they hate about it is actually that it seems to privilege the individual's right to be an active, choosing, fully-enabled "consumer" of education -- what they see probably as its "fickleness." In a way, to a certain extent, the web-browser becomes akin to empowered gentleman-amateur of the past who would attend a professional's lectures, but never once feel his inferior: s/he has picked and chosen, sampled and savored, and became more worldly; the professional wallows in a technician's expertise. People just now aren't any longer allowed / permitted to think of themselves that way: the web has demonstrated that people are porn, not prodigies . Itunes U (to them) is better, because it's potentially more arduous -- it's not so much about entertaining, about lecturers finding ways to please your credit-worthy sensibilities, but about you developing the discipline, the seriousness, to best engage with them: they're reaching out, but the signal will not be received unless you're able to listen (a talent best nurtured, of course, after serious engagement with a physical university). The "they" I'm talking about are moving away from the more Romantic estimation of people as flowering best away from institutions, toward understanding them as requiring the breaking-in that institutions can still yet enable. Names like "Harvard," "Princeton," "MIT" are summoned not to be matched or breezed-by, but because the overall cacophony and indulgent behavior is such that it REQUIRES the attention, the schooling-down, of long-experienced 'wakening Kings. Interactivity is being mentioned a lot. I'm with Stanley Greenspan (note: he's as good as Kohn) in thinking that back-and-forth conversation is so all. But as the psychiatrist R.D. Laing made clear when he established how the wrong sorts of conversations can lead to the like of schizophrenia, further involvement isn't always to be preferred to standing back, aloof, and in charge. Personally, I don't much trust that interactivity in universities isn't now more about a way to feel more securely enmeshed behind walls that are keeping the rabble at bay. Not about responsiveness for growth, but about further relinquishing for security and safety. People seem irritated that your response wasn’t properly subdued (i.e., too breathless). Your real “problem” — as is true with other good people like Alfie Kohn — is that you truly understand that EDUCATION, LEARNING is the point, with how we get “there” a truly open possibility. The way you think is that if someone is educated, and you find out that this person got that way sans university but simply Goodwill Hunting-like through a library card, then you’re one to give the library full credence: “it” doesn’t first acknowledge the university (as) clear master before listing its strengths, but, through evidence, has proven it can stand fully equal to all. This isn’t what’s going on in other people’s minds, and to them it’s merely convenient that TED’s lectures are gratefully near-dismissably only 18 minutes long. What they’re thinking is that becoming educated is primarily about being educated, being acted upon, by someone else — being broken in. They dismiss TED for its apparent lack of interactivity, but what they hate about it is actually that it seems to privilege the individual’s right to be an active, choosing, fully-enabled “consumer” of education — what they see probably as its “fickleness.” In a way, to a certain extent, the web-browser becomes akin to empowered gentleman-amateur of the past who would attend a professional’s lectures, but never once feel his inferior: s/he has picked and chosen, sampled and savored, and became more worldly; the professional wallows in a technician’s expertise. People just now aren’t any longer allowed / permitted to think of themselves that way: the web has demonstrated that people are porn, not prodigies . Itunes U (to them) is better, because it’s potentially more arduous — it’s not so much about entertaining, about lecturers finding ways to please your credit-worthy sensibilities, but about you developing the discipline, the seriousness, to best engage with them: they’re reaching out, but the signal will not be received unless you’re able to listen (a talent best nurtured, of course, after serious engagement with a physical university). The “they” I’m talking about are moving away from the more Romantic estimation of people as flowering best away from institutions, toward understanding them as requiring the breaking-in that institutions can still yet enable. Names like “Harvard,” “Princeton,” “MIT” are summoned not to be matched or breezed-by, but because the overall cacophony and indulgent behavior is such that it REQUIRES the attention, the schooling-down, of long-experienced ‘wakening Kings.

Interactivity is being mentioned a lot. I’m with Stanley Greenspan (note: he’s as good as Kohn) in thinking that back-and-forth conversation is so all. But as the psychiatrist R.D. Laing made clear when he established how the wrong sorts of conversations can lead to the like of schizophrenia, further involvement isn’t always to be preferred to standing back, aloof, and in charge. Personally, I don’t much trust that interactivity in universities isn’t now more about a way to feel more securely enmeshed behind walls that are keeping the rabble at bay. Not about responsiveness for growth, but about further relinquishing for security and safety.

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