Apurva's Blog

With a new school year about to begin, i would like to reflect on the summer gone by. It has been one of the more busier ones with many things happening on the work and home front. No, i am not complaining, but rather reflecting that i wish i had some more down-time — time to do nothing! So here are some of the highlights:
1. My oldest son sets off to college to pursue his dreams….which i am sure will change over the next four/five years. Would be curious to see what he decides to do. My youngest son enters high-school….i am sure he was very anxious.
2. My meeting with old college friends and their family – not just spending a few hours with them, but spending several days, mainly touring the sites on the east coast. After living in this country for 25+ years, there were sites that my family had not visited and this gave us an incentive to visit them.
3. A visit to the beautiful resort of Cancun, Mexico. Hmmmmm…i should count this as my down-time…..where there is not much to do, but eat and drink by the sandy beaches and the blue water. It was indeed relaxing, but the weighing scale and my primary doctor were not too happy.
4. The rabbit and the vegetable garden. I am glad that the rabbit ate well — lettuce leaves, green beans and snap peas. Eggplant, sweet pepper and tomatoes were spared and that is what we ate!
5. The presidential campaign. Oh! when is it going to end. I feel sorry for the folks that live in the battleground states….with TV advertisement, robot calling and the likes, the only ones that are prospering are the media companies. The one thing that i do like … is the technology CNN uses….so interactive….would be nice to use it in our classrooms to engage students.

The republican national convention was as other political events go…quite boring….lots of speeches read from teleprompters ….. maybe it should be required that each speaker give an extempore speech … which I am sure will be more fun and genuine. Clint Eastwood, was the only one that did not read from a teleprompter….good for him. Isaac did leave his mark on Louisiana — by and large the levy’s held up….maybe the president can pass an executive order or the house can pass a law barring any more hurricanes from hitting Louisiana. It has had its fair share of devastation.

6. The summer of violence. The shootings in the movie theater, the Sikh temple, in Baltimore at a school and i am sure many more that i am not aware off. We must do something – gun control + education??? Sigh!
7. The event that brought the world together – including my family where we all agreed on one show was the London Olympics. It was spectacular….the swimming, gymnastics, track and field, etc. I just wish NBC showed the events “live” rather than at night by when we already know the results.

Am I ready for the Fall 2012? I think so. We have 44 new faculty joining this year and I am sure we will be busy ….new products (Blackboard Learn 9.x, Office 365), upgrades to existing systems (Adobe Creative Suite, SPSS, NVIVO, etc.) & new services (iPad in the classroom). Stay tuned.

The month of May has finally arrived and with it a lot of rain, making the grass green as ever. I was happy to see the rabbit in my yard for a while i was getting worried whether he had survived the winter. The rabbit was sitting just under one of tree peonies which was about to bloom. Beautiful pink flowers. I am sure he was admiring its beauty as well. The warm weather has brought the lilacs to bloom a couple of weeks earlier that normal, I hope they last until mothers day!

Now that the election season is upon us, i would love to see what social media the two campaigns use and how they use it to reach out to the people. I am sure they will harness a lot of data from Facebook and Google and other sites to target their advertisements. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from the two campaigns.

CNN always uses cool technology during the elections — whether it is their interactive maps or magic wall or holograms they make the process so much more interesting. Wonder what CNN will unveil for the 2012 election?

On a late night drive i tuned the radio to NPR and discovered Moth radio. Heard a couple of fascinating stories, one humorous and the other quite touching, i guess in dedication for mothers day. I should download these short stories to my iTunes account and listen to it on my long drives to and fro work. Maybe it will help be pass the time battling the traffic.

Are we there yet?

About 6 months back i subscribed to an Educause listserv on etexts (ETEXTS@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU) — and I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of traffic on it. Clearly an indication that many universities and colleges were embarking on a project to address the availability of etextbooks and how best to integrate it into the curriculum. The one common element we can all agree on, is that text books are getting very expensive and very heavy! If i try and carry my sons (8th grade) school backpack, I clearly would have difficulty….plus i am sure to carry that amount of weight on a young back must have long lasting negative effects….and its not “cool” to carry a bag on wheels! Too much peer pressure. So just imagine, if all his science, math and art history text books (i wonder why all his English text books are paperback), were in e format on an iPad ($600) or even on a Netbook ($550), each of which weigh between a pound and three….plus all the paper that the environment would save….would not that be a win-win situation for everyone. I do feel, that the popularity of eTextBooks must happen in the K-12 system, which will force students to demand that ebooks be the primary source for when they enter college.

Here at UMass Boston we are about to embark on a program that will offer our faculty the opportunity to put content (hopefully eTextBooks) on an iPad and use it in their teaching and integrate it into their class. Some of the publishers are creating wonderful interactive eTextBooks, and apps like “inkling” will assist the eTextBook market to grow rapidly. I just pray that the students benefit by paying a lower price for the book and have a better experience with learning the content in it.

I think we are there!

Pray that the date of my first blog is not a bad omen! As you know we Indians tend to be very superstitious. Well…i guess time will tell.

While I was driving home last evening….i do have a long drive, about 70 minutes….the news on NPR was rather sad….i quickly remembered that i could download “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me”…one of my favorite NPR shows, as a podcast into the NPR app on my iPhone. While stuck in traffic on the Pike i quickly downloaded last Sundays broadcast…..and well for the next 40 minutes or so i enjoyed my drive home. I did miss Mo Rocca on the show….but nevertheless the show was just as enjoyable.

I do hope that our students are able to do the same for lectures that faculty record. What a great way of listening to content. As the percent of students that have smartphones increases, i do hope we are able to capture (record) additional content and make them available as podcasts. I should encourage my older son who heads off to college this fall to do the same. Well, I guess time will tell!