Martin Gordon's Blog

In the past few days, I've discovered several "real" blogs (i.e., not LiveJournal, angsty-type jobs) run by college kids. I think they each provide valuable content for their target niche and provide a younger perspective on their chosen topics. Here they are:

• Student PR by Chris Clarke of Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, Canada
• College v2 by Sean Blanda of Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
• College Startup by Ben Bleikamp of The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH.

I don't think I've ever come across so many college bloggers in such a short time, and I'm astounded by it. While I have by no means contacted these guys about starting or joining some kind of network, Sean of College v2 has already taken steps to starting such a network.

On a side note, I also need to stop breaking the cardinal rule of blogging and put up an About page before I actually finish college.

Technorati Tags: college, university, bloggers, students, networks

TechCrunch is reporting that one Microsoft employee has been able to join Facebook as part of the Microsoft network.

A quick search of Facebook turns up only one Class of '09 undergrad with the name "Niall Kennedy". It's hard to get an accurate number of the number of people on the Microsoft network, but there doesn't seem to be Google, Yahoo, or AOL networks on there yet (according to Inside Facebook, there are only 10 companies on Facebook so far).

Is this a good thing? On the surface, it looks like it will get more users on the network. But with already existing rumors that employers are already leveraging recent grads' logins to look at the profiles of potential new hires for "risky" behavior (partying, drinking, drug use, etc.), you have to wonder if this will hurt the utility of the college networks by forcing students to censor themselves or leave the network completely.

As a college student, I don't see much utility in letting someone on a work network see my profile. They could learn much more from me by reading my blog, and what they read hear is much more useful to both of us in terms of professional networking (as opposed to the social networking Facebook is optimized for).

Putting myself in the shoes of a work Facebook user, I don't see as much utility in learning about a coworkers favorite books, TV shows, etc than I do in learning about what type of projects they're working on, their title, where they fit in the formal structure of the company, etc. Of course, I haven't spent much time out in the work force, so I may be completely off base.

Anyway, I don't see this addition of professional networks of bringing much value to the network itself. What I do see it doing, however, is allowing bloggers at the companies allowed on Facebook to generate buzz about the network and drive up the perceived value of the business.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, social networks, Microsoft, professional, networks, college, university, work

I saw this on Kent Newsome's blog. I'll take any excuse to get distracted from studying…

Here are the instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Turn to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post it with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

Here's mine:
Finally, a fluctuating price may impose excessive risk on one or the other party.

From Krugman/Obstfeld, International Economics: Theory & Policy. Exciting, huh?

What's yours say?

Technorati Tags: a sentence, economics, international economics, Krugman, school, college, university, meme

The University of California, Berkeley has posted recordings of some classes on iTunes. This is a great step towards Education 2.0 (.edu + Web 2.0). Students don't have to be in the same physical room as the professor to hear the lecture anymore. Heck, the student doesn't have to be go to the same school.

Critics may complain that podcasting lectures will completely destroy class attendance. I disagree. There is definitely something about being able to see lecture slides and be able to ask questions on-the-fly and have discussions with the professor and other students. But imagine being able to learn twice as much by being able to fill in downtime with recorded lectures (see the jar of rocks metaphor).

This is only the beginning. What I see a few years down the line are many-to-many podcasts much like the way blogs work now. The professor puts out (or it happens automatically via classroom technologies) the day's lecture. Slides are timecoded so as automatically follow the audio. Students post audio comments, listenable by everyone else. Each student has their own feed for each class they're enrolled in. If I like a particular student's comments, I can subscribe to his/her feed and have their questions/comments brought to my attention. I can hear what he has to say in other classes. I can respond to them even if I'm not in that other class. I can respond on my own time.

There's no need for everyone to get together in the same room at the same time to have class. Class can happen on your time.

Technorati Tags: UC Berkeley, Berkeley, iTunes, iTunes U, education, podcast, lectures, audio, education 2.0, college, university, school, Web 2.0

One of my biggest problems with my Wharton education is that a lot fo the stuff we're being taught is outdated. Our Marketing 101 and Management 101 classes are being taught based on models and frameworks developed 30+ years ago.

In either class, I have yet to hear the word "blog", yet blogging has been around for at least five years and doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Blogging has changed the way businesses should be run, yet the leaders of my generation will be running businesses the way we learned to in school and the way its been done for the past few years. You know that boss that'll fire you in 10 years for blogging? They're sitting next to me taking pages and pages of notes on the Nadler-Tushman Congruence Model and learning how to do "business as usual."

So do we get it or not? Dean Harker does, but its not apparent from the "front lines". As the leading undergraduate business school (and one of the top graduate B-schools), I'd have hoped we could do something a bit more cutting-edge than the usual research/paper/presentation deal we have been required to do in many of the core classes. For example, in Management 101, we are to research a company "with a problem", analyze it in the context of the frameworks of the class, and offer our recommendations. Imagine instead, we assembled a class-wide World of Warcraft guild (or for the less war-mongering among us, perhaps set up a Second Life business) and built our characters over the course of the semester. Over the course of the semester, we would have to do small writeups defending the contributions we made to our guild. Which one would teach us more about being leaders and managers in the real world? I can tell you that the former probably won't and Joi Ito can tell you that the latter probably is.

Technorati Tags: Wharton, Penn, UPenn, MMOGs, World of Warcraft, Joi Ito, Dean Harker, Management, Marketing, Web 2.0, leadership, gaming, Second Life, business school, MBA

Last semester, the University set out to do something about that blasted wind tunnel between the high rises. When that "something" debuted a short while ago, it should have come at no surprise to everyone that brick paths, lots of mulch and a handful of trees do absolutely nothing to mitigate the winds.

Instead, it seems that fixing the wind tunnel was just a ploy to satisfy the unholy fetish that the University has with destroying green spaces. I mean, the Pythagorean Theorem is great and all and while I have utilized that newly minted diagonal crosswalk that stretches from 39th and Spruce to 39.5th and Locust a few times, it's just wasn't worth losing yet another recreational space to the brick and mortar gods for the convenience. The loss is especially bad considering that it was done under the pretense that it was going to do something about those horrific winds that toss me around daily like some 1st grader about to lose his lunch money to that mean ol' bully.

This post brought to you by the numbers 3 and 0 and the letters m, p, and h.

Technorati Tags: UPenn, University of Pennsylvania, recreation, construction, Philadelphia, Penn