anchor
The Future of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
Does anyone use the Google Reader? I recently started using it, and we have a love hate relationship right now. It's awesome, but it could be so much better. Why can't it do everything you would expect it to do? Anyways, here's a quicklist of reasons to use it:
the futuresustainablityarchitecture
They are so good at aggregating and indexing content, but the AJAX interface and functionality needs to step it up a notch.
Here is my blog spotlight of the day:
Om Malik
And in other news, I started using
del.icio.us today. I have thousands of Firefox bookmarks in all kinds of subfolders, and I'm so accustomed to that structure, that it's hard for me to get used to this delicious thing. I like it so far, but getting the thousands of bookmarks migrated over is going to be a task.
Tonight the dean of the college met with students at the AIAS meeting to talk about the "future of the college of architecture at Texas A&M." He spent a good chunk of the time talking about the reason the college requires students to spend a semester away during the third or fourth year of study. It was this ridiculous graph that looked something like this:
Keep in mind this is my crude re-interpretation of the graphic, but it gets the point across. The solution to this problem of students not learning anything new after their second year of school is apparently this:
Are we in kindergarten? Do we really need a graphic like this to explain something so simple? I didn't get a chance to say this at the meeting, b/c we talked about other things like budget issues, stagnant course content, etc... but I think this idea would be better explained some other way. All this theoretical crap about intellectual development is not impressing anybody.
I'm going to meet with the Dean in the morning to talk to him about various things. Most of all I'm going to recommend that he start a weekly podcast. I doubt he knows what a podcast is, but he's about to find out. What do you think of a Dean of a College having a podcast? I think it's a great way for Dean's to get rid of that mysterious reputation they always seem to have. What does the average Dean do all day long?
Well if they would talk about it every once in a while or write about it in a blog, maybe people wouldn't be so put off by them, or maybe they would be more put off. Either way it would open up lines of communication that have never been opened before, at least for our College, anyways,
4 Comments
I use Google reader. So far it's the best rss feeder I’ve found, but it is slow at times. I agree it could be so much better, but Google is a hit or miss company, sometimes their right on the mark, other times way-off. I use the hell out of del.icio.us. It might take some time for you to switch over, but it will be worth it to have all your bookmarks organized and saved to a web server (incase of any crashes). The ability to share the tags is what is so appetizing for me. Filtering out all the webpages viewed and creating an infustructure of sharing.
Wow, they REQUIRE people to study abroad?!?!?!?! That's AWESOME, that's the best thing I've heard yet about the A&M program!!!
My school made it insanely difficult to study abroad, and I always thought that was the single biggest missed opportunity in an otherwise great school. I did it anyway but couldn't do it in architecture (which ended up being better for me personally, but, still...)
So, yay! what a good thing to hear.
well i should clarify. They require you to spend a semester away, either in an internship or study abroad. Most students do study abroad b/c the internship program is kind of a joke. The students who get internships most often get them because of a friend of the family, and not b/c of the college or department administration.
Frankly I've never understood the idea of being forced to contribute part of your schooling time to an internship; you'll have years of that when you graduate, anyway, and those of us who can't afford school are probably working in summer intenships the whole time anyway. Studying abroad is wayyyy worthwhile, however.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.