Canonical qualitative models

Certain models in business and engineering become part of the "canon" and are thus part of the background of knowledge one takes for granted. Of course, the act of come up with such models was itself creative at one time, and the study of their structure and content is useful for developing new models of a business or technological situation.

Module 8 of my course, Creative Modeling for Tech Vision discusses some of these models and their construction and use and can be examined on slideshare here or in the viewer below.

Mtv 08 Canonical S07 from David E. Goldberg Transforming Higher Education

The course web site may be surfed here.

Biological anthropology course gets a B+

I just finished another Teaching Company course on DVD: Biological Anthropology: An Evolutionary Perspective (24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture). The instructor was Barbara J. King, The College of William and Mary. The logical flow of the course was quite good, and the content was up to date. I found her speaking voice a bit grating and her presentation ability below Teaching Company standards. Moreover, Dr. King had the annoying habit of describing in words really interesting graphics and pictures that she didn't show!! This is really odd, because the Teaching Company goes to great lengths to get good visuals. Nonetheless, the course was worth watching, and Dr. King was at her best when talking about primates and primatology, her specialties.

ShareThis on Vator.tv

Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis, does the elevator pitch for the ShareThis system on vator.tv here. Tim was at AlwaysOn Media in NYC last week (see related posts here and here).