New iFoundry content is up

The Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry) has posted new content, including new videos and ppts. For example, Patents in One Easy Lesson is a new video interview of USPTO veteran John Calvert, and Is Science Merely Applied Engineering is a new powerpoint presentation. Go here to see more.

University of Illinois seeks to reinvent engineering education

Today, the University of Illinois announced bold plans to transform engineering education. See here.

iFoundry: Organizational change for transformation of engineering education

Here's another YouTube video test.  iFoundry: Organizational change for transformation of engineering education.

More information about iFoundry is available here.

Engineers as category enhancers

I've been working on creating short YouTube videos for iFoundry, the Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education. The first one is about engineers in the 21st century and the need to move toward category creation, not just category enhancement.

How do people share? Email, Facebook & the rest

ShareThis has released some interesting statistics about how people share information online. E-mail is by far and away the most popular mode of sharing accounting for 35% of the traffic followed by Facebook with 10%, Digg with 7%, and MySpace with 6%. A number of bloggers have written about this including VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb , DigitalInspiration, BusinessBlogAngel.

2nd call: Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering

The second call for papers for the 2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering (WPE-2008) is available here. WPE-2008 will be held 10-12 November 2008 (Mon-Wed) at The Royal Academy of Engineering in London. The workshop, in part, traces its roots to a blogpost on 24 May 2006 on this blog (here) regarding the lack of a philosophy of engineering (see here).

Johnny Bunko: The kids like it

Dan Pink's new book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need is out, and I've given it the ultimate test. I asked my two sons (Max, 19; Zack, 15) to read it and comment on it. First, the book is successful in the sense that they both read it. It isn't very long, and it is in manga form, so it isn't very taxing intellectually, but neither of these comments is meant to suggest that it isn't quite good. Both boys read it and were able to discuss the points raised in terms of their own experience.

Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering CFP

Read this doc on Scribd: wpe-2008-call-for-papers-2008-4-23

Bury the Cold War Curriculum

My essay, Bury the Cold War Curriculum published as the Last Word in the April 2008 ASEE Prism, got picked up on the web and reprinted here at Redorbit. A related set of powerpoint slides, What Engineers Don't Learn and How They Don't Learn It, is available here or in the viewer below:

What Engineers Don't Learn from David E. Goldberg Transforming Higher Education

Favorite B. C. Forbes quotation

"The man who is cocksure that he has arrived is ready for the return journey." B.C._Forbes (1880 - 1954). Other Forbes pearls of wisdom may be found here.