Abe's Blog

Yesterday British Telecom announced that British cities and towns can keep the Phone Booths (see picture, courtesy of Le Devoir of Montreal) that are so prevalent. These nostalgic and beautiful boxes, together with the London double decker buses, bring to my mind everything that is beautiful and good in Great Britain, but with the advent of the cell phones, not many people use these boxes anymore. It is easier to talk while walking with your cell phone rather than waisting time sitting inside these cabinets.

British Telecom had a plan: to get rid of all the red booths located all over the three and a half Kingdoms of the United Kingdom. The Municipal Councils and the people of Great Britain had different ideas and decided that these boxes should remain being part of the scenery of English towns. British Telecom will comply with these requests.

British Telecom, however, will make a profit from this. It will charge £500 per year per booth for a booth with a working telephone, and £250 per year for a cabin without a phone. Make the numbers: Today there are over 60,000 booths in the UK.

I think this a small price to pay in order to preserve the patrimony. For us who do not live in the UK it will also be a relief to know that when you go to London those beautiful big cabinets will be there.

I wish other countries could follow the British example to enhance our sense of belonging to our history by conserving the national patrimony not only in museums but as an integral part of our daily living.

Could you post the names of things that you think your country should have preserved but it didn't, in the name of progress? Let's make a list so all the readers of CR4 can enjoy some nostalgia.

Abe

Last week the US Department of Justice discovered a diploma mill in Spokane. The mill sold college diplomas to more than 10,000 people in the US and around the world. After buying the diplomas these people went to work at places like the National Security Agency, NASA, the CIA, the White House (a military adviser to the President was found to have a bogus diploma), Nuclear Power Plants, Hospitals (several bought diplomas in Cardiology, Obstetrics and gynecology, an others), Colleges, Law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, and other places.

Many of these institutions have caught the usurper(s) and they were fired, but there are thousand still working.

Here you have a partial list of individuals who bought bogus diplomas:List

In your next visit to the doctor make sure you review this list to see that your doctor is not listed here.

What do you think about buying a diploma?

Since the year 2000 MIT started an initiative (called OpenCourseWare)that would publish all their courses in the web for everybody to see, enjoy and learn. They created a web site (http://ocw.mit.edu/) for this purpose where, nowadays, more than 1800 courses live. This initiative was started by a request from some of the faculty. Timidly at first, the faculty responded by allowing MIT to use, for publication, all the content of their courses: lecture notes, laboratory exercises, tests and quizzes and the answers to these, and videos for some courses. The courses posted in this site are the real courses, the same ones that are being offered in situs at the MIT campus.

I always thought that knowledge should be free for all people, and this initiative come close to this ideal. Million of people around the world are taking advantage of this web site: they are increasing their knowledge, they are understanding better the inner working of the World, they are using these materials as an example on how to prepare new courses and how to teach them. In essence MIT is having an extraordinary impact on global education, because to download the content of these courses you do not have to register, you do not have to pay a single penny, you do not have to belong to a elite school or institution (like MIT). These courses, however, do not allow you to get a diploma from MIT and you can not ask questions to the faculty creator of the course.

We all should thank MIT for this web site (who knows, maybe later they will lower their fees!) that allows all people in the World to learn just for the sake of learning, and allow educators to improve education.

Listen to the words of MIT President Susan Hockfield:"There is no limit to the power of the mind. We encourage you to use OCW—learn from it and build on it. Find new ways not only to pursue your personal academic interests, but to use the knowledge that you gain—and that you create—to make our world a better place. In the spirit of open sharing, we also encourage you to share your scholarship with others, as hundreds of other universities are already doing through their own OCWs."

Kudos for MIT.

Abe

As I explained last week, I attended the 2008 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference in Pittsburgh. One of the booth I visited often was the exhibit of Dassault Systemes, the great French software company (creator of Catia, Delmia, and owner of Solid Works, among others). They had there a "virtual run around the city of Pittsburgh" simulation. By taking your picture on the spot and feeding it to a computer, you would be running (virtually) in the streets of beautiful Pittsburgh! I enjoyed this very much.

Now, Dassault Systemes invites everybody to participate in the "longest virtual run in the World" by posting two pictures in this web site: http://share-vplusr.3ds.com/en/your-turn/

Here, after, posting your pictures you can select any place in the world to start your run (Egypt, London, Paris, the Gobi desert, the Canadian Rockies, you name it!). After this you can keep track of your running around the World.

Try it. It is really fun and very instructive. The places where you run are incredibly well depicted.

Just go for it!

-Abe

I am attending the 2008 ASEE Annual Conference that is taking place this week (June 22 – 26) in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) is the biggest organization of its kind in the world. It was established in 1893 with the purpose of enhancing Engineering and Engineering Technology education. Nowadays its membership includes more 13,000 engineering educators from around the world, and hundred of colleges and corporations. Every year the Annual Conference and Exposition attracts thousand of members and associates. This year more than 3,200 engineering attended and more than 500 papers were presented. You can imagine the activities in the conference center during the three days of the conference.

This year theme, "Building Bridges to Create Change in Engineering Education", was the main topic presented by the keynote speaker, Dr. Charles M. Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering, and by the daily presentations of the Distinguished Lecturers.

Dr. Vest, an influential figure in engineering and science education, talked about the big challenges in engineering education that are needed to respond to a shrinking and changing world ("The World is Flat"). Innovation and change in a global economy is always ahead of us. In a knowledge-based global economy we must address the increased global competition as well as the great opportunities and responsibilities for global cooperation. For Dr. Vest, our engineering education must address the emergence of new fields of knowledge associated with engineering, and the new realities of the World. In his keynote speech he outlined three general areas that must be addressed when educating our young engineers:

1. The emergence of life science as a foundation for engineering,

2. The massive employment shifts into the service sector, and

3. The essential of engineering systems in meeting humankind's grand challenges (energy, clean water, and others)

I will address these topics in my next posts. What are your thoughts about these challenges?