Biomedical and Electrical Engineer with interests in information theory, evolution, genetics, abstract mathematics, microbiology, big history, IndieWeb, mnemonics, and the entertainment industry including: finance, distribution, representation
I love this thread about politics and education. Especially Simon's response.
https:/
Caltech glassblower's retirement has scientists sighing http:/
Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman's Education Plea: Revolutionize Teaching : NPR Ed http:/
Great answer to "Why do professors teach 1 + 1 and then ask you 19.8 * 76 in exams?" https:/
MIT's self-disruption: an update - Changing Higher Education http:/
Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible by @jseelybrown https:/
I like what you've done with the final product and have always thought about doing something similar myself, particularly after I saw what Martin Fenner (https:/
Another thing I've been playing around with lately has been some tools/toys at http:/
A large part of their philosophy is to own one's own data and then syndicate it out to other social media/external site, but some of their infrastructure allows one to easily make posts on one's own page which then act as replies on another's site. This is particularly interesting from the viewpoint of teaching wherein students and professors can interact with each other, but still have/own all of their individual work. (Incidentally, it also makes for using one's own site as a commonplace book of sorts, which I often find valuable.)
As an exmple, you'll notice on the post on my blog http:/
Admittedly, it's incumbent upon users to double check, but the DRASTIC change from the old theme to the new is really TOO much of a change. As a theme publisher, you really should have created a totally new theme with a different name. Though the new design is lovely in and of itself, with a new name, it also would have likely benefited by not having the old one-star reviews or the support forum issues which are likely to scare new samplers/users of the new theme away.
You're also likely to have even worse problems from users who don't double-check to see the changes/updates and have issues. I'd imagine that many who had the older version may want to go back to the original version 1.2.3.
Though there were a few quirks with the old version (< v1.2.3), it was both lovely and very functional, particularly within the Education space. This new theme doesn't really have any type of educational feel at all and instead seems more like a plain vanilla WP blog format.
For the sake of the community, I honestly hope that you republish the old version under its original name and then republish v2.0 under a new name. If you do this, I'll come back and give the original a 5 star review along with some notes about how to navigate the home page slider that seemed to be one of the bigger issues in the original.
At the most basic level [book:Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or a Ph.D.|460669] has some relatively sound advice. If you need something entertaining my friend Adam Ruben's book [book:Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School|7769479] is pretty good.
For some of the other topics you mention, start reading The Chronicle of Higher Education. Most of it is available online without a subscription, but they've got lots of current faculty writing regularly on the topics you mentioned.
Slowly you'll find a community of online professors like Robert Talbert (http:/
On twitter, you might consider following some the people on this list to start: https:/
Within twitter, there are a handful of hashtags you might following/comment along with including: #mathchat, #PhDchat, #PhDLife and likely a handful of others.
On the practical side, consider creating accounts on mendeley.com, academica.com, researchgate.com, etc. as a way to find people, help, material, etc. You might also consider starting yourself a blog (aka Commonplace book) to collect all your thoughts: http:/
Finally, for graduate level math, I highly recommend spending the $100-200 for a Livescribe Pulse pen: http:/
Feel free to ping me here or via other means (http:/
University hiring: If you didn't get your Ph.D. at an elite university, good luck finding an academic job. http:/