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Designed by Feel Good Anyway for the song 'Meet the Elements'
Schoolhouse Rock! mattered. Three was a damn magic number. And even though we don’t remember exactly how “I’m Just a Bill” became a law, we knew that he usually didn’t. The failure of SOPA/PIPA recently reminded us of that.
Educational songs are edutainment 1.0. Simple lessons set to rhythm, rhyme and cartoons. Those of us who already like learning, like these songs. We get all sorts of nostalgic for Reading Rainbow.
Some contemporary bands are keeping this alive, like PUSA lead singer Chris Ballew’s “Caspar Babypants” or They Might Be Giants’ Grammy-nominated album, Here Comes Science.
Production company Feel Good Anyway produced a charmingly simple, high-contrast vid to accompany their song, “Meet the Elements.”
But even though this video got 1 million+ YouTube views, this shit ain’t going viral. Maybe edutainment 2.0 will.
This generation is in desperate need of more creative ways to keep up with the speed of technology, especially web tech. So much laughter and sharing across the globe is from viral video, and most of that is void of a deliberate, “Hey, I’m gonna make you laugh but teach you something along the way, too.”
Maybe it’s gotta be something interactive. Spoken-word HTML5 video responses. Paint-by-hexadecimal color code in realtime. Programming code scavenger hunt across the web with fun prizes. Something fun. Your suggestions are welcome in the comment box below.
American science edutainment 1.0 started way back with the 1959 album Space Songs by Tom Glazer.
They Might Be Giants re-recorded his song, “Why Does the Sun Shine?” It was a fun rendition, but no one can match the pomp of the unabashed original style. (:marching in place: “Come, let’s learn!”)
Like much of the style of the late 1950s, if you weren’t cheesy, you weren’t happening. If you watch the video below with the original song, you’ll see that Glazer wins your heart until he introduces some near-intolerable lecturing toward the end of this gem. Excuse me — mass of incandescent gas.
Watch the original: (For lyrics, click “read more.”)
A controversial essay about obsessing over getting into the “perfect college,” published in Newsweek magazine when she was still in high school.
Screening thousands of college application essays (a.k.a. personal statements) through her job at Yale University’s admissions office.
These are just some of the experiences that color writer Hannah Friedman‘s experience with education.
In 2009, Friedman published Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool, a frank memoir of her teenage years at a prestigious boarding prep high school and the ruthless college application process that created a frenzy among her senior classmates. College degree now in hand, the 24-year-old is working on her second book, which will discuss the pitfalls of standardized testing and other evaluation methods that she argues fail to help students succeed.
Hannah took some time to chat with BetterGrads and lend her thoughts on the college application process, writing a personal statement and how we evaluate student success. Check out the Q & A on BetterGrads.org.
Girls and boys, gather ’round. It’s story time. Aren’t we excited?
Are you still reading? Are you desensitized to being patronized? Not within the blogosphere, I hope.
Academia is the culprit.
You may find it unsurprising that condescending behavior exists in academia. It seems fitting for a culture in which intellect and pedagogy are central. However, I firmly believe that patronizing communication is un-educational. I care deeply about higher ed, so this issue burns me like wasabi in a windpipe.
When compared to the rest of the world, some say we’re far behind in education. Our science sucks, our math is elementary, and our language skills are as diverse as a Stephenie Meyer book signing. When compared to the other rest of the world, some taut American education as more robust than most countries on the planet, as we have a solid trajectory of nursery-through-post-graduate options for anyone who can muster their way through the necessary bureaucracy and financing.
But despite what any of them say… how do we compare to ourselves?
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released statistics reflecting the 50 states by percentage of residents aged 25-34 who hold a college degree. I instantly thought about the dozens of annoying under-employed Census representatives who’ve banged on my door over the past few months trying to get me to fess up to the ethnicity of my next-door neighbor who no longer lives there. Clearly, the Census is unable to track those who go unnacounted for–many of which do not hold college degrees–so I was instantly skeptical of the stats.
Instant cynicism aside, the results are thought-provoking. And if Statistics 101 taught me anything, a sampling is indicative of a larger population. The Chronicle of Higher Education, the ivory tower of all that is sacred and holy in academic news, prettified the numbers with a lovely interactive chart, which you can play with and view by clicking here.
Web humor seems to spew out of the subject of college, from CollegeHumor’s prank wars to PartySchoolTexts.com to fake Facebook college groups, but rarely does a funny site poke fun at the institutions themselves. Rife with administration bureaucracy and run by self-proclaimed intellectuals, colleges and universities are surely worth a jab for being the squarish bookworms of society.
Enter The Cronk of Higher Education, a satirical news site about ridiculous issues in higher education, overblown academic conferences and fake intern/slave-wanted advertisements. In short, it’s The Onion with a PhD in post-post-modernist structuralism in Beowulf. The movie.
Fake article topics range from tech-savvy colleges that admit students via Evite and college fairs that draw 3,000 parents … and zero students. From revered professors emerita to jaded school administration staff to the broke PhD going on a 6th year of candidacy, The Cronk sheds a lighter, more ironic light on academic culture than the iron gates of higher ed usually allow through.
- girl geeks
- guys who like girl geeks
- scientists
- documentary-lovers
- hungry artists
- artsy web developers
- Trekkies
- cat owners
- single-celled organisms, because they don't know any better
- scholars
- grad students
- people who buy magnetic poetry kits
- people who receive magnetic poetry kits as gifts
Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com title: "Wishful Thinking" - originally published 5/18/2012 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE! […]
Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com title: "The Avoidance Cycle" - originally published 5/14/2012 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE! […]
Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com title: "Grad Stereogram" - originally published 5/9/2012 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE! […]
Questions > Answers
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A Specialization in Postmodernist-Sub-Sub-Obscurity
Portrait of a Scholar by Rembrandt van Rijn, via Wikimedia Commons
The Ph.D. candidate who specializes in philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality in graphic novels.
The English lit master’s student who studies post-structuralism in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way.
The undergrad majoring in 19th century French poetry.
These hard working, passionate scholars often face the same dreaded question:
“…What are you going to do with that?”