TREND: Changing Roles in Higher Education

Derek Bruff, Dwayne Harapnuik, and Jim Julius in their Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Revolution or Evolution? Social Technologies and Change in Higher Education" discuss the adviseability of and likelihood of transformational change in the adoption of new technologies by faculty.

Key Points:

1. New technologies provide new learning 'affordances' but is a social technology revolution possible in an environment that values incremental change at best and no change at worst?
2. The authors narrate the story of a recent interactive session during the annual conference of the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Saint Louis.
3. POD's are located in faculty development offices on most campuses and are active in attempting to improve faculty teaching through change initiatives.
4. Ideas from POD
a. The model for information flow has changed from an industrial one to a filtering one.
b. We have shifted from an Instructional Paradigm to a Learning Paradigm. This is reflected in Monica Raskin's "Twitter Experiment" at University of Texas at Dallas. Bruff, et al ask whether this is the change we need to be drawn toward?



c. Some have argued for this radical shift:

d. POD Prezi Presentation

Revolution or Evolution? #pod10 on Prezi

5. POD group's examples of "roadblocks, obstacles, and speed bumps" toward this shift.
a. Faculty as proto-Luddites
b. Faculty need for models
c. Faculty loss of control when shifting
d. Faculty don't see it as a personal, professional, or university priority
e. Faculty don't have the 'geek' openness to new tech ideas
f. Faculty remain unconvinced of advantages over status quo
6. Here is an online document outlining their discussion and another interactive one using Google Forms to focus the previous one.
7. The biggest challenges?
a. The move from sage to the side, from prof-centered to student-centered.
b. Sharing effective models with other faculty
8. The authors do not explicitly answer whether it should be evolutionary or revolutionary; instead, they invite the readers to join.

Comments to Article:

9. You have to address faculty fears either way. Fierce autonomy, fear of being made redundant by technology, lack of clear cost/benefit analysis--these are all examples of the fear that fills reluctant colleagues.
10. Access to the tools of change along with a way to 'unstrand' colleagues will lead to change of both kinds.
11. "Most profs are amateurs when it comes to teaching"--improving learning no matter the tech (3X5 cards, face-to-face sims, Twitter). Focus on making the amateurs into pros.
12. References to book Nineshift
13. "Revolutions require ubiquity."
14. Administrative motive is suspect--use tech to save money is first priority.

Significance/consequences:

Failure to address this question simply kicks the can down the road for someone else to address and it may well be that a ginned up crisis or a real crisis will reduce the options we once had much like the climate change deniers may have damned our options in addressing carbon buildup in the atmosphere.

Being out of step with out students might be considered quaint by some. It might be thought that faculty are the last bulwark against the barbarian-students at the gate. Whatever rationale is given for sticking to the status quo ante-technology, it is clear that these 'good deeds' will not go unpunished. For-profit companies are gaming both student desires and federal money in an ugly takeover attempt. If you want to look at a school 'too big to fail' just consider University of Phoenix. This purity of the academe will be it death.

Lastly, the comment above that most professors are amateurs not pros is the dirtiest little secret of the ivory tower. Faculty development does yeoman work on our own campus considering how underpowered and de-valued it is. But the greatest sin is that it can be safely ignored by tenured faculty. And, honestly, it is ignored and without moral or professiona or personal hazard. One of the most morally bankrupt results of this is that those who have the power often and regularly do not exercise it for students but rather for their professional and personal selves. Yes, that is the foul cruft of corruption in the air and it is the most dangerous threat to the thousand year tenure of the University.

Hacker, P. (11:00 am). Revolution or Evolution? Social Technologies and Change in Higher Education. ProfHacker. The Chronicle of Higher Education, . Retrieved March 11, 2011, from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/revolution-or-evolution-social-technologies-and-change-in-higher-education/29304

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Trend: Affordability--Etextbooks at University

John Levi Hilton and David Wiley discuss in their First Monday article "A Sustainable Future for Open Textbooks?" the viability and sustainability of one model of etext delivery--Flat World Knowledge.

Key Points:

1. In 2008 the average price of textbooks was US$702 and 5.5 billion nation wide.
2. Textbook companies and professors have come in for a raft of criticism over the last ten years over the cost and waste in texts for classrooms.
3. E-books have proved a cheaper alternative but their cost, readability, and resale ability have proven to be stumbling blocks to adoption.
4. Free e-textbooks have been proposed as an answer by non-commercial groups like CourseSmart, Connexions, and Wikipedia as well as commercial efforts like Flat World Knowledge (FWK) and Textbook Media.
5. Flat World Knowledge's business model is the subject of this essay.
6. Benefits of FWK:
a. Older texts will not be discontinued even if revisions are available.
b. Texts are allowed to be freely customized.
c. Full text online version of etext is free.
d. Audio, pdf, and print version available for sale.
e. Higher royalty rate paid to authors (15%)
7. Alpha testing indicated that the business model was looked up favorably by both faculty and students compared to traditional texts.
8. Beta testing indicated that the majority of students were likely to buy the text instead of reading it only online.

Consequences/Significance:

Making college more affordable may depend on efforts like these to reduce costs. The authors suggest that this model might become the rule for K-12 which also is in desperate economic straits. One-to-one laptop initiatives would be well-advised to look at this freemium model and load up textbooks onto this hardware. The model might provide a counterbalance to the out-of-control costs in traditional textbook publishing.

Implications for the library's role in etextbooks has not been thought through. Amazon already sells more ebooks than paper books and access to these etexts through smartphones, tablets, and e-readers is becoming nearly universal; therefore, barriers to access are lower than ever before. In other words the textbook market is suffering severe dislocations as it tries to adjust to the 'textonic' forces shifting beneath them. Or maybe not. There does not appear to be a rush by faculty and students to adopt. Some have suggested that a new model (already used by the University of Phoenix) be used where stukdents woiuld pay a materials fee which would be lumped together to get e-books for all.

Plus/Minus:

We really could see the end of the 'paper and binding' textbook in five years. Western needs to have a pilot program running now to make this happen because the present system is effectively broken. But I am concerned that universities will not effectively contain costs considering how poorly they have fared keeping a lid on digital subscriptions at libraries. And...what exactly would the consequences be for existing campus bookstores? Lost revenue and lost jobs? No, this is disruptive stuff here and not all tea and skittles.  That the law of unintended consequences will have powerful sway here, there is little doubt.

Hilton III, J. L., & Wiley, D. A. (2010). A sustainable future for open textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge story. First Monday, 15(8). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2800/2578

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Trend: Technology Based Delivery Systems--the MOOC

Canadian educational research guru Stephen Downes outlines the beginnings of a new trend--the massively open online course (MOOC).

Key Points:

1. The MOOC is not just an online course with lots of students. Downes characterizes it as one that has 'connectivist' philosophy at its heart. Also, the course is free to all and open to all. Nothing is required and participants can participate as much or as little as they wish. Everything is optional.
2. Downes and fellow professor, George Siemens, model the work of the course (Connectivism and Connective Knowledge or CCK11) together and welcome others to join in.
3. The course reflects the underlying philosophy of connectivism.
4. Connectivism has as its major tenet that learning is not acquired nor is it transmitted; instead, it is the process of making connections across a distributed network of connections. In such a learning environment you situate yourself in a place where you can make connections among a community of practitioners.
5. There are four parts to the MOOC
a. Aggregation--Since immersion is one of the necessary conditions for maximizing connectivity, Downes stuffs the course with lots of contents of varying degrees of difficulty including a dailyk newsletter, blogs, articles, videos, podcasts, collected Tweets from Twitter, bookmarks, discussion posts, and any kitchen think he can come up with. The idea is for each person to create his or her own stance toward the material and others who want to talk about it.
b. Remixing--Once immersed the next step is to make connection within the course much like your neurons which learn by firing together. This associating is very loosely governed by rules if at all and might be said to resemble spiral learning models. The only suggestion Downes makes is to reflect upon the associations that form and to share that content with others.
c. Repurposing--Downes calls this the hard work of the course. At this stage the idea is to get beyond 'reception and filtering' and begin to create. Like an artist's pallette, the colors and canvas come from the materials already gathered together in the first two steps. The pattern is simple: watch the facilitators and adapt and practice with them. Seymour Pappert called this 'constructionism' and tradesfolk call it apprenticeship. Practice is at the heart of connectivism.
d. Feeding Forward--This is what we called "sharing" in kindergarten. It is public and difficult, but it is worthwhile. Feeding forward provides the grist for feedback which you will get from those who appreciate the risk you have taken for their benefit.

Quote from Daniel Pink: "Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus...by neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation--autonomy, mastery, and purpose--they limit what each of us can achieve."

Significance/Consequences:

One of the conclusions we need to draw from this is that learning is communal. While this is not a new understanding the affordances of new technology make its practice possible in tribes of folk who happen to want to be together to learn something. New pedagogies based upon new theories may be the most disruptive technologies that have every existed. The overturn existing paradigms almost unintentionally and by their very existence constitute a profound challenge to the status quo. Connectivism is a challenge to every existing idea that does not make as its reason for being the goal of maximizing the availability of connections in the system.

Plus/Minus:

Credentialing as we know it is very hard to do under this regimen. Carnegie units are cottonwood fluff for connectivists. Grades make no sense because the only person who can tell you if they have learned something is the connected learner. But this is not at all impractical or impractible. We can still assess mastery. If someone can do it, they can be a practitioner. This is akin to what we used to call "reading law at the bar". Lincoln was a connectivist.

Also, I don't think the MOOC works outside of the philosophical framework of connectivism.  

References

Downes, S. (2011). “Connectivism” and Connective Knowledge. The Huffington Post. Blog, . Retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/connectivism-and-connecti_b_804653.html?view=print

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Trend: Changing Role of Faculty/ Creating a Web Presence

Miriam Posner and her fellow bloggers make the argument that faculty need to make themselves more visible on the Internet. If they do so, they assert that it will benefit their "scholarship, pedagogy, and even service."

Key Points:

1. Web presence sounds like marketing. Isn't that beneath the dignity of one with an advanced degree? Certainly not, according to the authors.
2. If others are looking at you online (and they are looking at your 'presence') then you need to make sure they see what you want them to see.
3. Start with Google and end with Google.
4. Basics to creating a good presence:
a. when you sign up for web apps or platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) understand what you control and what you don't.
b. be consistent in your persona (voice, image, style)
c. understand that social networking is like potlatch culture--by your works shall ye be known

5. Keep tight control over what is public on public platforms like Facebook.
6. Use Google Profile as you default public page. Keep it simple and consistent as in 4(b) above.
7. Social networks rank high in Google searches so King effective ones. Academia.edu is a worthwhile one because you can store the necessaries there (CV, papers, teaching credo, links), it speaks the speak of academe, it is professional, it allows you to follow others' work (notifies you when colleagues add to their sites) and sends you emails anytime someone 'lands' on your profile page via Google.
8. Consider using LinkedIn in addition to Academia.edu. LinkedIn ranks highly in Google and helps you differentiate yourself from others with the same name.
9. Use Twitter if it fits your discipline. For example, in education it is nearly de rigeur to have one because the most influential educators tend to use it heavily for professional development.
10. Use RealSimpleSyndication (RSS) to maintain ties to professional ties and developments within your discipline. Get feeds for:
a. favorite blogs
b. google email alerts
c. Database alerts for research areas
d. twitter feeds
e. Jobs pages like the Chronicle's
f. Calls for papers

Comments to the above article yielded:

11. Buy a domain with your name.
12. Create an about.me page. This is a single page that points others to all your presences on the internet.
13. Create Google Scholar alerts.
14. Consider using Interfolio as a showcase for your work and career.
15. Offers up an alternative to "presence"--make yourself discoverable.
16. Use academic commons tools like Zotero and Mendeley.


Significance and Consequences:

Wouldn't it be fun to create a television series based upon doing web presence makeovers for faculty? I think it would reinforce the idea of faculty as arbiters of academic mojo at a time when we could certainly use a better image. Of course, I am only partly serious in this, but the implications of this article are bigger than its DIY intent. What would it mean if web presence was a part of the tenure process? The authors only assert that it can benefit scholarship, pedagogy, and service. How could it?

Scholarship? The social aspect of Internet life effects most of us. Why wouldn't it help us be better scholars. The efforts of The Center for History and New Media have brought us Zotero.org, a browser-based tool fof gathering research into a database which can in turn be accessed by others. Zotero Commons works with the Internet Archive to share research resources. It also allows for collaborative source sharing and group bibliographic work. Scholarship is becoming increasingly collaborative and web presence/discoverability might make a university much more international in its scope.

Pedagogy? One metaphor for this pedagogy is one developed in David Weinberger's seminal book on the web as social medium, Small Pieces, Loosely Joined. According to Weinberger's theory we are moving from a world of complex institutions that work together like machines. This is fine as long as the parts are maintained, but with the Web we don't have a machine but instead a living, messy network of small pieces that we are bringing together ourselves. So too, our pedagogy is growing into a definable presence that defies boundaries, even mashes them together. This article helps define these boundaries a little more clearly while recognizing that it is still a messy business.

Service? To be discoverable on the web is to acknowledge the service one has already done and to imply the service one can afford to others in the future. That service extends to the community and all of its members, but if you are not known by your good works then opaqueness looks like we are hiding something. It is scary, but also exhilirating and perhaps terrifying, that public money calls us to public service.

Increasingly, parents and students are becoming consumers of this new transparency. How much better would we serve future students and past ones if we were all to follow the advice in this article. And even better what if it was common practice to be this transparent at all levels of university life?

Plus/minus:

Some view life as a zero sum game, finite and limited by the hours of the day. I suppose if you followed this article's advice you might lose some sleep at first, but I do think that eventually this discoverability would become second nature and lead to productivity of a new order. This is the goal of The Red Balloon Project, to re-imagine undergraduate education. Part of that re-imagination is to make faculty roles fit the world better rather than vice versa.

It is a disruptive act to change your role, but it might be a necessary one if university will survive the dislocations of the 21st century. Below Clayton Christiansen discusses some of these disruptions. It is surprising how many of them call for faculty to change who they are professionally.

References

Hacker, P. (2011, February 14). Creating Your Web Presence: A Primer for Academics. ProfHacker. The Chronicle of Higher Education, . Retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/creating-your-web-presence-a-primer-for-academics/30458

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Trend: Common Core Standards/Alignment

Doug Lederman in his article "Colleges and the Common Core" explores the limited success in creating a 'seamess' K-20 system of education in the US.

Key Points:

1. Policy makers have long acknowledged and discussed the need for a smooth transition to college level work.
2. Work has been accomplished toward this end, but the author says the progress has been limited. Lederman points to a 2008 article that casts doubt on the effectiveness of so-called 'P-16 councils'.
3. He quotes Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, as making much the same criticism at the first joint gathering of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the State Higher Education Executive Officers.
4. Instead of progress we are getting familiar blame games, each side blaming the other for student ill-preparedness.
5. Top leaders Gene Wilhoit and Paul Lingenfelter hope that the new common core standards of high school graduates will be an occasion for improving this stalemate.
6. Wilhoit and Lingenfelter assert that without the core standards students and their schools won't know what to aim for. Without changes to schools of education that reflect those core standards, then there will be no one to teach students how to meet them.
7. The larger goal is "college attainment and completion" and Wilhoit and others in the joint gathering were optimistic at least at the attainment of a new 'awareness' of the need to address the issue.
8. The small start at the joint meeting highlights the gravity of the job of aligning colleges and core standards.
9. Problem One: Core standards were set up without hied involvement although some have argued that postsecondary teachers were surveyed (lame-o).
10. Hied involvement likely to ramp up as all parties figure out how to bring them into practice.
11. Knowledge and skill levels for entry-level academic institutions are described in the core standards, but proficiency levels are not established. That is where hied will contribute by helping to develop the assessments that will measure these skill and knowledge levels.
12. Three consortia have applied to the federal government for Race to the Top funds to build these assessments.
13. Kevin Reilly, president of the Wisconsin university system, would use the assessments to "help drive more sensible messages about what you need to do to attend any of our campuses."
14. Faculty must reconcile institutional standards with common core standards.
15. Next, the ed schools will have to change the way they prepare teachers. According to Wilhoit, we don't have that workforce in place.
16. The practical interface between postsecondary and secondary will be the ed schools and their professors, but national organizations will have their say as well.
17. Some at the joint gathering worried about how legislators might dumb down the standards and lower admissions cutoffs in response to parents' pressure.

Significance and Consequences:

One might argue that while the core standards have been put forth there is still much jockeying back and forth over the assessments and still more over revising the already drafted version; yet, one can never underestimate how slowly and finely this kind of top down, money driven millstone can work over time. Some commentators have remarked that we are beginning to see "a long, passive aggressive takedown of the Common Core in English Language Arts".

I am particularly worried that these well-intentioned folk are working with a fully stocked empathic deck. Their understanding is...understandably from an eagle's eye view. Looking top down from their eyrie they certainly get the illusion that they know the lay of the land, but it necessarily misses the classroom level hurlyburly and even further the professional mindsets that make up that classroom. In other words these leaders don't have the slightest inkling of the potential effect both professionally and personally to those who are expected to buy into and implement their plans. A true hell of unintended consequences could be hatched from such an airy perch. I worry about that. How many experienced teachers will flee the predations of these hawks?

I am also concerned that the whole enterprise has a distinct odor to it. The impressive involvement of the ETS from the beginning begs the question: who guards against the guardians. Damon Hargraves has tried to follow the money behind this initiative both profit and non-profit and has sketched out how their might be not so secret corporate agendas driving the common core push.




I am also concerned by one of the quotes in the article attributed to the president of Kentucky's Council on Postsecondary Education Robert L. King who remarked, "While everyone in this room is persuaded [about the wisdom of the common core standards and the need to raise educational attainment], we should be worried about parents coming back on our state legislatures." I hope this was taken out of context. If not, then two items are worrying. First, I wonder that there are no other voices in the room and that these meetings are echo chambers for prevailing opinion not public opinion. No one elects these arbiters of core standards. King should be especially sensitive to this and does not appear to be so. It is small wonder that conspiracy theorists abound and that experts' motives are often impugned. It ain't paranoia if they really are out after you.

Second, I am concerned about the obvious disdain that King has for parents. How dare they do an 'end around' someone who is looking out after the best interests of their children! Who better to decide what is in their best interests than Robert King, a carpet bagging New Yawker

Plus/Minus:

This initiative has the makings of a very fine train wreck. Economic conditions are poor for reform of any kind much less that of the ill-conceived and hierarchic as this one. If the latest footage around the world hasn't put you in the know then let me--common folk from Cairo to Madison are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. This isn't to say that reform isn't needed, it is, but not this kind done this way.

By all that is reasonable in educational research and sensible classroom level professional behavior, I think that we need to more like the Finns. Much has been said about their mighty educational system but little about the culture that supports it. Finland is a nearly homogeneous country. It is small. Teachers are paid above average and they seem well respected. I seem to be arguing against myself here, but bear with me. The Finns have a curriculum. Finito. No assessments. No standards. Just curriculum.

We have made the mistake of putting the horse not before the cart but to the side of it. Imagine if you will the retrofitting that will be needed at the classroom level for teachers to fit what they are already doing into the vagueries of such standards as these: they use technology strategically and capably. It will be as much 'by guess' as 'by gosh' when it comes to deciding how to do that and how that doing will be assessed by some as yet to be decided upon national test. Make no mistake. This is the first leap toward a single, ETS/CollegeBoard administered exam. Whether that fits the plethora of educational conditions in the US or not is not the concern of these people. Their concern is that the parents shut up and do what the experts say. Inflammatory you say? It is because they are.

References

Lederman, D. (n.d.). News: Colleges and the Common Core - Inside Higher Ed. Inside HigherEd. Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2010/07/19/core

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Trend: Globalization in Higher Ed

Paul Krugman in his opinion piece, "Degrees and Dollars" plays the contrarian when he counters the conventional wisdom that in order to have better jobs we need more money invested in education.

Key Points:

1. Legal research can be done with computers thus making redundant "armies of lawyers and paralegals".
2. The same is true of chip design and engineers.
3. Upshot? Modern technology doesn't just obsolesce the working class job. A college degree does not necessarily insulate one from the shock of technological productivity. Everything we 'know' about jobs and higher education is wrong.
4. This has led to the 'hollowing out' of the middle class as jobs at the low and high wage end grow. And...this hole in the middle is accelerating into the high end jobs as well.
5. Why? We assume that computers benefit mind workers over hand workers, but drawing on the research of economists David Autor, Frank Levy, and Richard Murnane, Krugman points out that this is not the right way to think. Any task that can be made routine can be computerized. Ironically, this does not include manual labor which can't be reduced to explicit rules and is, therefore, safe from the 'productivity' ravages of technology.
6. Plus, there are not many production/assembly line jobs left to be lost.
7. To aggravate matters for middle and high end knowledge workers, Krugman points to the research by Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger which indicates that their jobs are more "offshoreable" than low-wage jobs.
8. Krugman argues for policy changes: equalize the starting line for all college capable students no matter their class.
9. The idea that graduating more students will save the middle class is 'wishful thinking'. A college degree does not necessarily guarantee a good job. And that is less true with each passing day.
10. Krugman says that we need a "more broadly shared prosperity" that can only be gotten by restoring the balance of bargaining power between labor and management and by guaranteeing health care as a citizen's birthright.
11. If we don't do that then a degree might just be a ticket to nowhereville.

Significance: What are our degrees for? Emergent thinking practitioners like Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer would insist that what we need to do is lead from the future. That future is one in which jobs are abundant but only darkly realized. What I mean is that higher education is preparing students for jobs that already exist (although in startlingly fewer numbers if Krugman is to be believed) when we should be getting them ready to step into ones that don't even exist yet. Of course, we can only guess what those jobs might be and with the nearly logarithmic increases in computing power there is no promise that those jobs won't also be partly or completely automated by the time a typical graduate makes it through a program. Krugman implies that institutions of higher education have become complacent because they assumed that they were the only ones issuing tickets to ride or that because they were the only credential around they could get away with being 'dumb' to the forces around them.

Implications:

It might already be too late to turn around the hied ship of state. There are many impedences to effective change connected at every level and ever direction to hied that will rip and tear when change is even contemplated. It will hurt. People avoid pain as a matter of course, but if the affordances of the change are demonstrated (note I did not say explained) then folks may be persuaded to do so.

Hied must focus not on marketing its benefits other than as a meal ticket. Ironically, if Krugman is right, it must harken to liberal arts and general education as a way into this emergent future. In a roiling sea of change and disruption we need to show our students how to sail. But...institutions do not know how to value or factor in the iconoclasts. Unless we figure out how to do that, the hied's future is tied to an irrelevant beacon receding in the rearview leaving us without a guide ahead.

Plus/Minus:

I hope Krugman is wrong. His solutions to the problem seem truly tacked on so maybe his analysis is wrong as well, but I don't think so. One reason is the rise in for-profit schools. They have positioned themselves to capitalize (quite literally) on the assumption that Krugman takes solid aim at. They milk the idea that hied is an entitlement game--play by its rules and you get the ticket to ride the carousel with the big brass ring. These for-profit institutions will ruin it for all of us who have a more nuanced and realistic view. Imagine the indebted disallusionment of the for-profit graduates who cannot get the promised ride. The corrosive cynicism of even one such person will spread like acid and probably already has done serious damage.

The good news is that Krugman is a prophet who might actually have honor in his own country. Sometimes prophets have to sound the knell of doom just to get our attention. I think that this is doubly so now in an age where everyone tugs on our mind's sleeve and where the hyperbolic is the norm. Krugman may just be extrapolating around the bend, a fancy way of saying he is only guessing and wildly at that.

Futurology is beyond suspect in a world where everything you know is wrong at some point, but there is other evidence that he is at least pointing toward the moon of the zen parable. A recent article in The Guardian, "The Awful Truth: Education Won't Stop the West Getting Poorer," Peter Welby sounds the vuvuzela of doom as well. In the UK real wages have not risen since 2005 and in the U.S. it has barely risen in over 30 years. Citing the same Alan Blinder that Krugman does, Welby is truly scary, "Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has estimated that a quarter of all American service sector jobs could go overseas." Welby goes to insist that this is not going to be an orderly retreat either as predicted by the neoliberal, flat-earth, morons like Thomas Friedman who argued that such a sucking out of jobs would make more room for higher paid, innovative and new industries and jobs. Instead we will be subject to a new Digital Taylorism--the routinization of all but the most complex jobs so that even monkeys can do them. Low paid monkeys with big student loans.
But as the TV Detective Adrian Monk's theme song proclaims, "I could be wrong" Unfortunately, the song last line drops the other shoe when it resignedly sings out, "But I don't think so."

(As an aside, I have to wonder about Krugman's intellectual integrity. Much of the Guardian article is dumbed down in Krugman's column and while no words are lifted, the spirit of the article is plagiarized and the organization is as well. Just saying. Experts should be on tap not on top else they will break your heart.)

References

Krugman, P. (2011, March 6). Degrees and Dollars. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html

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Notes on Whyte's Street Corner Society

Chapter 1: Doc and His Boys
1. The Members of the Gang

opening reads like a novel with a first person narrative as Whyte begins his description of the Nortons, a gang he is 'studying'.

My God this is Dickens! How Fagan got his mojo only in this case it is Doc. A remakrkable recording of conversation. How did he do this?

Whyte chronicles the rise of Doc as gang leader including an extended story about a running battle that for all of me sounds like violent capture the flag or red rover.

I love the accent and argot and the way Whyte captures the voice of his Doc. He describers the long term relationship betgween the gangs and the settlement house. Ten to twelve years for some! Where do we have this anymore outside of schools?

Whyte describes Danny, Doc's closest friend and how they connected up with Mike. Whyte is clear in this narrative about the connections btweeen and among the young men, a ntework map in words.

In his descriptions of Nutsy I see how closely Whyte knew these folks. I especially like how he describes how Carl and tommy "accepted" nutsy's leaership-very nuanced and empathic.

Whyte is alying out the various roles but not from some preconceived idea about role behavior but based upon facts at hand. I am truly struck by the artistic 'behaviors' of so many of the men-stained glass, classical violin. Whyte is not working from stereotypes.

In 1937 the Norton gang reformed with a much different lineup tied together by "mutual obligations". Perhaps we are beginning to see the analytic method pull together. The reference to strong group loyalties is very much kin to the idea in social capital studies about strong ties.

Page 12 "I" is expressed for the first time. Whyte influence map is a visualization of the group. This is triangulation of a sort where his narrative data is backed by a data visualiztion. Taken together they make a gestalt, taken apart not so much. Classic fusion of right and left hemispherics.




So Whyte has brought us up to speed on the politics and social structure of the gang of young men aged 20-29.

2. BOWLING AND SOCIAL RANKING

Whyte sets up the class struggle in the Italian Community Club as represented by the bowling match between the college boys and the Norton boys. The not so secrect agenda was to put the high-toned leaders in their place. You can see from the map above that Fred and Lou are once removed from Doc, but only once removed from the club leaders; hence, their 'betrayal'.

Bowling drew the gang togehter even mpore than usual. Whyte is especially concerned about not only describing the game but alson the mental landscape of the game for its participants especially in his discussion of confidence which I can only presume he got from his long nights of bowling with the boyis. Suffice to say: "there was a close connection between a man's bowling and position in the group." (18) Doc clearly wishes to win and regulurly brings in ringers from outside of the group to bowl in the five-man rotation.

Whyte takes up the interesting story of the meritorious, but choking Alex.
Doc creates an opportunity to decide on a merit pecking order by way of a culminating bowlokng matchbowl.





Doc and Long John acknowledge that the match was only intended as a way to reinforce the existing pecking order. Note how Whyte lets the words of the boys define the context. He does not impose a structure or meaning from the outside. It is interesting that Doc knew his gang well enough to know that there was little danger in having his apple cart turned over. Self-testing on his part? If so a powerful leadership tool.

Whyte defines the function of heckling and realizes that his position as a tolerated outsided did not entitle him to heckling. To the group, he donesn't really matter. Alecs response to his loss in the match is to challenge other one on one. Doc is the deciding factor by exhorting Long John to beat Alec.
This is the long way round the barn to saying that social position withing the gang matched bowling skill. Doc attempts to keep the status quo. In fact the bolwing league might be considered as a happy way to reinforce gang status, but Doc never wanted it as a way to challenge gang status. Or maybe he did?

THE NORTON'S AND THE APHRODITE CLUB

Whyte describes the social gap between the two clubs in the words of the boys--conceited. Doc tricked up a meet on their turf (the bowling alley) with the girls. The group drew together because of the bowling and Doc brought the Nporton's back to settlement house, the Aphrodite's turf. It didn't work because of the settlement house director. After tht the girls became a pawn in the power struggle between the norton's and the Commnunity Club. Alec and Joe have a falling out over this and that upsets the Norton's clearly as a challenge to the social order.





Whyte catches all of the nuance in this social dynamic because he is on tghe inside, not the outside doing sukrvey and making netwrok maps.

4. DOC'S POLITICAL CAMPAIGN

Change and dynamic affect the gang even though it appears stable. Doc struggles as a single unemployed male to expand his influence in politics. Doc's pretension to llarger spheres of leadership put the gang off kilter just as much as others had, perhaps even more so.


5. DISINTEGRATION

The gang fell off to six from the original thirteen. Doc was lspun out fromt gang becauseof his new job. And he is no longer the leader of the gang. Especially sad is the 'straddle' situation of Long John who is not part of Doc's or the gang's inner circle.

Interesting that Whyte intervenes in aid of Long John, a true participant/observer. But the most interesting story is the one where Doc by force of personality takes over the Drmatic Club from Angelo.

APPENDIX A: ON THE EVOLUTION OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY

The researcher, like his informants, is a social animal---that is the takeaway from this research. ONe must find a way into the community and a way to be a part of the community. And a description of this is a part of the research.

Whyte has a powerful description of the interaction between data and experience that I think reflects the focus of reason and the holism of experience. We abstract but only as ir arises from experience. It is as he says a unique phenomenology but one in which common elements may arise.

1. PERSONAL BACKGROUND

Upper middle class
Aspriation to write which you can see clearly in his opening.
Social reform urges
Came to understand people in a 'lilfe situation' as Myles Horton put it
Lincoln Steffens as a model for movement between classes

2. FINDING CORNERVILLE

"I was forced to do what I wanted to do..." this is an astonishing quote about doing reserach that is intrinsically interesting.
starts with a vague idea
Unscientific view of model slum--Dornerville

3. PLANNING THE STUDY

Used Lynds' Middletown as a model and began to think of his own role as sociologicla and athropological.
Preliminary plan
Spught advice
Advice was cold water on his big undertaking.
Abandoned grandious for the street corner
Originally thought to apply friendship patterns to Cornerville families,but in the end decided that he would just observe them in situ.
Had a research partner.
Finally realized that Cornerville was a rather large universe unto itself.
Took aa research methodology in its infancy out into the field for the first time. Get help.

4. FIRST EFFORTS

Make a false start.
Make another falst start.
Got another idea--ask for help.
Try on their wisdom and try it out.
Take a little risk.
Find out where your subjects are.
Find out where subject zero is.
Get lucky and seize the day.
Live where your people are.


5. BEGINNING WITH DOC

Don't take your hat off in the house--i.e. pay the hell attention!
Keep observing and stay ouit of trouble.

6. TRAINING IN PARTICIPAN OBSERVATION

Have a cover story that makes sense to those who are listening to it.
Line up supporters and allies.
Share with these allies
REalize that yoiu will have an evvect on the field of observation.
Seek out the leaders wherever you are.
Be open and odon't argue.
Don't ask open ended questions so much as watch what happens.
Know your place and keep to it.
Don't seek to overtly influence, but be helpful in ways that reflect local custom.
Your note organization will grow from your research but start with some plan.

7. VENTURE INTO POLITICS

The study will find you if you ante up.








































































































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Notes for Summary

Sociology 510

Dr. Steve Groce

Terry Elliott

3/2/2011

Liebow echoes Jyndon Johnson's 'war on poverty' as unfortunate a metaphor as has ever been promoted.

Fast forward from past to present--poverty has always been with us, in 1963 25% poor, 30% black. The Black Poor are more extreme and tend to be generational.

A paucity of studies on male poverty as opposed to female and children.

Black male is written off as beyond help and as needing to help himself. NO research necessary.

Black male is 'harder to reach'--one might say that there are fewer leverage points on him-no children or mothers of children to act as a place to pry forth research information.

And like the carpenter every problem looks like a nail, every black problem tends to look like the problems of children and mothers.

The black subjects tha can be studied are 'captive' and thus the sample is skewed toward that bias.

Upshot? Expand range of research into to lower-class life. But there are problems including the validity of interview and questionnaire techniques.Gr8 response in fokotnote on 4 on page 9 that points to the problem of assuming that responses to questionaires and surveys mean the same thing to lower and middle class folks.

Purpose of study? Coming to 'grouind' with lower class folk on their turf and their terms.

Participant observation (P/O) methdology not questionaires and structured interviews intended to give a ground level icture of the world of lower class Negro men, not hypothesis testing.

I can't help but think how brave this was of these researchers to buck the quant tide and do this very different and powerful methodology--exploratiroy not designed.

24 men form the sample of the study which was conducted at all hours over a single year on street corners and varioius 'haunts and hangouts' for these men.

The researchers state the 'sense' was not built into the data, but rather it was made post hoc with a simple framework--streetcorner man as father/husband/lover/friend/breadwinner. I.e. commonly accepted behavioral roles that fit in all classes and can be categorized similarly.

I feel I am missing something in footnote 6 on page 12. Maybe we could talk about this in class.

The roles-based categories are not just imposed on them from outside but they are relationships that make common sense to the subjects of the study. They see themselves as hasbands, fathers, frieinds, lvoers, etc. This fit makes us do less violence to the data.

And... it makes cross-class comparison simpler and more plausible.

Researchers are not attempting to generalize outside of the context of the study. Neither are they saying that their subjects are abjectly idiosykncratic. No random sampling, in fact the study came to be by accident. The point? All research is contextualized and particular, but that context is fixed in time and place and hence is representative of someting larger.

I love how the resarchers summarizing all of street and streetcorner and public lower class life as trouble, tghrill, fate and fall.

Purpose again is examine a miniature and to make sense of it in place and to offer an explanation.

------

Researchers situate the reader in the 'archetypal' corner store then moves us out into the community as if moving fromthe heart to the hands. Place moves toward people as they describe the residents. Stats show hard times, but not all are "poor, dependent, and delinquent" but leans toward the "overcrowded, broken-plaster end of the scale."

And quite nicely the narrative returnes ot the Corner Shop and its description. I think this is a very good pattern and one I might adopt in my onw research into Skkype use by my doctoral cohort.

Bizarre observation in footnote about women eating Argo Starch.

This is at first an 'outside-in' view of the men in the corner milieu that moves very quickly to individual characterizations.

Page 28 reads like the dramatis personae of a play.

Chapter 5 Lovers and Exploiters (one of the chracterizations that the authors spoke of as useful earlier)

Exploitative characteristic of relationships both male and female. Men present themselves as such and expect other men to act self same toward women--sex objects and 'piggy banks'. Countervailing forces give the lie to these expression of exploitation. In ohter words all parties have a strong capacity for self-denial.

Interesting use of 'capital' metaphor tod describe the exploitation of relationship. to not exploit is to not cash in and hence to show oneself as a bad businessman. Marx would love to describe how the structural system of capitalism actually forces its denizens to embody its principles.

Men divide the world of women int nice and not nice only the latter which can be exploted. These roads separately taken justify sexual gamesmanship and romantic idealism.

You use contraception with not nice girls and don't with nice girls- the former is seen as contractual with no entangelments expected or wanted, the latter is seen as non-contractual with future entanglements as allowed, i.e. kids.

Again, the characterization is broad and not generalizable even among this small sample of men. In other words, as Emerson said, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and the exploitative and non-exploitative wind around within relationships as well. That would make perfect sense, too, because once a schema is developed then other purposes may certainly be made of them.

Neat how the larger category can be used as a container for other categories which subsequently have holes punched in them to demonstrate that relationships have flux.

A Field Experience in Retrospect

Lol, ' adamned fine reading of Snow White...."

LIebow describes himself in the context of the study (someting I will have to do in my study of Skype in a doctoral cohort.)

Prepring for the Field

Dr. Hylan Lewis' advice for all ethnographers: all is grist for the mill of the project.

Talk things over at a general, feeling out level.

Look over project literature.

Make like an anthropologistr.

Observe the encompassable, not the all-encompassing.

In the Field

Complete submersion led to a change in research plans from a neat and clean, boundaried one to an excursion of poking about and rock turning that stayed pretty close to his corner store 'home'. Leibow fully intended to return to his well marked research field to plow the next day, but as he put it 'tomorrow never came."

REsearch as a series of stories. Meeting people and talking as research. Gaining confidants and confidence as research. Liebow feels as if he is reaching a minimal state of belonging whatever that is it cannot be measured but it can be shown. How? By indicating how he was becoming a street corner man in training.

Research as a leap of faith and of following one's nose. IN the case of Lonny it meant inserting one into the subject of one's research. To research is to be human and humane. No sense of manipulaton or that Lonny was his research ticket to ride although some might think it so.

Interesting to see the word 'entrenched' in a research paper and glad of it. Yet he knokws that he is at best a tolerated outsider. Liebow in his insightful way recognizes that any thoughts that he was otherwise would be "vanity". Yet he subscribes to the Swiftian idea that while a community might not consider you anything other than a white man, some Tom, Dick and Harry's might. Some might bring you into their circle. Two contrarites ideas held simultaneously-genius. The metaphor of a chainlink fence is this genuis personified. Separate but equal?






































































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11 Fast Syllabus Hacks - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/11-fast-syllabus-hacks/22657

 

Profhacker has a very handy 11 tips for a crankin' good syllabus.  LOL, but you have never seen crankin' + good + syllabus together.  I especially liked the one about adding humor to your syllabi.  A professor, a hedgehog, and a fox walk into a bar....

The Enterprise of One: How New Entrepreneurs Are Taking Advantage of the Great Reset

• The Enterprise of One: How New Entrepreneurs Are Taking Advantage of the Great Reset

  • In his book, The Great Reset, Richard Florida calls periods like the one currently facing the United States “Great Resets.”
  • We all know the stories of mass unemployment and hardships suffered by American citizens during the Great Depression. But what often becomes lost in these stories is that a reset plays out as a process and not as much as an event. It represents a shift in values, economic tastes and preferences, business structures, and industries. In fact, it is a fundamental change in our culture as a whole.
  • The great resets first refocus people.
  • Much like turning soil, these resets provide fertile ground for new ideas and new ways of doing things.
  • cumulative cleansing
  • opportunity
  • a person’s professional identity is more important than ever. Individual skills, expertise, reputation and authority have become the personal currencies of our economy.
  • The opportunities provided by the transformation to an online business landscape, as well as the elimination of many barriers to entry and transaction costs, have left individual strengths, passions and expertise as the only distinguishing factors remaining in an individual’s or business’ success. Who you are as a person, and your expertise and passions, are more important than ever. In fact, they drive your own personal enterprise.
  • Today, everyone is an Enterprise of One.
  • the story of a new side of entrepreneurism.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and Google Books (Culturomics)

http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/compare-culturomics.asp

 

This link is a rather extraordinary one that begs to be followed up for anyone who loves language, it uses, and its wanderings. 

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General_Public - News & Events - Ryerson University

• General_Public - News & Events - Ryerson University

  • Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone tech experts present New Year’s tech resolutions

 

              "Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone tech experts present New Year’s tech resolutions

1. First things first: time to get a smartphone

2. Get to know Android.

3. If you already know Android, upgrade to Android 2.3.

4. Get into the tablet game.

5. Come June, Hold 3-D in the palm of your hand with the first handheld 3-D gaming system, Nintendo 3DS

6. Get out of your phone and back into your life with Windows Phone 7.

7. Take your home videos like a pro with Go Pro camera hero HD.

8. A resolution for the techie: Build your own 3-D Imax theatre at home."

 

          Maybe you can add a few of your own:  augmented reality apps on your smartphone, phone blogging, Moodle 2.0 tutorials, figure out streaming from your video camera, and create digital media on a regular basis for work or family. 

Article highlighted and highlights extracted using Diigo.

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The English Room-30 Days of Poetry-Student Activity

My pre-New Year's Resolution (btw, does that mean the resolution belongs to the new year and not to me?) is to play about with many forms of poetry before I teach E200 in the spring of 2011. Nice place to start.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070704015520/http://www.msrogers.com/English2/poetry/30_days_of_poetry.htm

Nuu Mini Key for the iPhone

via coolest-gadgets.com

I want one, please.

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Sugru

Sugru is a soft moldable material that reminds me of Fimo clay. But unlike Fimo, it does not have to be heated to cure. It air drys and is rubbery and sticks to anything. I used it to make a new button for my utility knife when the plastic one broke. I made bumpers for my cell phone. I put some on my tools so they would not roll off the table. I am still discovering ways to use the product.

-- Philip Lipton

This stuff comes in tiny pouches of different primary colors. You knead a bit with your hands until soft, then you apply it where you would like an additional grip, or stop, or section of repair. It's pretty sticky, can be worked like clay, but dries into a hard rubber. The photo shows a paring knife handle that was falling apart from years of dishwasher use. I coated the outside with Sugru and it now it feels great and is dishwasher proof. See Sugru's website for other ways it can be used.

-- KK

via kk.org

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Hands-Free Phone-Interview Setup

It's a serious issue in contemporary journalism: how do you record phone interviews while using a headset?

Radio Shack sells a nice, cheap device (the previously reviewed Mini-Phone Recorder) that interrupts the cord that goes from the handset to the phone, which works well when you're using the handset. But when I do interviews by phone, I like to type a rough transcript while I talk, and typing while clamping a handset to your ear with your shoulder can quickly get painful.

When I first confronted this problem earlier this year, I spent a lot of time on the internet looking for solutions. The ones I found were pretty unappetizing. The main technology on offer is a microphone that you stick in your ear, which seems both unpleasant and ineffective.

But then I encountered the good people at Sagebrush.com, who invented this elegant and inexpensive solution, which uses about $20 worth of stuff you can get from Radio Shack.

You need three items:

1. the Gold Series Y-Adapter, 3/32" Stereo Jacks & 3/32" Plug, which is item # 2264801 and costs $7;

2. a 1/8" Stereo Jack to 3/32" Stereo Plug Adapter, which is item # 2160379 and costs $6; and

3. a 12-Inch Shielded Stereo Audio Cable, which is item # 2265306 and costs $6.

The Y-Adapter splits the signal coming out of your phone's headset jack. One line goes to the headset; the other goes to the recorder.

Arguably, this is more of a hack than a Cool Tool. But it works (as long as your phone has a headset jack). And it's very portable: you can also use it on the road by plugging into a cell phone.

via kk.org

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Charles Jennings: Why focus on informal and social learning - Internet Time Alliance

Charles Jennings: Why focus on informal and social learning - Internet Time Alliance - Annotated

"Forgotten before it's needed"--what an odd expression!  Still rolling that idea around in my chinese checker tin.

 

How To Become A Culture Hacker (Ignite 2010)

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

How To Become A Culture Hacker (Ignite 2010)

View more presentations from sebpaquet.

A Contiuum of Twitter Use in the Classroom

Twitter-Matrix.jpg (JPEG Image, 708x428 pixels)

Anthologize

Sometimes you run across a tool that you know will change your professional, personal, and pedagogical life. Anthologize, a new plug-in for WordPress, is one of these tools.

I have been experimenting with it all morning and although it is in alpha I find it to be in general working order. Anthologize is a result of the One Week One Tool initiative sponsored by Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University. The idea was "more hack and less yack". In other words CHNM proposed  wanted "... a unique kind of institute: One Week, One Tool will teach participants how to build a digital tool for humanities scholarship by actually building a tool, from inception to launch, in a week—a digital humanities barn raising."

If you are interested here is some homework for you:

Read this overview of the tool and why it is so important.

Join this Zotero group if you want to keep apprised of links and resources.

Help out with work towards a beta version here.

Or check out a first rough attempt at using Anthology and exporting the output to Scribd as a pdf.


http://anthologize.org/

Be Safe, Be Ethical, Be Awesome

I just made “be safe, be ethical, be awesome” as my desktop background.
Sweet. I have been working to get schools to adopt at the very minimum
some sane social networking policies, but always in the background I am
wondering, “Is any of this really necessary?” Probably not in sane
systems. Isn’t the fact that we ‘need’ dress codes and AUP’s indicative
of a systemic illness or at least a failure of scale? Thanks for the
great image monika and thanks for sharing them.

"Next Practices” or "How Curiosity Actually Saves the Cat"

I love finding useful, thought-provoking and oddly congruent ideas from other disciplines. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Wikibon lately and this post's graph is a good example. I have always railed against the notion of a generalized 'best practice' because it is so contrary to complex and diverse systems like classrooms. You may have your own best practice, but only if it is customized to you.  But I do like the idea of 'next practice' . We should be wandering about inside and outside our disciplines foraging for not just the new new thang, but the idea or practice that is both practical and unique. In other words it must be both do-able as well as be appealingly fresh to our brains. If it is practical then we won't reject it out of hand and if it is unique, then it sets off all kinds of interesting and happy chemical cascades in our brains.

I use my social bookmarking tools, Diigo especially, to find these handy and 'deviant' tools. (Deviant in the statistical sense of standard deviance.) Here are a couple of qualifying samples of  the unique and practical.

Productivity guru, Mark Forster, has developed a method for getting stuff done that he calls Autofocus .  I am considering giving this tool a whirl, but the little piece of deviance I have found is in a reference to an animation created by Andreas Hoffman that demonstrates how the technique is done.  When you click on the 'animation' you download a pdf.  When I first opened it I thought Forster had the link wrong, but then you notice that the pdf has over 600 pages.  Hoffman has used each pdf page like an animation cell.  This is certainly a deviant use for pdf, but one that is unique and practical.  Are there other uses for this 'animation style'?  Could I combine this pdf with a screencast?  Acrobat has an automatic scroll function so you could start your screencast and then autoscroll.  I am sure others can come up with something sweeter and better with a little thought, but this a prime example of a deviant use that is completely handy.

Another example is the messaging/threading function I have just discovered in Diigo.  Below is a screenshot from my account with annotations:



Like I wrote in my annotation, I don't use anything like this anywhere in my toolkit. I think it is very practical for the classroom in light of the very safe, secure, and social "Teacher Console" within Diigo for K-12. In higher ed it encourages social connection inside and out of the classroom as well as legitimizing right click research for students. This is the first tool I teach my students each semester and with this new messaging system, it, like the rug in "The Big Lebowski", really ties the 'room' together, dude.

Last, I am always looking for new presentation tools and styles for my students.  I have adopted the pecha kucha for the last couple of years for its sheer fun and effectiveness.  Students love it, too.  Although this style doesn't lend itself to improvisation (which I am very attracted to in my own teaching) I have recently discovered a way to combine two familiar tools into one that could be instructive and fun in the classroom.  It is called "Battledecks" and can best be described as powerpoint karaoke.  Below is a rather profane video of Anil Dash putting battledecks through its paces.




Will I use this in my composition class this year? It is fondly to be hoped. Perhaps after we research a particular topic and write a paper I will put together a battledeck or two or ten based on that topic and see where my students take it. This means that I will have to practice battledecking myself. I find that tools owned are tools shared.

My larger point here is that we need to have our internal radar up as we free range for new stuff to integrate into our classrooms. All you need to do is to stick out those antennae that sense what piques you. It is a capacity we all have, but sometimes we don't allow it to come out and play. The affordances it offers are staggering. You never know what glorious fun will come from a spin of that wheel, but I guarantee it will be interesting especially if you offer your students the same opportunity.

Get Outside Your Echo Chamber

Kevin Kelly -- KK* Lifestream

"In the network economy, nine times out of ten, your  fiercest competitor will not come from your own field. In turbulent  times, when little is locked in, it is imperative to search as wide as  possible for places where innovations erupt. Innovations increasingly  intersect from other domains. A ceaseless blanket search--wide, easy,  and shallow--is the only way you can be sure you will not be surprised.  Don't read trade magazines in your field; scan the magazines of other  trades. Talk to anthropologists, poets, historians, artists,  philosophers. Hire some 17-year-olds to work in your office. Make a  habit to visit a web site at random. Tune in to talk radio. Take a class  in scenario making. You'll have a much better chance at recognizing the  emergence of something important if you treat these remote venues as  neighbors."

Reading Kevin Kelly's admonition to cast a wider net into other  disciplines comes from the simple observation that many innovations come  from outside one's own field.  Revolutions rarely come from within.  In  that spirit I would like to request that others write a little about  the outside sources that jostle the status quo within education either  intentionally or by accident.

Here are a few sites I recommend to get you out of your edublogging echo chamber:

1. One of my favorites is Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf's The Quantified Self.  Any look at recent posts will inspire you to think about your own discipline.

* For example, why can't classes be more like Meet-Ups?   Some of my most successful classes were ones where we met socially for  breakfast or coffee/tea.  Why not have a Meet-Up Monday?
* What about observing our disciplines and student use of tools within the discipline? A recent post about Bill Jarrold describes  how he uses the command line to log productivity.  Why not use Twitter  and Twitter hashtags to "log" writing productivity of all sorts that  your students produce?  I teach composition and have wondered about my  students' writing lives.  This would be a good way to open up a can of  observation on 'em.
* What about foursquare to extend the boundaries of your classroom?  I  have been wondering about how to bring games into the classroom and this  might be it.  What are the affordances of foursquare in the classroom? This post suggests a data visualization for it and some more ideas.  Yes, I think this will do.

2. Another one is ze frank's page:

* I love how the effectiveness of the blog-comment template is shown so well here.   It is a pattern that any writer can use to attract an audience.   Besides it demonstrates one of ze frank's principles so well--surprise  is everywhere.

3.  Or Dave Snowden's excellent and evocative Cognitive Edge.  While technically inside of the envelope of learning and education he also writes about leadership and family.

* Snowden's software, SenseMaker Suite, might be applicable to my burgeoning dissertation interest in social capital in professional learning communities.
* Or perhaps you discover a quote that thoroughly bumfuzzles your mind  like this one:  "In general, if a community is not physically,  temporally and spiritually rooted, then it is alienated from its  environment and will focus on survival rather than creativity and  collaboration."  This may seem obvious to many, but to me it points to  the sterility of classrooms in general and to mine in paricular.  One of  the oddest feelings I have gotten since I moved from teaching high  school to university has been a 'coldness'.  I miss the heat of high  school and I think this quote explains this in part and points me toward  a major goal for fall classes--figure out ways to root my classes.  And  I also think about how to 'root' my online classes as well.

4.  How about Scott McCloud's Mind Dump where I discovered:

* Eric Mazur's physics class where  he  makes the awesomely sensible and arguable assertion that you can  forget facts but you can't forget understanding.  This guy is my new  hero and I am determined to apply some of his techniques for physics to  my lit and comp classes.
* Or perhaps I will be moved to print up this quote from Seth Godin that McCloud points to for  our consideration:  "The internet has dramatically widened the number  of available substitutes. You don't have to like it, but it's true. That  means you have to work far harder to create work that can't easily be  replaced."  How can I make myself less replaceable?  That is an  essential question for every world class employee who wants real job  security.

How about the blog Sports Are 80% Mental ?

* File this under the category "Everything You Know Is Wrong":   "Physical activity had no impact on weight change, but weight clearly  led to less activity."  In other words don't be hatin' on the fat man or  boy or woman or girl.  My second thought when I read this was whether  there are similar 'Truths' in my discipline that need puncturing. What  are the assumptions that guide my work that might be wrong?  I will be  on my guard for this during the upcoming school year and will report  back.

The idea that innovation comes from the margins seems right  biologically-- growth occurs along the edge (wherever that might be). So  my challenge to you is to bring back similar (and better) missives from  the fraxillated margins.  Just fold one interest right on top of  another and that's where you might want to be.

Podcasting for Kids

This is good information on how to do a podcast, how to integrate it into what teachers do, and how to justify it.  I can see how valuable this might be as a solid first step toward a larger goal.  And what would that large goal be?  To show kids how to get inside their heads and find the stuff they are passionate about and then use the tool to convey that passion.  At their age they need just enough skill to balloon their personal joys into the air. 

 

 

via ScribeFire

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Quel Difference!

Wow, Alan Kay explains what a difference an "s" makes in our understanding of the world.

• McGee’s Musings : “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker - Annotated

   

  • It's largely about the enormous difference between News and New to human minds. Marketing people really want News (= a little difference to perk up attention, but on something completely understandable and incremental). This allows News to be told in a minute or two, yet is interesting to humans. New means "invisible",  not immediately comprehensible, etc.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Academic Productivity » The Future of the Journal, by Anita de Waard

This advice for researchers is apt for ANY writer at work from now on end.

• Academic Productivity » The Future of the Journal, by Anita de Waard - Annotated

   

  • A somewhat related idea are the 5 stars of open linked data:

    
    

    ★ make your stuff available on the web (whatever format)

    ★★ make it available as structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
    

    ★★★ non-proprietary format (e.g. csv instead of excel)

    ★★★★ use URLs to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
    

    ★★★★★ link your data to other people’s data to provide context

    
    

     

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.