Blurts

<blockquote><p>The typical 2030 faculty will likely be a collection of adjuncts alone in their apartments, using recycled syllabuses and administering multiple-choice tests from afar.</p></blockquote><p>This quote is from a Washington Post article on the “<a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091104312.html”>brewing virtual revolution in education</a>”. I am watching it happen around me. We just added 3 new lines to my department – all non-tenure track because of new opportunities in online instruction. This is a big percentage change. I wonder if we will ever expand the number of tenure track lines and what the long term implications of “the growth income being in online students” will be.</p><p>Reminds me a lot of the Jeff Jarvis predictions for educational change in “<a href=”http://learningaloud.com/blog/2009/05/30/the-relevance-of-college/”>What would Google do</a>?” The search for more economical ways to do things ignores the value of a composite. Isn’t this essential what “university” means? Now, any piece that can be improved is isolated to pursue greater efficiency. What remains after the removal of the easy money pieces are the admittedly valuable, but expensive parts that now are no longer subsidized. What remains may be too expensive to continue.</p><p>For me and my own little world, it translate like this. Everyone is willing to teach Introduction to Psychology. High schools want to teach it for AP or dual-enrollment credit. Every junior and community college wants to teach it. These institutions do not have the means to offer degrees or if four-year institutions to engage in graduate education or commit time to major research programs. They specialize, pass these students on and the potential concern is that what is left are specialized, upper-division courses. The courses are expensive to teach because of the expertise required and the small numbers enrolled. So, how will this work. Certainly, states and tax payers are backing away. The percentage of higher education budgets paid by the state is declining everywhere. What happens to the cost of instruction when upper division courses are not subsidized by large introductory and general studies courses? I assume tuition will have to be adjusted. I suppose we will be blamed for this, but few want to understand why such adjustments are necessary.</p>

I just finished writing about new ways to process aggregator content and I learn that there is something more to explore. Google has released a new service called “Fast Flip” that offers a new way to “flip” through content from popular sites. You can explore recent content within categories selected by Google or search.

There is also this interesting claim:

How do you personalize results on Google Fast Flip?
We are able to take the cues you give us – such as the stories you read, recommend and e-mail – to present sections, news sources and specific authors tailored specifically to your interests. To enable personalization of the articles you see, you must sign in to your Google Account. You can easily create a Google Account on this page if you don’t already have one.

I can’t say I know what this personalization accomplishes yet, but I will continue to explore. BTW – the site knows when you access from a mobile device (see image below) and adjusts. On the iPod Touch, you use the familiar swipe to move from one page “image” to the next and the click to expand. This is not an app, but a web site that is device aware.

A very well presented analysis of the trade-offs between abundant information and limited attention (Globe and Mail). Just what are the demands of 21st Century Learning? We tend to encourage a shift from having information to thinking skills. However, other challenges are also evident. What about the challenge of shallow knowledge – the lack of depth necessary to make substantive contributions in a given area.

Personal cyberinfrastructure (from Educause). I like this idea. I also liked it 5-10 years ago when most operating systems (even Windows) come with an easy to implement web sharing option. Apple still has it and I have lost track of what Windows offer in the basic package. Problem is – we seem to have moved to DHCP and ISPs seem to resent users having something available on the upload side.

Mine still works (http://grabe.psych.und.nodak.edu) if my desktop machine happens to be on. This is now just a page that links elsewhere, but it could be more for anyone who wanted to get by without purchasing space elsewhere.

So this guy with an impulse control issue, Rep. Joe Wilson, shouts at President Obama during the President’s address on health care. The event has set off a secondary battle at wikipedia.

What is at stake is what can be said on Wilson’s wikipedia page regarding the event. The NYTimes blog post seems to imply that initial references to the outburst were removed and the page then locked. I checked and there is now a brief comment

Previously “a little-known Republican”, he gained widespread attention in September 2009 for heckling President Barack Obama during a speech to Congress.

This is a tough call for Wikipedia and this represents only a recent example. What does the source want to be? I suppose one could claim that any source reflects the biases of the authors but accountability can be lost when anyone is an author. Or – perhaps wikipedia might learn something from historians (or at least my nonhistorian take on what I think historians accept). There is no single history because the individuals who live events each experience an event from different perspectives. The “facts of the case” do not capture the stories as lived by individuals.

Wikipedia assumes the “facts of the case” somehow will emerge from multiple “stories as lived”. Not going to happen. A flaw in “wisdom of crowds” logic.

I read this post from David Warlich with interest because I find myself in a similar situation with similar questions. Warlich is working on a book and describes an exchange with another potential author regarding public sharing of a future product. Both self-pubish their work. With Warlich’s visibility, self-publishing probably works. I must admit I would take the self-publishing route only as a last resort because I am unable to rely on the lecture curcuit to bring attention to my work.

The posts are really less about self-publishing and more about making the authoring process visible. Can you trust the system vs. should one be worried about having others take of advantage of your sharing? I think these posts are interesting in that they externalize a distinction between what some advocate and what they then are willing to do. We propose openness, but we also want to support ourselves doing something we value. Nothing wrong with hoping to make a living doing something you value.