more irony

Interesting article. Here's what's funny: The guy belabors the fact that years of online reading (surfing, scanning, scratching, etc.) has changed the way he reads. And yet, here he is, writing a long, drawn-out argument which he hopes we'll wade through -- as if we wont scan, scratch, and sniff through the page to get the gist, find his principle point, and move on. Better to modify your writing habits based on how you and a million other droids now read.

Just because you write it, does not mean that they'll read it.

multi-learning

This discussion has some obvious implications for online learning. Of particular interest are the claims made about the use of multiple media during or to facilitate a learning or information transfer activity. Here we are as course designers and information technologists, struggling to find effective uses of technologies to gather, push, pull, mash, and otherwise make accessible a range of content and information resources. Now we are to consider the possible (relative) negative effects of these solutions.

Is it possible that the asses-in-seats folks have had it right all along?

before the sillyness

I took a vacation day, mostly to spend some time with S. But he had a buddy spend the night, which meant that he'd be sleeping in this morning. So before catching up on some reading, I drove up to the Oneida River at about 0630. I set up just below the Caughdenoy dam. It was open and the water was running too hard. Some folks don't mind water moving that fast. I find that I'm fighting the water and not paying attention to the feel of the line.


I moved east above the dam. Slower water, but nothing but a few random nibbles. Back down on the canal (the Anthony cut that runs west out of the lake below the river) the water was glassy, the morning air was cool, and the fishing sucked. Choice morning though. There's a slim chance I can get back up there tonight. Those fish, they ain't going anywhere.

square peg - round hole

This is why people with graduate degrees in textual studies should not teach writing. The guy is failing nine out of 15 students per semester. The project manager in me says, "Whoa chief, let's evaluate what you're doing and how you're doing it." The skills-oriented writing instructor in me says, "If you're asking students in a community college writing class to read "Araby" and Hamlet, then you better be prepared for a lot of push back, yawning, tuning out, and frustration." The guy is wondering why his students are not improving as writers. Hmmm. I may be way off, but I'm going to guess that he's not actually teaching them how to write.

you got that right

All of the consultants I've been asked to meet with the last few years have made mention of Chris Anderson's Long Tail Theory. Sean Branagan was especially excited about how we (University College) might be able to apply the theory to marketing/selling higher education "products."

This article, while focusing on commercial product selling, seems to refute the core proposal of Anderson's theory: that the Internet is changing everything we know about marketing and selling. A short quote from the article:

"The Web is clearly changing cultural consumption patterns, but those changes don't seem to involve the sort of drastic flattening of demand curves predicted by the Long Tail. While whole new cultural categories -- YouTube videos, for example -- are indeed emerging, they seem to quickly settle into the same winner-take-all dynamic experienced in the pre-Google age. Don't toss out those old paradigms just yet."

This short blog post from Robert Scoble reminded me that while Anderson's theory is intriguing, at UC we continue to do the core technologies and strategies extremely well, especially when you consider the budgetary and staffing constraints in which we perform.