The NorthAmerican Council for Staff, Program and Organizational Development (NCSPOD) Conference has just ended in Reno, NV. In addition to providing an invigorating forum for collaboration among community colleges and universities, the international organization presents awards to honor exemplary performance.
The biggest award (to my biased and imperfect understanding) is the Glenn Schmitz Award. It "recognizes an individual or a group that has provided outstanding service to the NCSPOD board. " This award perhaps creates the most excitement and suspense because it is the only award kept secret. No one outside of the active board, not even the esteemed Helen Burnstad (who has an annual award named after her) knew of the selection before the NCSPOD President, Louanne Whitton, announced the winner.
Of course it went to KCKCC's Ben Hayes. All agreed that the recognition was well deserved and there was no luck about it, but you should ask him about how he did at the tables. The fates smiled on him this week.
Unsurprisingly, few people report downloading podcasts every day, but increasing numbers are accessing and downloading content.
Furthermore, access to the necessary hardware is increasing even faster, and socio-economic status doesn't hinder youth from having that hardware: "Like podcast downloading, ownership of iPods and MP3 players has also increased since 2006. According to a December 2007 Pew Internet Project survey, 34% of American adults and 43% of internet users report owning an iPod or MP3 player, up from 20% of the total population and 26% of internet users in April 2006.
Young adults between 18 and 29 years old are the age group most likely to own MP3 players, 61% of whom own these gadgets."
"assessed the kinds of changes that occur in face-to-face instruction when faculty add Web enhancements to their course. " It comes up with some expected and unexpected results. The affected faculty expected the following:
more efficient face-to-face interactions, better class discussions
more active learning,
less lecture
more readily available practice and feedback opportunities for students, and
more student-centered instruction.
That was essentially the case; moreover, “an unanticipated consequence of continual and comprehensive student access to course materials and resources was an elevation of faculty's expectations for students" [emphasis mine].
Where change was noted it was much more likely to be positive.
Source: Educause. Follow link in first sentence for full article.
In honor of the first meeting this semester of Multicultural Literature Book Club sponsored by the Intercultural Center (and since prior commitments will keep me from our discussion tomorrow, 9-16-8, in the ICC at noon) this post is a book review.
At first I found the first person thing annoying.1st person narrators are notoriously unreliable,ambiguous and subjective, and he refers to that when he says his “history” is at least true in its essence. That said, this makes it unconventional and artistic.The choice provokes discussion and avoids trite resolution.
The novella is overtly symbolic, in the nature of a Hawthorne novel, and is best understood in terms of an allegory. Wikipedia notes that his name, Changez, is Urdu for Genghis. The Chilean bookseller’s reference to young men captured and trained to kill for their adopted groups is Christian, right? But Genghis Khan’s tribe exchanged princes with the Romans in the same way.Maybe even Genghis himself, (if I remember my history channel).
Erica symbolizes the American dream, much like the Statue of Liberty or any other physical monument. Like Gatsby, Changez reinvents himself for the object of his desire, this Erica/ AmErica.
The crux is the Ghost seduction scene – where, after a failed attempt at “possession” – to “have her” - he tells (Am)Erica, “Imagine I’m Chris.” Changez hijacks the ghost of Chris and uses it to ram the twin pillars of Erica’s long guarded treasure.This results in, as the French would say, “La petit mort” her first with another man (she’d only reached climax one other timesince Chris’ death, where she pulled her own trigger while imagining Chris.)Like the towers on 9/11, her shudders signal collapse and impeding devastation.
Or does Changez offer himself up as a vehicle for the ghost – himself a spiritual victim of a long lost idea? We can’t trust his rationalizations.Was Changez the plane or the hijacker?Meat puppet or metaphysical date-rapist? I see him as the incubus who destroys his lover and loses his soul.His rationalizations for co opting the dead Chris smacks of the rationalizations of date rapists on a recent episode of “The Closer.”
The allegory isn't pure or consistent. Working for Underwood Sampson, he’s been blind and weak, but he regains his strength after his hair grows out.Christianity is a clear source of the allegory, but Changez shifting identifications with disparate images shows his actions are rationalizations for baser motives rather than the altruistic goals put forth in a monologue meant, after all, to detain and expose an enemy combatant, so anything said is unreliable. Does he blame some Delilah for cutting his hair? Would he say anything's fair in love or war? Could the pillars be also a Philistine prison?
And what about Chris – and obvious Christ figure who died for the sins of others (remember he died of lung cancer though he’d never smoked until he learned his death was inevitable and immediate)?
Angel is a place to put your stuff - online: a learning management system (LMS) also called a Course Management System (CMS).Here we use Angel mostly for fully online or distance learning, but other campuses provide an LMS for any class offered. You want to have Angel for an on-ground class, such as:
Copyright protection.Having content behind a password protected shell/firewall/ whatever, may keep the college from getting sued.Copyright law is ambiguous - sometimes intentionally so, and anyone can benefit from an added layer of protection.See Dr. Rosemary Talub’s Presentation from SIDLIT.
Students who transfer will have to use an LMS- Blackboard at KU, KSU Online at KSU or Moodle at Baker.They function similarly.
Students want it.
Students and faculty have widely and wildly different expectations.The embedded tables are from an Educause article which provided a meta-analysis of over 100 universities and community colleges. Our own Chan Tung published similar results.
Also, although the processmay differ from department to department, it requires a) institutional approval b) at least a semester advance notice c) that you take a "course" online from OES - to learn the system and get the students' perspective.
Because instructors may not know what section of a course they will be teaching or if it will fill, it’s challenging to arrange to have web-enhancement, particularly for an adjunct.
What are other obstacles, resistance, do faculty have to web-enhancement?
The biggest award (to my biased and imperfect understanding) is the Glenn Schmitz Award. It "recognizes an individual or a group that has provided outstanding service to the NCSPOD board. " This award perhaps creates the most excitement and suspense because it is the only award kept secret. No one outside of the active board, not even the esteemed Helen Burnstad (who has an annual award named after her) knew of the selection before the NCSPOD President, Louanne Whitton, announced the winner.
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